Are armies diverse enough in the TT?

[Bosskelot]

Decided to finally sign up after lurking for ages, hello everyone.

There's definitely a misconception I see from some in this thread that spamming is somewhat inevitable at higher levels of play, but even if you look at other GW games this isn't really the case. 40k manages to have a large amount of variety in units at top competitive levels of play and while spammy lists do exist for certain armies, it is by no means the standard. Space Marines, Sororitas, Necrons and Harlequins all have very diverse unit choices in their top lists just as an example. For Harlequins especially this is important because they're the most "AOS" of those factions, being that they have a relatively small model range, yet even then you see a more varied range of what small units the army has than you do in a lot of average competitive AOS lists. If Necrons were in AOS, their entire competitive build would probably be limited to TSK, 3 Chronomancers and 80-100 Warriors. Forget anything else in the Codex; that would be the build.

Enoby makes an excellent point about AOS's core mechanics reducing variety and diversity because if a unit of Night Goblins have an easy way to wound Behemoths or Elite Infantry on 2+ or 3+ then it completely discourages those types of units being used, while the Goblin player is basically pushed into taking nothing but basic gobbos. (Obviously this is just a broad example and not something competitively specific, but it highlights the point well. Morsarr Guard would be a more competitively apt example)

Battalions exacerbate the issue even further and it's weird that the system has continued to be deepened and expanded when Formations in 40k were rightly seen as a blight on the system. Battalions do at least have a points cost associated with them (which is good!) that helps keep them somewhat balanced, but it still encourages listbuilding styles that were part of what made 7th 40k so unenjoyable for people.

Different mission design would probably help AOS in this respect. Old ITC and now 9th edition missions for 40k provide lots of incentives to take varied and diverse armies, but like I said above, the flattened core statline mechanics of AOS will always remain an issue if they're not addressed in any way and the Battalion design will really just pigeonhole armies more and more. I'm honestly shocked sometimes looking at even "regular" AOS armies and how lacking in variety and diversity they are and to be completely clear this is not a result of small model ranges.

[stratigo]

On 12/15/2020 at 3:47 AM, Beliman said:

That's what I'm saying!!! If they think that an objective game is their way to have fun, just go all in!!

I'm not talking about competitive vs casual: If you make a game that plays around resources, you want mechanics that interact with them (harvest, capture, smuggle, etc...), if you want a game that it's about stealth, you want mechanics that plays around ambushes, moving outside of LoS,etc...

If you build a war-game about objectives, you want units hitting other units (done with magic, ranged weapons and melee weapons) and mechanics around objectives (we have some of them already with Kraken-eater kicking objectives and BCR and Mega-Gargants capturing them).

I want to note, 40k is now an objective game, won entirely on how you play the objectives.

 

On 12/25/2020 at 5:52 AM, Bosskelot said:

Decided to finally sign up after lurking for ages, hello everyone.

There's definitely a misconception I see from some in this thread that spamming is somewhat inevitable at higher levels of play, but even if you look at other GW games this isn't really the case. 40k manages to have a large amount of variety in units at top competitive levels of play and while spammy lists do exist for certain armies, it is by no means the standard. Space Marines, Sororitas, Necrons and Harlequins all have very diverse unit choices in their top lists just as an example. For Harlequins especially this is important because they're the most "AOS" of those factions, being that they have a relatively small model range, yet even then you see a more varied range of what small units the army has than you do in a lot of average competitive AOS lists. If Necrons were in AOS, their entire competitive build would probably be limited to TSK, 3 Chronomancers and 80-100 Warriors. Forget anything else in the Codex; that would be the build.

Enoby makes an excellent point about AOS's core mechanics reducing variety and diversity because if a unit of Night Goblins have an easy way to wound Behemoths or Elite Infantry on 2+ or 3+ then it completely discourages those types of units being used, while the Goblin player is basically pushed into taking nothing but basic gobbos. (Obviously this is just a broad example and not something competitively specific, but it highlights the point well. Morsarr Guard would be a more competitively apt example)

Battalions exacerbate the issue even further and it's weird that the system has continued to be deepened and expanded when Formations in 40k were rightly seen as a blight on the system. Battalions do at least have a points cost associated with them (which is good!) that helps keep them somewhat balanced, but it still encourages listbuilding styles that were part of what made 7th 40k so unenjoyable for people.

Different mission design would probably help AOS in this respect. Old ITC and now 9th edition missions for 40k provide lots of incentives to take varied and diverse armies, but like I said above, the flattened core statline mechanics of AOS will always remain an issue if they're not addressed in any way and the Battalion design will really just pigeonhole armies more and more. I'm honestly shocked sometimes looking at even "regular" AOS armies and how lacking in variety and diversity they are and to be completely clear this is not a result of small model ranges.

Be careful praising 40k here, it really rankles some people's feathers.

 

But, yes, current 40k has largely found a way to reduce spam through a variety of rules and tools. One of which is strategem utility. A bunch of units in 40k are only good with strat support, and you can only support one a turn. So, you usually only take the one unit. Then there's, of course, the rule of three hard limiting spam. And the nature of 9th edition objective game means a lot of armies have to have a variety of tools to play them. There isn't a huge number of armies that have a unit that is durable, strong in melee, and still good at shooting to take and hold an objective, while still having an effect on the battlefield if they sit there. Most armies your melee hammer is to take an objective, but they're too important to waste sitting there, so you move another unit, either cheap chaff or something very durable onto it. This unit may also be your shooting support, or you keep your shooters in the back/mobile, depending on their range.

[Scurvydog]

GW being rubbish at keywords is surely a major factor here, so much it boggles the mind at times. 

Big offenders of my own armies are Slaves to Darkness, where many warscrolls do not even have essential keywords to benefit from the only allegiance abilities in the book, which are marks of chaos on basically any warcry models and also the Darkoath heroes (who buffs marauders but marauders got marks, which the heroes cant help them with doh!). Silly choices that just makes some warscrolls dead on arrival in a competitive scene.

Also books like Orruk Warclans could have been a perfect mix, but all the spells in the lores of Ironjawz and Bonesplitterz are keyword specific, leaving little room for creative builds in the big Waagh as there is no interplay or synergy between the IJ and BS. 

Gloomspite also suffer from this, and is why we see these white dwarf allegiances pop up for spiders, troggoths and squigs, they got no good reason to mix beween each other at all, no synergy.

Cities is also really hampered by this, instead of being the races coming together in a city, instead we get heroes who only benefit their own specific keyword units, which makes it a book with tiny forces instead, like phoenixes + guard, freeguild only stuff, or greywater + artellery, even the city allegiances also cater more to specific sub factions, making the book way more limited than it had to be.

This is  why we see the top lists often being razor focused due to GW dictating very specific synergies from keywords. 

[MitGas]

39 minutes ago, Scurvydog said:

GW being rubbish at keywords is surely a major factor here, so much it boggles the mind at times. 

Big offenders of my own armies are Slaves to Darkness, where many warscrolls do not even have essential keywords to benefit from the only allegiance abilities in the book, which are marks of chaos on basically any warcry models and also the Darkoath heroes (who buffs marauders but marauders got marks, which the heroes cant help them with doh!). Silly choices that just makes some warscrolls dead on arrival in a competitive scene.

Also books like Orruk Warclans could have been a perfect mix, but all the spells in the lores of Ironjawz and Bonesplitterz are keyword specific, leaving little room for creative builds in the big Waagh as there is no interplay or synergy between the IJ and BS. 

Gloomspite also suffer from this, and is why we see these white dwarf allegiances pop up for spiders, troggoths and squigs, they got no good reason to mix beween each other at all, no synergy.

Cities is also really hampered by this, instead of being the races coming together in a city, instead we get heroes who only benefit their own specific keyword units, which makes it a book with tiny forces instead, like phoenixes + guard, freeguild only stuff, or greywater + artellery, even the city allegiances also cater more to specific sub factions, making the book way more limited than it had to be.

This is  why we see the top lists often being razor focused due to GW dictating very specific synergies from keywords. 

I also see this is as the biggest problem. I 'd love to play mixed lists but with the current rules it's a serious drawback to mix different branches, even of the same army (allies are obviously even worse). Which truly is a damn shame... I hope they abandon the "buff your units to oblivion" system and instead work on good warscrolls that are less dependent on being buffed by various heroes. The dependency on synergy is limiting at this point, which I don't think was the goal.

That said, I do appreciate easier rules. I haven't played the new 40k edition yet but I know that AoS was more fun than 40k in the past.

[Greybeard86]

I am glad that I am not alone in feeling this way.

I also feel that keywords are a big part of this, and honestly I am not a huge fun of the combo wombo approach GW seems to be focusing on (both for 40k and AoS).

Units are no longer good or bad based on their warscroll / data sheet, but rather on the buffs you can pile on them. Once you rely on buffs, and those and add the limitations to who can give and receive them, then you get the current list building approach.

Synergy, in my humble opinion, should come from strategic movement and choosing engagements, and how certain "combined arms" armies let you do that, not on a simple buff galore. The broken combos are discovered quite fast, then what is the strategy left on that "synergy" bit? Netlisting the strongest "combos"? I am aware the game is more than that, but this bit seems to really matter a whole lot.

 

[stratigo]

3 hours ago, Greybeard86 said:

I am glad that I am not alone in feeling this way.

I also feel that keywords are a big part of this, and honestly I am not a huge fun of the combo wombo approach GW seems to be focusing on (both for 40k and AoS).

Units are no longer good or bad based on their warscroll / data sheet, but rather on the buffs you can pile on them. Once you rely on buffs, and those and add the limitations to who can give and receive them, then you get the current list building approach.

Synergy, in my humble opinion, should come from strategic movement and choosing engagements, and how certain "combined arms" armies let you do that, not on a simple buff galore. The broken combos are discovered quite fast, then what is the strategy left on that "synergy" bit? Netlisting the strongest "combos"? I am aware the game is more than that, but this bit seems to really matter a whole lot.

 

Buff stacking also is very hard to balance with how GW does it. The best armies in the game are inevitably those that stack buffs, but only in isolated situations. So if you balance a model to its fully buffed potential, then anyone not taking that full advantage is screwed. If they balance the model around how it works for most people most of the time, then the people using the combo are suddenly overpowered. And GW relies largely on points balancing and not rule changes for balance.

 

So, like, KO. Their hardcore alpha list relies on a big ship using an out of order action to deliver a decisive strike in a way that KO can't do otherwise outside the one subfaction. So... do you nef ironclads as a whole under the conceit that it could be taken in this one subfaction? Or do you nerf the subfaction? More often than not, GW nerfs the unit, and removes their viability outside the combo as opposed to the combo, and you are stuck using the combo or just waiting for the next version of your battle tome.

[Bosskelot]

Buff stacking is an interesting one in that 40k is just as rife with it as AoS but yet again; there's still more diversity in armies.

Look at Marines and Sisters; strong armies that rely on and have access to large numbers of buffs and yet Sisters have some of the most diverse armies (in terms of total units being used) in the game currently and Marines see a lot of different unit types used as well, even though every Marine army ends up looking fairly similar despite Chapter differences. Like others said above, rule of 3 and stratagem limitations certainly play a part in this, but even then because 40k hasn't flattened its defensive profiles completely there still exist niches for different unit types to do damage. Intercessors can be buffed up to an insane amount, with bonuses to wound, re-rolls to hit, exploding hits on 6's, extra AP and multi-damage weapons. But at the end of the day, Plasma Inceptors kill elite armoured units better, as do Eradicators when it comes to vehicles/monsters and Aggressors are still superior anti-horde as well. Do you even really need "anti-" unit types outside of protection against spellcasters in AOS?

When it comes to "balancing" buff stacking and the like, Marines are still problematic but GW have done an excellent job with the new Necron codex. Core units (i.e. ones that benefit from the most buffs) are a relatively small number of units in total, however the non-core stuff is typically characterized by exceptional stat lines, solid special rules and most importantly; very good cost-efficiency. They benefit from fewer buffs, but they also require less to function and still have impact. Also, like Gloomspite Gitz, Necrons are essentially made up of 3 different armies: Core (Legions? idk what to call it), Canoptek and Destroyer Cult. Unlike GSG though you are not discouraged from taking the two other sub-types if your main focus is on one. A silver tide army, revolving around Core units and the Silent King can and will absolutely make use of Canoptek units and there also exist armies that are entirely composed of both Destroyer Cult and Canoptek.

Even looking at the "spammiest" top line army lists at the moment you have Orks. The competitive Ork list right now is Ghaz and an obscene and unreasonable amount of boyz, with 2 Mekboys with KFF's. Except those lists also include meganobz, mek guns, kommandos and trukks at least. So even in a "spam" list you're looking at 7+ unit types represented. That's obviously a small representation of the Codex and it's absolutely not a good thing, but it's still more unit types than you see in many AoS lists being run.

Both of those two above paragraphs are a combination of requiring different unit types to deal with different enemy ones, the necessity of certain units to achieve secondary objectives and just in general, subfaction and unit ability design is more in-depth than AOS in my opinion. Too often on AOS War Scrolls, units are basically just given bonuses or buffs that are around taking or receiving damage (specifically mortal wounds, which are a huge percentage of damage in AOS). This is one of the big issues with Idoneth after all; the entire army is just damage dealers, so you take the most efficient damage dealer in Eels. While utility abilities still exist, they're either too rare or too weak to really make an effect in most armies. Dankhold Troggoth's in GSG give you +1 Bravery to your Gobbos.... which is a massive "So?" If their damage or tankability was somehow needed or something a primarily goblin army couldn't achieve on its own then hey, they might have a niche. But as stated previously, you could conceivably just get by with goblins who could be better damage dealers and more resilient.

Battalions and subfactions also come into this as well, restricting army lists even further into specific niches and discouraging other unit types. Ymetrica Lumineth? Why take anything except Alarith units? No, seriously though. Add on an Alarith Temple Battalion too and it gets compounded even further. Something like the Novokh Dynasty in 40K Necrons however still leaves you open to plenty of unit types and adds a different dimension to the army without restricting it overly much. Obviously Novokh Doomsday Arks or Doom Scythes aren't gonna be great (since the trait is primarily close combat orientated) but plenty of non-combat units in Novokh THRIVE as the extra charge range, extra AP in combat and dynastic-specific stratagem give these units extra utility and damage that they otherwise lack.

[Enoby]

44 minutes ago, Bosskelot said:

Do you even really need "anti-" unit types outside of protection against spellcasters in AOS?

I agree with what you're saying, and I want to focus on this point as I think it's very important. At the end of the day, most AoS units compete for the same role. There's little need for anti monsters, anti horde, anti hero, or anti elite. Usually, you have a unit that's just good at damage against anyone - there's little to no interaction between warscrolls for the average unit (besides saves that are only on a 1-7 scale) that it rare for it to matter what you put into what as long as it does the necessary damage. 

In AoS, you'll always be able to have a points per damage and you'll find a superior unit for damage. 

In 40k, you'll find a superior unit for points per damage against a specific target; e.g. high damage, ignore + saves, high strength are good against big monsters but wasted points against infantry so you can't make your army out of this.

For example, in AoS you'd always take the unit that has 4 attacks at 3/3/-2/6 over the unit that has 12 attacks at 3/4/-/1 if it costs the same points. You could make up your army out of the majority of these units and do very well.

In 40k, a weapon with 4 attacks WS3/S6/-2/6 damage is a better choice against knights and monsters but a much worse choice against infantry because you can only kill a max of 4. You couldn't make up your army out of a majority of these units and do well because you'd be out of luck against a horde army. 

40k has a lot of issues, but I really like the variety the rules encourage.