Are armies diverse enough in the TT?

[Greybeard86]

Since my return to the fantasy side of the hobby, I have been surprised at how "spammy" the competitive and semi-competitive AoS lists feel. I won't go through all of them in detail, here you can find some obvious examples: LINK.

As far as I can understand, this is due to the fact that a large part of the TT performance of units is linked to buffs, which are often restricted to specific keywords. These are linked to specific heroes (e.g. wardens buffing hammerers), or specific battalions (e.g. lords of the lodge). Often, choosing one such route truly prevents bringing other diverse units to the army in an effective manner. This seems to be very much  the case for the wonderful Gitz (goblins).

Armies in AoS already have fairly limited ranges, in general, thus this keyword focus further specializes the  forces. In addition, it seems to kill, for the most part, effective cross-army options (e.g. within order), except for some niche cases. The result is that lists seem to focus on a subset of units, which are then spammed, together with a few supporting characters.

Is this "good"? Or would you prefer more "diverse" being "competitive"? Am I missing anything?

[Dreddships]

Due to the nature of the game, the 'best' combos are going to be the core of the 'best' armies. 

You see it in Video Games, where the 'best' builds are based around building entirely around what is the most broken thing at that time.

The more balanced a game gets, the chances are that the severe outliers become spammed even more (though not to imply AOS is fairly well balanced, GW is getting better but they're still stuck at balancing). Ultimately though, with multiple systems at play at once, it's going to struggle to achieve that "perfect balance", unless everything works exactly the same.

Monopoly is a fairly simple game in comparison, but the game is unbalanced in the sense of that the person who starts winning first will more than likely win in total.

Luckily, AOS is a great game at a non-competitive level - the most fun I've had in this game has been playing entirely unbalanced narrative games. I'd love for the competitive scene to be more diverse, but alas, as long as a combo is better than others, it's not going to be.

If the issue you have right now is because of that tournament level scene being built from stacking particular units, I would 1000% recommend casual beer and pretzel games, because in my opinion, it's a nicer way to use all those toys that aren't 'the best meta top tier gold star'. 

Alternatively, in my local scene at least, the more competitive side is never as 'hardcore' as the internet would seem to think, with all but a handful of players playing off-meta lists. 

[Greybeard86]

13 minutes ago, Dreddships said:

Luckily, AOS is a great game at a non-competitive level - the most fun I've had in this game has been playing entirely unbalanced narrative games. I'd love for the competitive scene to be more diverse, but alas, as long as a combo is better than others, it's not going to be.

I am sure that's the case. But that's not how the game "designed" to be played, when it comes to matched play. One may make "bad" choices for the sake of bringing diversity, but wouldn't it be better if players weren't pushed to that corner?

I get a lot of my enjoyment from painting, but paying some more attention to the gaming side, I couldn't help but notice this.

[Clan's Cynic]

It's a problem in 40k as well. GW are just horrific at internal balance, but it feels especially prevalent in AoS when quite a number of armies lack for fleshed out ranges - of course you could have an army with a hundred unit options, but if only two are considered anywhere near useable or viable then the other ninety-eight don't count for much.

Edited December 14, 2020 by Clan's Cynic

[Greybeard86]

8 minutes ago, Clan's Cynic said:

It's a problem in 40k as well. GW are just horrific at internal balance, but it feels especially prevalent in AoS when quite a number of armies lack for fleshed out ranges - of course you could have an army with a hundred unit options, but if only two are considered anywhere near useable or viable then the other ninety-eight don't count for much.

I am well aware of some the internal balance issues. But besides that, why isn't there more synergy between units in an army? Why must I pick between trolls or goblins, between squigs or stabbas, and so on, if I trully want to create a competitive list? I feel this is more due to buffs and keywords than just bad internal balance.

Even if there are a few "viable" competitive compositions for an army (so I guess decent internal balance), they tend to go all out but simply on different units. Woudln't it be more fun to see more diversity?

[Doko]

Yes 100% 

Many armys as fyreslayers need many more new units and internal balance is a problem also.

 

Batallions to buff one unit and buffs for only one unit etc makes that a big deathstar is better than many msu diferent units

[Kramer]

I honestly think that you could add 1 or 10 units to an army like fire slayers/KO/DoK or any small unit option army the same will happen that has happened with all the big option army’s: 
things have no specific role, so you compare them, and one is more efficient. 
if you want to win tournaments efficiency is king so one unit wins out. 

add a new boat to KO, and another will lose out the comparison.  Etc. 

You could offer more ally options: the same will happen as before. Only if one thing is better than things in the same role will you ally it in. So if the hurricanum is a better buff piece than the my support character. It’s coming along. 
mand even then. If I have 100pts of a certain unit. And the buff piece is 100pts and doubles the effectiveness of the unit... im better off getting two units as bodies are worth a lot in an objective game. 

the point of this ramble is that you can’t prevent people who build a list to win to look at the most effective option for a role. And even an attempt like the Honest Wargamer does with banning units during a tournament, only forces players to reassess what’s most effective for the role they have in mind. 

like you I prefer diverse and thematic lists, and I would love tournaments to adopt a system where you can decide beforehand if you want to play ‘for the hell of it’ or ‘play for the crown’ and match those people up round one. 

That way I can play my diverse thematic duardin list without first having to have my ass handed to me round one and two before I play someone with the same mindset as me.

and that only works with enough players. 

[Ggom]

What if battalions required more units and incentivised this with buffs? There's a line to be walked here between being too restrictive (eg. Must take exactly 2 units of X) and too open ended (eg. Must take up to 5 units of X, Y or Z.)

For this to work, GW would need to actually prioritize balance, but it could mitigate the scenario where X is objectively better than Y in all scenarios.

And yes, I agree with the general thread here that diverse model armies should be promoted more.

[Beer & Pretzels Gamer]

1 hour ago, Ggom said:

What if battalions required more units and incentivised this with buffs? There's a line to be walked here between being too restrictive (eg. Must take exactly 2 units of X) and too open ended (eg. Must take up to 5 units of X, Y or Z.)

The most open ended battalions that I have real experience playing against/with is Beasts of Chaos.  Yet to @Kramer’s point even with flexibility you’re still going to see the most efficient units picked within the battalion choices, particularly as relates to the sub-faction/great fray chosen.

As @Dreddships noted narrative games offer an alternative and local gaming groups can of course set up their own conditions to increase the variety of units on the table.  My Zoom League essentially requires lists to take a MONSTER or two.  In a side escalation league against a Nurgle player who loves his PBKs I want to trial some Rockgut Trolls in my Mawtribes list as allies.

I get the frustration with KEYWORDS though.  At the same time though “universal” faction or alliance  buffing could lead to some crazy combos that would only unbalance the game further.  My first tournament army list was Braggoth’s Hammer from the 1.0 Beastclaw Raider Tome.  That tome was incredibly flawed but I loved a battalion that allowed me to add diverse units like Gore Gruntas to my BCR list in a way that made sense  In 2.0 I really feel a lot of that style has been lost and there are too many times where there aren’t battalions or buffs for units and thus they will almost lose out.  This seems fixable as, to a certain extent, has been tried in White Dwarf with the Gitz.

[Kramer]

6 hours ago, Ggom said:

What if battalions required more units and incentivised this with buffs? There's a line to be walked here between being too restrictive (eg. Must take exactly 2 units of X) and too open ended (eg. Must take up to 5 units of X, Y or Z.)

For this to work, GW would need to actually prioritize balance, but it could mitigate the scenario where X is objectively better than Y in all scenarios.

And yes, I agree with the general thread here that diverse model armies should be promoted more.

Oh I would argue battalions are a big part of the problem.  
Because the value of the extra Cost, extra artefact and being low drops means that (close to) every tournament (winning) army  has one. 

if change host would require a unit acolytes and a herald extra for example. You might see more of those. But you still see the exact same army across the board but now with a min sized acolyte squad. 

untill the tax of the diversity becomes to great amd spamming the most efficient units becomes better 😅

[Kramer]

On a separate note can I just argue that it’s not a bad thing?

its amazing that our hobby allows everything from ‘I just want to tell a story’ through ‘ I just want to paint one of each and put them on the table’ all the way to ‘I want me and my opponent to go balls to the walls and put winning on #1’ 

thr only thing that this hobby requires more than any other is communication about what players expect from it. 

I have a big sporting background and there you have leagues. And depending on talent but mostly mindset people end up in a league and team with roughly the same reason to play. 
warhammer isn’t organised enough to do that.

while writing this I wonder what would happen if a local club would set up a two tiered league with promotion etc instead of a 24 person two day tournament. 

That way you could have two poules of 12. Play a game every two weeks in a fixture. Award points in the ‘championed league’ and more fun rules in the other league. A season would take the same time as a school season. 

I suspect that in a season or two you’ll have a robust system in which you see ‘efficient’ lists in one poule and more diverse lists in the other. 

and nothing is stopping you the of  shifting around the numbers in a poule I’d people prefer one or the other. 

[Beliman]

Imo, GW need to be clear what they wants to accomplish. Let me explain:

In any other wargames/skirmish games, we see extra-oficial roles like beaters, schemers, anvils, hammers, redirectors, flank-holders, etc... I think that AoS could go deeper in that too. If we play an objective game, just go all in!

As an example: Behemoth role/Monster keyword could disrupt how many models could capture an objective (they can't focus on the objective because they have a Gargantuan abomination near them). We could even have more interactions: Behemoths that were wounded by Artillery lose that "bonus".

Same with cavalry, troops that "steal" objectives even if they are less models (Mega-gargants and BCR style), troops that protect the objective (apart from that 4++), etc...

Btw, I'm not talking about a "paper-scissor" game because we could still kill the miniatures and move on with our 2+/2+/-3/D3 buffed unit that we slingshot across the table, but it could open another layer of strategic decisions in our lists.

P.D: Btw, My example is just that. I didn't think about how good or bad it is.

 

[ChillTuup]

10 minutes ago, Beliman said:

Imo, GW need to be clear what they wants to accomplish. Let me explain:

In any other wargames/skirmish games, we see extra-oficial roles like beaters, schemers, anvils, hammers, redirectors, flank-holders, etc... I think that AoS could go deeper in that too. If we play an objective game, just go all in!

As an example: Behemoth role/Monster keyword could disrupt how many models could capture an objective (they can't focus on the objective because they have a Gargantuan abomination near them). We could even have more interactions: Behemoths that were wounded by Artillery lose that "bonus".

Same with cavalry, troops that "steal" objectives even if they are less models (Mega-gargants and BCR style), troops that protect the objective (apart from that 4++), etc...

Btw, I'm not talking about a "paper-scissor" game because we could still kill the miniatures and move on with our 2+/2+/-3/D3 buffed unit that we slingshot across the table, but it could open another layer of strategic decisions in our lists.

P.D: Btw, My example is just that. I didn't think about how good or bad it is.

 

Tbh on the white dwarf 458 they have an article that writes what they want to achieve: fun. Its in the explanation thing of 40k rules somewhere at the start. I  think in general they want fun, meaning imho that the competitive side is not the main point but something for those who want to be the best at something. 

I do agree that (semi)competitive lists may look similar in terms of little variety, altho i think we should acknowledge the fact that the competitive part is just a small part of the hobby as well. I know Witch Aelves used to be spammed in a DoK list, but I for example am more of a collector and try to have a bit of everything (melisai, khinerai, aelves, morathi, shrine). And if i want to play a game it may not be competitive but atleast i have fun using all of these.

I think that competitive lists are there for a reason and for a totally different mindset and for a game developer near impossible to have variety in each army and be competitive. Its the same online gaming where theres a set meta which will simply be used untill a new patch comes out. The difference is that GW cant give a patch for each army with models and battle tomes every two weeks.

 

 

[Maddpainting]

20 hours ago, Greybeard86 said:

Since my return to the fantasy side of the hobby, I have been surprised at how "spammy" the competitive and semi-competitive AoS lists feel. I won't go through all of them in detail, here you can find some obvious examples: LINK.

As far as I can understand, this is due to the fact that a large part of the TT performance of units is linked to buffs, which are often restricted to specific keywords. These are linked to specific heroes (e.g. wardens buffing hammerers), or specific battalions (e.g. lords of the lodge). Often, choosing one such route truly prevents bringing other diverse units to the army in an effective manner. This seems to be very much  the case for the wonderful Gitz (goblins).

Armies in AoS already have fairly limited ranges, in general, thus this keyword focus further specializes the  forces. In addition, it seems to kill, for the most part, effective cross-army options (e.g. within order), except for some niche cases. The result is that lists seem to focus on a subset of units, which are then spammed, together with a few supporting characters.

Is this "good"? Or would you prefer more "diverse" being "competitive"? Am I missing anything?

Have you played old fantasy? Imo it was WAY more "spammy" than AoS, you had at times full armies of 1 unit and 2-3 heroes, or just lots of the same core over and over again. 

I went to a couple events back in 7th and it wasn't fun looking at all, blocks of the same thing, spam lots of chariots, spam lots of 40 man blocks, with very little diversity. A chaos army with max points in Hellconnons, 2 Heroes, and the rest was just Chaos warriors, it was 4 different units. I've never seen more than 5 different types of units outside of hyper causal players. Heck i saw a list that was 70 Blackorks and 2 Heroes.

AoS from what I've have seen (I play every week, I go to events, even GT's) and it for sure has WAY more diversity IMO. Now that doesn't mean its not "spammy" b.c they are "armies" and shoud have some of the same units such as battaleline's 

Edit: Examples from what I play;

BoC: Ungor, Raiders, Bestigors, Shamans, Beastlord/Doombull, Bullgors, sometimes Centigors, Cockatrice, Cygors/Ghorgons 
IDK: King, Tidecaster, Ishlean, Morrsarr, Leviathan, Namarti, Allopex
CoS: Hurricanum, Dreadlord on Dragon, Fleetmaster, Shadow Warriors, Scourgerunners, Drake knights, Assassin 

So on average is 7+ units in each of my main armies.
 

Edited December 15, 2020 by Maddpainting

[RuneBrush]

This feels a bit like the "more balance" discussion wrapped up with a different coat and hat if I'm honest.  The competitive / semi-competitive side of many table top games nearly always comes down to "min-maxing" your army.  Leaning towards one build will generally give you an edge over another build (even if it's miniscule).  You'll also find a lot of articles and advice out there which points out the "best" units to take, which results in them being more prevalent in lists.

Despite it getting what I'd call "prime-time" coverage online, I don't think the competitive side of AoS is the best measuring stick when it comes to diversity of armies.  It accounts for a far smaller portion of games played than people think.

I will also point out that the AoS Shorts article you linked has to be 18 months out of date, so doesn't reflect point alterations that have come along since then.

[Greybeard86]

6 hours ago, Beer & Pretzels Gamer said:

Yet to @Kramer’s point even with flexibility you’re still going to see the most efficient units picked within the battalion choices, particularly as relates to the sub-faction/great fray chosen.

6 hours ago, Beer & Pretzels Gamer said:

 

I get the frustration with KEYWORDS though. 

This is a general problem; when internal balance is lacking, some units get spammed. In competitive, this is hard to escape.

However, AoS adds another layer to it by doubling down on it via keyword specificity and battalions.

The funny part of this is that probably this was done to make sure multiple units of an army would be competitive (at least within the battalion). Furthermore, this is accomplished in "themed" armies.  The problem that I see is that they are doing this with an excessively narrow focus.

One thing is to increase the relative presence of some units (e.g. that goblin tribe is known for its trolls so they have some more), the other is to uber specialize then (e.g. now it is just trolls, or demigryphs, or whatever).  Again, the way the buffs are handed is such that attempting to have "diversity" is penalized; one heroe buffing 3 units is "cost effective"; having to buy a "heroe" per unit is not.

In the way it is currently done, armies do look a bit like one trick ponies. The HB spam, the eel spam, the demigryph spam, the witchelf spam, the troll spam. It is, of course, still "hard" to pilot them well and have them do whatever they are supposed to do, but the armies look incredibly repetitive to me. It just compounds the issue of them releasing armies with extremely narrow ranges (e.g. slayers on fyre? two models and heroes).

For me, the solution is a combination of diminishing the role of "combos" and "deathstar buffs", and making sure there is a bit more unit specialization. Right a lot of units are just good against everything, after buffs. So if you can just use HB and high efficiency against monsters, chaff, and what not, then you will spam that efficient unit to no end. While full specialization can lead to unfun situations, a bit more could be used.

 

[Beliman]

24 minutes ago, ChillTuup said:

Tbh on the white dwarf 458 they have an article that writes what they want to achieve: fun. Its in the explanation thing of 40k rules somewhere at the start. I  think in general they want fun, meaning imho that the competitive side is not the main point but something for those who want to be the best at something. 

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).

[Greybeard86]

8 minutes ago, RuneBrush said:

This feels a bit like the "more balance" discussion wrapped up with a different coat and hat if I'm honest.  The competitive / semi-competitive side of many table top games nearly always comes down to "min-maxing" your army.  Leaning towards one build will generally give you an edge over another build (even if it's miniscule).  You'll also find a lot of articles and advice out there which points out the "best" units to take, which results in them being more prevalent in lists.

Despite it getting what I'd call "prime-time" coverage online, I don't think the competitive side of AoS is the best measuring stick when it comes to diversity of armies.  It accounts for a far smaller portion of games played than people think.

I will also point out that the AoS Shorts article you linked has to be 18 months out of date, so doesn't reflect point alterations that have come along since then.

Yes, min-maxing is a thing, and it is hard to escape. However, low diversity is more prevalent in AoS due to keyword specificity.  You don't see as many entire armies of X in 40k, even though some people attempt it.

[Greybeard86]

4 minutes ago, 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).

That could be certainly a way: not only add variety via role specialization (so that you can't use trolls for everything, or demis, or whatever), but also via the interaction with the objectives of the game.  I'd prefer a bit of both, to be honest. In any case, I think a lot of us just want good excuses to field diverse armies other than "I am shooting myself on the foot for the visuals".

[ChillTuup]

38 minutes ago, Greybeard86 said:

That could be certainly a way: not only add variety via role specialization (so that you can't use trolls for everything, or demis, or whatever), but also via the interaction with the objectives of the game.  I'd prefer a bit of both, to be honest. In any case, I think a lot of us just want good excuses to field diverse armies other than "I am shooting myself on the foot for the visuals".

Honestly you made a point in the opening post that you just want to stand with. Right now you are speaking about totally different stuff...a troll cant do everything..what the hell..every unit or model has a warscroll and thats how the game works, what u are suggesting is more like changing the way the game been build rather than working on the balancin issue causing variety shortage, which is only for competitive play anyway...

 

If you gonna give spezialization roles you will have the same problem anyway...unit x is the best inthis role so evetyone competitive will unit x

 

Edited December 15, 2020 by ChillTuup

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

There is a general tendency in games like AoS where you get your build your list/team/deck to go spammy. It is a natural part of games that are built on a limited rock/paper/scissors mechanic. The idea of why it happens is this:

As a player, you have the option to build a generalist army that can do a bit of everything and has one counter for any problem you are likely to encounter. But if an opponent goes all in on one choice, they will likely be able to overwhelm the counters to their choice by sheer brute force. For example, if they have high armour units, you'd usually be able to muscle past them with mortal wounds or high rend. But if they have only high armour units, you won't be able to keep up and they will eventually be able to get rid of your sources mortal wound/high rend. At the same time, your low rend units won't be able to effectively deal with their high armour.

This kind of dynamic is, in my experience, part of any game with that works on countering opponents. This kind of design makes generalists weaker. Additionally, in AoS specifically, you frequently need to commit to a unit choice for it to clear a certain threshold of effeciveness. Ossiarch Crawlers are an example: You could probably just ignore or play around one of them, but if your opponents bring two the threat gets too high to ignore.

Since the core mechanics of the game naturally encourage spam (same for Warhammer Fantasy, by the way), are there mechanics that encourage diversity? In theory, that should be the role of battalions and subfactions. And from one perspective, they do: In the most recent army books, for whatever unit you want to bring, it's likely that there are battalions or subfactions that make it workable (at like a 7 to 8 out of 10 on the power scale). But of course, that does not mean you are very likely to see all the different units an army has to offer in the same list. However, I believe that you would see even less diverse lists overall if there were no battalions or subfactions, because at that point whatever has the best/most spammable warscroll is just what becomes optimal.

As far as diversity goes: It's true that it would be nice to have mechanics that encourage you to play armies with lots of different warscrolls, just as an option. But if this type of goodstuff list becomes the optimal thing to play, that is not necessarily more satisfying than a tendency towards more strongly themed armies. Overall, I don't think AoS is terrible at encouraging diversity., if we ignore certain outliers where faction internal balance is just not good (pre-broken realms Idoneth, Daughters of Khaine, Fyreslayers...). At least, I don't think AoS does worse in this regard than other games I know.

[Greybeard86]

4 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Since the core mechanics of the game naturally encourage spam (same for Warhammer Fantasy, by the way), are there mechanics that encourage diversity? In theory, that should be the role of battalions and subfactions. And from one perspective, they do: In the most recent army books, for whatever unit you want to bring, it's likely that there are battalions or subfactions that make it workable (at like a 7 to 8 out of 10 on the power scale). But of course, that does not mean you are very likely to see all the different units an army has to offer in the same list

Strongly agree with the battalion point, but somehow you seem to have a different conclusion. Battalions were meant to buff different parts of the army to make those units competitive. However, given the point costs, the "efficiency" of the buffing, and keyword considerations, battalions super-focused armies as a result.

4 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

. However, I believe that you would see even less diverse lists overall if there were no battalions or subfactions, because at that point whatever has the best/most spammable warscroll is just what becomes optimal.

We return to the point that if one unit is "the best" then it will be spammed. Only if what is "optimal" is optimal in all situations, against all targets. A unit might be a good horde killer, and bad monster killer. Then even if said unit is very "efficient" at horde killer, you won't simply spam it because you'd be decimated by monsters. I know this is not in the OP, but I do think that unit specialization and diversity are inherently tied.  Similar points can be made about defensiveness, buffing units, and other characteristics.

4 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

As far as diversity goes: It's true that it would be nice to have mechanics that encourage you to play armies with lots of different warscrolls, just as an option. But if this type of goodstuff list becomes the optimal thing to play, that is not necessarily more satisfying than a tendency towards more strongly themed armies. Overall, I don't think AoS is terrible at encouraging diversity., if we ignore certain outliers where faction internal balance is just not good (pre-broken realms Idoneth, Daughters of Khaine, Fyreslayers...). At least, I don't think AoS does worse in this regard than other games I know.

Really? Because looking at competitive lists I see a super high prevalence of spam.

I do think that "themed" armies are fun, and I do like that they support them; I just dislike when themed becomes spam. I think one of the issues is that currently there simply isn't room for more than a single theme in a lot of armies. Sometimes this is because the base army has a very narrow range, but in other cases this is due to keyword "abuse".

Ideally, armies should have several viable "themes". Encouraged armies should be those with at least a couple such themes, and at some point unfocused diversity should be penalized (in relative terms). For example Gitz have the following themes: 1) spiders, 2) squigs, 3) goblin hordes, 4) trolls, 5) big monsters, 6) mushroom magic. I would love for competitive armies to have at least 3 themes.

24 minutes ago, ChillTuup said:

Honestly you made a point in the opening post that you just want to stand with. Right now you are speaking about totally different stuff...a troll cant do everything..what the hell..every unit or model has a warscroll and thats how the game works, what u are suggesting is more like changing the way the game been build rather than working on the balancin issue causing variety shortage, which is only for competitive play anyway...

 

If you gonna give spezialization roles you will have the same problem anyway...unit x is the best inthis role so evetyone competitive will unit x

 

I am just exploring the premise. The specialization bit already is in the game (e.g. high vs low rend). In any case, my main point remains the diversity bit.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

9 minutes ago, Greybeard86 said:

We return to the point that if one unit is "the best" then it will be spammed. Only if what is "optimal" is optimal in all situations, against all targets. A unit might be a good horde killer, and bad monster killer. Then even if said unit is very "efficient" at horde killer, you won't simply spam it because you'd be decimated by monsters. I know this is not in the OP, but I do think that unit specialization and diversity are inherently tied.  Similar points can be made about defensiveness, buffing units, and other characteristics.

I disagree, and I tried to make the mechanism by which not universally optimal units still reward spamming clear in my last post. If your opponent has a diverse list with one or two counters to what you are spamming, but units that don't have an advantage against your spam otherwise, you will still likely be able to muscle past their counters.

To pick up your example: Gyrocopters are good anti-horde units, but they do bad against elite units or monster. If you bring a normal amount of them, that is. Bring one and it kind of just does nothing. Bring three and you will be able to deal with hordes. Bring six and they can take down two-wound elites, just with raw damage numbers. Bring more than that and they will be able to deal with monsters by using spamming their once a game 1d3 mortal wounds ability. I'm not saying that Gyrocopters are the next big spam list, but it illustrates how spamming even a specialized unit increases that unit's ability to deal with it's counters.

 

19 minutes ago, Greybeard86 said:

Really? Because looking at competitive lists I see a super high prevalence of spam.

I would not look to competitive lists as my yardstick for list diversity, in general. The top level of any competitive game I have ever played or paid close attention to has always had a much lower diversity than the average game at all levels. Fighting games, deck building games, strategy games... Nobody really seems to have cracked that nut of diversity at the top level. AoS seems very much in line with other games in this regard, in my opinion.

24 minutes ago, Greybeard86 said:

I do think that "themed" armies are fun, and I do like that they support them; I just dislike when themed becomes spam. I think one of the issues is that currently there simply isn't room for more than a single theme in a lot of armies. Sometimes this is because the base army has a very narrow range, but in other cases this is due to keyword "abuse".

Ideally, armies should have several viable "themes". Encouraged armies should be those with at least a couple such themes, and at some point unfocused diversity should be penalized (in relative terms). For example Gitz have the following themes: 1) spiders, 2) squigs, 3) goblin hordes, 4) trolls, 5) big monsters, 6) mushroom magic. I would love for competitive armies to have at least 3 themes.

Again, I would not necessarily look to the top level for this. But at the 7 to 8 out of 10 power level, it seems to me that Gloomspite have what you want, currently. In as far as any Gloomspite list is viable, goblin horde, troggoths and squigs all seem OK after the recent White Dwarves. Possibly spiders too, since apparently there is a battalion that lets Arachnaroks move like Kharadron Airships now.

[Enoby]

As others have said, there will always be a mathematically best option - always one unit that pumps out the best damage for the lowest cost. 

However, over the pandemic I've looked into other game systems. While there's been nothing perfect, I've noticed that they do tend to have more variety because roles are better defined. I played quite a bit of Malifaux, and that not only restricts the amount of a  model you can take (e.g. you can only take a maximum of 3 'ice gamins', and only 1 'ice golum') but you rarely want to have duplicates even if you're allowed them as every model has its own role. For example, the aforementioned Ice Golem is fantastic at doing damage and taking hits, but is incredibly slow in an objective based game that requires a lot of movement. That means that it has a use for killing your opponent's models to deny advantage, but more than one would mean you'd be too slow to capture objectives. If you had lots of fast and weak models, you'd be able to score objectives but they would die very quickly and couldn't threaten the opponent (who could do what they wanted with their models). 

Point is that I think AoS needs more defined roles. When troops end up competing for "who can do the most damage", or "who is the cheapest battleline" then there will be only one correct answer. For example, look at Marauders vs Daemonettes; both can be taken in Slaanesh (with the same allegiance abilities),  both have comparable points at max size (320 for 40 marauders, 300 for 30 daemonettes), both are battleline, both are fast with the same low save, marauders do have a lower bravery but battleshock immunity is very easy to come by. Marauders do 13 vs Daemonette's 11 damage if 20 get in against a 4+ save. So if you're looking for a bit killy battleline unit in Slaanesh, then marauders are mathmatically better. If daemonettes and marauders interacted with the game differently (e.g. marauders are more killy but daemonettes have an ability that lets them interact with the objective), then we may see more variety. 

I touched upon this in my overly long post about strength and toughness (for those curious, here it is:

) - that is if we had a mechanic for S and T, we could define a model's role further. Of course, as seen in 40k this doesn't solve the issue, but I believe it would give us a tool to help solve the issue. For example, spamming witch aelves will do you no good if their strength 3 comes across a megagargant, but a megagargant can be cut down to size with an Avatar of Khaine or Morathi - after all, a megagargant shouldn't be a walk in the park to take down.

Again, S and T on their own don't balance a game, but they do give us a tool to balance. At the moment, weight of universal quality attacks tends to be the winning formula in AoS  

[Greybeard86]

1 minute ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

I disagree, and I tried to make the mechanism by which not universally optimal units still reward spamming clear in my last post. If your opponent has a diverse list with one or two counters to what you are spamming, but units that don't have an advantage against your spam otherwise, you will still likely be able to muscle past their counters.

Again, skew is only as good as you can brute force units into different roles. At the moment, 40k has managed to create fairly diverse armies (granted vehicles are suffering now). The vast majority of winning competitive lists do lean hard on the FOTM units, but they rarely are 6 units of demis and a heroe type of things. So I just don't see the conclusion you point to here as "inevitable"; it is not, and the same company achieved better diversity in their other product.

1 minute ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

I would not look to competitive lists as my yardstick for list diversity, in general. The top level of any competitive game I have ever played or paid close attention to has always had a much lower diversity than the average game at all levels. Fighting games, deck building games, strategy games... Nobody really seems to have cracked that nut of diversity at the top level. AoS seems very much in line with other games in this regard, in my opinion.

I think this is besides the point. Yes, competitive play tends to lean hard on the best, thus lowering diversity. But AoS has rules that strongly disfavor diversity, on top of it, via keywording and battalion specificity; or you disagree on this specific point?  That is the point of my thread.

1 minute ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Again, I would not necessarily look to the top level for this. But at the 7 to 8 out of 10 power level, it seems to me that Gloomspite have what you want, currently. In as far as any Gloomspite list is viable, goblin horde, troggoths and squigs all seem OK after the recent White Dwarves. Possibly spiders too, since apparently there is a battalion that lets Arachnaroks move like Kharadron Airships now.

They seem OK, in heavily focused armies. To the point that the battleforce was mocked because it had two cores that do not work together well.

The diversity I am talking about is not having one viable list of trolls, another for squigs, and a final one for goblins. Rather, I'd love to see them play together for more diverse lists (within the list, not across lists).