AoS3 - Soulblight Gravelord Discussion

[TechnoVampire]

6 hours ago, Sception said:

the 3e trend has mostly been positive, but that trend started with our existing book.  remember that, as the last 2e battletome, the existing SG book was designed for 3rd edition.  Apart from missing faction tactics & strategies and 3e style ptg rules, our book effectively already is a 3e book, so there's not really any reason to expect any significant change to the current rules to update them to the edition's design philosophy.

I agree with what you’re saying from a GW perspective, that in their eyes the book is a 3.0 book, however a lot of that stuff was a hangover from the 2.0 LON battle tome. locus of shyish was brought over from legion of sacrament, the spell lores were a direct copy paste and mostly nerf, as were gravesites, and some of the war-scrolls such as Vhordia and VLOZD barely changed and now feel pretty dated when compared to monsters in newer books. The summoning mechanics also feel quite weak and dated when compared to the 4+ rally and other recursion abilities that newer books have, as does our ward save, and those are supposed to be signature death abilities. With these things in mind I feel that despite the book being relatively new, there’s quite a lot of it that feels dated, or cobbled together from old and new, without as much focus or direction as newer books have. Whether GW will acknowledge and address that is another matter though. 

[Sception]

2 minutes ago, TechnoVampire said:

I agree with what you’re saying from a GW perspective, that in their eyes the book is a 3.0 book, however a lot of that stuff was a hangover from the 2.0 LON battle tome. locus of shyish was brought over from legion of sacrament, the spell lores were a direct copy paste and mostly nerf, as were gravesites, and some of the war-scrolls such as Vhordia and VLOZD barely changed and now feel pretty dated when compared to monsters in newer books. The summoning mechanics also feel quite weak and dated when compared to the 4+ rally and other recursion abilities that newer books have, as does our ward save, and those are supposed to be signature death abilities. With these things in mind I feel that despite the book being relatively new, there’s quite a lot of it that feels dated, or cobbled together from old and new, without as much focus or direction as newer books have. Whether GW will acknowledge and address that is another matter though. 

nit picking details aside (locus of shyish wasn't an exclusive LoSac thing, it was part of the lores as it is now), many 3e books have a bunch of copy pasted stat lines, warscroll rules, & faction rules from their 2e versions, particularly in the case of books that didn't get major model range updates.

This is even the case for existing rules that were pretty much recognized to be terrible by just about everyone who had any experience with the faction.  The current ogor book is inarguably an improvement on their 2e book, but ask any ogor player about how the 3e battletome handled the beastclaw raider faction traits, or the thundertusk warscroll, and they'll let you know how how copy-paste from 2e can still blight 3e tomes.

I'm not saying there won't be any changes, just that it's probably a bad idea to pin a great degree of hope on any given perceived problem getting fixed, no matter how obvious that problem might seem.

[TechnoVampire]

55 minutes ago, Sception said:

nit picking details aside (locus of shyish wasn't an exclusive LoSac thing, it was part of the lores as it is now), many 3e books have a bunch of copy pasted stat lines, warscroll rules, & faction rules from their 2e versions, particularly in the case of books that didn't get major model range updates.

This is even the case for existing rules that were pretty much recognized to be terrible by just about everyone who had any experience with the faction.  The current ogor book is inarguably an improvement on their 2e book, but ask any ogor player about how the 3e battletome handled the beastclaw raider faction traits, or the thundertusk warscroll, and they'll let you know how how copy-paste from 2e can still blight 3e tomes.

I'm not saying there won't be any changes, just that it's probably a bad idea to pin a great degree of hope on any given perceived problem getting fixed, no matter how obvious that problem might seem.

Sorry, but I didn’t follow what you meant about the LOS locus ability. I thought that was specific to them in the LON book and then carried over to SBGL? 

You are right that most books, (even improvements) have loads of stuff carried forward. I’m not really getting my hopes up about most, or even any of it getting changed. My general point was more that despite the book being relatively new, there are things that could be addressed to make it feel more modern, interesting and a bit more competitive if GW was interested in doing so. I feel like SBGL could quite easily be modernised to provide a more unique identity, as opposed to a sort of mashup of LON and a more vampire focussed army, however I don’t think that’s very likely at this stage. 

Edited April 3, 2023 by TechnoVampire

[Leshoyadut]

While the WarCom article mentioned rules changes in the section for OBR, they only said warscrolls, pitched battle profiles and Path to Glory changes for Soulblight. Obviously we need to take anything WarCom says with an entire salt lick, but I feel like it's probably a good rough idea of what we're getting changed. I would of course assume the White Dwarf changes, PtG stuff, and adjustments to points and warscrolls. I would not be surprised if the pitched battle profile changes included something for Zombies and/or Skeletons (poooooossibly Dire Wolves?) to get additional free reinforcements in appropriate subfactions. Beyond that? I really don't see much.

I could see the usual cutting down on artefacts and subfaction traits in a specifically 3E book, and I'd love to see Endless Legions get adjusted to be a little more reliable, plus a revision on some of the spells. These are all relatively simple things for them to change that wouldn't take a lot of new design work and testing to add, and Endless Legions/Vampire Lore changes would help all of the army at once. But again, I'm not going to expect a whole lot.

Edited April 4, 2023 by Leshoyadut

[Sception]

8 hours ago, TechnoVampire said:

Sorry, but I didn’t follow what you meant about the LOS locus ability. I thought that was specific to them in the LON book and then carried over to SBGL?

LOS is short for "legion of sacrament", no?  Locus of Shyish wasn't unique to Legion of Sacrament.  It applied to the deathmage & vampire spells regardless of subfaction, just like it does now.

unless by LOS you just mean 'locus of shyish' and im just confused over what 'specific to them' means.

Edited April 4, 2023 by Sception

[TechnoVampire]

1 hour ago, Sception said:

LOS is short for "legion of sacrament", no?  Locus of Shyish wasn't unique to Legion of Sacrament.  It applied to the deathmage & vampire spells regardless of subfaction, just like it does now.

unless by LOS you just mean 'locus of shyish' and im just confused over what 'specific to them' means.

My apologies, I remembered incorrectly. You are right, LOS (legion of sacrament) received +1 to cast and locus of shyish was an army wide ability. 

[TechnoVampire]

4 hours ago, Leshoyadut said:

While the WarCom article mentioned rules changes in the section for OBR, they only said warscrolls, pitched battle profiles and Path to Glory changes for Soulblight. Obviously we need to take anything WarCom says with an entire salt lick, but I feel like it's probably a good rough idea of what we're getting changed. I would of course assume the White Dwarf changes, PtG stuff, and adjustments to points and warscrolls. I would not be surprised if the pitched battle profile changes included something for Zombies and/or Skeletons (poooooossibly Dire Wolves?) to get additional free reinforcements in appropriate subfactions. Beyond that? I really don't see much.

I could see the usual cutting down on artefacts and subfaction traits in a specifically 3E book, and I'd love to see Endless Legions get adjusted to be a little more reliable, plus a revision on some of the spells. These are all relatively simple things for them to change that wouldn't take a lot of new design work and testing to add, and Endless Legions/Vampire Lore changes would help all of the army at once. But again, I'm not going to expect a whole lot.

I picked up on that wording myself and felt like it was quite likely used to set expectations. 

[JackStreicher]

„Battletome: Soulblight Gravelords is dedicated to these thirsting horrors, featuring new warscrolls and pitched battle profiles for the heroes and shambling fodder of five full undead dynasties“

 

this creates some hope for powerful combat vampires!

(can‘t change the text Color on mobile gor some reason)

[MotherGoose]

Our book was 'designed with 3.0 in mind' 2 years ago. The game has changed significantly since then with all the new tomes and rules flying about. I'm expecting more than some simple battle tactics and grand strats, i think it would be silly to copy paste a 2 year old tome from a different edition of the game that is also one of the most underperforming armies currently.

Don't get me wrong, a lot of it will undoubtedly be the same, but see my previous post for expected changes such as access to 4+ rally on certain units, increase to rend/damage for others, buff/change to our gravesites, healing and ward saves including removing restrictions.

I'm not sure how much I believe 'made with 3.0 in mind'... 3.0 is three years of an evolving game with constant new tomes, how can you have that in mind? In my opinion that comment was made more to hush the complainers that would be upset about a new tome at the end of an edition and therefore likely quickly becoming bad and needing an update that they won't get for ages because of a brand new book already.

The only things I could see them 'having in mind' when making our previous book, was how it works with core rules changes such as the blood knights retreat+charge ability.

I think it's safe to assume a lot of our warscrolls will receive significant changes, such as a vampire lord being way worse in combat than a goblin lord (riding squig guy). 1" range lances etc etc. Ofcourse all of this could be included in warscrolls, so our actual battle traits may stay the same/have a minor change, but I don't think we really need a huge change to our core of the army to become good.

Either way this isn't a preorder for me - I'll check the videos out when they release and see whether it's worth buying an entire new book for or just waiting for wahapedia to update, khorne was different as they were SO old that I knew they'd have big changes and wanted a new tome.

Edited April 4, 2023 by MotherGoose

[TechnoVampire]

On a general note I don’t think there’s ever much excuse for making people pay for a new battletome that’s mostly copy and pasted from the old one. If the current book is so good it doesn’t need any significant changes, then the faction doesn’t require a new book, and if you’re going to the effort of printing a new book that people have to pay for to access the most current rules, then it only makes sense to change things that aren’t working, or are out of date. I don’t think the SBGL battletome needs anything like an overhaul, but to ignore obviously poor design elements, such as lore of the vampires having 5 different ways of rolling multiple dice to attempt to do a small number of mortal wounds, or blood knight lances having 1” reach is either very lazy or very out of touch. I understand that there’s limited capacity to write and test new rules even small ones, but I’m a pretty firm believer in doing something right or not doing it at all. Apart from anything it just feels bad to pay for something new, and it barely provide any significant improvements or interesting changes to the faction you love.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

1 hour ago, MotherGoose said:

Either way this isn't a preorder for me - I'll check the videos out when they release and see whether it's worth buying an entire new book for or just waiting for wahapedia to update, khorne was different as they were SO old that I knew they'd have big changes and wanted a new tome.

My plan is to pick up the OBR book at launch (mostly because I do not yet have an OBR book) and to get the new Soulblight book some time later.

I wrote something in this thread about changes that I expect from the book previously. I would predict a change to how healing works in the army that makes use of the Rally command, a rework of the subfactions to the new standard and lots of warscroll changes. I don't expect SBGL to get new core mechanics, but I would expect the army to feel pretty different after the update, because design paradigms have really changed for AoS in the last two years.

[JackStreicher]

4 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

My plan is to pick up the OBR book at launch (mostly because I do not yet have an OBR book) and to get the new Soulblight book some time later.

I wrote something in this thread about changes that I expect from the book previously. I would predict a change to how healing works in the army that makes use of the Rally command, a rework of the subfactions to the new standard and lots of warscroll changes. I don't expect SBGL to get new core mechanics, but I would expect the army to feel pretty different after the update, because design paradigms have really changed for AoS in the last two years.

I could imagine that our healing will be something like "Rally can be used even if the unit is in combat" and "rally can be issued up to two times per Character with Keyword X in the army"

Apart from that likely changes:
A fix for Black Knighs -> Grave Guard on Horses
A fix for Blood Knights -> Range 2 +1 rend

A fix for Zombie Dragons -> ramping up the damage is needed.
A fix for Terrorgheists -> Damage ramp-up!
An actual role for Giant Bats
Increasing the usability of Neferata


Wished Changes:
Generalisation of Vyrkos units - Most named Characters become generic characters. Undead Ogors bodyguards become generic. Vargskyr becoming a real threat and generic. (it'd be such an easy home-run)

WAY punchier Vampier Lords
More Powerful Necromancers (let them ride a corpse cart again)
Heavily ramped up Damage and usability of each Coven Throne, Palaquin and Mortis Engine unit (these guys have been banned to the cabinet for 2 Tomes in a row)

Making Nagash scary again, please?


Just to name a few ideas (SBGL are my favourite  (for 16 years) and oldest faction, I have an endless reperoire of ideas concernign them)

[MotherGoose]

5 hours ago, TechnoVampire said:

On a general note I don’t think there’s ever much excuse for making people pay for a new battletome that’s mostly copy and pasted from the old one. If the current book is so good it doesn’t need any significant changes, then the faction doesn’t require a new book, and if you’re going to the effort of printing a new book that people have to pay for to access the most current rules, then it only makes sense to change things that aren’t working, or are out of date. I don’t think the SBGL battletome needs anything like an overhaul, but to ignore obviously poor design elements, such as lore of the vampires having 5 different ways of rolling multiple dice to attempt to do a small number of mortal wounds, or blood knight lances having 1” reach is either very lazy or very out of touch. I understand that there’s limited capacity to write and test new rules even small ones, but I’m a pretty firm believer in doing something right or not doing it at all. Apart from anything it just feels bad to pay for something new, and it barely provide any significant improvements or interesting changes to the faction you love.

Yep completely agree. My brother collects lumineth and got the collectors edition when it came out, then like 4 months later there was another book with the other half of the army, then like 4 months after that there was another book... I'm a strong believer that the tomes should have tons of lore and awesome artwork, cool pictures and paint tutorials and maybe the rules too - but then make the rules alone and warscrolls free to download and any updates free to download. OR you buy the book at a premium (30-40 quid each time is expensive), and then you're given a free digital version too which will be updated with faqs and new rules etc. Currently you fork out for a book that's outdated in a month or two.

At least we are a step in the right direction with the app using updated rules and faqs.

[Sception]

I'm not saying there will be no changes.  just that from experience the things that get changes are often not the bits people want or expect.  Once again, consider the mawtribes book.  people expected obvious needed improvements to the bcr traits and to chronically bad units like the thundertusk.  instead those things were left the same, the already strong frostlord on stonehorn got even stronger, and the big cannon got such a big buff that the whole faction went from a melee charge army to an artillery countercharge army, like obr were back in 2e when the crawler was good.

Or consider the spell lores in the current book and how they changed from LoN.  in LoN the deathmage lore was pretty goid & the vampire lore was pretty bad, and in SBGL, a book that specifically centered vampires, they left the pretty good necromancer lore mostly in place and took the pretty bad vampire lore and made it way, way worse.

You can't just assume the devs see the same problems with our book that we do.  they likely aren't a long term player, and may not have played any games at all with or against the current army before rewriting their rules.

making vampire lords stronger in particular.  I want to see it too, but vampire lords, at least those nit riding zombie dragons, haven't been meaningfully stronger or tougher than regular human fighty heroes since age of sigmar's release, despite 4 chances at their rules, so it seems gw just doesn't see vampires that way in AoS. 

regardless, we do finally have a rules preview, albeit specifically for the new named hero:

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/04/04/ivya-volga-is-a-consummate-monster-hunter-who-brings-the-cruelest-creatures-of-ghur-to-heel/

without profile or points cost you can't say for sure of course, but from the preview she's already looking a lot better than I expected, so if you want a strong counter argument to my reflexive negativity, there you go.   Look at that debuff on monsters in melee!

the end of the article has mentions further battletome previews later in the week, but the phrasing is curious:

"Check back later this week for your first look at some of the new powers available to the Soulblight dynasties."

"new powers", eh?  Sounds interesting.  Sounds almost like...

No.  Not getting my hopes up.  We'll see it when we see it.

Edited April 4, 2023 by Sception

[TechnoVampire]

22 minutes ago, Sception said:

I'm not saying there will be no changes.  just that from experience the things that get changes are often not the bits people want or expect.  Once again, consider the mawtribes book.  people expected obvious needed improvements to the bcr traits and to chronically bad units like the thundertusk.  instead those things were left the same, the already strong frostlord on stonehorn got even stronger, and the big cannon got such a big buff that the whole faction went from a melee charge army to an artillery countercharge army, like obr were back in 2e when the crawler was good.

Or consider the spell lores in the current book and how they changed from LoN.  in LoN the deathmage lore was pretty goid & the vampire lore was pretty bad, and in SBGL, a book that specifically centered vampires, they left the pretty good necromancer lore mostly in place and took the pretty bad vampire lore and made it way, way worse.

You can't just assume the devs see the same problems with our book that we do.  they likely aren't a long term player, and may not have played any games at all with or against the current army before rewriting their rules.

making vampire lords stronger in particular.  I want to see it too, but vampire lords, at least those nit riding zombie dragons, haven't been meaningfully stronger or tougher than regular human fighty heroes since age of sigmar's release, despite 4 chances at their rules, so it seems gw just doesn't see vampires that way in AoS. 

regardless, we do finally have a rules preview, albeit specifically for the new named hero:

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/04/04/ivya-volga-is-a-consummate-monster-hunter-who-brings-the-cruelest-creatures-of-ghur-to-heel/

without profile or points cost you can't say for sure of course, but from the preview she's already looking a lot better than I expected, so if you want a strong counter argument to my reflexive negativity, there you go.   Look at that debuff on monsters in melee!

the end of the article has mentions further battletome previews later in the week, but the phrasing is curious:

"Check back later this week for your first look at some of the new powers available to the Soulblight dynasties."

"new powers", eh?  Sounds interesting.  Sounds almost like...

No.  Not getting my hopes up.  We'll see it when we see it.

Cool new rules for the hero indeed and the wording at the end of the article is dangerously close to tempting me into hoping for something fresh, but I dare not! 

I think you’re approach is pretty spot on. GW often make some very left-field design choices that confuse the player base. I’d like to think they have some kind of secret master plan, but I think your explanation about lack of testing and resources is a much more likely explanation. 

For my part I was mainly pointing out what I see to be quite obvious elements that could do with a refresh to modernise the army, but they in no way reflect my expectations of GW’s approach. 

ultimately I think we all just want the same thing; to see our favourite factions receive a little bit of the love and attention they deserve, in ways that seems obvious to us - the people that play them regularly… I just wish GW employees would browse these forums occasionally 🤓

(edit) or just employ more play testers, which feels well within their means considering their profits over the last few years. 

Edited April 4, 2023 by TechnoVampire

[TechnoVampire]

17 minutes ago, Sception said:

Or consider the spell lores in the current book and how they changed from LoN.  in LoN the deathmage lore was pretty goid & the vampire lore was pretty bad, and in SBGL, a book that specifically centered vampires, they left the pretty good necromancer lore mostly in place and took the pretty bad vampire lore and made it way, way worse.

This one has always completely baffled me in particular. 

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

Just now, TechnoVampire said:

This one has always completely baffled me in particular. 

There is an element to this where, as players, we tend to see areas where our faction is weak as something that needs to be fixed, while the designers might see it more as part of the faction's identity. We might see it as a weakness that SBGL has no ranged units, but they might see it as a balancing feature. They might think the same about the lore of vampires: According to the lore, vampires are supposed to be exceptionally tough, proficient warriors and literal sources of death magic. But actually just making them extremely good in all those areas on the tabletop is not really very good game design. So maybe the idea is that, OK, all vampires get to be casters, but they get this trait basically for free to keep their point cost reasonable, so their lore is not going to be that strong.

Honestly, if in the next book the lore of vampires is just Soulpike, Pinions and a direct damage spell, I'd be OK with that. It's a well-focussed tool kit. Just give dedicated caster vampires a good warscroll spell or access to the lore of deathmages.

[TechnoVampire]

15 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

There is an element to this where, as players, we tend to see areas where our faction is weak as something that needs to be fixed, while the designers might see it more as part of the faction's identity. We might see it as a weakness that SBGL has no ranged units, but they might see it as a balancing feature. They might think the same about the lore of vampires: According to the lore, vampires are supposed to be exceptionally tough, proficient warriors and literal sources of death magic. But actually just making them extremely good in all those areas on the tabletop is not really very good game design. So maybe the idea is that, OK, all vampires get to be casters, but they get this trait basically for free to keep their point cost reasonable, so their lore is not going to be that strong.

Honestly, if in the next book the lore of vampires is just Soulpike, Pinions and a direct damage spell, I'd be OK with that. It's a well-focussed tool kit. Just give dedicated caster vampires a good warscroll spell or access to the lore of deathmages.

Valid point for sure. As players we will favour one or two factions above the rest and probably view balance within them less objectively than GW. Personally I most enjoy when the rules feel unique to each faction, and reflect the lore and the themes of the army mechanically, and I think that GW has been making big strides in this direction with the 3.0 tomes. (I also play Nighthaunt and I love their current tome for this reason).
 

I think in this regard SBGL still have some work to be done, and the current tome feels dated compared to newer ones specifically in regard to lore and themes being reflected on the table (vampires are a perfect example). I don’t want to seem overly negative, as I think lately GW has been getting a lot of things right (using meta data to inform design choice is long overdue, but I celebrate them finally doing it) so I just hope they continue the new trend and don’t relapse into old patterns when they start to feel like things are comfortable (AKA SBGL is a 3.0 tome so let’s just copy it). 
 

fingers crossed for the new book being another step in the right direction. 

[Sception]

2 hours ago, TechnoVampire said:

(edit) or just employ more play testers, which feels well within their means considering their profits over the last few years. 

The problem with more playtesters is that it inevitably leads to more leaks.  This has been a recurring pattern over the last couple decades of GW rules development.  They'll start taking balance more seriously and bring on more play testers, including people from the competitive community, then they'll start having entire playtest army books leaking months before release and respond by firing most of the play test crew, going back to mostly just the dev team and a handful of trusted individuals who maybe aren't the most competitive & don't necessarily have experience with any particular faction.  But then you start seeing wildly unbalanced books - stuff that clearly had no QA applied to the rules themselves, and eventually that gets enough negative attention that GW makes a show of re-committing to balance and taking on more testers again.  We've seen this go back and forth a few times.

The main thing is that rules dev attention seems to go hand in hand with model range attention.  Not in the sense that new models are deliberately made op, but rather a big event release that gets the studio time to design and manufacture a bunch of new kits also gets the studio time to take a close look at the rules and get more games in to see how those rules feel on the tabletop.  Hence the heavy revision to our warscrolls - including many that had been largely unchanged from Compendium: Vampire Counts to Grand Alliance: Death to Legions of Nagash -  corresponded with the major update to our model range last time around.  Hence why I do expect major updates to the Seraphon Rules with their new book and model range, and still hold out hope for major updates to the FEC rules later this edition.

If the minis side of the studio only had time for a quick pity hero, then I doubt the rules writer had much time for more than a quick revision to our faction rules & warscrolls.  That doesn't mean significant changes are impossible.  As an example off the top of my head - again, just an example, not a change I actually expect to see - removing the 1/turn limit on healing a given unit with invocation is a miniscule change that would have a significant effect on how the army plays on the table.

....

Another thing worth considering is that the memories of developers last longer than the rules that form those memories.  There's an expression, 'snakebit', relating to the phrase "once bitten, twice shy".  Negative play experiences can result in continuing nerfs over multiple revisions to the rules even after rules that caused the initial negative experience were removed.  In 40k, the 3.5 revision to chaos marines was amazing, but also way over the top in power level relative to the rest of the game, and caused such a reaction that chaos books seemed to be held down for multiple editions thereafter, all the way to late 7th edition, out of fear of bringing back the bad old days of 3.5.  It might be hard for some of us to remember today, but early 2nd edition Legions of Nagash was absolutely one of those legendarily-bad-play-experience factions.  Multiple major tournaments closed on Nagash+grimghast mirror matches.  LoN recursion was off the charts for its time, and even as other books caught up in power level and our win rate fell back into the midfield, it was still a memorably bad play experience when 30 grimghasts died only to reappear at full strength moments later.  Preventing the crossover power of invocation & ghosts is likely part of why both nighthaunts and soulblight had their rules re-written to not play nice together as allies anymore (SBGL allied heroes can't invoke in nighthaunt armies anymore, allied vamp lords can't use their command ability to buff nighthaunt summonables, nighthaunt allies in SBGL armies aren't even ethereal anymore), and that over the top recursion leading to bad experiences against LoN is exactly why our healing is so much weaker now than it used to be, weaker even than some armies where healing isn't a core part of their narrative identity.

Frankly, I'm /still/ impressed that the devs had the presence of mind and restraint to improve the power of many of our warscrolls while they were weakening our faction rules.  SBGL was a nerf to LoN, but a dramatically more considered and better implemented nerf than pretty much any such faction nerf I'd seen in the past, and I've been playing GW games for a long time.

But the point is those memories of losing hopeless games to overpowered undead legions in the early days of 2e are still strong in many people's memories, likely including some of the devs, and it seems likely that they'll be, if anything, overly cautious with our rules for a while, particularly with the recursion.

[Sception]

You know, if their rules stay mostly the same as they are now, the Askurgan Trueblades would work pretty well with Ivya.  Maybe not the best aesthetic match, but mechanically they'd pair up to make for a heck of an anti-monster silver bullet.  I'm not sure what monsters exactly are tearing up the current meta enough to justify that sort of dedicated counter, but still.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

24 minutes ago, Sception said:

You know, if their rules stay mostly the same as they are now, the Askurgan Trueblades would work pretty well with Ivya.  Maybe not the best aesthetic match, but mechanically they'd pair up to make for a heck of an anti-monster silver bullet.  I'm not sure what monsters exactly are tearing up the current meta enough to justify that sort of dedicated counter, but still.

Her ability should work just fine on any hero on a monster mount, which is a good amount of centerpieces. As always, the problem will be delivering her into combat, especially against stuff that has a 12" flying move like a lot of monsters. But she has those wolfy legs, so maybe she gets a 10" base like the Vyrkos Bloodborn. Could be enough in conjunction with Pinions.

[TechnoVampire]

2 hours ago, Sception said:

The problem with more playtesters is that it inevitably leads to more leaks.  This has been a recurring pattern over the last couple decades of GW rules development.  They'll start taking balance more seriously and bring on more play testers, including people from the competitive community, then they'll start having entire playtest army books leaking months before release and respond by firing most of the play test crew, going back to mostly just the dev team and a handful of trusted individuals who maybe aren't the most competitive & don't necessarily have experience with any particular faction.  But then you start seeing wildly unbalanced books - stuff that clearly had no QA applied to the rules themselves, and eventually that gets enough negative attention that GW makes a show of re-committing to balance and taking on more testers again.  We've seen this go back and forth a few times.

The main thing is that rules dev attention seems to go hand in hand with model range attention.  Not in the sense that new models are deliberately made op, but rather a big event release that gets the studio time to design and manufacture a bunch of new kits also gets the studio time to take a close look at the rules and get more games in to see how those rules feel on the tabletop.  Hence the heavy revision to our warscrolls - including many that had been largely unchanged from Compendium: Vampire Counts to Grand Alliance: Death to Legions of Nagash -  corresponded with the major update to our model range last time around.  Hence why I do expect major updates to the Seraphon Rules with their new book and model range, and still hold out hope for major updates to the FEC rules later this edition.

If the minis side of the studio only had time for a quick pity hero, then I doubt the rules writer had much time for more than a quick revision to our faction rules & warscrolls.  That doesn't mean significant changes are impossible.  As an example off the top of my head - again, just an example, not a change I actually expect to see - removing the 1/turn limit on healing a given unit with invocation is a miniscule change that would have a significant effect on how the army plays on the table.

....

Another thing worth considering is that the memories of developers last longer than the rules that form those memories.  There's an expression, 'snakebit', relating to the phrase "once bitten, twice shy".  Negative play experiences can result in continuing nerfs over multiple revisions to the rules even after rules that caused the initial negative experience were removed.  In 40k, the 3.5 revision to chaos marines was amazing, but also way over the top in power level relative to the rest of the game, and caused such a reaction that chaos books seemed to be held down for multiple editions thereafter, all the way to late 7th edition, out of fear of bringing back the bad old days of 3.5.  It might be hard for some of us to remember today, but early 2nd edition Legions of Nagash was absolutely one of those legendarily-bad-play-experience factions.  Multiple major tournaments closed on Nagash+grimghast mirror matches.  LoN recursion was off the charts for its time, and even as other books caught up in power level and our win rate fell back into the midfield, it was still a memorably bad play experience when 30 grimghasts died only to reappear at full strength moments later.  Preventing the crossover power of invocation & ghosts is likely part of why both nighthaunts and soulblight had their rules re-written to not play nice together as allies anymore (SBGL allied heroes can't invoke in nighthaunt armies anymore, allied vamp lords can't use their command ability to buff nighthaunt summonables, nighthaunt allies in SBGL armies aren't even ethereal anymore), and that over the top recursion leading to bad experiences against LoN is exactly why our healing is so much weaker now than it used to be, weaker even than some armies where healing isn't a core part of their narrative identity.

Frankly, I'm /still/ impressed that the devs had the presence of mind and restraint to improve the power of many of our warscrolls while they were weakening our faction rules.  SBGL was a nerf to LoN, but a dramatically more considered and better implemented nerf than pretty much any such faction nerf I'd seen in the past, and I've been playing GW games for a long time.

But the point is those memories of losing hopeless games to overpowered undead legions in the early days of 2e are still strong in many people's memories, likely including some of the devs, and it seems likely that they'll be, if anything, overly cautious with our rules for a while, particularly with the recursion.

Fair… I think the AOS community will forever be haunted (pun intended) by LON + grimghasts. I’m ashamed to say it’s what pulled me over to LON initially and then SBGL, as I was getting tired of losing 90% of my games with nighthaunt. 
 
the play testing issue is interesting and something I’d never considered. 

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

New Nagash:

I'm a big fan of the increased consistency. The bracketing is really managable now. Casting 4 spells at +3 at worst seems pretty great. Since he lost his Arcane Bolt machine gun, maybe we will be glad if the Lore of Vampires ends up containing four direct damage spells again this time around?

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

Also, cossposting the points:

EDIT: Crossposting them into the wrong thread, that is.

Edited April 6, 2023 by Neil Arthur Hotep

[ArcLight]

New article with some more Soulblight rules: https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/04/06/battletome-soulblight-gravelords-ushers-in-a-new-era-of-ravenous-spell-slinging-vampires/

I like the new idea for the locus of Shyish.