AoS should encourage bigger lists to have more variety!

[Marcvs]

1 hour ago, Greybeard86 said:

Personally, I think that lots of the current "focused lists" don't feel natural from a bluff perspective, or what one might expect coming into the game. What you label as "random amalgamation of units" often feel more like what the armies should be.

As for spam, I consider a troll (2 types) plus Hag + general and maybe a gobbo shaman (or not) spam. And couple of blocks of hobbos, a boss, a few trolls, maybe a giant, and some squigs, not spam and NOT a "random amalgamation of units" but rather a lore adequate list. That's why I say that it comes down to what the designers want to be "good" on the table; what is the vision?

I understand your point, however we're in pure personal preference territory here so I'll just note our different tastes.

Personally, I find it very fluffy to have an army composed by a horde of trolls*, and even find it fun to play against it on the table. In fact, considering that the size of the battle in AoS (in terms of number of models involved) is often very far from a full-scale conftontation, and more akin to a random encounter between two patrols, I don't mind spam lists from a narrative perspective (though I can find them boring in gaming terms): a battalion of pistoliers might well be entirely composed of pistoliers.

*this exact scenario (an empire army vs a 100% troll army) was even in one of my favorite digital incarnation of Warhammer, Warhammer:Dark Omen ^^

[BigNStinky]

Spam is definitely a subjective topic.

 

Most spam people (and by people I refer to people with a similar mindset to me) find bothersome is less when it fits a narrative and more when its just blatantly the best unit in an army repeated X times and it seems to bother people a bit further when it also pushes the narrative out the window. Yes a horde of trolls may be a tons of units of trolls. But are you using JUST rockguts? or are there bog trolls and dankholds mixed in there? Even if you are not most people would be fine with the spam (even the lore purists would be satisfied with a flimsy but plausible reason for it all) as it isn't spam for the sake of putting power on the table.

Then look at eels. Put down as many as you possibly can fit. Yes it can be cool and the reason people got into the faction (casualties of their interest in specific units in a faction) however we know for the most part its to put the most powerful unit down as many times as possible as the rest of the book "sucks". Same with various other units people complain about (Hearthguards, Witches, thunderers, Terrorgheists, Keepers/morteks at one point etc. whatever flavor people are up in arms about these days) Yea they're cool. But seeing an army composed of ONLY keepers, ONLY hearthguards ONLY witch elves, ONLY mortek with not just one opponent but over multiple opponents in those factions ad nauseum sure does take away from the narrative angle which I think gets to people over time especially those who play against a wide variety of opponents and can see the common trend among most of them. It definitely makes it harder to take your flimsy narrative wrapper seriously when you face the third or fourth guy in a row who "had a larger than usual gathering of keepers all playing nice together for realsies" back at the height of their power and if you google "tournament hedonites list" its the first one there.

 

yea it definitely sucks to be lumped in with the power gamers who are into winning but that's a risk most people take when they really really enjoy one specific thing. I can't imagine anyone complaining of someones obsession with something like trolls or Steam tanks or Cygors in fact I really love to hear peoples homebrew lore for why/how their specific faction came about particularly when its using something oddball or unique. Really spices up he experience and sometimes it can be very surprisingly adequate on the field.

 

Don't take this as an attack on people who are in it to win it. Its not what I try to get out of the game and I actively avoid it when I can but its not inherently wrong or abhorrent style of play just not for everyone. Which is why you should always have a chat with opponents before you start to make sure you're on the level.

 

[Greybeard86]

57 minutes ago, Marcvs said:

I understand your point, however we're in pure personal preference territory here so I'll just note our different tastes.

Of course! But let's be honest, so is designing rules that encourage gitz to be played like 4 different mini armies. That's why I said this is about implementing a vision. Should the common sight on the table be something that looks kind of like an army, or like a specialized force?

57 minutes ago, Marcvs said:

 In fact, considering that the size of the battle in AoS (in terms of number of models involved) is often very far from a full-scale conftontation, and more akin to a random encounter between two patrols,

Absolutely, maybe it may surprise you, but I agree. I think the rules in AoS are those of a skirmish game, not of true "armies". But then they just bloated the model count for the sake of mimicking the old forces from WHFB, and most likely to boost sales.

I have no problem have a band of trolls fighting against a band of pistoliers, if that is in a scale of say around 10 miniatures. But I do have a "problem" with it when I want to portray battles and the rules instead just push me to representing that skirmish, now with dozens of models.

I think battalions and some of the current buff design are just taking too far some of the old "wouldn't it be fun to have an army of slayers?"; but that was fun as a gimmick, not as the norm.

I don't like having to reference 40k again, but that system has dealth with spam far better than AoS.

[Saxon]

12 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

There are a lot of points that could be made here.

I think I could agree that Nagash and 2x5 wolves at 1000 is pushing the boundaries of what an acceptable list should look like. But it's important to note that this list is not exactly mechanically encouraged. It really sucks at playing the objective game, and everything in the LoN book encourages taking a few big units over multiple small ones. The appeal of that list (I suspect, I came back to the game just after LoN was dominant) is probably more that you can play it after painting just 11 models, as opposed to the usual 50 or so you need for a 1000 point LoN list. Arguably, what's wrong with this list is more that Direwolves are unconditional battleline than anything else.

As for Treelord spam, I think it's important to enableTimmys (players who like big, stompy monsters and doing flashy stuff on the table) to play the game in the way they want to. Again, it's not like those lists are mechanically any more encouraged than lists with a lot of different units. They are generally quite bad, as the rules stand at the moment.

Finally, I think that this is a good example for the point I was making earlier about awareness of the social contract of the game. On aspect of that is that in casual games, you should try to ensure that your opponent has a good time, too. I think that would definitely include not bringing these types of lists all the time, if you are able to. Although as a very enfrenchised player with a large model collection it's easy to forget how significant of a barrier putting a fully painted, diverse list on the table really is.

It was a very popular list because at 1000pts it was very difficult to beat with a lot of scenarios. Dogs ran at objectives, nagash murdered everything. I think they upped points on dogs so this list is no longer viable unless Nagash got a reduction which i don't know about. I brought it up because it was a niche example of how unit slots would stop nonsense lists like this. 

The thing i find hard is when you see someone dropping one of those lists on the table, you're the bad guy for not wanting to play against it. It's legal so how can you be against it. Rather than upset the apple cart because 3/4 of the players i play regularly play min battle line lists with bulk monsters, i usually just humour them resulting in a boring game for me where i usually get stomped in 3 or 4 turns and then get accused of being a bad sport if i don't want a rematch. I don't play particularly competitively.

[Saxon]

13 hours ago, Marcvs said:

I don't think that asking for an increase in the minimum requirement of battlelines does what you think it does. As of today the most "spammy" part of armies are often battlelines. In fact, quite a few of the strongest armies are strong because they have good options for battlelines and can just spam them: skinks in Seraphon, pink horrors in Tzeentch, eels in Idoneth, hearthguard berzerkers in Fyreslayers, mortek guards in OBR and so on. You might not like playing against minumum battleline but how do you like playing against 3x20 hearthguard berzerkers? or 3x40 skinks, 27 eels and so on?

Take also into account that rules *already* encourage you to invest in your battlelines, due to some battleplans having bonuses for them (Shifting objectives)  or only allowing battleline to score (The Better Part of Valour), while NO battlelplan gives bonuses to all other units apart from Leaders and Monsters.

Including forced "slots" in AoS might seem like a good idea to import from 40k, but those proposing it should take into account what it would do to armies which already have a very limited roster: you might improve "internal" diversity (Fyreslayers must now take bersekers AND vulkite AND auric guards) while destroying the "external" one (every  Fyreslayers army is now the same combination of units for lack of options in differnt slots).

Whilst i agree it limits it, doesn't this suggest a lack of diversity in GW in general. Instead of throwing out new armies maybe they need to improve the units available to existing ones first and make warscrolls more balanced for underused units.

Like does any play ever use glaivewraith stalkers? They're the most pointless model in AOS with the coolest lore....

[Kadeton]

4 hours ago, Saxon said:

Whilst i agree it limits it, doesn't this suggest a lack of diversity in GW in general. Instead of throwing out new armies maybe they need to improve the units available to existing ones first and make warscrolls more balanced for underused units.

Totally agree with this. There are always people demanding more new releases for their armies, but that doesn't make sense to me.

I'd be much happier to have only 8 warscrolls available that were all excellent, than to have 30 warscrolls available where all but 3 of them suck.

[Marcvs]

9 hours ago, Saxon said:

Whilst i agree it limits it, doesn't this suggest a lack of diversity in GW in general. Instead of throwing out new armies maybe they need to improve the units available to existing ones first and make warscrolls more balanced for underused units.

Like does any play ever use glaivewraith stalkers? They're the most pointless model in AOS with the coolest lore....

Agreed on improving underused warscrolls, it should be the first order of business for armies that have already a good number of warscrolls. However, you would still need to expand some ranges (like Fyreslayers, but Lumineth are not very far ahead) to have some diversity as they literally only have 3/4 choices for units.

[Beliman]

5 hours ago, Kadeton said:

I'd be much happier to have only 8 warscrolls available that were all excellent, than to have 30 warscrolls available where all but 3 of them suck.

There is no need to take that to an extreme.

We could have 30 units and 10 could be really good but couldn't be spammed, 10 could be good and last  10 could be average with enough gimmicks to be considered for some specific strategies. 

Edited January 13, 2021 by Beliman

[Greybeard86]

12 hours ago, BigNStinky said:

 Even if you are not most people would be fine with the spam (even the lore purists would be satisfied with a flimsy but plausible reason for it all) as it isn't spam for the sake of putting power on the table.

[...] But seeing an army composed of ONLY keepers, ONLY hearthguards ONLY witch elves, ONLY mortek with not just one opponent but over multiple opponents in those factions ad nauseum sure does take away from the narrative angle which I think gets to people over time especially those who play against a wide variety of opponents and can see the common trend among most of them.

I think this is a good point, but no need to divide between WAAC and narrative; I think many of us are somewhere in between, and just would like to see rules such that viable competitive compositions included wide ranges of units, even if one made exceptions for some fluffy focused lists (the horde of trolls). But not, as you say, making the horde of trolls the to go, rather an option as good as any.

There is also the camp of people who think it is OK for some lists to be uber competitive and weird in composition, as long as more varied compositions are "more or less OK" in a competitive sense. Which I do not like, personally. The designers do decide, with their rules, what armies are good. Their design chooses the viable and the top compositions. I'd very much prefer to have compositions with a solid variety to be the preferred mode, or at least at an equal standing as all HB spam.

[MitGas]

They wrote themselves into a corner with forcing you into buffing your stuff - and those buffs usually target a single keyword. 

It would be better to make warscrolls better and rely less on stacking buffs onto the units. Cause else you get marauder bombs and the like.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

22 hours ago, Greybeard86 said:

I don't think that is a valid point, honestly. While of course I support not beign a ******, the game should not rely on people "house ruling" armies out to deliver a fun experience, that is the point of balance and the rules!

You already got responses from @Marcvs and @Kramer on this point, but this conflation of competitive play with play in general. and anything that deviates from playing the hardest lists 100% of the time with house ruling is exactly why I think we need more awareness of the social contract of play.

It seems to me that the AoS rules care about a certain type of balance, which is balance in the middle of the curve, not primarily at the top end. In general, the rules of AoS allow you to build a lot of different lists, diverse ones as well as spammy ones. And in the mid field, those lists can mostly go up against each other and have a game where anyone has a chance to win.

Chances are, the average casual play group plays closer to that level than at the top end of the competitiveness. And I think that being aware of that would make people enjoy the game more. Setting an expectation with your group that you want to play lists at a 7 to 8 out of 10 power level, where you can forgo the occasional synergy and are able to put some pet choices into your list increases the number of viable lists and armies by a lot. You don't need to house rule anything here. Your group just commits to a certain default level, with the expectation that if someone wants to play their tournament list, they at least ask you if you are up for that today. The same expectation exists in very competitive groups, by the way, where you should ask your opponent if they are up for playing against your 10 Steam Tank meme list and not waste their time if they are looking for a hard game.

Everyone going for the strongest tournament-level lists need not be the default. With the large component of self-expression that the hobby side of the game brings into the mix, most play groups would probably be better served by dialing back the power level a little.

 

22 hours ago, Greybeard86 said:

Frankly, a lot of us just want to be able to have lists that aren't hyper focused. In a previous thread some people told me that those are possible for some factions, but I have a hard time finding them. Specially for my collection of gitz and trolls, but also in other cases (e.g. sea people). The extreme requirements for buffing make it hard, and synergies tend to be rather limited.

Out of curiosity, would it be possible to run a competitive cities list that uses a combination of demis, 1-2 artillery pieces, some spears, some ranged, and some heroes? Because that is the point of contention here. People come to the hobby with some fluffy idea of how armies should look like, then the rules push them in a different direction.

 

I'm not going to go into whether or not that list you describe can be competitively viable. This is because I don't think that the competitive viability of any one pre-conceived fluffy list idea is pertinent to the discussion. There are plenty of competitively viable lists with a wide variety of units across a number of armies. I'm not going to lend credence to this meme that all AoS armies need to spam to be competitively viable. It's sucks for you that you are playing Gloomspite, which have a badly written book and many bad warscrolls. I hope this and other battletomes with internal balance problems get reworked down the line. But they don't represent the state of the game as a whole.

Frankly, I find the idea that playstyles need to be competitively viable to be viable in any sense absurd. Not getting into what "competitively viable" even means (Able to go 3-2? Able to go 5-0? Sometimes? Most of the time? Always?), the requirement this puts on rules design is ludicrous. A playstyle can only be considered supported if it's able to succeed competitively? And presumably, we want every army to be able to support as many playstyles as possible? That's an insane standard for success in rules design. There is literally no game I am aware of where this is the case.

Competitively, it does not take much for an option to be outclassed. If you have two identical warscrolls, but warscroll A has 1 more point of bravery than warscroll B, there is literally no point taking warscroll B from a competitive perspective. But this tells us nothing about how much of an advantage the better warscroll provides. The gap between the two might be (and in this example probably is) minute. While warscroll B is not competitively viable, it's very likely still quite viable by a different, less strict standard.

Of course what is good in the rules shapes the game. I already expressed my support for increasing the viability of balanced lists. The rules matching the fluff is desirable. But I don't believe that it's at all reasonable to only accept the rules to succeed in this regard if those lists are tournament viable, and for any given army at that (which I take you to want due to your focus on Gloomspite, regardless of the fact that plenty armies can already field balanced lists in tournaments). Currently, most armies can't play monster mash lists competitively, either, but I still consider that playstyle supported.

[Greybeard86]

8 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

It seems to me that the AoS rules care about a certain type of balance, which is balance in the middle of the curve, not primarily at the top end. In general, the rules of AoS allow you to build a lot of different lists, diverse ones as well as spammy ones. And in the mid field, those lists can mostly go up against each other and have a game where anyone has a chance to win.

You don't need to house rule anything here. Your group just commits to a certain default level, with the expectation that if someone wants to play their tournament list, they at least ask you if you are up for that today. The same expectation exists in very competitive groups, by the way, where you should ask your opponent if they are up for playing against your 10 Steam Tank meme list and not waste their time if they are looking for a hard game.

This is, surprisingly, far more difficult than you'd expect (limited collections and such). It also makes one wonder: if it is so "easy" to spot the outliers, why do they exist in the game anyway? We  have discussed this in other threads, better balance is not so hard to get, if one actually designs for it. 9th age is far more balanced than AoS (if we are to believe their tourney stats), and that, IMO, benefits both casual players and competitive ones.

8 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

I'm not going to go into whether or not that list you describe can be competitively viable. This is because I don't think that the competitive viability of any one pre-conceived fluffy list idea is pertinent to the discussion.

This is, precisely, my main point. People read AoS lore, fantasy lore, see the models and then mush all that into some "vision" of what the armies ought to be like. But that doesn't truly carry out on the table, for many armies. It is easy to dismiss the list I presented (or any other) as "it is just you", but I don't think it is. There is a general issue with armies being overly focused around specific gimmicks (others call it synergies). In some armies this is worse, in others not as much, but there is something there.

8 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

It's sucks for you that you are playing Gloomspite, which have a badly written book and many bad warscrolls. I hope this and other battletomes with internal balance problems get reworked down the line. But they don't represent the state of the game as a whole.

They represent significant sections of the game. Gitz are not a minor faction, they are a very popular one. And, over the history of AoS, there seem to have been plenty of other factions that suffered from the "curse of few". If we start dismissing those experiences as "it is just gitz", "it is just FS", "it is just old sea elves", and so on...

8 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Competitively, it does not take much for an option to be outclassed. If you have two identical warscrolls, but warscroll A has 1 more point of bravery than warscroll B, there is literally no point taking warscroll B from a competitive perspective. But this tells us nothing about how much of an advantage the better warscroll provides. The gap between the two might be (and in this example probably is) minute. While warscroll B is not competitively viable, it's very likely still quite viable by a different, less strict standard.

There you have it. Such things should be fixed before they make it to the books, not just accept them like quirks. It simply reflects bad quality control, at best, or other worse schemes, being less generous (gotta sell them indomitus boxes, eradicators and BGs go brrrrrrr and whatever other meme you want to insert here).

8 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Of course what is good in the rules shapes the game. I already expressed my support for increasing the viability of balanced lists. The rules matching the fluff is desirable. But I don't believe that it's at all reasonable to only accept the rules to succeed in this regard if those lists are tournament viable, and for any given army at that (which I take you to want due to your focus on Gloomspite, regardless of the fact that plenty armies can already field balanced lists in tournaments). Currently, most armies can't play monster mash lists competitively, either, but I still consider that playstyle supported.

Let me put it this way: IMHO, the extreme outliers in tournaments are no less than big ugly proof of failed balance. There should not be factions that beat others 10 to 1 and other things we see. It should not be clear that to win LVO or what not you gotta buy into whatever top meta broken thing is out there.

Those things are, I insist, a big red bright pimple in the face of the game. Frankly, as someone more hobby oriented, seeing some of the tourney lists just puts me off the game. I imagine lots of people want to "play to win" but do not want to play some of the broken stuff out there, simply because it does not align with their "one pre-conceived fluffy list idea". I thought this was what the game was about, to simulate battles we read in the fluff; there rules are there to guarantee that it actually reflects the "life or death" challenge presented to the combatants, and everyone can attempt to win without ruining the other person's fun.  

[Marcvs]

13 minutes ago, Greybeard86 said:

Those things are, I insist, a big red bright pimple in the face of the game. Frankly, as someone more hobby oriented, seeing some of the tourney lists just puts me off the game. I imagine lots of people want to "play to win" but do not want to play some of the broken stuff out there, simply because it does not align with their "one pre-conceived fluffy list idea". I thought this was what the game was about, to simulate battles we read in the fluff; there rules are there to guarantee that it actually reflects the "life or death" challenge presented to the combatants, and everyone can attempt to win without ruining the other person's fun.  

We're discussing across different topics so it all gets a bit blurry

"to simulate battles we read in the fluff" is more or less the definition of a narrative approach. Which is both part of the game and completely different from non-narrative tournaments, where winning is the objective for many players (far from all, since the social and hobby aspect often are the main drivers). If you are hobby oriented or just don't play in tournaments, you will most likely never play against those lists anyway so no need to feel pressured to play "the broken stuff out there".

[Saxon]

4 minutes ago, Marcvs said:

If you are hobby oriented or just don't play in tournaments, you will most likely never play against those lists anyway so no need to feel pressured to play "the broken stuff out there".

That is entirely dependent on your gaming group though. Even if you dont play tournaments there's no guarantee you won't have regular opponents who create very optimised lists. Sometimes it's not even on purpose. Some models people like are just really good compared to others. 

Edited January 13, 2021 by Saxon

[Marcvs]

Just now, Saxon said:

That is entirely dependent on your gaming group though. Even if you dont play tournaments there's no guarantee you won't have regular opponents who create very optimised lists. 

True, fair point. Your gaming group makes or brakes your experience of AoS (and all similar games), on this I 100% agree.

[Greybeard86]

27 minutes ago, Marcvs said:

We're discussing across different topics so it all gets a bit blurry

"to simulate battles we read in the fluff" is more or less the definition of a narrative approach. Which is both part of the game and completely different from non-narrative tournaments, where winning is the objective for many players (far from all, since the social and hobby aspect often are the main drivers). If you are hobby oriented or just don't play in tournaments, you will most likely never play against those lists anyway so no need to feel pressured to play "the broken stuff out there".

See, that's one approach, but not the only one. I do not want to play fake pre arranged scenarios, I want to simulate! I want to believe that I am a cunning general organizing a viable force against the enemy. If the rules are "good", they should result in the fluff being represented.

The fact that for more "narrative like" scenarios to emerge you need to heavily orchestrate them to me means that the rules fail at bringing the fluff to the table.

Makes sense?

PS - Read this in a passionate but friendly tone

[Marcvs]

51 minutes ago, Greybeard86 said:

See, that's one approach, but not the only one. I do not want to play fake pre arranged scenarios, I want to simulate! I want to believe that I am a cunning general organizing a viable force against the enemy. If the rules are "good", they should result in the fluff being represented.

The fact that for more "narrative like" scenarios to emerge you need to heavily orchestrate them to me means that the rules fail at bringing the fluff to the table.

Makes sense?

PS - Read this in a passionate but friendly tone

I see your point. I would note that AoS works at an incredibly high level of abstraction so the simulation angle is not really its forte -raining down arrows on enemies locked in melee with your pals? sure, no risk; true line of sight drawn from a foot to the point of a spear? of course you can see the ******! gitz are always fighting close to a fragment of the bad moon, literally can't find them anywhere else, and so on

I like the game for its (relative) simplicity and I am afraid that in order to reach a more "realistic" feeling, more rules would be needed if one does not want "fake pre-arranged scenarios". For instance, you mentioned in the other topic the divesity created in 40k by the anti-infantry anti-tank roles. This is an example of added "realism" (to an extent, ofc) but it evidently requires additional rules and complexity.

Edited January 13, 2021 by Marcvs

[Greybeard86]

2 hours ago, Marcvs said:

I see your point. I would note that AoS works at an incredibly high level of abstraction so the simulation angle is not really its forte -raining down arrows on enemies locked in melee with your pals? sure, no risk; true line of sight drawn from a foot to the point of a spear? of course you can see the ******! gitz are always fighting close to a fragment of the bad moon, literally can't find them anywhere else, and so on

I like the game for its (relative) simplicity and I am afraid that in order to reach a more "realistic" feeling, more rules would be needed if one does not want "fake pre-arranged scenarios". For instance, you mentioned in the other topic the divesity created in 40k by the anti-infantry anti-tank roles. This is an example of added "realism" (to an extent, ofc) but it evidently requires additional rules and complexity.

But there is already a lot of rule bloat. It just isn't in terms of universal rules, rather they are constantly adding completely ad hoc rules. Trolls do this, but not these ones, which can do that odd thing.

So the game becomes a list of gotchas or, alternatively, knowing which gotchas get the enemies ****** the better and going for them. All those special rules just complicate the game and lead to lots of feel bad moments (wait, you can do what?).

It is equally if not more bloated as the so called realism rules.

[Popisdead]

Tabletop games historically and generally struggle to maintain a balance across the board.  GW suffers from having more options.

TBH being that units or heroes or monsters claim objectives GW has been moving in a good direction.  I actually find it hard to play people who've been in this game for 10-15 years to do more than "let's just put our models down and kill each other".   40k make Ob Sec pretty mandatory and I'm suspecting we'll see a shift that AoS BL troops hold objectives over non BL (or something similar).  Making a core built army more important than min 3-BL.  

People take Battlalions for low-drop, CP and the artifact usually.  Often they are good enough value that this helps the overall army.  They are most certainly not mandatory or build the army the only way.  Who won with BoC Tzeentch years ago.  Dan something?  He made a comment he never takes battalions as they generally aren't good points per value.  I see his point and it makes sense; he plays the reactive game and his opponent not the units (like poker, play your opponent not your cards).  The Sylvaneth book has some battalions and glades and yet I still see people say "you can build a decent list without either, there are good options."    Also people come onto these forums to win 5-0 in a tournament and often drive the thread to top tier choices.  It is up to the individual to play this game they way they want.  

What I thing you should really be looking at is what is causing you to feel this way is stifling you.  Are you coming away from games feeling your opponent only won from spamming and using a battalion?  Are you facing people spamming things more effectively than you can counter them with what you have in your lists?

[yukishiro1]

I think what animates a lot of people is they don't like facing a list of 27 eels + volturnos, to take an obvious example. If someone really *wants* to bring that list fine...but the game shouldn't make it the best IDK list you can bring. Even if someone should be allowed by the rules of the game to take that kind of list (a debatable proposition), it should absolutely not be the optimal choice for winning the game. When it is, there's a big design problem.

Now generalize that out: people don't want gimmick lists to be the strongest competitively. They want a game system where the strongest lists are balanced lists that take a reasonably wide variety of different units that perform different rules.  That's really all it boils down to. 

By and large, AOS is not that game right now. Part of this is because of the stat homogenization in AOS that removed toughness and allowed wound carry-over and thus compressed unit roles; part of it is from the low number of units available to many AOS armies; lots of it is from the typically overly restrictive buff interactions in many AOS battletoms that sub-divide the books into mini-factions that don't work well with one another. 

One ray of hope is that what Morathi did to IDK is exactly what GW needs to do to all the battle tomes. IDK went from 27 eels + volty to a much more complete and well-rounded faction. It's still an incomplete faction and it's still out of date in a lot of its design parameters, but Morathi successfully addresses the internal balance and makes more diverse lists at least somewhat more competitively viable compared to eel spam. That's what I imagine most people would like to see happen for all factions. 

[Kramer]

1 hour ago, yukishiro1 said:

think what animates a lot of people is they don't like facing a list of 27 eels + volturnos, to take an obvious example. If someone really *wants* to bring that list fine...but the game shouldn't make it the best IDK list you can bring.

I think what animates the other half of the conversation is that a lot of people don’t mind facing 27 eels + volturnus. It’s cool it’s thematic. The only shame is that it’s the only list you see. And almost everyone agrees with that at least. 
but whatever, in your words, is made the best list by the game; will meet the same resistance.

because whatever the options available you’ll get people figuring out what’s the strongest options, and then that becomes the new list to play. That’s what tournaments are. 

thats why it’s so important to have an idea of what your opponents are looking for and matching that with what you want. 

The other argument of it being more thematic for lists to be more mixed is subjective. I get it, I personally like things to be a bit specialised. But fair enough. 

And think of it this way, if the eel warscroll was the worst in the book. The player that brings an all eels list would be an absolute legends. He would get high fives when he rocks up with his army, old bretonnian players would bring him/her tankards of ale for keeping the dream alive,

 and nobody would never ever complain about it not being thematic. 

And of course its a good thing when GW updates factions to the current standard. But sadly we are in a game that has a slow turn around I. That respect. It’s a lot faster than it was though. 

Edited January 13, 2021 by Kramer

[yukishiro1]

6 hours ago, Kramer said:

but whatever, in your words, is made the best list by the game; will meet the same resistance.

 

That's the bit I just don't think is true. There would absolutely not be the same resistance to IDK if the most powerful list was a balanced list that took 1-2 of most units in the book. You would not hear people say "oh god, not that balanced IDK list again with a bunch of different unit types! that's so boring to play against! why can't we have 27 eels + volty instead?"

Of course there will be stronger and weaker lists. Nobody's arguing otherwise. But when the strongest list are gimmick lists that take a whole bunch of one unit over and over again, that is a separate, distinct problem from simply "this list is too strong." You don't seem to feel that's a problem personally, and that's fine - you're entitled to your opinion. But for a lot of us, it absolutely would not be the same if the lists that were powerful were balanced lists that take a wide variety of units from the battletome. 

[Kadeton]

17 hours ago, Beliman said:

There is no need to take that to an extreme.

We could have 30 units and 10 could be really good but couldn't be spammed, 10 could be good and last  10 could be average with enough gimmicks to be considered for some specific strategies. 

It's a question of development resources and focus.

Yes, in theory we could have 30 warscrolls where 10 were great, 10 were okay and 10 were situational. But it would be more or less pure luck for that to happen - we could just as easily end up with my scenario, 30 warscrolls where most of them are just terrible.

If an army was instead 10 warscrolls (and crucially, given the same amount of development time!) then the dev team could spend three times as long on developing and testing each unit. This would make it far more likely that those units were well balanced internally and externally, and performed as expected in their intended role.

I really don't think people understand how arduous playtesting is, or how fast-paced GW's release schedule is. Every additional warscroll adds a large overhead - the more there are, the more the overall quality of the battletome becomes a matter of random chance.

All I'm really saying is that I would prefer to have consistent quality over broad variety. I get that's not everyone's cup of tea, but I think it's important to acknowledge that given finite resources, there is a give-and-take tension between those desires. You can't have it both ways.

[yukishiro1]

That's not how GW works, though. They make the minis first, then come up with rules for them afterward. The rule are just an excuse to sell the miniatures. They have no incentive to release fewer miniatures in order to make sure the rules for them are better. 

 

 

[Saxon]

1 hour ago, Kadeton said:

I really don't think people understand how arduous playtesting is, or how fast-paced GW's release schedule is. Every additional warscroll adds a large overhead - the more there are, the more the overall quality of the battletome becomes a matter of random chance.

All I'm really saying is that I would prefer to have consistent quality over broad variety. I get that's not everyone's cup of tea, but I think it's important to acknowledge that given finite resources, there is a give-and-take tension between those desires. You can't have it both ways.

This is covering old ground and is very harsh but at the price point we pay which is greater than any other company i have bought miniatures from, this is no excuse. 

Regarding your second paragraph, i agree. Quality over quantity. However, quantity maintains hype and interest. It's a difficult balance for GW.