AoS Power Creep

[Overread]

Agreed, balance improves sales and one big thing the end of the Kirby era showed was that listening to the customers and improving balance (or in AoS case even just providing an actual formal game) resulted in massive sales spikes. That said they still have the same rules writing teams so I think some of the balance issues stem from the team working on the rules itself as well as budgets and management considerations above.

 

One thing I think that Warmachine has shown though is that Starcraft and video game style balancing isn't good for physical model games. Whilst digital rules are nice as a resource; trying to adopt a constantly shifting balance structure and shifting to almost totally online rules doesn't actually work out well in the long run. Warmachine went from a game recruiting new people with "rule cards in the box" to a game left with mostly a dwindling pro-playing customerbase with very reduced recruitment. Of course there ARE other influences going on (issues with distribution and stocks; loss of the PG system etc...). However I think it highlights how whilst its good to listen to people who want to see tighter rules and better balance; you don't want to make changes too fast nor disconnect from the physical product too far. 

 

The other trap is removing lore/fluff from core books - another thing PP did to appease the pro players who "only need/want rules" and which, again, saw a fall off in customers overall (and the pretty much closure of all their fluff production for the game). Even within GW we see fairly fewer reading Black Library novels compared to those playing the game (heck I'd been gaming on and off for years and yet only read a BL novel a few years back)

[Enoby]

I  think the question should be 'what is power creep'? Is it rules getting stronger over time, or imbalance becoming more prevalent? I think the former is inarguably yes, but the latter is harder to argue either way.  

I think it's hard to argue that there hasn't been a power creep in AoS when comparing current AoS to AoS at release (dubbed AoS 0). For those who don't know, AoS 0 had no points, command traits, artifacts, and importantly allegiance abilities. The only 'extra' rule outside of warscrolls came from battalions. 

That means, if pointed how they were right at the beginning of AoS 1 (e.g. GHB 1) an AoS 0 army would lose almost 100% of the time vs the same AoS 2 army purely based on the fact that the AoS 0 army would have no 'extra' rules besides battalions and very weak allegiances. 

Of course, this isn't too useful of a point to make because in the real world nobody plays AoS 0 armies against AoS 2 armies. What we should look at is AoS 0 vs AoS 0 armies and AoS 2 vs AoS 2 armies. Right at the beginning of 0 it's impossible to say as 20 Nagashes (Nageesh?) was a valid army as well as 10 zombies being a valid army. Balance was out of the window at this point. So if we look at AoS 0 being right at the beginning of the GHB, so everyone had generic allegiance abilities (besides Sylvaneth who we won't count for fairness as only a small section of players played them) we might be able to make out something more useful. I don't remember much in the meta from this time, besides Thundertusks feeling ridiculous and everyone took loads of skinks or other cheap battleline, and I think Tomb Kings were relevant. However, playing my Vampire Counts in a casual setting always felt balanaced and the games felt quite slow as there wasn't much in the way of mortal wound spam or great shooting. I think the most powerful list I went against was Settra chariot alpha strike that I would say was about as oppressive as a modern day casual alpha strike list. But to be perfectly honest, this is 100% based off personal experience and there could be loads of reasons I felt that way (e.g. everyone in my local GW may have played weak armies). The big thing I can take away is that buffing a model was limited to 8 things: it's own warscroll (e.g. 10 X get a bonus), command abilities, generic allegiance abilities, generic command traits, generic a artifacts, other model support (not a command ability), warcroll spells/prayers, and battalions if applicable. 

Compare this to AoS 2, and there are 11 things that can buff a unit: all of the above but the command traits/allegiance abilities/artifacts are specific (and nearly always better than their generic counterparts), scenery rules, battletome spells/prayers, and subfactions. Overall, this means each unit has the potential for more power, and so more chance for a 'misapplication' of this power through a broken combo - there are effectively 6 more ways in AoS 2 that a faction can become 'broken' compared to AoS 0. 

During AoS 1 and before mid AoS 2, I'd say the imbalance was at its worse because some armies didn't have a battletome at all. It was very hard to win with a battletome-less army due to the lack of options, though not impossible. While we have some 'top' armies now, every army has at least some tricks up its sleeve. 

That said, it feels massive unavoidable damage as become more common at the moment. Everyone (even weak armies) have the ability to spit out massive damage with specific builds, but that doesn't mean rocket tag is fun to play. 

Tl;dr AoS armies have become more powerful over the game's lifetime, but more importantly the game is more balanced than it has been in a while (even if not perfectly balanced). However, the typical manifestation of this balance is everyone having a way to deal out massive damage - damage has scaled up more than defence. I personally don't enjoy rocket tag as it feels like either my army or my opponent's army dies off too quickly to feel satisfying. 

Personally, I think internal balance is an equal or greater issue, but that's by the by. 

[Greybeard86]

1 hour ago, NinthMusketeer said:

Because MTG is so completely different from Warhammer in so many ways that we would be better served comparing AoS to Starcraft.

Because for every other wargame on the market balance is a  priority--why are they doing that if they would be better off with an imbalanced system?

Because every wargame, even GW, has seen its popularity suffer in the long term when its balance has degraded. When the meta shakes up it generates sales relatively immediately, the consequences of continuously imbalanced meta can take years to become apparent.

Because we all know that GW would not get away with the balance swings (and prices) they do if they weren't the most popular by a huge margin.

Because 'baked in by design' implies an active inclusion of imbalance. They went from spending no resources on balance (AoS release) to a considerable amount (yearly GHB, frequent FAQ/errata). If they wanted more imbalance they would scale back the amount of effort put into balancing, not spend additional effort to put imbalance back in to the system after spending effort to remove it.

I think that there are more nuanced views of balance that would allow for some imbalance in the actual competitive performance of armies.

For example, in MTG:

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/timmy-johnny-and-spike-2013-12-03

One could argue that megagargants were designed not to be balanced against competitive armies, but to be "Timmy" attractive. I don't think that this would be odd to believe, that this is part of the design process.

There more things like these we could discuss that may also be part of it. Like high / low variance armies, or what not. But that would require willingness to chat about it amicably. Is that the case?

[NinthMusketeer]

@Enoby, I think you make a lot of great points, especially about balance getting better over time for AoS. Despite a massive inflation of options the game has remained at approximately the same level of balance overall, which is a notable feat in itself. I also agree that the internal balance of options within books is a bigger issue, because while I enjoy and fully support GW adding more options that only counts for so much when about two thirds of them are irrelevant for their inferiority.

 

@Greybeard you are issuing a passive-aggressive accusation towards me at the same time you are asking to chat amicably. Not only do I find your implication unjustified, but hypocritical given the nature of the request; clearly you are not willing to abide by your own suggestion.

 You asked a question, I answered. Disagreeing with my answer doesn't mean it is uncivil.

[Sarouan]

2 hours ago, Overread said:

Agreed, balance improves sales and one big thing the end of the Kirby era showed was that listening to the customers and improving balance (or in AoS case even just providing an actual formal game) resulted in massive sales spikes.

I don't think balance truly improves sales. An active competitive scene does help though, especially about selling new rules and extensions rather than just miniatures. Having a team of rule designers being reactive to the feedback does inspire trust on the well-being of the game.  It's more about the attitude and showing the game is alive and faring well, I believe.

The forced break with the pandemic would be interesting to analyze when it's done to see what's the real impact about, let's say, the 9th version of 40k. We can then see if it really hurts not having competitive tournaments around.

 

About the "power creep"...To be honest, you can see the options in the battletomes tend to be having similar effects in some shape. The very unique ones are becoming less common than before.

That tends towards balance, because it's easier to balance things when both sides have access to the same options in terms of rules. What is really upsetting the balance is when you introduce unique mechanisms never showed before - see what happened when the Ossiarch Bonerepears came with their "not command abilities" rules. In other words, when you try to make a faction really different from the others in their rules.

Balance always comes with a sacrifice. It's not a hazard we get less weapon options on the heroes than at the beginning - sure, it's fitting the new kits, but also it's easier to balance / put the points right when you only have a couple of different weapon combos rather than ten.

To me, what we have to lose for the sake of perfect balance from the start isn't worth it. Especially if it's just to cater for people who will always complain about how unbalanced -insert new battletome here- is when it's released.

Better to take some time, send feedback and let GW correct the situation if it's really problematic for the competitive scene like they're doing currently. It doesn't work so bad in the end.

Edited December 29, 2020 by Sarouan

[Overread]

10 minutes ago, Sarouan said:

I don't think balance truly improves sales. An active competitive scene does help though, especially about selling new rules and extensions rather than just miniatures. Having a team of rule designers being reactive to the feedback does inspire trust on the well-being of the game.  It's more about the attitude and showing the game is alive and faring well, I believe.

Attitude and trust are nothing without results. 

And the thing is a majority of gamers are not meta-chasers. The very nature of the hobby of building and painting actually works heavily against that approach. Card games can easily meta-chase and in fact when you look at them they are built on the idea of continually revolving stock of cards; each year you'll get X number of new sets cycling in and out. Thing is your card works as soon as you own it.

 

Wargames (esp warhammer) instead encourage you to build and paint armies as "your" army. With the costs and market many people have "their army/ies" and will more likely stick to those forces. So a person who finds that their army is significantly underpowered due to imbalance is going to feel disgruntled. Why spend more on the hobby when their chosen army, the one they built and painted, is basically useless because its not the current newest release and the top of the power-creep cycle. 

Look at Dark Eldar and Sisters of Battle - two armies that missed many editions in terms of rules and fell way behind at various points. People who collected them drifted away; they lost faith in GW; they slowed their purchasing. Some might have bought another army, but many wanted to buy that army. Reinvestment and putting those armies back up, not on top just back up, made them popular and generated sales all over again. 

 

 

[Sarouan]

13 minutes ago, Overread said:

Attitude and trust are nothing without results. 

Exactly. Which is why I tend to believe balance isn't really that improving sales, since it only matters to the competitive minority who really wants balance at all costs.

The results dont have to be the ones you're looking for, just the ones that will satisfy the majority of players who enjoy the Hobby in its whole. And it doesn't even have to be about balance at all. Just having a rule mechanism that is cool and feels unique enough may also be an incentive...

...actually, I think unbalance sells more than balance itself. Because a new army that performs well certainly looks attractive to the one wanting to win.

 

Quote

And the thing is a majority of gamers are not meta-chasers. The very nature of the hobby of building and painting actually works heavily against that approach. Card games can easily meta-chase and in fact when you look at them they are built on the idea of continually revolving stock of cards; each year you'll get X number of new sets cycling in and out. Thing is your card works as soon as you own it.

I agree. Just to note that the nature of our Hobby isn't the same as building a card deck, since it doesn't revolve about rules alone. Collecting an army and painting it is an important part of the community as well, and that impacts the sales as well.

 

Quote

Look at Dark Eldar and Sisters of Battle - two armies that missed many editions in terms of rules and fell way behind at various points. People who collected them drifted away; they lost faith in GW; they slowed their purchasing. Some might have bought another army, but many wanted to buy that army. Reinvestment and putting those armies back up, not on top just back up, made them popular and generated sales all over again.

I don't think the picture you're drawing here is as grim as you think it is in reality. These two factions are also...very distinctive with their background, visuals and ways to play. Not everyone enjoys playing a sadistic villain who fights without honor and is litterally a glass cannon, nor a fanatical woman not as tough as a Space Marine who tend to fight in close combats. Also the prices, but that's another whole matter here.

Why Space Marines are so popular no matter the versions, after all, even at the time they were less than effective on the competitive scene ?  Because they're emblematic, have a very distinctive elite feeling and well, they can do pretty much everything. Balance was never the deciding factor here, to me.

Edited December 29, 2020 by Sarouan

[Greybeard86]

25 minutes ago, Overread said:

Attitude and trust are nothing without results. 

And the thing is a majority of gamers are not meta-chasers. The very nature of the hobby of building and painting actually works heavily against that approach. Card games can easily meta-chase and in fact when you look at them they are built on the idea of continually revolving stock of cards; each year you'll get X number of new sets cycling in and out. Thing is your card works as soon as you own it.

 

Wargames (esp warhammer) instead encourage you to build and paint armies as "your" army. With the costs and market many people have "their army/ies" and will more likely stick to those forces. So a person who finds that their army is significantly underpowered due to imbalance is going to feel disgruntled. Why spend more on the hobby when their chosen army, the one they built and painted, is basically useless because its not the current newest release and the top of the power-creep cycle. 

Look at Dark Eldar and Sisters of Battle - two armies that missed many editions in terms of rules and fell way behind at various points. People who collected them drifted away; they lost faith in GW; they slowed their purchasing. Some might have bought another army, but many wanted to buy that army. Reinvestment and putting those armies back up, not on top just back up, made them popular and generated sales all over again. 

 

 

I agree. However, it appears that GW can do very well, at least short or mid  term, without balance. 

[Maddpainting]

21 hours ago, stratigo said:

 

It's usually a bad mechanic when the source is a command ability or battalion ability or faction/subfaction ability. GW struggles with pointing in abilities that essentially occur with all units in a faction in a similar manner in that they are bad with knee ****** nerfs to a warscroll as a whole when the issue comes from one specific combo in one subfaction or with one leader. Mostly I don't think GW writers are amazing at figuring out how things interact outside of a very limited context of how they think things should go. This, I am betting, is mostly a function of not having enough time to fully cook rules, especially with how fast GW releases books now, as opposed to them just being incompetent. Though it leads to the day one DLC/FAQ issue in that a book comes out with something full busted and has to be emergency FAQed to make it actually work how they intended.

The mechanic isn't bad, its how they implemented it that is bad, having a unit with fight first is not bad, heck having a full army with it is not either if it was balanced to doing that. FeC fight first double fight on a giant damaging monsters with insane speed is a good example of it being bad, but if it say was on BoC chariots "if a chariot charges they always fight first" well no one would care and I can 100% guaranteed you it would not be good b.c that unit is not very strong. 

GWs bad balance doesn't make a rule bad.

Edited December 29, 2020 by Maddpainting

[NinthMusketeer]

The ones who want imbalance are the meta chasers, it's right in the name after all! Experienced tourney players have more to gain from continuous meta shake, because they are the ones ready to pounce on hot cheese as soon as it appears (which, for the record, is largely at random--not specifically new releases).

But casual players getting utterly crushed is a great way to lose those customers. Warmahordes has shown us how well games without the casual playerbase do.

At any rate, I think we can all agree it will be pretty difficult to really analyze things overall, because of the pandemic. Even with the situation presumably getting back to normal sometime in 2021 the rebound will be affecting behavior. It'll be halfway through 2022 before the big picture is intact again. In the meantime I doubt GW will be shaking up their standard routine in regards to balancing. But who knows? They have pulled some crazy stuff before, sometimes good sometimes bad.

Edited December 30, 2020 by NinthMusketeer

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

14 hours ago, Greybeard86 said:

Or a certain degree of imbalance is actually baked in by design. Given that similar companies openly say it (WOTC - MTG), why is it so hard to believe that this would happen in GW games?

MTG is a bit of a different case in this regard. Wizards can afford to have a few bad cards in every set, since the average set has between 150 and 250 cards. As far as I know, they said they put bad cards in to make the good cards stand out more/be more exciting. Plus, there are several different ways to play MTG. Apart from the regular deck building style which is kind of like list building in AoS, there is also draft, where you open sealed boosters and have to build your deck with whatever you find. The function weaker cards serve in that environment is more clear: You might find yourself forced to use them in a draft even though they are not optimal.

By contrast, in AoS there is little reason to use a weak unit apart from aesthetics. There is no real environment that would force you to deal with it. Plus, you can't switch armies as easily as you can switch decks in MTG. Overread correctly pointed out that you are expected to stick with an AoS army a lot longer than you are with an MTG deck (although I still disagree that aesthetics should be the primary sales driver in AoS). The comparison weak cards to weak models or even weak factions does not really hold up in that regard. If an army is weak that's more like a deck archetype or colour being weak for a few years. Which, when it dos happen, makes MTG players unhappy, as well, much more than a few weak cards per set.

[Sarouan]

7 hours ago, NinthMusketeer said:

But casual players getting utterly crushed is a great way to lose those customers. Warmahordes has shown us how well games without the casual playerbase do.

And this is more a matter of the community and the way Privateer Press has always encouraged more towards "hard competitivity". It shows how you can write rules in a way that put more emphasis on an attitude rather than another (the famous "page 5" that really forged the Warmahorde community's mindset in the first place). Even though PP tried to correct the situation in the following editions, it was too late already. Same for Guildball (which unfortunately died because of that).

On the other hand, GW isn't in the same situation, since it encourages the three ways of playing and constantly show others ways to play (like the narrative battles) on their different medias. So the competitive scene isn't the only one seen as the True Way to Play (even if its advocates try really hard to make it look so).

This is why balance isn't as important for GW games than in others that put so much emphasis on the competitive scene they really have no other choice. To me, the experience with others games ultimately failing by putting all their eggs in the same box is a proof that focusing only on balance and the competitive scene isn't working on long term.

Because let's face it : armies build for the competitive never last as much as a collection built for the narrative or just the pleasure to collect miniatures. Competitive armies only last the time the build is working in the meta - they are changed whenever it shifts or the player wants to try something new. You can't play the same tricks over and over on the competitive scene - not just a question of it working, but also because the competitive scene needs a renewing meta to make the game interesting for them as well. Balance is constantly worked and reviewed for that purpose - a perfectly balanced set of rules that would never change means actually the stagnation of the competitive scene. It's a chimera to believe than achieving that will actually satisfy the players enjoying that way to play.

Edited December 30, 2020 by Sarouan

[Greybeard86]

1 hour ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

MTG is a bit of a different case in this regard. Wizards can afford to have a few bad cards in every set, since the average set has between 150 and 250 cards. As far as I know, they said they put bad cards in to make the good cards stand out more/be more exciting. Plus, there are several different ways to play MTG. Apart from the regular deck building style which is kind of like list building in AoS, there is also draft, where you open sealed boosters and have to build your deck with whatever you find. The function weaker cards serve in that environment is more clear: You might find yourself forced to use them in a draft even though they are not optimal.

By contrast, in AoS there is little reason to use a weak unit apart from aesthetics. There is no real environment that would force you to deal with it. Plus, you can't switch armies as easily as you can switch decks in MTG. Overread correctly pointed out that you are expected to stick with an AoS army a lot longer than you are with an MTG deck (although I still disagree that aesthetics should be the primary sales driver in AoS). The comparison weak cards to weak models or even weak factions does not really hold up in that regard. If an army is weak that's more like a deck archetype or colour being weak for a few years. Which, when it dos happen, makes MTG players unhappy, as well, much more than a few weak cards per set.

What I wanted to illustrate with my link is that there is more than weak or strong to balance. In MTG they point to a type of player that likes to "win with style" and that values some big wins with cool centerpieces over many smaller wins based on efficiency. I cannot help but think that stuff like this may very well be part of GW's design plans. Custodes in 40k come to mind, in particular, or SoB in AoS.

So, while not all MTG points are directly applicable, I just wanted to point out how "marketing" considerations are part of the design phase and not just balance. I expect that there will be plenty such things also in GW's games and that is, in part, why we don't really see that much balance. Frankly, the people over at 9th age achieved far more balance (true, it is not perfect, but look at their recent tournies) across armies than GW ever did. And that's with volunteers and on the foundation of WHFB 8th edition.

All that to say, there are sales considerations complete interwined with design decisions because this is a commercial game handled by a for profit corporation. While having no balance would likely be bad for business (read the flop of AoS on release), some degree of imbalance is to be expected. That's why I think that, for "matched" or "competitive" play, player organizations need to have more of a say in order to achieve balance.

 

 

[Drazhoath]

The imbalance between armies we can’t change but my gaming group an me try to solve a few „bad“ or boring rules to make games more interesting.

We ignore the double turn and try to use an alternating system. So wie want to try alternating shooting in the shooting phase so in every phase (moving and charging) like in the combat phase too.

Did sb else try it and can tell the experience?

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

1 hour ago, Drazhoath said:

We ignore the double turn and try to use an alternating system. So wie want to try alternating shooting in the shooting phase so in every phase (moving and charging) like in the combat phase too.

I have said this elsewhere before, but I think these house rules just make worse the problems a lot of people have with AoS already.

Going from the double turn to I-go-you-go makes alpha strikes better, because those usually carry the risk of getting double turned. Of course, another system might work better than the double turn at keeping alpha strikes in check.

Making the shooting phase alternate like the combat phase just means that oppressive shooting armies get to shoot twice as much. It especially makes things worse for armies without any shooting.

[Maddpainting]

Honestly the Double turn is needed right now.  But when players don't even want to try to use it as a mechanic and think/hope it goes their way, then yeah its going to be very bad. Also I understand a few books can not handle it as well as other books but that is a balancing  issue and not a core mechanic issue.

So house ruling something that might be good for the game b.c you don't like it? yeah that's bad. 

 

[Yondaime]

14 minutes ago, Maddpainting said:

Honestly the Double turn is needed right now.  But when players don't even want to try to use it as a mechanic and think/hope it goes their way, then yeah its going to be very bad. Also I understand a few books can not handle it as well as other books but that is a balancing  issue and not a core mechanic issue.

So house ruling something that might be good for the game b.c you don't like it? yeah that's bad. 

 

Imho yes and no, its the only way some shooting armyes are in meta and also the only way some melee can counter punch

The only problem is, its random, and annoying

For example, i play khorne often and a friend of mine play kharadron i usually give him the first turn because i have 2/3 drop max, do you know how 9/10 game go?

If i get double, my bts+ skarbrand absolute destroy everything on the table, if he wins initiative, my bts get shoot down into oblivion, either way, game is often over turn 2

Problem is not double turn per se but  whole armyes built around it, specially in this annoying shooting meta

aother problem is, if dices are not in your side, losing like 4 initiative roll (and it happens a lot more than in should) your will to play is destroyed

[Maddpainting]

But the problems it creates outside of it are even worst. Lets take my tournament army, 15 Scourgerunners and 2 Hurricanium with 40 bodies for screens. If I knew every game there was no double turns I would not have to hold back turn one ever and you would get my full force of shooting every turn rather than for 2-3 turns. Those double turns are keeping full alpha strikes in check, which can be A LOT.

You would also know the outcome of almost every game for the most part by the end of turn 1.

[Drazhoath]

55 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

I have said this elsewhere before, but I think these house rules just make worse the problems a lot of people have with AoS already.

Going from the double turn to I-go-you-go makes alpha strikes better, because those usually carry the risk of getting double turned. Of course, another system might work better than the double turn at keeping alpha strikes in check.

Making the shooting phase alternate like the combat phase just means that oppressive shooting armies get to shoot twice as much. It especially makes things worse for armies without any shooting.

So what are your experiences with house rules? It sounds like you know what you do.

The idea was to prevent alpha strikes: Unit A is fast and moves to unit B for a good position for the charge. But Unit B moves and so can avoid a charge when the phase is coming😉 But as I said befor, we just try different things.

Another idea was to change the shooting a bit like Oldhammer. Penalty for moving and shooting, no shooting when in close combat and so on.

But again, I want to hear sth about alternative rules sb tried. Let us imagine just a little bit 😉

Edited December 30, 2020 by Drazhoath

[Yondaime]

26 minutes ago, Maddpainting said:

But the problems it creates outside of it are even worst. Lets take my tournament army, 15 Scourgerunners and 2 Hurricanium with 40 bodies for screens. If I knew every game there was no double turns I would not have to hold back turn one ever and you would get my full force of shooting every turn rather than for 2-3 turns. Those double turns are keeping full alpha strikes in check, which can be A LOT.

You would also know the outcome of almost every game for the most part by the end of turn 1.

I agree, as i stated its far more complicated that it seems, you cant just remove double turn, since it keeps in check both shooting and alpha. Aos has been built around it with its pro/cons

[Bosskelot]

I'd say big imbalance and poorly designed units/armies are a bigger problem for casual and lower skilled players than competitive ones. Competitive players will usually just gravitate and focus on what is good and form less of an attachment to how an army is "meant" to play or what its lore is or anything else like that. If someone gets into AOS or any GW game for narrative and fluff-based reasons, starts collecting based on those reasons and then goes and finds out that that army or that style of play is completely unplayable trash, it's going to basically kill any enthusiasm they have to keep on playing.

[NinthMusketeer]

@House rules making things worse: if they so, people change them until they don't. That's how house rules work.

@Balance makes a stale meta: it theoretically could. But it also absolutely wouldn't. Even a well balanced AoS would still have an exploitable meta--there is way too much stuff in AoS to render it all balanced, and releases hit way too fast for even an honest concentrated effort by GW to keep everything on par all the time. To say nothing of other meta-shifting factors.

@Double turn needed to counter alpha strike. No. Roll off before deployment, winner chooses to deploy first go first or deploy second go second, and initiative remains fixed. If the alpha strike player is going first they will have everything deployed before the second player puts their army down--allowing the second player to deploy in a manner to counter the benefits of the alpha strike. Is it a perfect counter? Of course not; that's why you still have to play the game. Besides, for every player winning off alpha strike there's one losing to being doubled on round 1-2 or 2-3 by a shooting/magic army. There is no net benefit even if the double WERE needed to counter alpha strike. And besides even that, the counter to a strong type of army build is blind luck on a roll off?

And this is coming from a player who spent all of first edition and some of second beating down people at tournaments using the double turn. I know the advantages of getting it very well; it is the easiest and least satisfying way I have ever had to win games.

[Overread]

One thing I notice EVER so often when watching battle reports on youtube - whoever gets the doubleturn nearly always wins. It's one thing I REALLY REALLY wish GW would get rid of from the core rules of the game - shift it to open play. We already have had years of discussion on how a single turn can be supremely powerful and doubleturn lets you do that twice - its just too much power! But that's a rant for another thread.

 

 

 

I've never understood the whole "balance makes things boring" aspect. If anything it should make things far more exciting and interesting. You get far more diversity of armies; far more options and choices on the table. That means far less predictable results; far fewer repeat matches and far more freedom for players. In addition it means that more factions have a chance and it pushes the chance to win away from purely army list building and back to where it should be - player skill  and choices. Besides, as I've noted before, if you're imbalance then at the top end of the competitive circles you'll just see mirror matches with the current best metal lists any way. So the worse the balance the far more predictable results you'll get; the far fewer options and the simpler you make the game. 

You devalue the player and choices and put everything in the army list; which for a game that can last several hours, that's a sheer waste of time to put all the weight on the army list. 

I honestly think most of those who argue in favour of imbalance are either arguing from a point of ignorance/having not thought it through; or they are simply looking for the easy win and see imbalance as a means by which they can buy the best and not have to think any further than that. Which is fine for them, but its a selfish approach to the game and not good for the game nor community's health. 

[Drazhoath]

34 minutes ago, Overread said:

One thing I notice EVER so often when watching battle reports on youtube - whoever gets the doubleturn nearly always wins. It's one thing I REALLY REALLY wish GW would get rid of from the core rules of the game - shift it to open play. We already have had years of discussion on how a single turn can be supremely powerful and doubleturn lets you do that twice - its just too much power! But that's a rant for another thread.

 

 

 

I've never understood the whole "balance makes things boring" aspect. If anything it should make things far more exciting and interesting. You get far more diversity of armies; far more options and choices on the table. That means far less predictable results; far fewer repeat matches and far more freedom for players. In addition it means that more factions have a chance and it pushes the chance to win away from purely army list building and back to where it should be - player skill  and choices. Besides, as I've noted before, if you're imbalance then at the top end of the competitive circles you'll just see mirror matches with the current best metal lists any way. So the worse the balance the far more predictable results you'll get; the far fewer options and the simpler you make the game. 

You devalue the player and choices and put everything in the army list; which for a game that can last several hours, that's a sheer waste of time to put all the weight on the army list. 

I honestly think most of those who argue in favour of imbalance are either arguing from a point of ignorance/having not thought it through; or they are simply looking for the easy win and see imbalance as a means by which they can buy the best and not have to think any further than that. Which is fine for them, but its a selfish approach to the game and not good for the game nor community's health. 

That’s the point. I played against so many different players at a few local tournaments. The competitive players ALWAYS chose the new hyped and op factions. Every season a new army and the powerful one...just because they want to win. And guess how the armies looked like...grey in grey and poorly based. There were no work and no love in building and painting... just overhyped grey garbage. That’s sad because I liked to play games because I love painted armies fighting each other on beautiful maps.

The competitive scene here ruins this game. If I want to push grey plastic soldiers than I play Risiko or st like that. And this is all made by the power creep circle made by GW. God forbids the new Slaanesh will go the same way again...

In times of WFB we never ever chose our army because it’s op or fresh and hyped by rules. We chose them because of the fluff and background (which was so much better...look how beautiful the army books were) and especially because of the nice models. There were enough diversity and AoS has much more in terms of different factions. Even a balanced rule system would push the curiosity and sales because of diversity.

Edited December 30, 2020 by Drazhoath

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

4 hours ago, Drazhoath said:

So what are your experiences with house rules? It sounds like you know what you do.

The idea was to prevent alpha strikes: Unit A is fast and moves to unit B for a good position for the charge. But Unit B moves and so can avoid a charge when the phase is coming😉 But as I said befor, we just try different things.

Another idea was to change the shooting a bit like Oldhammer. Penalty for moving and shooting, no shooting when in close combat and so on.

But again, I want to hear sth about alternative rules sb tried. Let us imagine just a little bit 😉

I don't mess around with house rules too much because I enjoy the game as it currently is and don't see the double turn as a problem to be solved.

But if I were to change something about it, it would be to make it more interactive. One of the biggest complaints about the double turn you see all the time is that it makes one die roll super impactful, to the point where it decides games (although I personally feel the impact is just one more instance of randomness you need to mitigate). My solution would be to make you able to play to get or deny the double turn.

An easy way to implement this as a house rule would be something like this: At the start of a round, before the priority roll-off, any player can spend a command point to gain priority without rolling. The opponent can then deny this by spending another command point. Players may keep trying to gain priority in this manner until one of them does or they run out of command points. If no player gains priority this way, proceed to roll-off as normal.

This allows a player to force a priority/a double turn by conserving command points. In particular, it almost guarantees the double turn after an alpha strike, which are usually very command point hungry.

Another implementation would be to tie gaining priority to secondary objectives somehow, but I have not really though this through.

But back to topic:

Right now the thread is going off the rails a little with discussions of balance, house rules and meta diversity. All of that can tie into the topic of power creep, but it's not a consequence of it necessarily. Magic provides a pretty good example: In modern magic you frequently just get more for your mana now than in the past. For example, an X/X creature without any abilities for X mana is no longer a good rate, when it was in the past. Similarly, in AoS you generally get more for your points during list building than you did in the past. A unit of Liberators for 100 is no longer really a good deal. That's what power creep is: You get morr oomph for less resources spent compared to the past.

That does not necessarily result in bad balance, but likely will if newer books can get this extra oomph when old books are still working on the old level. In my opinion, AoS balance is currently pretty decent for casual, but somewhat serious games (people try to win and somewhat tune their lists). It's the top level where newer books frequently (not always) outperform older ones. I believe that it's more important to balance for the middle than the top level because top players can usually deal with imbalance, so I think this situation is not the worst. In a perfect world we would of course want the game to be balanced at every level, but allow for several viable army lists for each faction at the same time. But I don't personally believe it's realistic to expect every model, every faction, and every way to build that faction to be viable at every level of play.

My general position on power creep in AoS is this: It definitely exists, but is not out of control and does mostly not negatively affect balance at the mid-level too badly.