What would you like to see for 3rd edition?

[Kramer]

37 minutes ago, SleeperAgent said:

You can still fail. But spending resources (spell attempts) to get essentially a re-roll is less "feel bad". Combat has so many ways to re-roll and make it more likely to succeed if built correctly. Let magic have the same.

Say it's a 50/50 chance to cast it. You fail, cast again. With two casts you're talking a 75% chance. A third cast 87,5. It doesn't matter if it's mystic shield. It does if it's soulscream bridge on which your whole strategy hangs. 
In the same manner, can I then attempt a dispel until I get it? So i'm bringing three runelords. You get your soulscream bridge off, and can I then attempt to dispel until I get it or run out of attempts?

But I do get it though. Just would be a less fun in my mind if it's a general thing. If it's faction rules it's better limited. Like the Skaven Warp Lightning spell. 

But you never know until you try.  

[Tittliewinks22]

Faction specific generic command abilities table similiar to spell lores.

More once per battle abilities (inspiring presence!)

Removal of the grand alliances via lore and implemented well in game.

The dwarf gods having more presence in a narrative form, maybe playable incarnates for Fyreslayers (Grimnir) and KO (Grugni).

Better terrain rules.

But most importantly, please let GW finally make the layout of their books coherant, and add indexes to the back...

[SleeperAgent]

5 minutes ago, Kramer said:

Say it's a 50/50 chance to cast it. You fail, cast again. With two casts you're talking a 75% chance. A third cast 87,5. It doesn't matter if it's mystic shield. It does if it's soulscream bridge on which your whole strategy hangs. 
In the same manner, can I then attempt a dispel until I get it? So i'm bringing three runelords. You get your soulscream bridge off, and can I then attempt to dispel until I get it or run out of attempts?

But I do get it though. Just would be a less fun in my mind if it's a general thing. If it's faction rules it's better limited. Like the Skaven Warp Lightning spell. 

But you never know until you try.  

No, the mistake here is that if it's 50/50 first time, it's 50/50 every time. Percentages do not go up. A coin flip is always 50/50. And you would only have to dispel it on the successful cast. And if we go that way, sure you can attempt to dispel it more times. I would much rather have MORE interaction in the game than less.

I'm just trying to create coherency. If we aren't going to have magic re-rolls, why do we have attack re-rolls, wound re-rolls, save re-rolls, charge re-rolls, battleshock re-rolls, etc.

[Kramer]

7 minutes ago, SleeperAgent said:

Percentages do not go up. A coin flip is always 50/50. And you would only have to dispel it on the successful cast.

The percentage of getting a head/tail does go up. Yea every single throw is a 50/50. But if I get 4 throws I have a 87,5% chance of getting head. Versus only one throw that is a 50/50. 

11 minutes ago, SleeperAgent said:

I'm just trying to create coherency. If we aren't going to have magic re-rolls, why do we have attack re-rolls, wound re-rolls, save re-rolls, charge re-rolls, battleshock re-rolls, etc.

First of. Rule of 1, so you only get one re-roll. That’s a big difference. 
And up to a point I agree with you. A 2+ re-roll failed saves character sucks. It isn’t fun.  Again in my opinion because I get that people like coming up and using those combo’s. Just makes it less 

The marauders charge thing as well, there’s basically no chance of failing. Again no fun imo. 

Inspiring presence same thing. Would be more fun it means d6 less run away or something. That way battleshock has meaning. 

and I get that it’s also resource management. But if the chance of failing becomes too low/high the game loses its appeal. and I’m overstating a bit here. Something like unlimited cast attempts until you get wont kill the game. Just would make it less fun for me. 

but  hey, if it would make it a better game for you there is at least alway a winner wether or not it’s changed  

[GrimDork]

I'd like to be able to spend a command point to re-roll a cast/unbind.

For when you really need that spell to go off, same as when you really need to make that charge.

[Twisted Firaun]

Expansion of current lines of models to better reflect the fluff, and Chaos Dwarfs. This happens I’ll be a happy man.

[Neverchosen]

12 minutes ago, TheR00zle said:

Expansion of current lines of models to better reflect the fluff, and Chaos Dwarfs. This happens I’ll be a happy man.

I think that GW could have done a really cool job of associating the 4 chaos gods with specific races for their mortal followers. They could have created the elite faction for each mortal god specific army to reflect the diversity of the mortal realms. Khorne could have used Chaos Dwarves for Wrathmongers and blood warriors. Ogres could have been used by Nurgle to represent Blightkings. Tzeentch could keep Tzaangors as their more diverse option. Slaanesh would obviously have some tainted Aelves. This would hopefully not imply that those races exclusively worship those gods, but rather just provide chaos players with more varied troop selections. As this was not the direction they chose I am going to keep holding out hope for a fully fledged Chaos Dwarf faction instead.

[schwabbele]

Hmm,

• Rework or remove the double turn
• points as separate download or small cheap booklet
• Rework user experience from the aos app
• Battletomes need to be in synch for the edition, can't be that some armies are just fu***** because their tome was early in the edition
• Rework the aosfaq email approach and actually answer stuff, I pay for your sh** I expect an answers to my questions.
• Faction terrain, either we all get it , or no one.

[Laststand]

Bring a rally roll into battleshock so if your guys run there is a chance they stop and you can move them back next turn. To balance that remove most of the BS immunity and bravery stats of 10. 

[Sleboda]

I would like three things:

1. A delay of at least another two years before it comes out. There's just no overwhelming need for a restart.

Edit: Importantly, I would be highly bummed if the new edition invalidated the existing Battletomes. It might even get me to stop playing for an edition or two. 

 

2. A further refinement of terms, in particular an un-muddying of wound/mortal wound and damage/wounds. You should not be checking for wounds at a point before you are wounding.

 

3. Model-by-model additions to units. Right now it really, really stinks to have to add 10 more models to a unit just to prevent losing a buff when a single model dies.  Plus, sometimes you have six points left or are six points over and you have no flexibility on how to handle that.

 

Bonus fourth item:

Do not remove the priority roll. Not being able to completely predict the sequence of turns is a vital, absolutely crucial element of the game. Those of us who have been around long enough can remember when knowing the order of turns meant you could mostly predict all the action. It was boring. It was not fun. Too many games were over before a single hit roll was made. Now, with random turn order, gosh, you have to make contingency plans and can't just hit autopilot after deployment.

We can also recall hundreds of games where one player or the other would say "Well, next turn is the last turn and I go first, so I will just retreat and deny you any chance. If the game were going to keep going (or I didn't know I could escape), I'd do something else, but oh well." Talk about anti-climactic!

Determining the sequence for the whole game at the start is a major road block to fun and to challenge.

Edited September 2, 2020 by Sleboda

[Sleboda]

6 hours ago, JPjr said:

Employ some normal people to read the rules before they print them.

I disagreed with a bunch of your ideas (:shrug: - nothing personal - I think about 90% of the suggestions I see in this thread are massively bad ideas (imo)), but gotta give this one a huge 👍.

Assuming that by "normal people" you mean people who understand what words actually mean and who don't just take the lazy "well, common sense ... they'll figure it out ... nobody would ever try that cheeky interpretation ... we can't possibly be expected to be clear" way out.

Edited August 17, 2020 by Sleboda

[Clan's Cynic]

Alternating activation.

Or, at the very least, a Lord of the Rings style My Movement, Your Movement, My Shooting, Your Shooting, etc, vice versa.

I probably won't happen of course, but I can dream.

Edited August 17, 2020 by Clan's Cynic

[Vasshpit]

•Any hero (minus characters) gets access to artifacts regardless of battalions. 

•wizards get access to all spell lore spells but still retain their casting number.  

 

[Maddpainting]

8 hours ago, Sleboda said:

I would like three things:

1. A delay of at least another two years before it comes out. There just no overwhelming need for a restart.

Edit: Importantly, I would be highly bummed if the new edition invalidated the existing Battletomes. It might even get me to stop playing for an edition or two. 

 

2. A further refinement of terms, in particular an un-muddying of wound/mortal wound and damage/wounds. You should not be checking for wounds at a point before you are wounding.

 

3. Model-by-model additions to units. Right now it really, really stinks to have to add 10 more models to a unit just to prevent losing a buff when a single model dies.  Plus, sometimes you have six points left or are six points over and you have no flexibility on how to handle that.

 

Bonus fourth item:

Do not remove the priority roll. Not being able to completely predict the sequence of turns is a vital, absolutely crucial element of the game. Those of us who have been around long enough can remember when knowing the order of turns meant you could mostly predict all the action. It was boring. It was not fun. Too many games were over before a single hit roll was made. Now, with random turn order, gosh, you have to make contingency plans and can't just hit autopilot after deployment.

We can also recall hundreds of games where one player or the other would say "Well, next turn is the last turn and I go first, so I will just retreat and deny you any chance. If the game were going to keep going (or I didn't know I could escape), I'd do something else, but oh well." Talk about anti-climactic!

Determining the sequence for the whole game at the start is a major road block to fun and to challenge.

I literally just got done telling some 40k players this same thing when introducing them to AoS, the Double turn has value in AoS and its only bad when players play like its not there. 

It would be different if there wasn't so many armies with 1 or 2 tricks and that is it. But the game is way to predictable without it.

[Sapca]

AoS 3.0:

* Going first vs Second (and double turns).

Going second gives you 1 global (minor? defensive) tactical buff in opponents turn only. For cost of 1 CP or better, free once per game.  Might be just enough.

"Brace for Impact" "Shields Up" etc... (-1 to be hit with shooting, -1 to be hit in melee, +1-2 to unbind rolls,...)

 

* Endless Spells are owned by caster, no stealing, moved to hero phase.

Wizard that cast the spell needs to be 30" within (not wholly) to sustain it. If caster of spell is slain, spell vanishes or goes rogue(can be controlled by enemy wizard(s) also). This enables alternative "Unbind" option for armies without actual Unbind(s).

All Endless Spells get Augment option (wizards uses 1 cast at  to augment it on 2nd round of it's life, no roll or -2 of initial cast needed*). CoS wizard spells do not vanish if slain and are always augmented. Augment has 30" range and requires LoS.

 

* Coop-Casting. Wizard can assist other Wizard with a single cast.

They need to be 3 or 6" within each other. They cast 1 spell together (2 casts used), bonuses per faction / warscroll. 

EG. Death wizard spells combine cast roll (they have a lot "if 10+ cast"), Chaos higher range,  Destruction extra damage and Order's can't be unbound this way. Or just make it uniform that it requires 2 unbinds or something.

 

* Bonereapers are NOT immune to battleshock. It just limits design space (and all armies that want to bravery bomb, which is bad tactics even without this atm).

 

* Offensive (maybe all) Prayers and Invocations can be blocked by enemy Priests (Prayer unbind).  Some factions have better prayers than others have spells... without dangers and up to 2x better chance of it working + blocking magic themselves. 

 

* Small heroes (5w and less) get better at not dying if they have 3 or more of small friendlies nearby / between attacker and them.  Look Out Sir v2...

 

* Carmine Dragon is 400 points or less with warscroll to match and is legit in matched play (purely selfish reasons, because I need a dragon in my fantasy army, thanks).

 

* Minimum sized (battleline only maybe) units gain "Cooperation / Strike As One". If in combat with same unit they (can) activate together to offset HUGE advantage larger units have over small due activation sequences.

 

* Remove all Fights First bs with possible exception on a specific Hero or two...

 

Edited August 18, 2020 by Sapca

[Jagd]

I'd like better incentives to the double turn choice. I think endless spell control was really not enough of a decision against taking the double turn. I think the best space for double turn incentives is with mission objectives. Second turn player gets bonus points for objectives etc. Enough points to make fighting back from getting double turned a possible game changer. Just a spitball idea but I think could be refined into something fun.

 

And please somebody, HELP my poor Gitz battletome keyword soup. 😅

[Kramer]

2 minutes ago, Jagd said:

I'd like better incentives to the double turn choice. I think endless spell control was really not enough of a decision against taking the double turn. I think the best space for double turn incentives is with mission objectives. Second turn player gets bonus points for objectives etc. Enough points to make fighting back from getting double turned a possible game changer. Just a spitball idea but I think could be refined into something fun.

 

And please somebody, HELP my poor Gitz battletome keyword soup. 😅

Have you tried the new battleplans in ghb? 
They really tried to. I personally think they good have gone farther. But still such fun.

and turn priority is now more often a big choice. 

[RuneBrush]

Most of my thinking has largely been covered in the comments above (including version 3 being no earlier than 2022).

Separate competitive and casual play a bit more.  I don't mean matched/narrative/open, I mean specifically competitive (including tournaments) and the rest.  My own (and unpopular) opinion is I'd like to see two points systems, one being a granular system for competitive games and then a quicker easier one for casual games (basically what we have now).  I feel this could help to provide balance where one load out is considered the "best" for a unit and fix units that are a little out by just increasing it by a couple of points rather than a multiple of ten.

Curtail the number of rules and abilities that prevent "normal" interaction by one player.  The basic point of any game is that the players enjoy themselves, preventing the interaction of one player will likely reduce their enjoyment.  By interaction I mean "no you can't unbind that" or "no you can't make a save roll against that" - basically "there's nothing you can do to stop me".  At an event this is often viewed as "I'll go get a drink then you can tell me what models to remove"

Have a merciless exercise of "murdering your darlings".  This is something that's been talked about in articles in White Dwarf by Jervis Johnson and the other game devs in the past and plays into the saying that "perfection isn't when there's nothing left to add, it's when there's nothing left to remove".  I believe that over the years there has been too much complexity added into the game, most games I play start off with a discussion if we want to use terrain rules, most players forget triumphs and trying to remember all your rules requires the use of multipage crib-sheets (and online tools to compile them all together).  The beauty of AoS has always been that it's easy to learn without needing the old "basic rules and advanced rules" concept.

[TMS]

3 hours ago, Maddpainting said:

I literally just got done telling some 40k players this same thing when introducing them to AoS, the Double turn has value in AoS and its only bad when players play like its not there.

The double turn is bad depending on the armies involved. My army can only run and punch things and is also fragile, so with a double turn I can't charge in willy-nilly since I'll only get to fight first in one place. Against strong magic or shooting you're in for a nuking.

The power of ranged combat has gone up dramatically and the double turn works poorly with it. This must be addressed.

[Scurvydog]

18 hours ago, Frowny said:

I don't really like the terrain rules. More like 40k with Los blocking would be nice. Who even cares for most of the rolls? 

-battalions must be dropped either all together or all separately, not both ways.

- roll off for first turn (and roll winner picks) instead of decided by drops. Stops that silly race to the bottom and I think would help balance a lot.

- look out sir allows a 5+ pass off of mortal wounds onto nearby characters. Too easy to snipe little support characters for far too many armies now with magic. 

- battleshock like 40k Changes seem good However, you keep taking battleshock each turn if you've lost more than half your models, with 1s again always failing and 6s always succeeding. If 29 of your friends died t1, I can't imagine those last guy is feeling super brave t2, and will continue to be in danger of running off.

Mostly I don't want a lot of changes. Seems pretty good right now. I really hope they don't do some psychic awakening ****** like wrecked 40k. The aos missions are excellent

I agree with a lot of things here. Better terrain rules are needed, especially those you roll for, always being a 1 or 6 on a d6 just does not feel good, you can't really play much with it and all the negative stuff just results in tedious micro managing units to be 1" away from stuff and slows play.

Battalions are interesting I think, but we could do without them with more consistent and better sub factions, as getting to use the same models, but with different stuff added on is fun and cost effective.  This leads into the next point though, as battalions if kept around, should not have anything to do with first turns. 

In general the current first turn and roll off just feels bad, and it seems most agree here. Squeezing into tight battalions, often to not get 1st turn, as that opens you up to the dreaded double turn. Facing a double turn against the current meta of shooting and magic can often be the end of the game before it even started, like a KO army hiding in a corner, then blasting with everything T1 and then get double turn and fire everything again, then the opposing army is usually just too crippled to do anything.

A 5+ wounds transfer, like a slightly weaker version of the cities commander and bodyguards is a decent option. Either that or there needs to be more consistent access to bodyguard units. DoK just got a warband to "fix" the hag issue with added bodyguards. Ironjawz got a terrbile warband and warchanters are still essential and die to every gun and spell that spots them. This is also true for armies like mortal khorne and makes the game at high level impossible for these armies. I still think a penalty should apply, if it is just a 5+ wounds transfer, all damage still comes through, targeting a character like that should still result in more misses, due to the difficulty, otherwise you might as well shooting character, if that fails, you still kill other stuff.

Battleshock was ruined from the start, giving most death and daemons a flat 10 across the board ensured a horrible system that had no chance of being balanced.

I am not sure that some stuff similar to PA would be all bad. Getting new stuff is so exciting and I think few people would like everything to stay static, with no new models or rules. I hope what they do, is to fill some gaps in armies, both the model lines and rules wise. Adding some sub factions for armies with none/few or poor sub factions, like Maggotkin got i WotEC. Getting a new hero or unit will always be an exciting time. Sometimes I dream of a situation where AoS got useful version of the warbands from underworlds and warcry, so many cool sculpts, it seems those games get more cool stuff than the main game!

Lastly after hearing a lot of interviews from battletome designers, it sounds like they communicate very little internally, that has to stop yesterday! All designers involved in tomes for a rules edition should be keenly aware of what the rest are doing, how else can we achieve a semblance of balance? These tomes are designed long before they are released into a "current meta", so the only way to prepare for this, is for the designers to talk to each other about ideas and also decrease NPE's.

[JackStreicher]

19 minutes ago, Scurvydog said:

All designers involved in tomes for a rules edition should be keenly aware of what the rest are doing, how else can we achieve a semblance of balance?

This. So much this.

[Overread]

1 hour ago, RuneBrush said:

Have a merciless exercise of "murdering your darlings".  This is something that's been talked about in articles in White Dwarf by Jervis Johnson and the other game devs in the past and plays into the saying that "perfection isn't when there's nothing left to add, it's when there's nothing left to remove".  I believe that over the years there has been too much complexity added into the game, most games I play start off with a discussion if we want to use terrain rules, most players forget triumphs and trying to remember all your rules requires the use of multipage crib-sheets (and online tools to compile them all together).  The beauty of AoS has always been that it's easy to learn without needing the old "basic rules and advanced rules" concept.

Honestly I don't think the issue is that the rules are bloated so much as:

1) The rule books are bloated. GW is publishing optional rules in expansion booklets; annual rule updates; white dwarf; the website etc... That's a lot of sources of information. Furthermore GW is generally very unclear about what remains; what trumps what; what is optional etc... It's one of those "you do you" lines from them that is designed  not alienate any one group, but at the same time doesn't give people a clear "base line" to work with. It's not helped when they do things that rely on models (like the Mercenaries in the GHB 2019) which then get quietly replaced or removed or just not mentioned past the initial selling of that rule expansion document. 

2) The way GW writes things in ultimate statements. Because so many rules are written in isolation by different teams and then are written to expand upon a core after the core is published; this means there's a lot of ways that rules are written which makes them seem very final. Then another rule jumps infront of it which feels like a surprise/shock to the player because they didn't know about the other rule in another book (eg battletome). This is all about delivery and phrasing and presentation of options and potential. It would actually be easier if GW wrote all the rules in one go and then selected some to be published later (even though that's not really a good idea either as it would leave clear gaps). 

When you cast a spell you're prepared for the chance it can be countered because that's covered in the spell casting rules as an option. However if countering casting was left out and not even added as an option until 6 months later then the idea of a spell being countered goes from something you plan for to something that you don't even know might happen. 

 

Honestly most of GW's rule problems would resolve themselves if GW took a more serious attitude toward them, at least for competitive matched play (which in theory should be the baseline standard). If they approached rules like MTG did then at the very least most of the technical, writing and communication issues would vanish; or at least drastically reduce. But we've had this for 30 years now and for better or worse it seems to work for GW so its unlikely to change. 

[EMMachine]

3 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

Separate competitive and casual play a bit more.  I don't mean matched/narrative/open, I mean specifically competitive (including tournaments) and the rest.  My own (and unpopular) opinion is I'd like to see two points systems, one being a granular system for competitive games and then a quicker easier one for casual games (basically what we have now).  I feel this could help to provide balance where one load out is considered the "best" for a unit and fix units that are a little out by just increasing it by a couple of points rather than a multiple of ten.

Bringing back Points per Model and Equipement would just bring another problem, that I already see in other forums.

40k has Powerlevel and Points (where Powerlevel is basicly what the points that AoS has right now.

The community is basicly split into two groups. The people that play with Points and literially state that Powerlevel should be removed because it is unbalanced and the people that like Powerlevel and don't want to spent hours to write there list.

Points is not better balanced (it never was)

The difference is, that with powerpoints units with much special equipment  has the preference while it is getting way to expensive with Points. It would basicly ****** up all existing lists and people would simply leave out all special equipment to get more models on the table.

15 hours ago, Sleboda said:

3. Model-by-model additions to units. Right now it really, really stinks to have to add 10 more models to a unit just to prevent losing a buff when a single model dies.  Plus, sometimes you have six points left or are six points over and you have no flexibility on how to handle that.

While it would be easier with units where you can build heroes from (like in case of Flesh Eater Courts. It will basicly be an element to max out armies even more and and GW wouldn't be able to change points by 10 anymore in some cases where the unit for example has 3 or 20 models.

And how do you get 6 points more or less in a game where all Points are at least values of 10?

 

 

I thing I would wish for would be if all subfactions were structured like Hedonites of Slaanesh or Cities of Sigmar, so every Subfaction would have their own list of Command Traits and Artefacts instead of 1  of both they are forced to get. That's not really immersive (but that is more a Battletome thing than a edition thing).

 

[azdimy]

I'd like to see a rewrite of how the activations in the combat phase sequence work specifically in regards to things that fight at the beginning of the combat phase and at the end. 

I d like to see those subphase activations alternate between units from both sides that can activate in the subphase just like they do in the combat phase and abilities that happen at the beginning of the combat phase should be able to happen before any unit can pile in and attack. Of course this doesn t need a new edition for gw to fix it. just rewrite the faqs that made it so .But in reality gw won t touch it until they release a new edition of aos

[Yondaime]

I agree with the double turn concern

But just because atm shooting armys rule the meta and its really boring to play vs  a heavy shoot list

Oh i got double turn? just watch how my KO/COS delete everything that for some reasone wasnt dead

Some list are just a coin flip, if you get double turn, you win, if you dont, you lose

I like all the current rules of aos, but its really annoying playing vs some lists

 

Peril would be cool tho, 12 and double 1

 

Edited August 18, 2020 by Yondaime