Are armies diverse enough in the TT?

[Beliman]

1 hour ago, Enoby said:

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 coudn't said it better! Malifaux is a really nice game (what can I say, I love it) and even if there are 4-5 roles (schemer, beater, summoner, redirector, etc...), they have a lot of interactions with objectives.

In AoS, we can only do two things to take an objective: kill enemies or put more bodies.

But we know that GW can do some really interesting mechanics too, we already have Tectonic Force (push enemies out!), Get Orf Me Land (move objectives) or Irresistible Lure (lure enemies). That type of things are what an objective war-game will have over a war-game that just win by killing. Don't be shy and just go all in!!

Edited December 15, 2020 by Beliman

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

14 minutes ago, Greybeard86 said:

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.

To me, what is happening in 40k seems more indicative of a more immature meta game after the recent edition change, to be honest. Younger competitive metas are usually more diverse compared to older ones. But I don't follow 40k very closely, so that might well a wrong assessment.

16 minutes ago, Greybeard86 said:

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.

I somewhat disagree. I don't think it the case in general, or for newer battletomes. There are some like Khorne or Gloomspite that are extremely balkanized by their implementation of keywords. But if you look at Cities of Sigmar, for example, it's not as much of a problem even though the synergies follow keywords pretty closely. Mostly this is because it's viable to have a block of dwarves buffed by a dwarf hero and a block of elves buffed by an elf hero in the same army.

Battalions are a mixed bag. I already said that I think in general battalions increase the viability of different units in an army. But they don't usually serve to encourage diverse lists in the sense that you want. It's worth noting that the least restricive battalions, the ones like Changehost where you can just take whatever you were going to take anyway, encourage spam the most. More specific battalions do more to encourage diversity in a list.

Battalions could also in theory be used to encourage more diversity by forcing you not to repeat warscrolls. But that's not being done anywhere yet as far as I know.

It would be absurd to claim that there could not be rules that would result in more diverse lists. Like Enoby said above, if you just forbid taking multiples of a unit, that will do it (but it's kind of admitting defeat in terms of game design, because it's an admission that you can't manage to naturally make diverse lists attractive). But I think it's reasonable to claim that AoS is not especially bad in terms of ensuring the viability of diverse lists. At mid levels, a lot of units and lists are playable. At top levels, I don't personally see an inordinate amount of overcentralization (compared to other competitive games).

[Greybeard86]

3 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

To me, what is happening in 40k seems more indicative of a more immature meta game after the recent edition change, to be honest. Younger competitive metas are usually more diverse compared to older ones. But I don't follow 40k very closely, so that might well a wrong assessment.

8th edition wasn't like that either; it is the game's rules, not the edition.

3 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

It would be absurd to claim that there could not be rules that would result in more diverse lists. Like Enoby said above, if you just forbid taking multiples of a unit, that will do it (but it's kind of admitting defeat in terms of game design, because it's an admission that you can't manage to naturally make diverse lists attractive). But I think it's reasonable to claim that AoS is not especially bad in terms of ensuring the viability of diverse lists. At mid levels, a lot of units and lists are playable. At top levels, I don't personally see an inordinate amount of overcentralization (compared to other competitive games).

That's the part that is shocking to me. Coming from old WHFB, where armies had multiple models in the range, it was already a shock to see how in AoS you could have such narrow ranges. Before checking the new fantasy, I spent some time painting and collecting 40k and spam is not as bad there. But then I looked at the rules and the lists that resulted from following them in AoS (i.e. matched competitive lists, if you are just going to ignore the game design and play whatever you want, that's a different thing), and I was baffled.

People running only demis, or only charriots, or 2 blocks of witchelfs and buffers, or 2x2 fyreslayers, or only eels. Those are not rare armies, and then I realized that keywords and battalions did reward focusing the army so much. I am guessing not ALL armies are this way, but a couple of afternoons browsing showed me that they are far more common than in 40k (not even talking about other completely different systems, others have covered that).

I get it, spamming "efficient" has always been the competitive way. I believe rules should be making "efficient" as diverse as possible (within an army), not further narrowing it.  I looked at the battleforce for gits and it looked nice, some goblins, some trolls, some bosses. Then I read the reviews and checked the rules. The horror!

[Enoby]

34 minutes ago, Beliman said:

I coudn't said it better! Malifaux is a really nice game (what can I say, I love it) and even if there are 4-5 roles (schemer, beater, summoner, redirector, etc...), they have a lot of interactions with objectives.

In AoS, we can only do two things to take an objective: kill enemies or put more bodies.

But we know that GW can do some really interesting mechanics too, we already have Tectonic Force (push enemies out!), Get Orf Me Land (move objectives) or Irresistible Lure (lure enemies). That type of things are what an objective war-game will have over a war-game that just ones to kill people. Don't be shy and just go all in!!

Yeah, I think Malifaux does it really well, especially as you build the list after you know the objectives (for those who don't know, they are chosen randomly, and you have a universal one and two you pick in secret). For example, if you get objectives that favour running to the opposite side of the board, you may choose faster units, and if it required killing and surviving you may choose tankier and more deadly units. Usually, the objectives need a mix of both with a skew, so your list ends up with a mix of units. For example, in the crew I play, there's a very good healing unit you can take two of, but I don't always take two if the objectives are far away and I don't need to keep one particular model alive. Also, some models have ways to remove or place objective markers that can give you a leg up, for example normally you can't place objectives when in combat, but some models ignore that rule (usually not being very killy or tanky in the process).

As you said, in AoS there are two ways to get an objective - kill the opponent or swamp them. If they had more ways to interact with objectives and other people's models, then we could see a greater variety in list building. For example, if the Idoneth Eels remained super good at killing, then that could be find if Namantri were considerably better at capturing an objective, or at getting the opponent off an objective.

[Beer & Pretzels Gamer]

6 hours ago, Greybeard86 said:

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.

Coming from historical wargaming I guess I truly struggle to see AoS as anti-diversity.  In historical wargaming your options can be incredibly limited from the simplistic recreation of a battle where only the units that were in the actual battle are allowed to major restrictions on what type of weapons are allowed given year the battle is being fought to which armies can fight each other.  In sharp contrast AoS currently has 24 armies I believe ranging from dwarves & goblins to giants & greater deamons (with more trademark able names of course) or from bare chested club wielding barbarians to steampunk powered riflemen.  

While there are rules that apply once I have chosen a given army on what else I can put into that list for matched play again, vs historical wargaming it is incredibly flexible.  When the player in our group felt that his Legion of Azgorh Execution Herd needed something a little different the was able to throw in Skarbrand or Mazarall the Butcher as backup.  If you want to combine your old school elves with your tree people and Stormcast you’ve got Living City.  Combine Ironjawz & Bonesplitterz?  Big Waaagh!!!  (Cities of Sigmar is the type of flexibility in diversity you’d never see in Historical Wargames...)

Again, you can’t do everything but you can do so much.  You can, in fact, build an army list that combines Trogs and Grots.  Now if your point is simply that not all combinations are equally competitive... Sure, I guess.  But as @RuneBrush notes that may just be a more balance discussion in different clothing.  I doubt AoS will ever be balanced but at least, with the steady release of new tomes and new rule sets it is also never stagnant.  If your army or favorite flavor is out of fashion wait and in the next cycle it could be on top.

I hate to use a tautology but when it comes to tournaments the top tier of competitors are going to build competitive lists and at any given time the scope of those competitive lists will be determined by the balance between point costs and current rules/WS/battletomes.  Fortunately at any tournament of scale there are likely to be participants who aren’t there just to go 5-0 who increase the diversity of the lists you’ll see.  Even more fortunate, though I do understand some people are more restricted to tournament play, there is incredible list diversity being played across AoS tables every day in less competitive settings.

But to build on @Kramer’s point, as frustrating as KEYWORDS can be (I’ve been playing Stormcast lately and it is frustrating that all the named Hero buffs are restricted to Hammers of Sigmar, limiting my ability to play other sub-factions if I use them) I do think some of the use of KEYWORDS is truly for the good in creating a more immersive game.  Sure it is possible to reduce the buffs given on WS to there simple effects but that little bit of text explaining why that buff is given absolutely can add to the experience AND improve the internal logic of a game.

To look at a simple example using the Gloomspite Gitz I believe you’ve referenced let’s check out the Loonboss options.

- Regular Loonboss has “I’m da Boss, Now Stab ‘EM Good”.  Sure we can reduce this to a buff that grants 1 MW on unmodified 6s  and say hey, that should be universal to Gloomspite instead of limited to the KEYWORD MOONCLAN but the text says this is about a Loonboss’s ability to get their minions to fight for them.  Hard to picture those Grots up on an Arachnarok Spider as seeing that little guy on foot as their boss, but at least if they did you could argue that they at least have stabbing weapons.  It is not only harder to picture this little guy bossing around a Troggoth but they’re also bashing weapons, not stabbing.  Semantics? Sure, but this game is about Semantics otherwise why bother naming the weapons and other attacks?  Sure we can reduce WS to melee weapons option #1 and melee weapon option #2 but are we really better off for it?

- The Loonboss on Giant Cave Squig has Let’s Get Bouncing! Which adds 3” to the move characteristic of KEYWORD SQUIG units.  Hey, I’m with you that I’d love an extra 3” for my slow moving Shootas and Stabbas.  But what is the basis for this 60% increase in their movement?  They don’t have anything to bounce on so to speak so where is it coming from?  On the other hand the logic of a bunch of Boingrot Bounderz following their similarly Squig saddled leader into battle is there.  Similarly I just don’t see Troggoths as that bouncy or being inspired to follow a small green git on a red mushroom with a mouth into a wild charge.

- similarly the Loonboss on Mangler Squig’s CA is Bite Da Moon! requires the keyword SQUIG.  I get that this one isn’t worded to only grant the +1 to Wound to the biting related attacks but again there is a logic to giving it to unit that do have one versus all units.

Sure, any of these buffs would be great if more widely applicable but doing so would make the units more generic.  The same logic applies to battalions in that they are supposed to represent something and the requirements and buffs should reflect that.  Spider Rider Skitterswarm Battalion is meant to reflect the fast riding forward units of the Spiderfang so it makes sense they’d have 2” extra movement.  What is the logic to grant this buff to other units?  Maybe you could make it a more generic battalion by allowing any mounted unit and I’d be okay with that.  But expanding it to include Shootas and Stabbas - that I just wouldn’t understand.  (And yes I realize there isn’t a full internal logic to AoS - why can units that only move 4” charge up to 12”? - but there is clearly meant to be some logic to the WS and battalion buffs.)

To quote my old economics professor there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.  In other words there always will be trade-offs when building a list and those trade-offs will bias competitive list building in certain directions at certain time and thus at the tournament top there may be some lack of diversity (though I still see plenty of different armies wracking up tournament wins when they are being played).  But the basic rules of AoS allow for plenty of diversity even if not all of it will be all that competitive.  And even if you removed every KEYWORD players would still be optimizing for what remains, constraining diversity at the highest levels.  But if you did you’d be losing a whole lot of the game’s immersive flavor.

 

[Sleboda]

TT?

[Overread]

37 minutes ago, Sleboda said:

TT?

Table Top - ergo in the game itself as opposed in theory or the lore.

[Nullius]

What is being described as a bug in this thread is an intentional feature.

 

the designers obviously intend there to be a tension between armies composed of every single one of the most ideal units tasked for the job they excel at, and armies with powerful synergies but limited unit choice. 
 

the purpose of this approach is to offer an alternative to the sort of “soup” lists that make for a vastly less interesting meta that the one the op is describing. Remember when every order army had a unit of Skinks in it? Remember how fun and immersive that was? Yeah, neither do I.

 

the spectrum of army building is supposed to have picking the best tools off the shelf on one end, and getting maximum horsepower out of one or two tools on the other.  This is a delicate balance. If the Grand Alliance Allegiences were just a LITTLE bit better, the balance would tilt and -for example- every death army would be supported by a pair of OBR catapults and be led by a Ghoul King on Terrorgheist with Reapers as battle line etc etc. the current system incentivized themed builds, and I prefer this to the soup approach myself, although it is admittedly a delicate balance. 
 

if the Grand Alliances had a spell lore each, and maybe one more allegiance ability, I think it would be a good thing, but they should never have armywide capabilities commensurate with building your army around narrower and narrower keywords.

[Greybeard86]

15 hours ago, Beer & Pretzels Gamer said:

 In other words there always will be trade-offs when building a list and those trade-offs will bias competitive list building in certain directions at certain time and thus at the tournament top there may be some lack of diversity (though I still see plenty of different armies wracking up tournament wins when they are being played).  But the basic rules of AoS allow for plenty of diversity even if not all of it will be all that competitive.

Here there is a key consideration: yes, you can build a diverse army, but it requires that you ignore the game's design, in the sense that you need to make "bad" choices. Creating a trade off between choosing "well" and having "diversity" is a bad thing, IMO.

15 hours ago, Beer & Pretzels Gamer said:

 And even if you removed every KEYWORD players would still be optimizing for what remains, constraining diversity at the highest levels.  But if you did you’d be losing a whole lot of the game’s immersive flavor.

 

Diversity is obviously not ALL about keywords, but keywords are certainly part of it.

6 hours ago, Nullius said:

What is being described as a bug in this thread is an intentional feature.

the designers obviously intend there to be a tension between armies composed of every single one of the most ideal units tasked for the job they excel at, and armies with powerful synergies but limited unit choice.

the spectrum of army building is supposed to have picking the best tools off the shelf on one end, and getting maximum horsepower out of one or two tools on the other.  This is a delicate balance.

I am well aware that this is all by design, hence this thread. They have hyperfocused armies, and I find that unfun. Sure, I can ignore their design and paint, and even play, whatever I want. But I would prefer a game system that encourages diversity, not one that works against it.

I mentioned it elsewhere, but to continue with the Gitz example (who doesn't LOVE the little gobbos? and this is coming from a dwarf collector):

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.

Currently, you get mostly 1 theme within a competitive army, thanks to keywords and battalions. I think softening that would make for far more fun armies to play and collect, though obviously that is subjective. Frankly, I find the current "gaming" lists incredibly boring. While I can simply ignore the game and go on with my dioramas and display armies, I figured I'd come discuss with the community and see if anyone felt similarly.

 

[Enoby]

8 hours ago, Nullius said:

What is being described as a bug in this thread is an intentional feature.

 

the designers obviously intend there to be a tension between armies composed of every single one of the most ideal units tasked for the job they excel at, and armies with powerful synergies but limited unit choice. 
 

the purpose of this approach is to offer an alternative to the sort of “soup” lists that make for a vastly less interesting meta that the one the op is describing. Remember when every order army had a unit of Skinks in it? Remember how fun and immersive that was? Yeah, neither do I.

 

the spectrum of army building is supposed to have picking the best tools off the shelf on one end, and getting maximum horsepower out of one or two tools on the other.  This is a delicate balance. If the Grand Alliance Allegiences were just a LITTLE bit better, the balance would tilt and -for example- every death army would be supported by a pair of OBR catapults and be led by a Ghoul King on Terrorgheist with Reapers as battle line etc etc. the current system incentivized themed builds, and I prefer this to the soup approach myself, although it is admittedly a delicate balance. 
 

if the Grand Alliances had a spell lore each, and maybe one more allegiance ability, I think it would be a good thing, but they should never have armywide capabilities commensurate with building your army around narrower and narrower keywords.

I understand what you're saying, but I don't know if GW's current approach is working as intended. You're right that no one liked it when Skinks were taken as cheap battleline for everyone, but I don't think that's what this thread is arguing for. 

From what I can gather, the issue in this thread is that certain units in a single army overshadow the other units in that army because they end up performing the same roles. So you mention that the purpose of each unit is to excel at a certain role, and these units are limited by synergy. I would agree that's a good goal - each unit in an army should be good at something that another unit isn't good at. 

The issue is that this isn't the case. I mentioned daemonettes vs marauders earlier on in this thread. Both fulfill the same  role, but one is just better at it than the other. This leads to less diverse lists as every (competitive) Slaanesh player would choose marauders over daemonettes for that role as there isn't enough to distinguish them. And while Slaanesh is in a bit of a state at the moment, in its heyday the answer to "what should I bring in my list" was always some multiple of Keepers of Secrets as they were very poorly internally balanced. Of course, one could argue that you don't need to play optimally, but that's a cop out argument as it says to ignore the problem rather than fix it. 

You see this lack of internal balance a lot in Idoneth too. Namantri thralls are more numerous that eels, but they do less damage, are slower, and die more frequently, all while not being particularly cheap. This imbalance leads to a lack of diversity in lists.

I think people would just like to bring their fiends, thralls, troggoths, chaos warriors, liberators etc without feeling as if they're hamstringing themselves. It's not about a Stormcast player wanting to find the best way to use skinks in their army, but rather being disappointed that their best list uses a very small selection of models.

[Greybeard86]

14 minutes ago, Enoby said:

I think people would just like to bring their fiends, thralls, troggoths, chaos warriors, liberators etc without feeling as if they're hamstringing themselves. It's not about a Stormcast player wanting to find the best way to use skinks in their army, but rather being disappointed that their best list uses a very small selection of models.

I would add to this that while this is true, battalions also play a role.

For example, if I am a gitz player, I can choose between battalions that buff squigs, spiders, trolls, or goblins. Once you pick that battalion, you pay a tax and, after filling the requirements, you really can't expand much, if at all, into other types of units. That's how you end up with only trolls, only goblins, only squigs, etc.

Then there is the issue of internal balance, which further compounds.

The newest release for Gitz was a white dwarf battalion for trolls, glogg's megamob. One of the key abilities is the ability to retreat,  then shoot and charge. If you fulfill the battalion's requirements, you are left with extremely few points to do anything else. Then, within the battalion clearly fellwater trolls are better than rotguts. Why? Because they can shoot it seems custom made for them. Given that mathhammer already favors fellwater trolls on the offensive in many ways, this completely tips the balance. So you end up with an army that SPAMS fellwater trolls LINK.

I would dread having to paint fellwater after fellwater model like that. I would love to have a gitz tribe face my dwarves, perhaps a bit heavy on trolls (of both types!), but including some squigs, some little gitz, maybe even a giant (I have some lovely giants of albion waiting in storage for an opportunity like this). You know, something that might ressemble a bit more a true gitz mob. And I do not want that army to be absolutely terrible on the table top.

Edited December 16, 2020 by Greybeard86

[TheCovenLord]

I would go so far as to argue that the units themselves could be worse (hamstringing yourself) than the golden boys from their respective army book and I would still want to use them if it wasn't closer to blowing your legs off with a cannon than hamstringing.

 

The problem arises when 1) the alternative unit is so much worse than the better unit that taking it is not hamstringing yourself, its not reducing your potential output, its outright hurting your tabletop performance. This is usually because of: 2) it functions in an unfun manner (often rolled into the issue of not living up to the fantasy on the table top). I have to say there is nothing worse than placing a big monster down (ex: Sorceress on Black Dragon, seeing a Ghorgon or Bloodthirster across the table from me) then watch it require 4+ to hit rolls (or more because of debuffs) on very few attacks. It just doesn't function. And this can be extended to units that do not have significant keyword synergies with buff pieces, have wonky warscrolls that make buffing difficult or have horrendous returns on investment. They just are not intuitive or "fun" on the table because they have issues carrying out their basic designated function whereas other units function well and excel when buffed.

This is a balance though as units that are too easy to buff or too hyper-efficient aren't fun in their own regard. But usually only for the opponent and depending on your personal goals within the game (ie: if all you want is to win and winning is the only fun) than this may or may not apply. 

 

What it comes down to for me is that certain basic keywords need to provide baseline functionality to units to really give "classes" a role in the game. If infantry are going to be buff blenders why not make the Monster keyword do something more? Double battleshock results within an AOE (I also think Bshock and bravery need a haul but I digress), no unit can wound them easier than a 4+ (to represent toughness without using S/T, I stole this idea from someone else on this forum I have fallen in love with the concept as it retains the simplicity of AoS rolling but still gets the fantasy across) etc. I see the beginnings of this with SoB and Ogres EDIT: with regards to capturing objectives allowing big boys to actually function on the battlefield and that is definitely a good start.

Cavalry also suffer horrendously in the current meta (barring eels) because they don't really serve a role with so much summoning and teleportation around. I am not saying they are unusable but I really have not seen anyone play them in a significant manner in a long long time. So why not add "Cavalry" as a keyword and give them something to define their role. I know many cavalry can baseline run and charge and it just isn't enough. Maybe add in Retreat and Charge on them and cavalry would be back in a huge way just for the repositioning + pinning game.

 

Don't even get me started on "elites" whose baseline scrolls are often comparable to their better battle line counterparts while being in smaller units/more expensive and often on larger bases. Just give them baseline tools to differentiate them from infantry. The idea's I've had and seen floated often seem to border on OP but honestly I think a big change needs to happen and I accept that it won't be balanced on the first pass (as if the current system is at all balanced...). I have high hopes for the whispers of potential changes coming with 3rd ed though so we will just have to see. GW has honestly surprised me since the change in leadership from the Kirby reign and I am happier for it overall. I just love the game enough that I think it can be even better.

Edited December 16, 2020 by TheCovenLord

[Enoby]

19 minutes ago, TheCovenLord said:

I would go so far as to argue that the units themselves could be worse (hamstringing yourself) than the golden boys from their respective army book and I would still want to use them if it wasn't closer to blowing your legs off with a cannon than hamstringing

This rings very true - I personally find it very disheartening when I use Chaos Knights (which I really want to like) and they fail again and again. They won't necessarily 'cost me a game', especially in a casual setting, but taking a bad unit I like is often akin to taking fewer points than the opponent because they don't perform at all, whereas another unit would. 

And on the other hand, some units are too good not to take. E.g. Idoneth eels or the Keeper of Secrets in 2019 Slaanesh. As I don't play Idoneth, I'll use the 2019 KoS for this example. You were never forced to take a KoS (the book didn't say you had to take one), but you were highly incentivised to (with two of the three allegiance abilities highly playing into a KoS in a way that other models couldn't compete with). So if you didn't like the model, or weren't too keen on the narrative of multiple KoSs showing up every battle and working together, you struggled to play the army.

I think people would like to be able to take whatever they like and still feel as if their army is capable. At the end of the day, while it can be a fun challenge to play using bad models, it's not fun when you actually want to use those models in an even game.

[Greybeard86]

I just want to point out, folks, that it is only about "bad" and "good" units. Following the example of Gitz, you can make goblins, trolls, or squigs moderately competitive (we all know how they do in tournies, but still), you just can't do it for more than 1 type of unit in one army. I guess battalions and narrow keywords precisely did what you guys seem to want (liften underperforming units) but at the cost of sacrificing variety.

Just go on any list builder and put in the requirements for a Gitz battalion, with reasonable unit sizes. There just aren't any points to do anything else. How does that lead to fun diverse armies? :(

[Saxon]

My biggest gripe with AOS is the minimum battleline armies.

12 hours ago, Enoby said:

I think people would like to be able to take whatever they like and still feel as if their army is capable. At the end of the day, while it can be a fun challenge to play using bad models, it's not fun when you actually want to use those models in an even game.

It doesn't help that the battleline requirements are pretty poor. You can play a legal army with under 200 points of foot sloggers and the rest with whatever you want. Whilst im not really all over the 40k rules in detail, the more restricted army selections make armies more balanced to some degree and prevent spam to the same level. This can only be good for sales by forcing lists to be more diverse? 

Edited December 17, 2020 by Saxon

[RuneBrush]

14 hours ago, Greybeard86 said:

Just go on any list builder and put in the requirements for a Gitz battalion, with reasonable unit sizes. There just aren't any points to do anything else. How does that lead to fun diverse armies?

Battalions are more about representing something specific on the tabletop.  If you're running the Emerald Host, it's going to fix you on running many Hexwraiths for example.  Gore Pilgrims isn't going to contain any of the more elite Khorne units.  If you're looking for diversity, they're certainly not the way of achieving it.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

22 minutes ago, RuneBrush said:

Battalions are more about representing something specific on the tabletop.  If you're running the Emerald Host, it's going to fix you on running many Hexwraiths for example.  Gore Pilgrims isn't going to contain any of the more elite Khorne units.  If you're looking for diversity, they're certainly not the way of achieving it.

They are not currently, but they could be. I could easily imagine a Cities battalion that makes you take equal amounts of elves, dwarves and humans. The Syll'Eske suballegiance already does this for demons and mortals.

I believe that battalions and suballegiances are good tools to make army compositions viable that would not naturally be. There's no reason this could not include "no repeating warscrolls".

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

15 hours ago, Greybeard86 said:

I just want to point out, folks, that it is only about "bad" and "good" units. Following the example of Gitz, you can make goblins, trolls, or squigs moderately competitive (we all know how they do in tournies, but still), you just can't do it for more than 1 type of unit in one army. I guess battalions and narrow keywords precisely did what you guys seem to want (liften underperforming units) but at the cost of sacrificing variety.

Just go on any list builder and put in the requirements for a Gitz battalion, with reasonable unit sizes. There just aren't any points to do anything else. How does that lead to fun diverse armies?

I feel you are overly focussed on Gitz, which are among the worst offenders as far as restrictive army building goes. But they are not representative of the state of the game as a whole.

[Greybeard86]

1 hour ago, RuneBrush said:

Battalions are more about representing something specific on the tabletop.  If you're running the Emerald Host, it's going to fix you on running many Hexwraiths for example.  Gore Pilgrims isn't going to contain any of the more elite Khorne units.  If you're looking for diversity, they're certainly not the way of achieving it.

Yet every single semi competitive list I have seen relies on battalions. That’s why I am frustrated with the system.

1 hour ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

I feel you are overly focussed on Gitz, which are among the worst offenders as far as restrictive army building goes. But they are not representative of the state of the game as a whole.

Really? Because I look at other armies and I see similar things. Fyreslayers also have HB blocks as the core, or demigryph spam with hammerfall. In fact, among the competitive lists I have read, it is rare not to find spam. I am open to being proved wrong, but nevertheless it seems to me that he current keyword / battalion system does tend to encourage narrow compositions.

it makes sense, you pay a tax to bring support heroes and battalions,  you need to make most of it by picking mostly along the units buffed by them and decent enough unit sizes to make it work. I mean anyone can see that’s what the system  Encourages. Then, there is the further later of unit imbalance and battalion imbalance. Some are better than others so even then more restrictions on what you can bring without handicapping your list.

I understand battalions and so on are about trying to make more units competitive. But they are so taxing that they end up eating most of the points pool. Eliminate the taxes and restrict the battalion size and you my then be able to pick more than one theme for a list.

[Marcvs]

2 hours ago, Greybeard86 said:

Yet every single semi competitive list I have seen relies on battalions. That’s why I am frustrated with the system.

Really? Because I look at other armies and I see similar things. Fyreslayers also have HB blocks as the core, or demigryph spam with hammerfall. In fact, among the competitive lists I have read, it is rare not to find spam. I am open to being proved wrong, but nevertheless it seems to me that he current keyword / battalion system does tend to encourage narrow compositions.

it makes sense, you pay a tax to bring support heroes and battalions,  you need to make most of it by picking mostly along the units buffed by them and decent enough unit sizes to make it work. I mean anyone can see that’s what the system  Encourages. Then, there is the further later of unit imbalance and battalion imbalance. Some are better than others so even then more restrictions on what you can bring without handicapping your list.

I understand battalions and so on are about trying to make more units competitive. But they are so taxing that they end up eating most of the points pool. Eliminate the taxes and restrict the battalion size and you my then be able to pick more than one theme for a list.

Seraphon are among the most competitive armies at the moment and their top lists never use battalions. Same for IDK pre-broken realms (now Akhelian Corps is seeing a resurgence). Some of the most competitive Cities lists, based around soulscream bridge and irondrakes, do not use battalions, and in fact Cities armies very rarely use them. Of course you can find counter-arguments (Changehost for Tzeentch), but it still won't go as far as you make it in your first point (every single list)

Concerning your second point: it's rare not to find spam in competitive lists. Talking of the competitive scene right now is kind of hard because there's no big tournaments, but I'll take a look at two recent events on TTS, just because I played in them those had 52 and 22 players, the first UK based, the second based in France, both competitive oriented.

For the UK tournament, here's the 6 lists going 3-0:

• Slaves to Darkness: 9 units in total, 7 different units (2x20 marauders, 2xchaos sorcerer lord), no battalion
• Tzeentch: 7 units in total, 6 different units (2xscreamers), no battalion
• Daughters of Khaine: 8 units in total, 7 different units (2xsisters of slaughter), no battalion
• Idoneth Deepkin: 9 units in total, 7 different units (2xattack eels, 2xdefense eels), no battalion
• Idoneth Deepkin: 7 units in total, 5 differnt units (3xdefense eels), battalion -> battleline spammy
• Tzeentch: 7 units in total, 6 different units (2x screamers), no battalion

For the French tournament, 5 lists going 4-0 or 3-1 (yep, it was a 4 games tournament)

• Cities of Sigmar: 10 units in total, 9 different units (2xlongbeards), no battalion
• Stormcast eternals: 12 units in total, 8 differnt units (3xliberators, 2xconcussors, 2xskinks), no battalion -> battleline spammy
• Tzeentch: 10 units in total, 5 different units (4x pink horrors, 3x brimstones horrors), battalion -> very spammy
• Cities of Sigmar: 11 units in total, 9 different units (2x irondrakes, 2x freeguild guard), no battalion
• Idoneth deepkin: 9 units in total, 7 different units (3xdefense eels), battalion -> battleline spammy

Conclusion: 4 list out of 11 might fit some criteria of spamminess, 3 of which only spam their battlelines (and in MSU). Only one list is truly spammy on the table. Now of course this is a very small sample but the whole thread is anecdotal so far, so I just wanted to provide some basis to understand why my own perception is quite different. Also, just because I was checking the lists already: only 3 out of 11 had a battalion.

 

Edited December 17, 2020 by Marcvs

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

1 hour ago, Greybeard86 said:

Really? Because I look at other armies and I see similar things. Fyreslayers also have HB blocks as the core, or demigryph spam with hammerfall. In fact, among the competitive lists I have read, it is rare not to find spam. I am open to being proved wrong, but nevertheless it seems to me that he current keyword / battalion system does tend to encourage narrow compositions..

Here's an article about top Cities lists:

https://aosshorts.com/top-cities-of-sigmar-lists/

It features the Demigryph spam you mention, plus two other spam lists in Pistoliers and Scourgerunner Chariots. But it also features three diverse lists. It's also worth noting that one of the spam lists does not have an associated battalion.

It really does not seem to me that Cities in particular has a diversity problem. In fact, if we don't focus on tournament lists, there are a lot more viable lists in Cities, many of them quite diverse. You said before that you don't mind themed lists if diverse lists are also playable. I think they are in Cities. There are still many reasons to prefer spam if you are a tournament player. Spam lists are easier to pilot and have a clearer game plan most of the time compared to balanced lists, for one. But you can play balanced lists, at least in CoS.

As for other factions, there is no denying that there are factions with bad internal balance. Fyreslayers are the prime example. OBR was before the Petrifex nerf (although diverse Petrifex lists were stll possible, even good). IDK is another stand out, but end while they still lean eel heavy, sharks, turtles and the Eidolons have become a lot better recently. Marauders in Chaos are another instance where bad balance leads to spam.

There is also the other camp with low diversity lists: Factions with overly restrictive battletomes. That's Gloomspite Gitz for example, where your keywords punish you from not picking a tribe. Khorne is another book like this.

But other books with multiple factions don't suffer from the same problems. Both Mawtribes and Ironjaws can play mixed lists. Even some old books like Legions of Nagash or Skaven are better about mixing keywords.I

I really don't think the viability problem of diverse armies is inherent to the core design of AoS. It's down to the individual books whether they get it right or wrong, and I also think more books get it right rather than wrong.

[Greybeard86]

3 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

As for other factions, there is no denying that there are factions with bad internal balance. Fyreslayers are the prime example. OBR was before the Petrifex nerf (although diverse Petrifex lists were stll possible, even good). IDK is another stand out, but end while they still lean eel heavy, sharks, turtles and the Eidolons have become a lot better recently. Marauders in Chaos are another instance where bad balance leads to spam.

There is also the other camp with low diversity lists: Factions with overly restrictive battletomes. That's Gloomspite Gitz for example, where your keywords punish you from not picking a tribe. Khorne is another book like this.

But other books with multiple factions don't suffer from the same problems. Both Mawtribes and Ironjaws can play mixed lists. Even some old books like Legions of Nagash or Skaven are better about mixing keywords.I

I really don't think the viability problem of diverse armies is inherent to the core design of AoS. It's down to the individual books whether they get it right or wrong, and I also think more books get it right rather than wrong.

 

11 minutes ago, Marcvs said:

Conclusion: 4 list out of 11 might fit some criteria of spamminess, 3 of which only spam their battlelines (and in MSU). Only one list is truly spammy on the table. Now of course this is a very small sample but the whole thread is anecdotal so far, so I just wanted to provide some basis to understand why my own perception is quite different. Also, just because I was checking the lists already: only 3 out of 11 had a battalion.

 

Many thanks, to the both of you, for bringing examples and evidence to the table. As a newcomer to AoS, I am eager to learn.

I do not think spam is "inherent" to AOS, rather that it is a natural consequence of keyword restrictions and battalion implementation. Those books that do not seem to rely on either, apparently have better diversity. But in the books where they are powerful, narrower lists seem to emerge.

Is that a fair assessment?

[RuneBrush]

2 hours ago, Greybeard86 said:

I understand battalions and so on are about trying to make more units competitive. But they are so taxing that they end up eating most of the points pool. Eliminate the taxes and restrict the battalion size and you my then be able to pick more than one theme for a list.

They're not though, battalions are to allow you to represent a specific piece of background lore on the tabletop and something that's specific about that background.  Many competitive lists use battalions as a way of sliding in an extra artefact and command point - if you're running the models needed and there's a cheap 70 point battalion available, why wouldn't you?  There are odd super battalions (Tzeentch & Khorne both have them off the top of my head) that represents an entire organisation with specific rules that does make the army better as a whole.

You're also focusing the diversity point back to competitive gaming.  AoS isn't purely about competitive gaming or running a super powerful list.  Competitive gaming by its nature will always lean into a "best of the best" which does reduce diversity in an army.  What we do have in some armies where one unit is significantly better than the rest or some (e.g. Fyreslayer & Kharadron) that have a really limited miniature range.  GW do make point changes every 6 to 12 months to help the under / over represented units.

[Kramer]

2 minutes ago, Greybeard86 said:

do not think spam is "inherent" to AOS, rather that it is a natural consequence of keyword restrictions and battalion implementation.

no it’s not but It’s inherent to competitive gaming no matter the game itself. 

the only way to counteract it is with restrictions or rewards based on bringing different units. 
so a battalion that forces you to take different units (like the mawtribes battalions) or the lumineth with the archers only counting as battleline when there is also a spear unit. 

but that’s not really diversity. Because the moment that battalion is better than the next, every list that attempts to win a tournament with that army will take it. 

Some Goes for internal balance. in your examples of the gits. How do you balance 3 trolls vs 20 grits? You can give them stats so they do the same average of damage and have the same survivability. You could even make them count as the same number for objectives. But at the end of the day if I think it’s better to swamp my opponent and have a big board presence I’m taking multiples of the grots. 
and if it works, then other players will try  the same to win tournaments. 

its normal. Now the good thing is that I don’t think your frustration is with the game. I think it is with the people you play and how they approach the game. (Wether that’s a tournament setting or a game with friends I don’t know) 

but I can tell from experience AoS can be what you describe but you need an opponent with the same approach. 

[Greybeard86]

5 minutes ago, Kramer said:

no it’s not but It’s inherent to competitive gaming no matter the game itself. 

That is what balance and game design is meant to accomplish, to create a diverse game. It is like those all 2d fighting games, if the game was best played by spamming a certain attack, they'd become stale. True, competitive players will gravitate towards that even if it is boring. The question is whether the overall design of the game counteracts this, or not.

I am mainly a "hobby" oriented person, but I like to have the chance to play fun somehow balanced games (granted, not these days due to covid-19). I wanted to assemble at least 2 "decent" collections for games, one for Gitz and the other for dwarves (mainly not steampunk). Turns out I hit two of the worse armies: i) gitz players will rightfully point out that you must specialize or have an outrageoulsy weak army, ii) dispossessed synergyze very poorly with fyreslayers, and fyreslayers have incredibly narrow range and list variety.  The third collection I looked at, a freeguild army to have room for my old and new empire-related sculpts, also features lots of spammy lists (pistolier spam, demi spam, etc.). I am also painting a bunch of sylvaneth but have no plans to take them anywhere for gaming.

5 minutes ago, Kramer said:

Some Goes for internal balance. in your examples of the gits. How do you balance 3 trolls vs 20 grits? You can give them stats so they do the same average of damage and have the same survivability. You could even make them count as the same number for objectives. But at the end of the day if I think it’s better to swamp my opponent and have a big board presence I’m taking multiples of the grots.

I am not as pessimistic. I have seem GW achieve more "viable" compositions in 40k, I am positive they can find a viable role for both trolls and goblins. That is, if they try!