Powercreep Illusion - Petrifex

[Kramer]

4 hours ago, Scurvydog said:

It would be rather terrible if the game was balanced according to the lowest denominator. If Bob who plays once a month at best with only liberators and judicators needs to have an equal win chance with all other armies we will see a problem. I see building a list as any TCG, making a deck is just as important as how you play it, if you build a poor deck and you don't know how it plays and also don't know what your opponent is doing, you should by all rights lose

If this was in response to my post. I agree let’s not make Bob ‘bottom of the deck’ the common denominator. But the same goes for not making ‘win at all cost’ William. 
Or to be more realistic. Also take non tournament games into account instead of only top table games. To prevent the skew of only judging it by that metric. 
so we also need ‘middle of the road’ Martin. 

[Brakh]

From my perspective main problem is. We set-up, shake hands, first turn, half of my/oponents army dead without any chance for any reaction, we can pack up.

[Ravinsild]

10 hours ago, Euphanism said:

Until I started just bringing catapults and Mortek, I lost most of my games as Petrifix. Our 'competitive' meta is veeeeery first-turn kill heavy; Slaanesh, FEC, and KO pretty much dominate. I only saw a few weeks of Tzeench before the shut down but it seemed to be in the same tier. In those cases, playing Petrifix without catapults felt like I basically showed up to make a neat little display of my army and then put it back in the case. 🙃

We have very few Death players at my LGS (besides that one FEC netlist), and only two Ossiarch players counting myself. The fact that none of the people that usually jump on the new hotness (until it gets an errata) went for Petrifix made me feel like it wasn't as powerful as people thought. It's a shame the best way to play them is with hordes of Mortek, because the lore of Petrifix makes it seem like tons of Stalkers and Guard would be really cool thematically. 

 

tl:dr if Petrifix is really overpowered then I'm doing it wrong

Bro....I hate to tell you.... the reason people didn't jump on the Bandwagon is cuz them some REAL ugly models 😢

[Overread]

People who jump on the "new hotness" often want it to hang around for a while too - they might have felt that Ossiarchs were powerful, but also highly likely to get nerfed pretty quick too. Another aspect is that their general performance means that they can start the game losing. I've seen a good few battle reports where the Ossiarch army is losing the game by turn 2 so its a struggle to win by the end. A lot of those "power games" want to start winning turn 1 with little to no risk of losing.

 

 

 

Also darn it stop calling them ugly!! 

[Yondaime]

On 6/21/2020 at 5:10 PM, Maddpainting said:

Both my main armies i'll play against OBR anytime anywhere, i have zero problems with them, they are just bulky, limited on the table, and slow. You can easily body block them and hold objectives. You really only need to kill 1-3 units to have the upper hand all game.

It's sad to hear that they are banned, doesn't let players grow in experience at all and creates a stigma for something that isn't any stronger than 10 other traits/lists.
 

Yes he is strong, but he is also 1/2 an army and should be able to do 1/2 an armies work. Kill everything else, ignore him and play the objectives.

I play BoC and CoS and have no problem player OBR+Nagash or even Archaon. You just don't want to head strong them unless you know you can. They both are huge point investments which leads the a smaller force. Play the objectives.

The fact that OBR are slow is a myth that needs to be buster, infantry can move +3 with a discipline point (total 7), and the cavalry is REALLY fast, do you know how many times i got chargerd turn 1 by OBR?

You cant really ignore 30 mortek (full buffed -2 rend reroll all, exploding hits etc)

I dont say that OBR are broken but for some armies, specially older armies (SCE is an example) is a straight up massacre

[Overread]

The base stats are slower for Ossiarchs broadly speaking. They can speed up, but they have to spend resources to do so. This requires planning and efficient use of their discipline points and positioning. Especially as they are not cheap.

 

I think the key is that whilst they are not intolerably slow, they are not a reactive force. They lack numbers and native speed to be a highly reactive force suited to a very dynamic game state. They have to push their own agenda and focus on the tactics and objectives to really succeed. Otherwise they run the risk of being beaten on points or stretched too far across the board. 

[Maddpainting]

1 hour ago, Yondaime said:

The fact that OBR are slow is a myth that needs to be buster, infantry can move +3 with a discipline point (total 7), and the cavalry is REALLY fast, do you know how many times i got chargerd turn 1 by OBR?

You cant really ignore 30 mortek (full buffed -2 rend reroll all, exploding hits etc)

I dont say that OBR are broken but for some armies, specially older armies (SCE is an example) is a straight up massacre

 

23 minutes ago, Overread said:

The base stats are slower for Ossiarchs broadly speaking. They can speed up, but they have to spend resources to do so. This requires planning and efficient use of their discipline points and positioning. Especially as they are not cheap.

 

I think the key is that whilst they are not intolerably slow, they are not a reactive force. They lack numbers and native speed to be a highly reactive force suited to a very dynamic game state. They have to push their own agenda and focus on the tactics and objectives to really succeed. Otherwise they run the risk of being beaten on points or stretched too far across the board. 

100% this ^ 
This, yes they can move 1 unit per Leader +3" but when your base movement is 4" a 7" movement is now normal for other armies, which many has good limited movements too if not better. 

Also about old SCE, when the new Points comes out in a month or 3 (IDK when sense its been pushed back) that should solve a lot of the problems for them, SCE right now is just in a general bad spot with a lot of their units, along with a couple other armies like Goblins, Sylvaneth, and NH.

[chord]

5 hours ago, Yondaime said:

I dont say that OBR are broken but for some armies, specially older armies (SCE is an example) is a straight up massacre

This!  Sure OBR are slow, but SCE are even slower and less powerful.  

[Aelfric]

11 hours ago, Scurvydog said:

Although I for sure would not be able to buy the new lumineth even if I wanted to for a year or so before everyone calms down, the rules shown right now has everyone in a frenzy, even though some older tomes will most likely do very well against them.

I have ordered the Lumineth box, but thereagain, it will be a year (or two) by the time they're painted, which means everyone will have calmed down when I get to play them (by which time they will be losing to Grotbag Scuttlers).

[Euphanism]

7 hours ago, Ravinsild said:

Bro....I hate to tell you.... the reason people didn't jump on the Bandwagon is cuz them some REAL ugly models 😢

The players that always jump on the most powerful bandwagon at my LGS don’t care about looks at all. Most of them don’t paint anything, and at a recent tournament I actually played against a guy running a FEC list with his zombie Dragon stuck to the base with blue sticky tack. 

Personally I think they look way better than the same little human guy on a horse that I can get from 40 different other miniature companies, but that doesn’t affect their balance at all. 

[Kramer]

1 hour ago, Aelfric said:

I have ordered the Lumineth box, but thereagain, it will be a year (or two) by the time they're painted, which means everyone will have calmed down when I get to play them (by which time they will be losing to Grotbag Scuttlers).

Nah that’s destruction. They don’t get any love  

[Ravinsild]

27 minutes ago, Euphanism said:

The players that always jump on the most powerful bandwagon at my LGS don’t care about looks at all. Most of them don’t paint anything, and at a recent tournament I actually played against a guy running a FEC list with his zombie Dragon stuck to the base with blue sticky tack. 

Personally I think they look way better than the same little human guy on a horse that I can get from 40 different other miniature companies, but that doesn’t affect their balance at all. 

Oof. I guess my post wasn't funny enough to pass on the joke.

[Euphanism]

20 minutes ago, Ravinsild said:

Oof. I guess my post wasn't funny enough to pass on the joke.

Sorry, I've been hearing 'those models are ugly why do you like them' from day 1 so I'm probably a bit defensive! Hard-line opinions about little plastic toys and all that.

Edited June 23, 2020 by Euphanism

[Acid_Nine]

14 hours ago, Brakh said:

From my perspective main problem is. We set-up, shake hands, first turn, half of my/oponents army dead without any chance for any reaction, we can pack up.

Yea, that’s a big problem too, and one that seems to be Porting over from 40k just a bit. Alpha strike armies are really powerful and quite (dare I say) unfun. I saw a game where a tournament level hallowheart list won against a balloon boy army list turn 1 by using the comet, teleporting in and wiping out so much of the army the guy (a tourney player) called it. I played the same list with my Deepkin and I think that if I got the double turn and spaced my units out I would have won it, but I also had the first turn and can also arrive near target units. 

 

I dunno the point of this post is either. Teleporting a lot of high damage units is bad unless I am doing it?

[Kasper]

22 hours ago, Brakh said:

From my perspective main problem is. We set-up, shake hands, first turn, half of my/oponents army dead without any chance for any reaction, we can pack up.

To be frank this just sounds like bad play, because it is nothing like the games I experience at my club or with my mates at all, and we do try to finetune lists and multiple people I know just copypaste a list from a recent tournament etc. What kind of armies/lists do you play with and against? Alpha strikes are strong, but thats where you need to learn about threat ranges and deploy accordingly or use screens of cheap units to prevent your good stuff from being killed. There are very few armies that just flat out annihilate you with little you can do in return. 

I feel like the described problem is where two inviduals just line up all their stuff and then max move everything forward without any thought or care. Of course stuff will be blown up, since it will just be a matter of whoever has the strongest units in combat. 

[ACBelMutie]

Like other people said, they problem of AoS is there are some armies which are very powerful against other armies and some people get frustrated playing against them. This happened to me using LoN with no competitive list, but a lot of corpses and resurrecting a lot of miniatures per turn. When my opponents didn't have enought power to kill the entire unit, they got frustrated because they killed 15 miniatures and 10 went back in my turn.

Ossiarch Bonereapers have the same problem. They can't be killed if you can't deal mortal wounds or a nice shooting phase. They have hard counters, but I have to admit they are powerful against other armys or list that can't win since the beggining.

Greetings

[Joseph Mackay]

In regards to Bonereapers, I think everyone is forgetting the mechanics built into their units. The Hekatos (unit leaders) being able to use command abilities and providing a 6+ damage save in the same manner as a hero. Additionally with the RD points, they tend to get to use more command abilities than any other army.

in general, I’m of the belief that ‘power creep’ is accidental. Late during an edition they create these new ideas (RP points and Hekatos for Bonereapers as an example, or Allegiance Abilities in the first Sylvaneth battletome), and the problem is it takes them so long to implement these ideas into the older armies as well, so it creates this situation where armies get left behind until they redo the battletomes.

additionally I actually think most units are just under/over costed rather than being ‘OP’ or an example of power creep. Deepkin Eels for example were (and still are, in my opinion) too cheap for their stat lines, but when combined with their allegiance abilities and Volturnos spamming his command ability they just become insane for their points. Conversely though I think the Abbhorrant Archregent is overcosted. The thing is that yes he can summon a 200pts unit but let’s not forget that said unit is overcosted to account for the summoning and various healing abilities within the army. Flesh-Eaters have this weird economy where the units that can be summoned pay for it rather than the unit that summons them. As such when you compare the warscrolls, the Ghoul King at 160pts, the Archregent was fine at 200pts for +1 attack, +1 wound, +1 spell/dispel and a choice of summoned unit (however, I also think he should only summon 10 ghouls rather than 20. He should basically get a choice between all the 3 summon abilities whereas the others don’t). His points only went up due to people complaining about the more competitive/borderline WAAC players spamming 6 of them in lists.

not necessarily related to ’power creep” but the small model choice armies (Fyreslayers, Flesh-Eaters etc) hurt the game by being so restricted in choices due to low amount of units to choose from, that gw are unable to force lore based list restrictions. Take Fyreslayers for example, by the lore in the battletome, if you’re using any of the Lodges then you should only be able to take a single Auric Runefather and Auric Runemaster as the book makes very clear that there’s is only ever one of each in a lodge at a time. Additionally, neither Hearthguard units should be battleline options as they’re both described as ‘bodyguard’ type units that you shouldn’t be able to spam the board with. For Flesh-Eathers, the Archregent should also be one per army. But because the model range is so small for those armies, they’re unable to make it so that lists actually match the lore

[Maddpainting]

10 hours ago, Kasper said:

To be frank this just sounds like bad play, because it is nothing like the games I experience at my club or with my mates at all, and we do try to finetune lists and multiple people I know just copypaste a list from a recent tournament etc. What kind of armies/lists do you play with and against? Alpha strikes are strong, but thats where you need to learn about threat ranges and deploy accordingly or use screens of cheap units to prevent your good stuff from being killed. There are very few armies that just flat out annihilate you with little you can do in return. 

I feel like the described problem is where two inviduals just line up all their stuff and then max move everything forward without any thought or care. Of course stuff will be blown up, since it will just be a matter of whoever has the strongest units in combat. 

Thats what i was hitting at in my other comments, If you are playing smash face armies and all you do is smash face with no utility units, and no thought as to how to win other than kill more stuff, then the stronger smash face army will always win.

Edited June 24, 2020 by Maddpainting

[Icegoat]

I just wish the power creep went with the right models. Individually in the game stats a chaos warrior is one of the most non lethal least dangerous things you could ever fight against. Same with a stormcast liberator. Compared to say a diseased rat or a bikini clad elf with a knife it always seems to be the wrong units with the most power. Osssiarchs are the prime example tiny mortrek guard which serve as the army's chaff or at least should but are actually a hyper lethal death star that also cant be killed. Make chaos chosen great again. 

[Beliman]

17 hours ago, Aelfric said:

I have ordered the Lumineth box, but thereagain, it will be a year (or two) by the time they're painted, which means everyone will have calmed down when I get to play them (by which time they will be losing to Grotbag Scuttlers).

One year for my next army you say?!?!

[Kasper]

1 hour ago, Maddpainting said:

Thats what i was hitting at in my other comments, If you are playing smash face armies and all you do is smash face with no utility units, and no taught as to how ot win other than kill more stuff, then the stronger smash face army will always win.

Yeah I understand that there are some people that just line all their stuff up and just go head first into a giant brawl in the middle of the table, but you cant really expect to experience a fair and balanced game through that way of playing. It is a tactical boardgame no matter how you look at it.

[Heijoshin]

2 hours ago, Icegoat said:

I just wish the power creep went with the right models. Individually in the game stats a chaos warrior is one of the most non lethal least dangerous things you could ever fight against. Same with a stormcast liberator. Compared to say a diseased rat or a bikini clad elf with a knife it always seems to be the wrong units with the most power. Osssiarchs are the prime example tiny mortrek guard which serve as the army's chaff or at least should but are actually a hyper lethal death star that also cant be killed. Make chaos chosen great again. 

I understand where you are going with this, but smallest, cheapest, most numerous unit does not automatically mean it is chaff. Mortek are the prime example. 130 point 10 man "chaff"? I don't think so. Are they the closest TO chaff in a pure OBR army, yes. But they don't necessarily qualify as chaff solely because of that. Nor should they. It's not what the army is about. Also you need to consider intention of the unit. Skinks I would argue are intended to be chaff. They go in, block stuff, take the hit, die and then your saurus (a stronger infantry) come in and sweep up. That's not the same with Mortek, and that is by intentional design. What stronger infantry is there? Stalkers? I wouldn't argue that a  single 6-man (or two 3 man) unit of stalkers as an infantry replacement once mortek die. Mortek ARE the replacement that would come after the chaff. They get the re-roll as a replacement for chaff (in my opinion). 

If you were talking Marauders though, I would be right on board. The distance that marauders can cover with their charges and such is basically like a movement equivalent of mortek guard. This was covered in a recent podcast by The Honest Wargamer, where the guest "Colonel Cabbage" basically said that from 18" (movement and charge), marauders basically have around 56% chance of getting into combat. At 17.5", that goes up to around 75% (because you only need to end up at 0.5" at the end of a charge). Nope, you're eyes did not deceive you... a 0.5" difference means the likelihood goes up by 20%!!! From 14.5" or less a marauder unit will always succeed (not counting terrain etc etc). I think someone else said that at 17.5" inches, marauders are more likely to succeed in getting into combat than Chaos Knights, a unit that can move a whole 4" more....and they ride freaking horses. Lets not forget the fact that they start with 2 buffs for just being in a 20 man (i.e. their minimum sized unit) and for some reason they get their banner / drums for every 5 of them. Five!!. They blow Chaos Warriors out the water. Want to know the worst of it.....That's just all from their warscroll. Lets not forget Chaos God Marks or dare I say it, darkoath warqueen buffs or whoever it is from Khorne who can also increase the charge by 3". 

Edited June 24, 2020 by Heijoshin

[Sleboda]

3 hours ago, ACBelMutie said:

Ossiarch Bonereapers have the same problem. They can't be killed if you can't deal mortal wounds or a nice shooting phase

This is the sort of comment that had me start this thread, so thanks for saying that and giving me the nudge to encourage it to get more focused.

See, I just don't get that. In my recent game vs. Gitz, it was not mortal wounds or shooting that got me. It was superior movement and being vastly outclassed in combat. Manglers and hoppers dominated in both areas, wiping out droves of Mortek easily, giving my opponent control of objectives they I simply could not counter. This was why I ended up thinking "This is the army people were concerned about???"

So, to get us a bit more on track, I'll ask again -

What is real, on-table experience showing us? What is the reality of the situation as opposed to the read-the-book-theory of it?

[Icegoat]

The reality of the situation is there is power creep I play maggotkin and have never won against ossiarchs in 4 matches I've played. They dont die and when they do they get up and they run around like a sprinting cheetah. It's not so much they kill my unitss they just park themselves in front of them and the combat never ends. Its depressing. 

[Beastmaster]

„They say he can’t be killed.“

“And do you believe them?“

„No, Mylord. Anyone can be killed.“

😁