AoS Power Creep

[Drazhoath]

38 minutes ago, Kramer said:

I reckon it’s just to keep it simple. Warhammer fantasy battle ended with 300 pages of rules (at least in my memory) 

And AoS started with just four. But I agree that if they want to add depth to  things this would be a good one. 

That’s right...but Fantasy never needed FAQs every year just because so many rules are not clear or interfere with another.

[Kramer]

7 minutes ago, Drazhoath said:

That’s right...but Fantasy never needed FAQs every year just because so many rules are not clear or interfere with another.

That’s an unfair comparison Imo. Because problems start due to new additions to the game. Wether it’s nee army books or version updates. 
 

and aos releases 6 books a year. That took WHFB at least 4 years 😂

[Maddpainting]

41 minutes ago, Drazhoath said:

That’s right...but Fantasy never needed FAQs every year just because so many rules are not clear or interfere with another.

No, its b.c they wrote rules in a more clear way, but there were broken rules that ruined editions and games b.c they had no FAQs to fix them. Some books were godly strong for YEARS, some units where godly strong for YEARS, some armies had a 5-10% win rate for YEARS. 

Edited January 3, 2021 by Maddpainting

[yukishiro1]

My memories of WHFB is that you'd spend a lot more time arguing with the other player about how to play according to the rules than AOS. There may have been theoretical answers, but the reality of the game was super slow and clunky. 

[Maddpainting]

For me and my group the arguments was "I remember it this way, well I remember it that way" then spend 10min reading the rule on it. 

Then when i would just pick up 25-30% of my army turn 1, then 20-30% turn 2, and give up on turn 3 to reset up and play again b.c I was Beastmen.

[NinthMusketeer]

12 hours ago, Kramer said:

well you're very sarky about this. I'll leave you to it then.

But from my standpoint a succesfull Hand of Gork can win a game just as much as a Priority roll can. But at least everybody gets a chance at that. Hell I lose, and win, more games to a succesful 9+ charge than anything else. 

I'm not intending to express it that way. An early game double-turn is just having the win given to you, a late game one is the same unless the result is already way in one side's favor. It is totally random and no action taken by the player affects it. Compare to winning a game via a 9+ charge;

-You positioned the unit in such a way that making the 9+ charge will get them into a combat that allows you to win the game. There are a TON of decisions which involve only player action and no random elements just to get to this point, let alone semi-random elements of risk management.

-Your opponent either did not take action to prevent it or was unable to. This is another consideration with a huge number of factors, many not at all random, factoring in.

-The game state as a whole has reached a point where that charge into that combat will determine victory. Even if it was a turn-1 alpha strike this still involves a load of deployment decisions being made on both sides in reaction to the context of the game.

Ultimately I think you are selling yourself short when you say you won from a single roll. The reality is that when 'one roll wins the game' there have been a massive number of non-random decisions leading up to that point, YOU got yourself to the position where that roll could win the game. Were there random factors? Absolutely! But you managed those, made decisions, and reacted appropriately. The situation where one roll will decide things does not arrive out of nowhere.

Except with a double-turn.

Edited January 3, 2021 by NinthMusketeer

[NinthMusketeer]

Double-post, oops!

 

 

 

 

Edited January 3, 2021 by NinthMusketeer

[NinthMusketeer]

3 hours ago, Drazhoath said:

That’s right...but Fantasy never needed FAQs every year just because so many rules are not clear or interfere with another.

It did, we just didn't get them.

[Kramer]

49 minutes ago, NinthMusketeer said:

Ultimately I think you are selling yourself short when you say you won from a single roll. The reality is that when 'one roll wins the game' there have been a massive number of non-random decisions leading up to that point, YOU got yourself to the position where that roll could win the game. Were there random factors? Absolutely! But you managed those, made decisions, and reacted appropriately. The situation where one roll will decide things does not arrive out of nowhere.

Except with a double-turn.

I genuinely don't know if your joking or not 😅

I mean the unconditional support and faith in my warhammer skills give me a nice fuzzy feeling though  
 

[NinthMusketeer]

I'm not. People don't just start games in a situation where one 9+ on 2d6 will seal the victory; one needs to create that situation through their own gameplay.

[Sarouan]

I think you're too focused on the double turn mechanism, NinthMusketeer.

Fact is, there are plenty of situations in AoS where dice decide the results instead of your pure skills. Double turn is just one of them. Like Kramer said, there are plenty of more dice rolls actually deciding your loss or victory - it's just that blaming the double turn is easier.

I don't think double turn in itself is a negative thing in AoS rules. I believe it should stay - I just wish like others to have more battleplans giving a real choice about having a double turn or not, giving advantages in the victory conditions to the second player. If all battleplans work like this, then going second when you win the roll will become a true strategic choice. I think that's what GW will do for the next edition, just like they did change victory conditions for 40k's missions to put less incentive on the destruction of the opponent's army  alone.

 

Besides, I guess this topic has become "Should Double Turn Exist At All ?" instead of talking about the power creep in AoS. I don't mind, but I feel it would be better suited to another topic dedicated to it.

Edited January 3, 2021 by Sarouan

[BigNStinky]

Compared to old fantasy which had years to reach the rules they were at I am overall happy with AoS, Sure its not balanced and yes the tomes definitely seem to creep up in power (usually with the addition of a new mechanic being a bit on the strong side). But the support we receive via points changes and FAQs is light years ahead of fantasy.

 

I still have nightmares about vampire counts leaders kitted to be unkillable and purple sun hurling turbo sorceresses.

[Maddpainting]

Yeah, but thats b.c power creep has run its course for the most part. Really some armies are a bit too powerful, but others are too weak, and both are newer armies, so there really isn't power creep as much as newer armies are just made better with learned mechanics, some older armies needs an update because of that. Look at SoB, not really an amazing army and its one of the newer ones.

[NinthMusketeer]

56 minutes ago, Sarouan said:

I think you're too focused on the double turn mechanism, NinthMusketeer.

Fact is, there are plenty of situations in AoS where dice decide the results instead of your pure skills. Double turn is just one of them. Like Kramer said, there are plenty of more dice rolls actually deciding your loss or victory - it's just that blaming the double turn is easier.

I don't think double turn in itself is a negative thing in AoS rules. I believe it should stay - I just wish like others to have more battleplans giving a real choice about having a double turn or not, giving advantages in the victory conditions to the second player. If all battleplans work like this, then going second when you win the roll will become a true strategic choice. I think that's what GW will do for the next edition, just like they did change victory conditions for 40k's missions to put less incentive on the destruction of the opponent's army  alone.

 

Besides, I guess this topic has become "Should Double Turn Exist At All ?" instead of talking about the power creep in AoS. I don't mind, but I feel it would be better suited to another topic dedicated to it.

The relevance is because a double-turn doubles the magnitude of power differences. Something that was once a minor power disparity can suddenly become noticable when you get to slam your opponent with it twice in a row. And on the other hand it can also mask disparity by giving a statistically weaker army extra wins based on luck. It even distorts the meta--it is no coincidence that shooting & magic armies do so well in overall stats. If we are going to examine power creep it is important to understand and factor in these elements.

But I readily concede that the double isn'teverything--I've played hundreds of games of AoS so I know full well the varying factors that go into a win. Just above I was explaining how winning based on a 'lucky roll' generally has a huge amount of player action going into it. I should note that I don't speak in absolutes; if I meant to say that literally every single round 1-2 double results in a win I would phrase it as such! Obviously an advantageous double will not correct a large mismatch or compensate for total incompetence. Indeed, I have lost games myself after getting a round 1-2 double and each of those losses was due to critical tactical errors on my part. I had a massive advantage handed to me and in all three of those games I managed to squander it.

[PlasticCraic]

I play my share of competitive AOS, mostly on top tables, and mainly with combat armies. I love the priority roll.

To offer an alternative perspective to the idea that it only (or mainly) benefits shooting armies, I would hate to lose the opportunity to get a double turn with my Ogors for example.  I quite regularly play against chaff 'n' bang armies, where they have devastating shooting perched behind a wall of junk.  The on-meta version would be Sentinels sitting being a phalanx, and an off-meta example that is doing well locally is 40 Skryre Acolytes sitting behind 100 Clan rats.  There are plenty of other examples, such as Irondrakes. 

Without the opportunity to crash through the screen turn one and into the juice turn two, combat armies would be sitting ducks against that playstyle.  All you'd be doing is moving from one style of shooting meta (low-drop, teleport and bang) to another style (screen and bang).  I don't believe that moving from the former to the latter would be of net benefit to competitive combat armies.

My own preference would be to keep the priority roll, but remove the automatic first turn for outdropping your opponent.  I've heard +1 to the army that drops first touted, and I could get on board with that.  Making life harder for flowchart armies and getting into a game where you're thinking on your feet would be a great outcome, and a roll off for every priority (including the first) helps to achieve that.

  22 hours ago, Enoby said:

I don't hate the concept of the double turn - 'you go I go' has issues too - but it needs some tweaking to stop it being to easy to wipe with. To the side, personally I prefer unit by unit activation (e.g. player 1 activates their Lord of Change in the hero phase, player 2 activates their Fungoid Cave Shaman, player 1 activates their pink horrors etc until they move onto the next phase and repeat).  

Yup.  I play a few non-GW systems, and it does work really well for them (Star Wars Legion and Marvel Crisis Protocol spring to mind, but also Bolt Action with its dice bag mechanic). 

The new(ish) 40K Apoc also has a really interesting system, where you don't remove units until the damage phase at the end of the turn (so both sides at least get to have a crack), but that is only really helpful and relevant where both armies have a lot of shooting.

  21 hours ago, Kramer said:

Thinking about it. What would peoples thoughts be on a system where turn 1 and 2 the priority is set? 

but starting turn three the priority roll sets in. 
it could nicely represent that the battle gets more hectic and unpredictable as it goes on.

- Would prevent an early double turn ending the game early as people argue is a problem. 

- would allow for some late game turns and twists, as others argue is part of the value.

- would also reduce wait time as turn three both armies are usually starting to fade rapidly. And you get two solid turns of play minimum before a double turn could happen.

The priority turn 1 based on drops would have to go. (Which is really the only core rule I have an issue with anyway). Change it to a +1 on the roll off who decides turn order for the first two turns. 

In the end I still feel priority roll combined with more rewarding choices through scenarios is more fun. But that’s very much down to what you want from the game i suspect. 

I actually really like that concept!  If you give it a try, let us know how it goes please?

[Yondaime]

9+ charge or not, getting a alpha strike is totally your fault,it means you didnt deployed your units to prevent that, you can play around it, and once you know it, its pretty fun if you ask me, playing vs kharadron its like playing chess, you cant leave a single opening

[Yondaime]

1 hour ago, PlasticCraic said:

I play my share of competitive AOS, mostly on top tables, and mainly with combat armies. I love the priority roll.

To offer an alternative perspective to the idea that it only (or mainly) benefits shooting armies, I would hate to lose the opportunity to get a double turn with my Ogors for example.  I quite regularly play against chaff 'n' bang armies, where they have devastating shooting perched behind a wall of junk.  The on-meta version would be Sentinels sitting being a phalanx, and an off-meta example that is doing well locally is 40 Skryre Acolytes sitting behind 100 Clan rats.  There are plenty of other examples, such as Irondrakes. 

Without the opportunity to crash through the screen turn one and into the juice turn two, combat armies would be sitting ducks against that playstyle.  All you'd be doing is moving from one style of shooting meta (low-drop, teleport and bang) to another style (screen and bang).  I don't believe that moving from the former to the latter would be of net benefit to competitive combat armies.

My own preference would be to keep the priority roll, but remove the automatic first turn for outdropping your opponent.  I've heard +1 to the army that drops first touted, and I could get on board with that.  Making life harder for flowchart armies and getting into a game where you're thinking on your feet would be a great outcome, and a roll off for every priority (including the first) helps to achieve that.

  22 hours ago, Enoby said:

I don't hate the concept of the double turn - 'you go I go' has issues too - but it needs some tweaking to stop it being to easy to wipe with. To the side, personally I prefer unit by unit activation (e.g. player 1 activates their Lord of Change in the hero phase, player 2 activates their Fungoid Cave Shaman, player 1 activates their pink horrors etc until they move onto the next phase and repeat).  

Yup.  I play a few non-GW systems, and it does work really well for them (Star Wars Legion and Marvel Crisis Protocol spring to mind, but also Bolt Action with its dice bag mechanic). 

The new(ish) 40K Apoc also has a really interesting system, where you don't remove units until the damage phase at the end of the turn (so both sides at least get to have a crack), but that is only really helpful and relevant where both armies have a lot of shooting.

  21 hours ago, Kramer said:

Thinking about it. What would peoples thoughts be on a system where turn 1 and 2 the priority is set? 

but starting turn three the priority roll sets in. 
it could nicely represent that the battle gets more hectic and unpredictable as it goes on.

- Would prevent an early double turn ending the game early as people argue is a problem. 

- would allow for some late game turns and twists, as others argue is part of the value.

- would also reduce wait time as turn three both armies are usually starting to fade rapidly. And you get two solid turns of play minimum before a double turn could happen.

The priority turn 1 based on drops would have to go. (Which is really the only core rule I have an issue with anyway). Change it to a +1 on the roll off who decides turn order for the first two turns. 

In the end I still feel priority roll combined with more rewarding choices through scenarios is more fun. But that’s very much down to what you want from the game i suspect. 

I actually really like that concept!  If you give it a try, let us know how it goes please?

Units by unit activation wont fix mono shooting list, heavy melee armies will still have to engage, until that the opponent can still shoot you down

[Marcvs]

Honestly, I am not sure that eliminating the double turn and go for A-B-A-B structure would really hurt shooting armies.

We're discussing how bad it is when a shooting army gets a double turn, so we start from the premise that they want to go second whenever they can decide -and that they generally will be able to decide (otherwise why are we discussing double turn mechanics in connection with shooting armies?). So this means, melee army get to go first, then the shooting army then, in 40% of cases, shooting army again.

Now you eliminate the possibility of a double turn. The shooting army has no reason to go second since they don't risk getting doubleturned themselves. So it goes like this: shooting army gets first, shoots you, melee army goes then gets shot again in turn 2. Result: melee army just got shot twice and played one turn -in the meantime, shooting army also got the opportunity in the first turn to move on objectives and start scoring.

Also, eliminating the possibility of a double turn allows the shooting army to know with mathematical certainty that they cannot be charged if their range is higher than the movment of their target + 12".

Bottom line: I think that the problems with the "shooting meta" should be discussed separately from the issue of double turns -which one is still entitled to hate of course.

Edited January 4, 2021 by Marcvs

[Yondaime]

12 minutes ago, Marcvs said:

Honestly, I am not sure that eliminating the double turn and go for A-B-A-B structure would really hurt shooting armies.

We're discussing how bad it is when a shooting army gets a double turn, so we start from the premise that they want to go second whenever they can decide -and that they generally will be able to decide (otherwise why are we discussing double turn mechanics in connection with shooting armies?). So this means, melee army get to go first, then the shooting army then, in 40% of cases, shooting army again.

Now you eliminate the possibility of a double turn. The shooting army has no reason to go second since they don't risk getting doubleturned themselves. So it goes like this: shooting army gets first, shoots you, melee army goes then gets shot again in turn 2. Result: melee army just got shot twice and played one turn -in the meantime, shooting army also got the opportunity in the first turn to move on objectives and start scoring.

Also, eliminating the possibility of a double turn allows the shooting army to know with mathematical certainty that they cannot be charged if their range is higher than the movment of their target + 12".

Bottom line: I think that the problems with the "shooting meta" should be discussed separately from the issue of double turns -which one is still entitled to hate of course.

Problem of double turn is not shooting armies, is that who wins get a massive advange and makes the whole game too much luck based

 

Shooting armies own if they win the priority roll and get owned if they lose

 

Problem is that playing vs heavy shooting is a coin flip and not fun at all, and the power creep dosnt help at all since the latest releases are all ultra shooting armies (lumineth, soon slaneesh)

Edited January 4, 2021 by Yondaime

[Marcvs]

5 minutes ago, Yondaime said:

Problem of double turn is not shooting armies, is that who wins get a massive advange and makes the whole game too much luck based

 

Shooting armies own if they win the priority roll and get owned if they lose

Ok two problems with this assumption:

1) It invalidates the whole thread: no power creep is possible if everything comes down to a dice roll.

2) It clashes with results (partial they may be): if shooting armies get owned when they lose a priority roll, how is it possible that so many shooting armies are able to get on the podium? (KO, Seraphon, Tzeentch being the main culprits at the moment)After all, they should lose half of their priority rolls -in fact, they should lose 60% since they will often go second on first turn, given the choice.

[Yondaime]

3 minutes ago, Marcvs said:

Ok two problems with this assumption:

1) It invalidates the whole thread: no power creep is possible if everything comes down to a dice roll.

2) It clashes with results (partial they may be): if shooting armies get owned when they lose a priority roll, how is it possible that so many shooting armies are able to get on the podium? (KO, Seraphon, Tzeentch being the main culprits at the moment)After all, they should lose half of their priority rolls -in fact, they should lose 60% since they will often go second on first turn, given the choice.

1) It was a hyperbole, 

2)Fair point, maybe i exagerreted a bit

 

[Skreech Verminking]

23 minutes ago, Marcvs said:

Ok two problems with this assumption:

1) It invalidates the whole thread: no power creep is possible if everything comes down to a dice roll.

2) It clashes with results (partial they may be): if shooting armies get owned when they lose a priority roll, how is it possible that so many shooting armies are able to get on the podium? (KO, Seraphon, Tzeentch being the main culprits at the moment)After all, they should lose half of their priority rolls -in fact, they should lose 60% since they will often go second on first turn, given the choice.

Well Ko are pretty great in the game currently.

with the exceptions of some horde armies or nurgle  blight lord spam, KO, are basically able to almost always have the choice of taking either first or second turn, and with their shooting output and that fly highrule they are basically able to destroy armies in a single round.

the last tournament I went to, a Friend of mine won the event.

his strategy was basically to teleport turn one everything into the front of the enemy army, and with the new books those ships have gotten stupidly strong.

he shoot pretty much all armies down to 10% of their force remaining, winning basically the game before the opponent even had a chance to play the game.

but considering that most players were using what was considered meta back then, which was mostly extreme elite armies with almost no wounds.

Winning the event was basically easy for the Ko player.

the only time he struggled was against a bastiladon seraphon spam army, since he was unable to kill them off.

Edited January 4, 2021 by Skreech Verminking

[Yondaime]

1 minute ago, Skreech Verminking said:

Well Ko are pretty great in the game currently.

with the exceptions of some horde armies or nurgle  blight lord spam, KO, are basically able to almost always have the choice of taken either first or second turn, and with their shooting output and that fly highrule they are basically able to destroy armies in a single round.

the last tournament I went to, a Friend of mine won the event.

hus strategy was basically to teleport turn one everything into the front of the enemy army, and with the new books those ships have gotten stupidly strong.

he shoot pretty much all armies down to 10% of their force remaining, winning basically the game before the opponent even had a chance to play the game.

but considering that most armies were playing well what was considered meta back then, which was mostly extreme elite armies with almost no wounds.

this was basically easy for the Ko player to do

yeah playing a lot vs kharadron

they have2 major problems imho

1)the skaven spell

2)the mobility, they can deploy in a angle far away turn 1 and then teleport all in your face and shoot with the whole 2000pt

 

 

[Enoby]

19 minutes ago, Yondaime said:

Units by unit activation wont fix mono shooting list, heavy melee armies will still have to engage, until that the opponent can still shoot you down

It wouldn't "fix" it exactly, but it would allow a little more counterplay. To give an example:

Current AoS:

One unit of 20 archers shoot into Unit A, dealing 50% damage. Then another unit of 20 archers shoot and finish Unit A off.

Unit by unit:

One unit of 20 archers shoot into Unit A dealing 50% damage. Then Unit A is selected to move, and moves out of range/into cover/out of LoS. The second unit can't shoot them or shoots them less effectively, allowing Unit A to stay in play.

It doesn't fix everything, but allows for more reactive play. 

[boombyeyeah]

A big change in the game mechanics is something i dont expect, not even in a new  edition. Biggest problem i see are the general damage numbers. Most units kill other units in one go #activationwars. Units do more and more damage with every new release but the saves are not getting better. Units either are rockhard with rerollable 2+/3+ saves or their saves dont matter at because of all those strong rend attacks. With such numbers shooting will always be super strong. I remember a game with my 1drop shootcast against ogors, every unit he catched to kill he did like 3 times more damage than needed. If he had some tools to increase his defense he would be way better off but gw will likely give those guys another 3 dmg attack than some ability to raise shields or go on dodge mode.