What would you like for AoS 3

[Mcthew]

Soooo... Balance, meta and double-turns aside, I'd also like the rules to play tbe Great Game in the Realm of Chaos, between massive armies of daemons, across crazy-assed terrain with bonkers rules.

Something where balance doesn't matter but scratching ones head does as you try figuring out what the heck is going on across a battlefield of farting mushrooms the size of mountains or seas of boiling blood. Something that is so Chaos, it makes the Mortal Realms feel like a petting zoo.

Not sure if that's doable, but heck, I'd love to see GW try...

[Bayul]

36 minutes ago, Mcthew said:

I'd also like the rules to play tbe Great Game in the Realm of Chaos, between massive armies of daemons, across crazy-assed terrain with bonkers rules.

This is something for a General's Handbook or a small supplement, you don't need a new edition for this kind of ideas. It also shouldn't be exclusive to one allegiance. If you want Great Game rules for CHAOS, then ORDER should have rules for a tournament, DESTRUCTION for a Royal Rumble-style brawl and DEATH for summoning duel between two necromancers. Each with different ressources and mechanics.

But speaking of ressources: GW shouldn't waste much time on something like this to be frank.

[stratigo]

10 hours ago, yukishiro1 said:

I don't think anybody is arguing that Seraphon are oppressive solely because of shooting. It's because they do magic better than anybody...and they shoot better than just about anybody...and then you get to melee, and they beat you up there too, because they're buffed into the stratosphere.

People who don't like how shooting works in AOS aren't saying it's only because of the current powerful factions. You're constructing a massive straw man there. And the argument that "other games have more shooting" is again simply ignoring what other people in this thread have said. The issue isn't the amount of shooting per se, it's the way that in AOS - unlike every single one of those games - there is very little you can do to limit shooting. Line of Sight is essentially irrelevant with the terrain the game is intended to be played with, Look out Sir does little to nothing, you can shoot into combat and units in combat can shoot (albeit here with the small caveat that they can only shoot what they're engaged with). And then they can double turn you and just delete more than half your army with nothing you can do. 

I don't think people would complain about AOS shooting if you had to obey the same restrictions as 40k, even if everything then shot like sallies. 

A minus one to hit is a significant decrease in expected damage.  And the combos in the game are so fundementally warping that it's better to have at least some tools to take the combo pieces off than it is to not have those tools and protect support characters. Like, they'd have to redo every army with ridiculous combos to tone that stuff way down before you can make the combo pieces untargetable (and GW would probly to something dumb like making cauldrons and bells untargetable too like they already have). Seraphon would jump from 65 winrate to 70 if you removed the ability to target their combo pieces.

 

Double turns are bad. There really isn't an army that doesn't want to double turn you.

 

Shooting into combat is a necessity because the game's too damn fast, you don't even get a turn before you're being charged. Shooting already generally does less damage, you can't then go "and you won't be using it anyways, lol" because your army is in combat from turn 2 onwards (presuming you brought a screen) and locked in your own deployment zone. AoS would have to change movement tricks before this is a viable change for shooting armies (legit the most of the top shooting armies all don't even GAF about it, they teleport out of combat. All the other armies with shooting cry)

 

I agree that more cover should be a thing. I believe always in more cover. This isn't WHFB, 2 hills and 2 copses of trees don't cut it. Get creative! 

 

Almost none of the changes proposed would make a better, or more fun game. Unless your fun comes from going to your local KO player and telling them to suck a fat one.

 

And you can't start stacking further negatives to hit because, well, negatives are already pretty common. DoK can all be minus 1 or more for their supports. LRL will have the majority of their army minus one to hit at the start. All characters are already minus one. There's a lot of artifacts or command traits that give out minuses to hit in shooting. Start stacking that stuff and shooting becomes worthless against some of the best armies in the game,

 

Edited February 24, 2021 by stratigo

[Neverchosen]

I am curious if some of these shooting mechanics could be altered somewhat to be special rules for units or even armies, for example the trained precision of Aelven Archers make them adept at shooting into other units engaged in Combat, whereas the sturdy defences, tactics and technology allow Duardin the ability to fire at opponents that have engaged them directly in close combat? I doubt this would make everyone happy but it could mitigate some of these issues whilst giving more variation to different units, weapon profiles, command abilities, and factions. 

Edited February 24, 2021 by Neverchosen

[zilberfrid]

41 minutes ago, Neverchosen said:

I am curious if some of these shooting mechanics could be altered somewhat to be special rules for units or even armies, for example the trained precision of Aelven Archers make them adept at shooting into other units engaged in Combat, whereas the sturdy defences, tactics and technology allow Duardin the ability to fire at opponents that have engaged them directly in close combat? I doubt this would make everyone happy but it could mitigate some of these issues whilst giving more variation to different units, weapon profiles, command abilities, and factions. 

That would just increase army vs army imbalance further. 

We already see more availability of -1 to hit combined with bypassing that (due to mortal wounds on 6) on lrl.

[Neverchosen]

7 minutes ago, zilberfrid said:

That would just increase army vs army imbalance further. 

We already see more availability of -1 to hit combined with bypassing that (due to mortal wounds on 6) on lrl.

Thanks, I will confess as a Slaves to Darkness player that primarily plays against Legions of Nagash shooting is not my area of expertise 😅

[zilberfrid]

41 minutes ago, Neverchosen said:

Thanks, I will confess as a Slaves to Darkness player that primarily plays against Legions of Nagash shooting is not my area of expertise 😅

That indeed does not sound like a social distancing engagement.

[Mcthew]

8 hours ago, Bayul said:

This is something for a General's Handbook or a small supplement, you don't need a new edition for this kind of ideas. It also shouldn't be exclusive to one allegiance. If you want Great Game rules for CHAOS, then ORDER should have rules for a tournament, DESTRUCTION for a Royal Rumble-style brawl and DEATH for summoning duel between two necromancers. Each with different ressources and mechanics.

But speaking of ressources: GW shouldn't waste much time on something like this to be frank.

Had no idea there was a Great Game equivalent within the ORDER allegiance (maybe the "Great Khaine"?).

Was thinking not a discreet rule set but Realm rules for the Realm of Chaos and the 4 lands within (ahem, sorry, 5 if you include Blight City). We've been homebrewing something like this for a while in battles between Slaanesh and Khorne, but nice to have something official.

AoS 2.0 had sections for playing in the different realms, so see no reason not to again. Sure, it might be Chaos-centric to include these, but for the sake of a few pages, it's hardly taking up GW's time. Afterall if they can produce 2 LRL battletomes in 12 months I reckon GW have the resources to create nine pages or so of lore and rules for AoS 3.0?

[zilberfrid]

I forgot one thing I really would like to see changed: More differentiation of the words "Wound" and "Damage"

We have:

• Wound value
• Wounds attributed
• To wound
• Mortal wounds
• Damage value of a weapon
• Damage dealt

The way these interact is super unintuitive, and changing a few words here might make it a lot clearer. 

Currently (as far as I understand it):

1. Roll to wound, if successful: enemy saves
2. Take damage value, apply modifiers
3. Apply damage
4. Attribute wounds
5. Compare total attributed wounds to wounds value, if equal or larger, dead and go to next

Somewhere, there is damage dealt/damage taken in there. I think mortal wounds simply forgo the roll to wound and save, but there is a niggling something that tells me this is not entirely correct.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

7 hours ago, stratigo said:

A minus one to hit is a significant decrease in expected damage.  And the combos in the game are so fundementally warping that it's better to have at least some tools to take the combo pieces off than it is to not have those tools and protect support characters. Like, they'd have to redo every army with ridiculous combos to tone that stuff way down before you can make the combo pieces untargetable (and GW would probly to something dumb like making cauldrons and bells untargetable too like they already have). Seraphon would jump from 65 winrate to 70 if you removed the ability to target their combo pieces.

[...]

And you can't start stacking further negatives to hit because, well, negatives are already pretty common. DoK can all be minus 1 or more for their supports. LRL will have the majority of their army minus one to hit at the start. All characters are already minus one. There's a lot of artifacts or command traits that give out minuses to hit in shooting. Start stacking that stuff and shooting becomes worthless against some of the best armies in the game,

I think this is in response to Look Out, Sir! being fairly useless. On the one hand, you are right. -1 to hit is significant. Especially if your shooting attack has a low hit chance in the first place, like 5+. But on the other hand, +1 to hit has to be just about the most common buff around, so the disadvantage is also kind of easy to negate. And on the third chaos mutated hand, the armies that are most affected by Look Out, Sir! are the lower tier shooting armies, not the top ones.

Seraphon, for example, have a pretty easy time either buffing their hit chance back up for Skinks or can use their other sources of mortal wounds to make up the difference when picking off heroes. If they are bringing Chameleon Skinks, they deal mortals on a 6 to hit, so -1 to hit does not affect their damage enough to be an actual defense against their shooting. Same for Salamanders. The Bastilladon also has the Skink keyword, so it gets +1 to hit fairly easily, too.

Lumineth Sentinels are the same: They deal their damage as mortal wounds on hit. This is just extremely strong on shooting, because it means their damage is barely affectedy by Look Out, Sir! and cover, since -1 to hit does nothing against effects that trigger on natural 6s and +1 to saves does nothing against mortals.

But I agree with you in so far as I also see the need to have shooting which is good enough to be able to remove buff pieces. I think that is generally healthy for the game. But currently, some armies have to barely try to do this, while others are nearly unable to. Just look at the points you have to invest into otherwise sub-par units to remove a buff hero reliably in Mawtribes. Or even in Cities of Sigmar, which have pretty solid shooting. But Seraphon get to remove buff heroes at range nearly incidentally, with all the mortals they have flying around even when they don't build to do this. And Lumineth basically just need to bring 20 archers to all but guarantee 5 to 6 mortals anywhere on the board every turn. I think this imbalance, where you either can't really efficiently deal with buff heroes or get to remove them super reliably and cheaply is definitely worth looking at for a new edition.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

1 hour ago, zilberfrid said:

I forgot one thing I really would like to see changed: More differentiation of the words "Wound" and "Damage"

We have:

• Wound value
• Wounds attributed
• To wound
• Mortal wounds
• Damage value of a weapon
• Damage dealt

The way these interact is super unintuitive, and changing a few words here might make it a lot clearer. 

Currently (as far as I understand it):

1. Roll to wound, if successful: enemy saves
2. Take damage value, apply modifiers
3. Apply damage
4. Attribute wounds
5. Compare total attributed wounds to wounds value, if equal or larger, dead and go to next

Somewhere, there is damage dealt/damage taken in there. I think mortal wounds simply forgo the roll to wound and save, but there is a niggling something that tells me this is not entirely correct.

There is this weird game state where an attack has succeeded, the target has failed it's save roll, but the wounds caused by the attack have not yet been applied to the model. That's the time when bodyguard abilites usually apply. It's just such a strange, counter-intuitive moment, where according to game logic an attack has passed the target's defenses and has wounded, but it has not yet wounded anyone in particular. The wounds are just kind of free floating.

A strange consequence of this is that during this moment, you can attempt to negate free floating wounds as often as you like. The rule that disallows multiple wound negations only applies to assigned wounds. This is really the kind of weird edge case, potential gotcha moment that I would love to not have to worry about as a player. I think it would help a lot if there was an in-depth rules document that helped players understand the inner workings of the game better, in addition to the basic rules that we have at the moment and that are good enough for 95% of play.

[zilberfrid]

1 hour ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

There is this weird game state where an attack has succeeded, the target has failed it's save roll, but the wounds caused by the attack have not yet been applied to the model. That's the time when bodyguard abilites usually apply. It's just such a strange, counter-intuitive moment, where according to game logic an attack has passed the target's defenses and has wounded, but it has not yet wounded anyone in particular. The wounds are just kind of free floating.

A strange consequence of this is that during this moment, you can attempt to negate free floating wounds as often as you like. The rule that disallows multiple wound negations only applies to assigned wounds. This is really the kind of weird edge case, potential gotcha moment that I would love to not have to worry about as a player. I think it would help a lot if there was an in-depth rules document that helped players understand the inner workings of the game better, in addition to the basic rules that we have at the moment and that are good enough for 95% of play.

Yeah. I'm not sure what it was about, but there was a massive misunderstanding about what something did that could be solved by going at it step by step. Perhaps Gotrek.

My line of thought was not to add more explanation, but to change definitions to prevent confusion.

For instance:

To hit roll, To hurt roll (was to wound), Weapon strength (was damage value), Hit points (was wounds value). Then we still have the damage dealt and wounds taken. Mortal wounds could be replaced by direct damage, because I think it is applied at the "damage dealt" state.

This means that the word "Wound" means one thing, Mortal Wounds that currently are possibly neither mortal, nor even wounds with a successful aftersave, are replaced by a term that is more in line with its actual effect.

Edited February 24, 2021 by zilberfrid

[EMMachine]

8 hours ago, stratigo said:

Shooting into combat is a necessity because the game's too damn fast, you don't even get a turn before you're being charged. Shooting already generally does less damage, you can't then go "and you won't be using it anyways, lol" because your army is in combat from turn 2 onwards (presuming you brought a screen) and locked in your own deployment zone. AoS would have to change movement tricks before this is a viable change for shooting armies (legit the most of the top shooting armies all don't even GAF about it, they teleport out of combat. All the other armies with shooting cry)

The interesting point is I have seen rules where close combat was too string.

4. Edition 40k (and to a little point WHFB)

In both games you were able to Overrun a unit or reposition yourself into the next close combat. In both cases a close combat unit was able to get into the next combat.

You either shoot something in round 1 (or overwatch in WHFB) or your unit is stuck in combat and can't shoot anymore.

In WHFB your only chance was surviving the first combatround or having no unit behind the charged unit.

In 40k is was leaving enough room so the unit couldn't reposition into another combat.

In 5. Edition 40k they removed the option to reposition into the next combat and from their on, shooting became stronger.

[yukishiro1]

17 hours ago, stratigo said:

A minus one to hit is a significant decrease in expected damage.  And the combos in the game are so fundementally warping that it's better to have at least some tools to take the combo pieces off than it is to not have those tools and protect support characters. Like, they'd have to redo every army with ridiculous combos to tone that stuff way down before you can make the combo pieces untargetable (and GW would probly to something dumb like making cauldrons and bells untargetable too like they already have). Seraphon would jump from 65 winrate to 70 if you removed the ability to target their combo pieces.

 

But all this does is give a big advantage to shooting armies that further warps balance. It's terrible design to have buff pieces that can easily be removed through shooting, if shooting isn't distributed in even vaguely equal ways across factions. Saying "well at least this way shooting armies have a chance against buff-stacking armies" is missing the point: this is layering one problem on top of another, which just makes the situation worse for everyone else. 

If buff pieces are a problem, they should be curtailed directly. The answer to buff heroes being "just no-scope them at 50 yards from inside a crowd of their friends lol" is neither satisfying gameplay (nobody really thinks this is how things should work, do they? It is so far from any notions of how heroic battles should work to just have the heroes picked off at range) nor good for a game with many factions that just don't have shooting. This is an example of a mechanic that is bad both in the abstract and in the particular. 

Edited February 24, 2021 by yukishiro1

[Karlsbass]

I'd love to see alternating activations or alternating phases similar to Kill team or LotR, or phases other than combat phase. "I go-you go" mechanics brings in my opinion a lot to player interaction and improves the overall play experience. Double turn is too big of a deal to be as random as it is now. In such system shooting in combat or into combat maybe shouldn't be possible, and combat phase should maybe consist on two activation rounds.

I would like board size reduced to match 9ed 40k and fitting better in a living room.

I would like to see a Crusade like narrative system.

I would like to see a rework in meeting engagements that gets it closer to a smaller scale full game and less specific setups and rules.

I would like to seee battleshock reworked.

I would like secondary objectives to mean more to the final result in matched play.

I would like more streamlined terrain and realm rules. And that the terrain interacts more with the game in sensible ways (cover, line of sight bloking, slowing movement, etc.)

I would like that available allies are stronger tied to subfactions and existing lore, kind of like it is in some CoS.

I would like some slightly different rules/bonus for Infantry, Cavalry, Monsters, Heavy Infantry and Artillery in regards of controlling objectives.

I wouldn't mind buffs/debuffs capped to +1/-1.

I would like rend to be more consistent through the game, right now with units have -0/-1/-2 is quite random.

I would like that Look out sir is reworked. Maybe to be the same it is now in 40k. But as alternative I wouldn't mind that infantry heros can join infantry units and not being targetable as long as they can just give command abbilities to that unit, same with Cavalry.

 

[stratigo]

3 hours ago, yukishiro1 said:

But all this does is give a big advantage to shooting armies that further warps balance. It's terrible design to have buff pieces that can easily be removed through shooting, if shooting isn't distributed in even vaguely equal ways across factions. Saying "well at least this way shooting armies have a chance against buff-stacking armies" is missing the point: this is layering one problem on top of another, which just makes the situation worse for everyone else. 

If buff pieces are a problem, they should be curtailed directly. The answer to buff heroes being "just no-scope them at 50 yards from inside a crowd of their friends lol" is neither satisfying gameplay (nobody really thinks this is how things should work, do they? It is so far from any notions of how heroic battles should work to just have the heroes picked off at range) nor good for a game with many factions that just don't have shooting. This is an example of a mechanic that is bad both in the abstract and in the particular. 

Sure, but buff stacking has to go first.

 

Legit, I am worried because GW could go "Hmmm, let's nerf an entire phase" and ruin the majority of shooting in the game, while I don't ever see GW making buff stacking go away though. Small characters are just too much a RoI for them to make them less good.

[Kadeton]

On 2/17/2021 at 1:11 PM, stratigo said:

I wonder how 40k is the most popular GW game if shooting is really the least fun mechanic then?

Harking back to this, @stratigo - not quite sure what your position is on 40k-style shooting.

Because the conversation basically looked like this:

You: "Shooting can't be anti-fun, look at 40k."
Others: "Sounds great, let's make AoS' shooting mechanics similar to 40k, we agree that would be more fun."
You: "NoOoOoOoo, that would ruin the game..."

To echo what you said: I wonder how 40k is the most popular GW game if 40k shooting is worse than AoS shooting?

[stratigo]

12 hours ago, Kadeton said:

Harking back to this, @stratigo - not quite sure what your position is on 40k-style shooting.

Because the conversation basically looked like this:

You: "Shooting can't be anti-fun, look at 40k."
Others: "Sounds great, let's make AoS' shooting mechanics similar to 40k, we agree that would be more fun."
You: "NoOoOoOoo, that would ruin the game..."

To echo what you said: I wonder how 40k is the most popular GW game if 40k shooting is worse than AoS shooting?

If AoS shooting became as strong as 40k shooting, then it would have to be balanced more. AoS shooting is not, despite complaints, near as deadly as 40k shooting

 

40k is also more even cheeses stratagems than AoS is with cheesy command abilities (as hard as that is to think about, spreading the cheese makes for better balance than concentrated cheddar) and has more reactive defensive tools baked into those stratagems then AoS does (indeed I can’t think of a single reactive defensive stratagem. They are all proactive defensive buffs)

Edited February 25, 2021 by stratigo

[Kadeton]

2 hours ago, stratigo said:

If AoS shooting became as strong as 40k shooting, then it would have to be balanced more. AoS shooting is not, despite complaints, near as deadly as 40k shooting

Cool, so we take 40k's superior shooting mechanics, and then adjust the power level of individual shooting units to suit AoS. Sound good?

[Mcthew]

7 hours ago, Kadeton said:

Cool, so we take 40k's superior shooting mechanics, and then adjust the power level of individual shooting units to suit AoS. Sound good?

I wouldn't want shooting to be deadlier if I'm honest. As a KO player I often  experience embarrassment when I shoot a player off the board by round two. But then that's GWs fault for synergies around shooting only when melee is clearly KO's worst attribute.

The mechanics of the game work fine. It's the points balance and tweaking of abilities that don't. Why GW can't get these right only they know, but they won't say.

Cow-Elfs, Clown-skulls and Flyin'-Dwaarfs all have had abilities that break matched-play, yet GW persist with this strategy. Like they want to undermine their own game... Or the more cynical could say it's about encouraging people to buy more than one army (or more than one battletome every 12 months).

It works though. I do wonder how many competitive players have ditched their Bonereapers for Realmlords in the last 12 months?

[Skreech Verminking]

4 minutes ago, Mcthew said:

I wouldn't want shooting to be deadlier if I'm honest. As a KO player I often  experience embarrassment when I shoot a player off the board by round two. But then that's GWs fault for synergies around shooting only when melee is clearly KO's worst attribute.

The mechanics of the game work fine. It's the points balance and tweaking of abilities that don't. Why GW can't get these right only they know, but they won't say.

Cow-Elfs, Clown-skulls and Flyin'-Dwaarfs all have had abilities that break matched-play, yet GW persist with this strategy. Like they want to undermine their own game... Or the more cynical could say it's about encouraging people to buy more than one army (or more than one battletome every 12 months).

It works though. I do wonder how many competitive players have ditched their Bonereapers for Realmlords in the last 12 months?

Sorry mate I got stuck with the only truly greatest Army.

 

[Mcthew]

8 minutes ago, Skreech Verminking said:

Sorry mate I got stuck with the only truly greatest Army.

 

For me, Skaven are the most balanced, both on abilities and points wise. They have shooters, brawlers, magic-flingers and suicide units all wrapped up in one furry package, points-costed reasonably.

And totally unpredictable on the tabletop. An absolute joy to play with and against.

They show what's good and works about AoS 2.0.

Edited February 26, 2021 by Mcthew

[zilberfrid]

20 minutes ago, Mcthew said:

For me, Skaven are the most balanced, both on abilities and points wise. They have shooters, brawlers, magic-flingers and suicide units all wrapped up in one furry package, points-costed reasonably.

And totally unpredictable on the tabletop. An absolute joy to play with and against.

They show what's good and works about AoS 2.0.

So, 1€ per point skryre acolytes?

[Skreech Verminking]

30 minutes ago, zilberfrid said:

So, 1€ per point skryre acolytes?

Thankfully most skavenplayers are true hobbyists and love converting.

 

[Mcthew]

56 minutes ago, Skreech Verminking said:

Thankfully most skavenplayers are true hobbyists and love converting.

 

Yep - did this with my poison globe mortar team. Worked out like a dream, yes-yes.

Just to clarify, never mentioned cash prices in the above. And agree, completely overpriced models, but that's a different thread.

Edited February 26, 2021 by Mcthew