What would you like for AoS 3

[NicholasT]

Apart from it obviously being overpowered by the double turn, to tone down shooting you could have -1 to hit at long range. -1 to hit a unit if they are in close combat (I think not being able to shoot them is unrealistic and trying to allocate hits between friendly and enemy units would be too time consuming) and an individual model cannot shoot if it is within 1 inch of an enemy model. I also think these mortal wounds on 5 or 6s should be subject to negative modifiers so that if you have mortal wounds on a 5 and you are -1 to hit you get MWs on a 6 and if you are -2 to hit you cannot get any MWs.

[stratigo]

Almost every nerf to shooting people are suggesting is essentially "We want shooting to suck and go away". Like, yeah, if you can nerf shooting so that it pretty much goes away. It's not gonna balance the game, it will just get rid of shooting. Whatever the new hot melee OP thing is will drag the game through the mud. 

 

Over arching nerfs to a playstyle are bad unless you legit are looking for an excuse to get rid of that playstyle in its entirety. You can actually achieve balance by... balancing units and not just going "Get rid of shooting"

[Kadeton]

12 minutes ago, stratigo said:

Over arching nerfs to a playstyle are bad unless you legit are looking for an excuse to get rid of that playstyle in its entirety. You can actually achieve balance by... balancing units and not just going "Get rid of shooting"

Saying "Maybe shooting should suffer additional penalties under certain conditions" is not remotely the same thing as saying "Get rid of shooting".

That said, no army's playstyle should just be "shooting". If an army can focus solely on one phase of the turn and more or less ignore the others, and still win games, that's an indication that something is seriously wrong with the fundamental mechanics.

[stratigo]

Just now, Kadeton said:

Saying "Maybe shooting should suffer additional penalties under certain conditions" is not remotely the same thing as saying "Get rid of shooting".

That said, no army's playstyle should just be "shooting". If an army can focus solely on one phase of the turn and more or less ignore the others, and still win games, that's an indication that something is seriously wrong with the fundamental mechanics.

There is not a single army that has just shooting as it’s only thing. Indeed such an army would be pretty bad. I suppose LRL are the closest, but you still have to be spicy with movement and screening to capitalize on firepower

[Kadeton]

Hey, you were the one saying people wanted to get rid of the "shooting playstyle". I'm saying the shooting playstyle isn't, and shouldn't be, a thing at all. You can't get rid of something that doesn't exist, but you can tone down the shooting aspect of the game as a whole to prevent "shooting as a playstyle" from becoming a viable option.

Edited February 15, 2021 by Kadeton

[stratigo]

6 minutes ago, Kadeton said:

Hey, you were the one saying people wanted to get rid of the "shooting playstyle". I'm saying the shooting playstyle isn't, and shouldn't, be a thing at all. You can't get rid of something that doesn't exist, but you can tone down the shooting aspect of the game as a whole to prevent "shooting as a playstyle" from becoming a viable option.

Sure, you can nerf shooting to irrelevance and every army that relied on it will be trash. There's no gotchya here that you're trying, so stop being silly.  There's no army that relies on melee alone either. Melee and shooting are how an army can deliver damage. But none of that matters if they can't actually get to a position to roll them dice. KO isn't at the top because it shoots good. CoS can make an army that napkin maths way better DPP for shooting. KO is at the top because it can teleport.

 

The most important phase will always be the movement phase for 90 percent of armies. And that won't ever change.

 

Like, there has been no changes in the AoS base rules between now and since the strongest armies were melee based. And this game saw no dominance like Hedonites dominance, and army that had no shooting at all. And DoK had a top reign for a long butt time too. Both melee.

 

The problem isn't shooting. The problem is that currently the OP armies are shooting armies. The answer isn't to go "Well I guess we should nerf all shooting for all time so only melee armies can sit at a 70 percent winrate". The answer is to fix the OP armies. Without ****** over literally every other army that isn't OP but so happens to use a little shooting.

[EMMachine]

1 hour ago, NicholasT said:

Apart from it obviously being overpowered by the double turn, to tone down shooting you could have -1 to hit at long range. -1 to hit a unit if they are in close combat (I think not being able to shoot them is unrealistic and trying to allocate hits between friendly and enemy units would be too time consuming) and an individual model cannot shoot if it is within 1 inch of an enemy model.

The thing is, is it bad when Throwing Axes, Javelins, Pistols, or Repeater Handbows (weapons with 8-9") can shoot into combat or can shoot while in combat? It is basicly their only point of existence.

If bows, or Handguns should not shoot while in combat, they could have a minimum range.

Some debuffs like long range (12+") or shooting a units (though screening could actually make sense) could still be a thing.

1 hour ago, NicholasT said:

I also think these mortal wounds on 5 or 6s should be subject to negative modifiers so that if you have mortal wounds on a 5 and you are -1 to hit you get MWs on a 6 and if you are -2 to hit you cannot get any MWs.

GW actually got rid of most of using modified rolls for Abilities because it can backfire. You are seeing, "hey, if I have -2 to hit the unit should make mortal wounds anymore, but on the other side, if the unit gets +2 to hit it would make Mortal Wounds on 3+. Thats a reason for the "unmodified" rolls in Abilities.

The Vanari Auralan Sentinals with indirect shooting and making mortal wounds could be fixed if only the aimed profile could make mortal wounds (They made similar stuff with Kharadron Overlords, where units can't use abilities while within a skywessel).

[LeonBox]

43 minutes ago, EMMachine said:

The Vanari Auralan Sentinals with indirect shooting and making mortal wounds could be fixed if only the aimed profile could make mortal wounds (They made similar stuff with Kharadron Overlords, where units can't use abilities while within a skywessel).

Fantastic idea. It makes so much more sense that aimed attacks would cause MWs rather than the fantasy equivalent of spray-n'-pray.

Regarding a unit shooting into the combat it's in -- maybe the "quick to fire" rule could make a reappearance. Throwing axes, javelins etc. can still be used if you're in combat, but big heavy weapons like longbows and handguns cannot. 

[Ninelives]

On 2/1/2021 at 1:32 AM, NinthMusketeer said:

 

Related to the above; holy ****** stop making abilities that add extra damage or rend on a hit roll of 6. It is irritating because it means those wound rolls have to be made separately and slows down gameplay for no appreciable benefit. Have them happen on the wound roll instead.

 

This so much, it used to be the case for the old plague monks warscroll and they re-wrote in a more complicated way  

[whispersofblood]

AoS by design has as few restrictions of players actions as possible, so general changes to shooting are unlikely.

That being said there are no armies which rely on shooting to win the game, nor is it a solid general strategy. If that was the case CoS would be the undisputed and statistically obvious dominating faction in the game.  No army can put out the ranged power that CoS can, period. LRL isn't one of them statistically regardless of how people feel about Sunmetal weapons. People are acting like LRL are putting out monstrous and unseen levels of dmg, my original concern about LRL was that as an army their dmg arch was too low! Its difficult to balance for all levels of gameplay, because 80 Sentinels (Keep in mind  80 sentinels cannot include Teclis) don't worry a competitive player the second time they see it, its just not good enough at most missions. 

The problem really isn't "shooting", per se. The real problem is the extreme generosity and disparity in the spread of that generosity some factions possess. The object of this generosity is maneuverability. Ranged attacks are a poor substitute for being highly mobile, the factions that consistently do well are one that are (subjectively)highly mobile. This has been true since the original GHB. The Battleplans are all a race, to hold a position other than the place you started before but at least longer than your opponent. Killing your opponents models and suffering as little damage yourself can go some way to helping keep them off objectives but it doesn't get you onto the objectives yourself. Mobility+Shooting now there is a challenge. Extreme Mobility alone can win the game, HoS are perfect use case of this. No one would have cared about HoS, locus and depravity if they were a Mv4 faction, without the ability to apply those rules where they want and need them they are useless in the game. 

I think the Fly High rule on KO vessels was a mistake, it allows for too perfect a game plan. I think KO have bad match ups, I also think there is game play against them. I just think it creates too wide a gap between the type of game most people in this hobby are capable of playing and what a person of average intelligence can do after some practice with KO. Also I think the book is almost completely unaffected by its absence, from the perspective of being able to fully enagage in the game.

I think Skinks are a similar problem, but far less difficult to deal with. Dealing with skinks just takes some preparation and diversity in your armylist. I think most people think about AoS the way Ironjawz play, and prefer the game to be like that. Personally I would find that shallow and constraining and prefer the clash of personality we currently have, but need to keep our eye on how disparate we let mobility get faction to faction.

[Kadeton]

2 hours ago, stratigo said:

Sure, you can nerf shooting to irrelevance and every army that relied on it will be trash. There's no gotchya here that you're trying, so stop being silly.

There's a thousand miles of nuance separating "tone down shooting" and "nerf shooting to irrelevance". Stop talking about them like they're the same thing.

2 hours ago, stratigo said:

There's no army that relies on melee alone either. Melee and shooting are how an army can deliver damage. But none of that matters if they can't actually get to a position to roll them dice. KO isn't at the top because it shoots good. CoS can make an army that napkin maths way better DPP for shooting. KO is at the top because it can teleport.

Lumineth are extremely close to having no need for positioning (of their Sentinel units).

The main complaint about shooting as a core mechanic is not that it doesn't require positioning, it's that there is little to no positioning-based counter-play. Against melee units, you can counter-play them by manoeuvring your units to force them into engagements on your terms. The only way to limit a shooting-focused unit's freedom of engagement is to stay outside of their range, which is not a feasible tactic in an objective-based game.

KO is at the top only because it can teleport and has overwhelming firepower. If KO were a melee-focused army, they would not dominate the meta regardless of their ability to teleport - again, this is because melee can be counter-played, and shooting basically cannot. KO would still be an extremely competitive army even if they lost the ability to Fly High.

2 hours ago, stratigo said:

The most important phase will always be the movement phase for 90 percent of armies. And that won't ever change.

I'd like to see it change to 100% of armies, but that's somewhat of a tangent.

2 hours ago, stratigo said:

Like, there has been no changes in the AoS base rules between now and since the strongest armies were melee based. And this game saw no dominance like Hedonites dominance, and army that had no shooting at all. And DoK had a top reign for a long butt time too. Both melee.

Hedonites and DoK dominated a meta that had nothing like the shooting we see in the game now. In particular, Hedonites were egregious because they broke the primary balancing factor of melee, alternating activations (on top of insanely low summoning costs).

2 hours ago, stratigo said:

The problem isn't shooting. The problem is that currently the OP armies are shooting armies. The answer isn't to go "Well I guess we should nerf all shooting for all time so only melee armies can sit at a 70 percent winrate". The answer is to fix the OP armies. Without ****** over literally every other army that isn't OP but so happens to use a little shooting.

A problem exists in which all the top meta armies are shooting armies, and you can approach that in two ways.

The way you seem to be advocating for is to nerf the top armies. That's a perfectly reasonable approach to balance, but it doesn't address the core problem with a lack of counter-play to shooting.

The way I'm advocating is to address shooting's basic problem, and then buff any armies for whom the impact of that change puts them below par.

Is your reluctance to even countenance that approach due to a fear that GW will neglect the "buff the weak ones" part of that process? In that case, why do you have any confidence that they would follow through with the "nerf the strong ones" part of yours?

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

2 hours ago, stratigo said:

Almost every nerf to shooting people are suggesting is essentially "We want shooting to suck and go away". Like, yeah, if you can nerf shooting so that it pretty much goes away. It's not gonna balance the game, it will just get rid of shooting. Whatever the new hot melee OP thing is will drag the game through the mud. 

 

Over arching nerfs to a playstyle are bad unless you legit are looking for an excuse to get rid of that playstyle in its entirety. You can actually achieve balance by... balancing units and not just going "Get rid of shooting"

 

I have been thinking about how to balance shooting for under the assumption that we still want ranged-focussed armies to be viable, but don't want the playstyle to be dominant. Plus, there are some armies around that basically have no shooting, so we have to take this uneven distribution of the mechanic into account as well.

Currently, this uneven distribution makes it hard for core rule changes to help balance the mechanic. Something like a simultaneous, alternating shooting phase does nothing for armies that don't have access to shooting. To the contrary, depending on the implementation (like if you could shoot back on your opponent's shooting phase), it would just make things worse for them.

For what it's worth, I think there are some restrictions that made shooting weaker than melee that have been in the game for a long time, they were just not part of the core rules:

• Shooting units did less damage than melee units on average (even if they get to shoot and attack in melee in the same turn).
• Shooting range was usually low enough so that a fast melee unit would be able to charge a shooting unit on their turn even from max range.
• If you had long range shooting, those pieces were immobile, fairly weak and frequently had a minimum range.

I think for a moment last year we had an army that could do strong shooting, but was not oppressive: Cities of Sigmar.

If you compare Cities shooting to current top shooting armies, the difference in power becomes pretty clear. Cities shooting is mostly mid range, around 18". Anything above that is either no rend or artillery. Definitely no 30" mortal wound bombs. Cities still has some of the strongest shooting in Irondrakes, but they you need to jump through a lot of hoops to make them work. You need to keep buff heroes around them and not make a move with them maximize to their damage, need to use Soulscream Bridge to get them where they need to be and need to properly screen them to prevent a counter charge.

Compare that to Lumineth Sentinels: Basically self-sufficient (they need magic to buff their moral wound output, but they can cast the spell themself), and can reliably take out a 5 wound buff hero turn 1 from anywhere on the board with their 30" range, and for a fairly small investment. Even if you are not planning to spam them, a unit can basically go into any army an be great value.

This is why I think fixing shooting is hard. I think the problem is not with the core shooting mechanics, but that we have several overtuned armies that can put out too much damage at too high ranges. Which is way harder to fix. I for one am hoping for a bunch of warscroll rewrites, but it seems like GW is going the opposite way and just giving everyone good shooting.

 

[Skreech Verminking]

Considering the last few posts about shooting this are my thoughts on containing the shooting:

1. Look out sir. Has to change -1 has basically no affect to units that hit on  +2-3 can reroll everything. Having the rule from 40k for look out sir seems like a nice Idea.

2.rework some warscrolls that are currently dominating the  table. For example changing the rule for scryhawk lantern to maybe being able to reroll 1s to hit against the chosen unit.

Seraphons on the other hand are in dire need of many points and warscrolls changes.

for example skinks, how exactly is a skink with a blowpipe able to hit a target, that is basically just in range of being hit by a bow or musket.

and why exactly is a unit that can throw out 80shots, doing mortals on 60s, able to have a 3+ save, and having a move of 6-9 inches move, while also being able to hit pretty hard with a few buffs, so terrible cheap.

if they are meant to be meatshields, they shouldn’t be able to do all of that.

if we wanna chance their warscroll we definitely would have to give them a keyword that would hinder the ability to take many of those buffs mentioned before, as well as having to reduce their shooting range from 18 to “12”.

If we are talking about points, i’d say that an additional 20-30 points per 10 models seems kinda fair.

as for kharadron overlords, just please make a restriction of only being able to take non faction endless spell in a bottle, or at least have them take a risk of taking mortals wounds or have the character be instantly killed on a roll of 1 when casting Warplightning vortex, because no Skaven spell should be risk free.

and that would be it with KO, considering that they would be unable to snipe off those support heroes turn one, if we chance look out sir.

3. Units that were clearly meant to be able to snipe heroes, should maybe get some kind of sniping rule.

although I would like to keep the numbers of units very low per book that can do so.

Now I don’t know if this will truly chance the shooting meta to be well more likable, but it just might.

I don’t really want to see too many nerfs that could destroy an armies playability, but something like mentioned before might not be a bad idea.

any thoughts??

[whispersofblood]

15 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

 

I have been thinking about how to balance shooting for under the assumption that we still want ranged-focussed armies to be viable, but don't want the playstyle to be dominant. Plus, there are some armies around that basically have no shooting, so we have to take this uneven distribution of the mechanic into account as well.

Currently, this uneven distribution makes it hard for core rule changes to help balance the mechanic. Something like a simultaneous, alternating shooting phase does nothing for armies that don't have access to shooting. To the contrary, depending on the implementation (like if you could shoot back on your opponent's shooting phase), it would just make things worse for them.

For what it's worth, I think there are some restrictions that made shooting weaker than melee that have been in the game for a long time, they were just not part of the core rules:

• Shooting units did less damage than melee units on average (even if they get to shoot and attack in melee in the same turn).
• Shooting range was usually low enough so that a fast melee unit would be able to charge a shooting unit on their turn even from max range.
• If you had long range shooting, those pieces were immobile, fairly weak and frequently had a minimum range.

I think for a moment last year we had an army that could do strong shooting, but was not oppressive: Cities of Sigmar.

If you compare Cities shooting to current top shooting armies, the difference in power becomes pretty clear. Cities shooting is mostly mid range, around 18". Anything above that is either no rend or artillery. Definitely no 30" mortal wound bombs. Cities still has some of the strongest shooting in Irondrakes, but they you need to jump through a lot of hoops to make them work. You need to keep buff heroes around them and not make a move with them maximize to their damage, need to use Soulscream Bridge to get them where they need to be and need to properly screen them to prevent a counter charge.

Compare that to Lumineth Sentinels: Basically self-sufficient (they need magic to buff their moral wound output, but they can cast the spell themself), and can reliably take out a 5 wound buff hero turn 1 from anywhere on the board with their 30" range, and for a fairly small investment. Even if you are not planning to spam them, a unit can basically go into any army an be great value.

This is why I think fixing shooting is hard. I think the problem is not with the core shooting mechanics, but that we have several overtuned armies that can put out too much damage at too high ranges. Which is way harder to fix. I for one am hoping for a bunch of warscroll rewrites, but it seems like GW is going the opposite way and just giving everyone good shooting.

 

The bolded is just not true at all, and needs to stop being repeated. It takes 280 points of Sentinels to put out the dmg needed to kill a 5 wound hero using only their own stats and abilities. 9 shots 3 hits, causing 3 MWs for 140 points. People are out here acting like Sentinels have 2-3 shots a model. 

[Kadeton]

4 minutes ago, whispersofblood said:

The bolded is just not true at all, and needs to stop being repeated. It takes 280 points of Sentinels to put out the dmg needed to kill a 5 wound hero using only their own stats and abilities. 9 shots 3 hits, causing 3 MWs for 140 points. People are out here acting like Sentinels have 2-3 shots a model. 

Regardless of the points involved, the fact is that taking 5 wounds off a 5-wound support character is vastly more valuable than taking 5 wounds off a battleline unit, in almost every case. You can protect your important characters from death in melee - why not death from shooting?

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

12 minutes ago, whispersofblood said:

The bolded is just not true at all, and needs to stop being repeated. It takes 280 points of Sentinels to put out the dmg needed to kill a 5 wound hero using only their own stats and abilities. 9 shots 3 hits, causing 3 MWs for 140 points. People are out here acting like Sentinels have 2-3 shots a model. 

I was thinking of a unit of 20, should have made it clear. 280 is still far below the going rate for other artillery that does the same thing.  The closest other thing I can think of is OBR catapults, where you really need two (400 points) to do it reliably. I definitely don't think anything in any book before OBR can do this reliably, at 30 inches and for such a low point cost.

[JackStreicher]

I thought about what I'd like to see and came up with this:

- Double Turn is gone - It favoures shooting/Magic armies way too much

- Heroes  with 8 or less wounds can't be shot if they're within 3" of a unit of at least 3+ Models. Heroes with more than 8 wounds that are not a Monster are -1 to be hit.

- minus 1 to hit if closest model of the target unit is further away than 14"
- Charging let'S you reroll 1s to hit. If you already reroll 1s to hit it will let you reroll 1s to wound

- Battleshock: 40ks Battleshock.

- EVERY Command ability is limited to 1 use per turn.

- Once per Battle you can spent a CP to auto-unbind.

- Rolling a 9+ (pre-modifiers) for dispelling automatically dispells any spell. - Stop the Magic dominance. Rolling a double 1 causes d3 MW to the caster.

Edited February 15, 2021 by JackStreicher

[whispersofblood]

24 minutes ago, Kadeton said:

Regardless of the points involved, the fact is that taking 5 wounds off a 5-wound support character is vastly more valuable than taking 5 wounds off a battleline unit, in almost every case. You can protect your important characters from death in melee - why not death from shooting?

You used the word investment, and set that as a metric for discussion so don't move the goalposts. And, no its not vastly more important for a few reasons. 

1.  model count is how you win the game, having more models that you can move and put on objectives is the primary concern of the game
2. Most good armies actually don't rely on support heroes
3. Those that do use support heroes have extremely tough ones( Warchanters for example of 6 wounds and 4+ save for 110 points), or have extremely high utility paired with a low price or consistent durability(Hags and Skink heroes) I can't think of a hero that is actually vulnerable to over 200% the points of Sentinels if I'm honest, I suppose Chaos Sorcerer Lords

 Also you don't want to live in a game where support heroes are invulnerable to dmg most of us have a lot of experience in list design from WHFB its not a space we enjoyed.

But, lets talk about how you protect characters from melee. It is almost never by making them resistant to actually attacks or dmg, it is by putting units in the way. Now if you look at that literally its not comparable to how you would play against shooting. When you abstract it out though it changes how you see the game. Putting units in the way is about changing the threat profile of the pieces on the board.

Here is how you stop people targeting your heroes assuming they are key to your plans. You put pressure on their armies ability to win the game. Meaning you aggressively target their non-shooting units, and make them move their shooting units in ways they don't want to. Now they have to choose do they shoot your heroes, thin your lines, or stop you from killing their own objective scoring models. 80 Sentinels puts out about 25 dmg in the controlling players turn total (1120 pts), you can manage that even if you don't enjoy taking it. 10 Ard boys fyi with a warchanted and a teleport put out 12 dmg against a 4+ save unit (and 25 against a 5+ save unit) for a total of 420 pts, with significantly fewer points of failure fyi. 

Quote

I was thinking of a unit of 20, should have made it clear. 280 is still far below the going rate for other artillery that does the same thing.  The closest other thing I can think of is OBR catapults, where you really need two (400 points) to do it reliably. I definitely don't think anything in any book before OBR can do this reliably, at 30 inches and for such a low point cost.

Its difficult to compare across factions, but I would start by saying that OBR are significantly more resistant to deathball synergies than LRL so the need to be able to kill support pieces isn't as much of need. But, They are still quite excellent at it, the ordinary Crawler is hitting heroes on a 2+ with 4 attacks for 40" away. It does need Line of Sight though and for 200 points with the obligatory hero will kill a 6 would hero on a 4+ pretty regularly. I think its a reasonable situtation, crawlers are more swingy then the 80 points more worth of Sentinels when it comes to targetting heroes. On the other hand 20 sentinels will never do 20 dmg, or break coherency. Also remember that a crawler on a slight above average roll 8 on a 2d6 can slay a 5 wound hero form 40" away.

I think people need to just accept that all damage is damage and not get so triggered by MWs.

Edited February 15, 2021 by whispersofblood

[Sleboda]

I just thought of another thing I'd like to see in 3.0.

I want a new rule that says if your opponent uses the prefix "meta" as a word on its own, you win the game. This could apply to any misuse of a prefix. For instance, if you're setting up the game and instead of asking you if you have anything to explain or take care of before turn one they instead ask about what you have to handle in the "pre." Or if they wonder aloud about any abilities your troops have that allow them to wound with no need to make a roll and refer to them as any "autos" you have have.

It would promote better communication and do something to help slow down the stupifying of our children. Please, think of the children. The children, I say!

After that, they could show up at my house and put a very pretty sign in my front yard that says "kindly get the heck off my lawn."

[Kadeton]

42 minutes ago, whispersofblood said:

You used the word investment, and set that as a metric for discussion so don't move the goalposts. And, no its not vastly more important for a few reasons.

I think you've gotten confused about who you're replying to.

42 minutes ago, whispersofblood said:

1.  model count is how you win the game, having more models that you can move and put on objectives is the primary concern of the game
2. Most good armies actually don't rely on support heroes
3. Those that do use support heroes have extremely tough ones( Warchanters for example of 6 wounds and 4+ save for 110 points), or have extremely high utility paired with a low price or consistent durability(Hags and Skink heroes) I can't think of a hero that is actually vulnerable to over 200% the points of Sentinels if I'm honest, I suppose Chaos Sorcerer Lords

 Also you don't want to live in a game where support heroes are invulnerable to dmg most of us have a lot of experience in list design from WHFB its not a space we enjoyed.

Okay, so which is it? Are support heroes irrelevant (in which case making them invulnerable would also be irrelevant to the strength of an army) or are they important (in which case allowing ranged units exclusively the power to kill them with impunity is a problem)?

42 minutes ago, whispersofblood said:

But, lets talk about how you protect characters from melee. It is almost never by making them resistant to actually attacks or dmg, it is by putting units in the way. Now if you look at that literally its not comparable to how you would play against shooting. When you abstract it out though it changes how you see the game. Putting units in the way is about changing the threat profile of the pieces on the board.

Being able to shield characters from shooting attacks by "putting units in the way" is literally the exact thing I'm asking for. It makes thematic and mechanical sense.

42 minutes ago, whispersofblood said:

80 Sentinels puts out about 25 dmg in the controlling players turn total (1120 pts), you can manage that even if you don't enjoy taking it. 10 Ard boys fyi with a warchanted and a teleport put out 12 dmg against a 4+ save unit (and 25 against a 5+ save unit) for a total of 420 pts, with significantly fewer points of failure fyi.

But - crucially - the 'Ard Boyz allow for significantly more interaction and possible counter-play. The Sentinels don't put out the same damage per point, but they do it without restriction or retaliation.

I'm not singling out Sentinels as a problem, by the way, so there's no need to try to defend them by listing off examples of other problematic shooting units. The lack of meaningful tactical counter-play to shooting is what I have an issue with.

[Galdenistal]

I'd like to see a massive reduction in mortal wound output in post AOS 3 battletomes, make armour mean something. Have 2 or 3 sources of MW per army, make it rare.

[Ragest]

3 hours ago, Kadeton said:

Regardless of the points involved, the fact is that taking 5 wounds off a 5-wound support character is vastly more valuable than taking 5 wounds off a battleline unit, in almost every case. You can protect your important characters from death in melee - why not death from shooting?

Because inmortal support heroes is almost more toxic than shooting spam.

We need to stop asking for low term balancing and watch the full picture, because if not we will end in the same point. I want to remember than MW spam started with the destructive alpha melee armies (FEC, Slaneesh) to undestructible stuff (Mortek) to stop them and later MW to kill the infinite hordes.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

19 minutes ago, Ragest said:

Because inmortal support heroes is almost more toxic than shooting spam.

We need to stop asking for low term balancing and watch the full picture, because if not we will end in the same point. I want to remember than MW spam started with the destructive alpha melee armies (FEC, Slaneesh) to undestructible stuff (Mortek) to stop them and later MW to kill the infinite hordes.

Surely, though, a middle ground between support heroes being invincible and support heroes being instantly deleted by certain armies is possible. At least it should probably require a much higher commitment in terms of points to kill a five wound hero turn one with shooting or magic than such heroes usually cost. And even then, not getting a lot of counterplay against shooting or magic is a pretty big feel bad situation. That alone warrants taking another look at the mechanic.

[whispersofblood]

2 hours ago, Kadeton said:

1. I think you've gotten confused about who you're replying to.
2. Okay, so which is it? Are support heroes irrelevant (in which case making them invulnerable would also be irrelevant to the strength of an army) or are they important (in which case allowing ranged units exclusively the power to kill them with impunity is a problem)?
3. Being able to shield characters from shooting attacks by "putting units in the way" is literally the exact thing I'm asking for. It makes thematic and mechanical sense.
4. But - crucially - the 'Ard Boyz allow for significantly more interaction and possible counter-play. The Sentinels don't put out the same damage per point, but they do it without restriction or retaliation.
5. I'm not singling out Sentinels as a problem, by the way, so there's no need to try to defend them by listing off examples of other problematic shooting units. The lack of meaningful tactical counter-play to shooting is what I have an issue with.

 

6 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

6. Surely, though, a middle ground between support heroes being invincible and support heroes being instantly deleted by certain armies is possible. At least it should probably require a much higher commitment in terms of points to kill a five wound hero turn one with shooting or magic than such heroes usually cost. And even then, not getting a lot of counterplay against shooting or magic is a pretty big feel bad situation. That alone warrants taking another look at the mechanic.

 

1. I maybe have combined two posters, apologies.
2. Most support heroes are irrelevant, Id say only about 2% of foot heroes are relevant in the game. Most the those heroes fall into the two camps I've described a) tough and resistant to most shooting (The Warchanters, Chaos Lords, etc) or cheap and very impactful (skink priests). There are some that sit somewhere in between like Hags which have some durability, and are very impactful. 
3. Remember Look out Sir is a placement rule, you get -1 to hit for being near friendly models, so we already have a screening rule.
4. Yes Shooting has less risk, but remember crucially they don't take board space, you would be more correct if the game was about killing models. But, its not. The game is about killing specific models in specific places and taking control of those places. Shooting units don't do that. They at the very best can hold the position they are deployed near against the most undetermined attacker. If you teleport 5 Ard Boyz you should kill 8 Sentinels in one round of combat, they are horrible at objective control. I generally include Iron Skull Boyz just for this task. I think generally we need to take a more expanded view of what interaction actually means. It can't be limited to rolling dice at each other and putting up screens.
5. Think about it this way. Shooting without extreme mobility is only truly capable of doing damage. When has there been an army which has dominated AoS solely on its ability to do overwhelming amounts of damage (assuming shooting can even be shown to do that much damage). Its pretty clear that Sentinels even spammed don't do that much damage, so what units are we talking about here?
6. I would say we are already there. There isn't an example of a shooting unit that does 5 wounds to a single model with any sort of save (That people will include in an army) for equal or less points than those heroes cost. I think the closest example is actually the Mortek Crawler and its 200 points, and a hero of its own to get close to being reliable at killing cheap heroes. A warchanter on a piece of terrain is basically not going to die to a Crawler, and has like a 50/50 to survive against 20 Sentinels, I'm not even certain an Ironclad can just remove one without some serious effort.

Basically what I am saying is that it feels like there is a problem, but there hasn't been an actual example of where these things are true. I play or have played a lot of factions and I can't think of an example of a model I'm afraid to field because I might play against shooting. That is the risk reward system built into highly synergistic army builds and I think that is a good tension to have and I believe it is well balanced at the moment. 
It is my belief that there is a clash of playstyles and preferences happening in this discussion which is being made totally absent from the core objective of the actual battleplans.  

 

[Nostrammo]

21 hours ago, Sleboda said:

Sooooo ... Warhammer Fantasy Battle then?

Well.......actually....No

I am not saying bring back wheeling, reforming, static CR, psychology rules, scroll caddies, miscasts bound spells etc and generally mechanics that feel good but actually slow the game.

But some things could be implemented to make the game more tactical and less gamey...

AOS game speed is great dont get me wrong but phases should start filling up.