Discussing the quality of rules in AoS

[MitGas]

14 minutes ago, Greybeard86 said:

Yes, please. Keyword radicalization really kills some super fun varied lists. When will I be able to field my trolls and gobbos together?

You know, that's actually one of the biggest reasons why I think so too - our GG player also wants to use troggoths with his gobbos without it feeling like he's penalizing himself. 

[JackStreicher]

Imo it should not be hard to make any army decent, flavorful. The same goes for warscrolls. Most people ask for nothing more. Instead we get a mess that easily could have been avoided. 
Putting out half baked rules, without a clear goal in mind is no longer timely. Especially since much smaller companies create way more engaging, fun, solid and interesting rules than GW.

 

Yet let‘s be honest: GW mostly operates like a patriarchal, conservative business out of the 80s

[RexHavoc]

2 hours ago, Mcthew said:

The more this community moves to preserving the good of AoS, ignoring the hype, the next new thing, homebrewing proper rules etc the better for the hobby, rather than for GW - who might supply the game and models... but remember, it is us, the players, that keeps the game alive.

This is the answer to almost all the issues that people have with the hobby as a whole, but sadly so many people are stuck in the mindset that it needs to be official and from GW to be used. People can hobby however they like, we all like different aspects after all and perhaps some people are only wanting the out-of-box & official experience, but I've never understood the mindset of people that want that but continue to pay for products that they don't think offer that experience.

I've said it a million times here in the past month, but the quicker people can learn to separate the hobby from 'TheHobby©™', which is the commensalistic side of GW that a high percentage of the complaints are usually about, the longer the game will survive.

Yes, we should be able to buy a polished product from GW, but they've proven time and again that they are happy with how they release rules and how they make money and they won't change until the market forces them too.

[JackStreicher]

28 minutes ago, RexHavoc said:

but sadly so many people are stuck in the mindset that it needs to be official and from GW to be used

This is the biggest issue of them all. 

[Phasteon]

Why does every discussion in this forum lately evolve into a „GW is bad/evil and wants to steal our money and they hate my army“-type of thread? 🤔

Are people just generally anti-GW/toxic/frustrated because they dont have a grip on their game or do I just dont see the „evil truth“ ? 

As far as I‘m concerned GW is pretty good at giving the people what they want which ultimately leads to increased sales. 

Be it the new „high elves“ people cried for years about,

More balanced rules (AoS 2.0 and the battleplans did a lot to achieve that and we are getting a new edition soon) 

More and quicker information before releases and whatnot. 

I‘ve never felt so involved in the hobby and the designprocesses as I am now and still there are so many people hating on GW and the game (funnily enough still playing it LOL) 

When you ask for constructive criticism you get 4-5 rational posts and then BOOM - complete escalation as the GW bashers chime in and recite their litanies of eternal hate to open our eyes on why we should stop liking GW/AoS as its so bad. 

Kind of tiresome.

 

Edit: And before people call me a „Fanboy“

1. Yes I proudly am and rightfully so as the hobby is probably one of the best parts of my life. 

2. I absolutely acknowledge that AoS has some flaws (as all games have), BUT they are not half as bad as people make them look like and compared to other games I play its much more enjoyable. 

Edited May 29, 2021 by Phasteon

[Greybeard86]

11 minutes ago, JackStreicher said:

This is the biggest issue of them all. 

This has been discussed to death, though. GW are equivalent to basic manners & politeness. With strangers, they ensure less bumpy communication / interaction, but you may replace them with your own set for rules with friends (inside jokes, better understanding of intent).

If you play mostly in a close-knit environment, GW's rules be darned. Though it does take effort to replace them, and you might not want to go through the trouble. But if you play frequently with strangers, they are a strong default.

I believe that Swedish competitive rules and other player-driven efforts are a good compromise. But GW does try to compete with such efforts, since it takes away power from them. Ultimately, I believe GW has too many bad incentives and we'd be better with others making "competitive standard rules".

[Greybeard86]

7 minutes ago, Phasteon said:

Why does every discussion in this forum lately evolve into a „GW is bad/evil and wants to steal our money and they hate my army“-type of thread? 🤔

[...]

When you ask for constructive criticism you get 4-5 rational posts and then BOOM - complete escalation as the GW bashers chime in and recite their litanies of eternal hate to open our eyes on why we should stop liking GW/AoS as its so bad. 

Kind of tiresome.

Well, I think that it is true that it can develop quickly. Ultimately, though, I'd say most people here find some aspect of the game to be good enough to stick around. The critical bit comes with the hobby, I'd say

But at the end of the day, you can simply ignore such posts? I am not sure if there is an ignore function here, but scrolling past some posts shouldn't be too hard. Plus the mods do take out the louder grumbling.

[RexHavoc]

6 minutes ago, Greybeard86 said:

But if you play frequently with strangers, they are a strong default.

I'm not a very sociable person at all, so perhaps I'm missing a part of the puzzle, but I've still never understood this as a defence at not being able to fix an issue themselves for a game. Who are these travelling sales people that only play with strangers week after week? Now, I totally get that there are tournament players that will travel and play with strangers, but then tournaments often put out a rules pack that alters the rules or define expectations to stop any miscommunications when potentially playing with strangers.

I just have this image every time this is brought up of the people that refuse to talk to their opponent before a game, only to show up one week and having accidentally discovered their opponents name they've now had to stop playing them.

Warhammer is a pretty geeky hobby still and whilst Gw have done everything they can to bring in those mainstream dollars, the hobby is still filled with geeky people that love to talk about their hobby, the game, their armies. But they can't have a five minute discussion prior to playing a game about rules or their proxied models or their kit bashes or any of the other things that might affect someone else's enjoyment of a game?

I'm not knocking anyone else's hobby with this, but I'm just baffled by the amount of people that mention playing with strangers, when it really must be the smallest percentage of all players in the hobby.
 

[Feii]

30 minutes ago, Phasteon said:

Why does every discussion in this forum lately evolve into a „GW is bad/evil and wants to steal our money and they hate my army“-type of thread? 🤔

Are people just generally anti-GW/toxic/frustrated because they dont have a grip on their game or do I just dont see the „evil truth“ ? 

As far as I‘m concerned GW is pretty good at giving the people what they want which ultimately leads to increased sales. 

Be it the new „high elves“ people cried for years about,

More balanced rules (AoS 2.0 and the battleplans did a lot to achieve that and we are getting a new edition soon) 

More and quicker information before releases and whatnot. 

I‘ve never felt so involved in the hobby and the designprocesses as I am now and still there are so many people hating on GW and the game (funnily enough still playing it LOL) 

When you ask for constructive criticism you get 4-5 rational posts and then BOOM - complete escalation as the GW bashers chime in and recite their litanies of eternal hate to open our eyes on why we should stop liking GW/AoS as its so bad. 

Kind of tiresome.

 

Edit: And before people call me a „Fanboy“

1. Yes I proudly am and rightfully so as the hobby is probably one of the best parts of my life. 

2. I absolutely acknowledge that AoS has some flaws (as all games have), BUT they are not half as bad as people make them look like and compared to other games I play its much more enjoyable. 

I think most people find the core game rules (with some terrain shenanigans) invredibly good. The models are the best in the world - not a hyperbole. The only thing that lacks this game are proper army rules - which is not a problem in other GW gane systems. (There isa huge difference betwren something outdated and releasing a new battletome that has the same problems as some codexes in 40k that are 3 years old and outdated) 

 

If you did a veil of ignorance thought experiment and chose an army at random and knowing this game you would most likely not play this game. - on top of that filter out elven factions and this game’s army balance is attrocious. 
 

 

Not to mention that elves having better rules leads to more sales and that will shape how this company schedules the future releases. Elves will become primaris of this game but at least in 40k they were able to fix them at least power lvl wise.

[Greybeard86]

4 minutes ago, RexHavoc said:

I'm not a very sociable person at all, so perhaps I'm missing a part of the puzzle, but I've still never understood this as a defence at not being able to fix an issue themselves for a game. Who are these travelling sales people that only play with strangers week after week?
 

Well, clubs are a place where this happens, besides tournies.

In any case, even if you do play among friends or people you know, GW rules are the foundation upon which you tweak. Very few people design their own set of rules to play with miniature figurines from scratch (and even fewer can design them well). And since you do not want to discuss every week every single detail of the rules to see what's broken, people gravitate to GW matches rules for the most part.

Of course, a few clearly OP things might be banned here and there, or some groups might stick to previous formats (6th WHFB has a following). But again, GW is pretty central to how the game is played almost everywhere.

The only real counterbalance I can thing of is player organization based rules. They have a similar smell ("official"), they are often better balanced than GW's rules. E.g. 9th age has its issues, but win rates never really got so out of whack.

In any case, all that to say that good balanced rules are a needed foundation for a fun game, as they make it easier for games to feel fun and challenging.

[PraetorDragoon]

It takes a special quality of rules writer, to take an underperforming monster in an underperforming army, and actually make it worse by having it able to buff your opponent. I am actually in awe of that skill.

[Phasteon]

37 minutes ago, Feii said:

Not to mention that elves having better rules leads to more sales and that will shape how this company schedules the future releases. Elves will become primaris of this game but at least in 40k they were able to fix them at least power lvl wise.

Where did you get that impression? 

I mean Stormcast Eternals are quite obviously the Primaris of AoS, even getting a new model range with the new edition. 

Yes, Aelves have some of the better rules in AoS, be it DoK, IDK or LRL (except Sylvaneth aka Woodelves, they are doomed - jk) 

but why does that make them appear to be GWs lovechild? 

Chaos, Death, Destruction and even other Order armies have the same amount of strong rulesets, hell in our gaming group nobody wants to face duardin of any type as Fyreslayers and KO are dominating almost every game. 

Still nobody talks about dwarven supremacy, which I get because duardin are awesome and everyone likes them, unlike those annoying long ears. 

But still, I can‘t share the opinion that aelves are getting the best of the best and the most attention while other armies are left behind. 

Even Skaven got a bonkers battletome and they are literally cowardly rats. 

I‘d 100% say that there are armies that fell behind powerwise, but those are few exceptions to an otherwise solid range of armies. 

And even when playing those „bad armies“ you still have every chance to win a game with the right list against the right match up. 

Those matches are just not gonna happen publicly and are not documented because most hyper competitive players dont play those armies. 

I‘ve seen literally every army out there win/lose games. 

[Feii]

13 minutes ago, Phasteon said:

Where did you get that impression? 

I mean Stormcast Eternals are quite obviously the Primaris of AoS, even getting a new model range with the new edition. 

Yes, Aelves have some of the better rules in AoS, be it DoK, IDK or LRL (except Sylvaneth aka Woodelves, they are doomed - jk) 

but why does that make them appear to be GWs lovechild? 

Chaos, Death, Destruction and even other Order armies have the same amount of strong rulesets, hell in our gaming group nobody wants to face duardin of any type as Fyreslayers and KO are dominating almost every game. 

Still nobody talks about dwarven supremacy, which I get because duardin are awesome and everyone likes them, unlike those annoying long ears. 

But still, I can‘t share the opinion that aelves are getting the best of the best and the most attention while other armies are left behind. 

Even Skaven got a bonkers battletome and they are literally cowardly rats. 

I‘d 100% say that there are armies that fell behind powerwise, but those are few exceptions to an otherwise solid range of armies. 

And even when playing those „bad armies“ you still have every chance to win a game with the right list against the right match up. 

Those matches are just not gonna happen publicly and are not documented because most hyper competitive players dont play those armies. 

I‘ve seen literally every army out there win/lose games. 

Dont know dude. IDK being a top tier army since their release? Same goes for DoK. LRL are at least an A tier army. Half of the BR books is about them and they are moving the narrative forward the most. They have the most Gods, Lore time and consistently the best rules. 
 

calling SCE primaris is just cringe and false at this point.

[Galas]

I mean. Look at this new revenant Sylvaneth musician. How can you have such a cool model and make such bad rules for him? 275 points for 7 wounds and his only "unique" rule is a bravery aura? 

 

Compared that with the Lore Seekers that infiltrate your opponent and block objetives. I'm not even talking about the power of the rules but how inspired and interesting ones are and the others could not  be more lazy.

[Phasteon]

15 minutes ago, Feii said:

Dont know dude. IDK being a top tier army since their release? Same goes for DoK. LRL are at least an A tier army. Half of the BR books is about them and they are moving the narrative forward the most. They have the most Gods, Lore time and consistently the best rules. 
 

calling SCE primaris is just cringe and false at this point.

I dont know about BR, there were so many other factions involved in each of those books and to be fair, in the end there is also almost always a big chunk of chaos involved so your point is again moot. 

I stopped caring about tournament statistics / tier lists too much because the longer you search the more different lists you find. 

And those statistics often just show which results the top 0,5% of players achieve - tournament statistics differs from regular/casual/local meta games strongly anyway. 

„They have the most gods“ 

Ahem Chaos wants to talk to you? 

 

And the last part was just annoying tbh, I dont care what your perception in that regard is, but Stormcast Eternals are literally getting the same treatment as Space Marines in 40k so its a justified comparison. 

Every other opinion just lacks objective criteria. 

[Phasteon]

10 minutes ago, Galas said:

I mean. Look at this new revenant Sylvaneth musician. How can you have such a cool model and make such bad rules for him? 275 points for 7 wounds and his only "unique" rule is a bravery aura? 

 

Compared that with the Lore Seekers that infiltrate your opponent and block objetives. I'm not even talking about the power of the rules but how inspired and interesting ones are and the others could not  be more lazy.

Except he also got a decent close combat profile, 4+ wound shrug, 2 casts at +1 which makes him the best Sylvaneth caster and a spell that can deal more damage than kroak - and he actually can stand atop of a balewind vortex. 

All in all he is a pretty solid Hero and I‘d definately include him in a Sylvaneth army.

That being said, the song IS kinda lame, would have been much cooler if you got to choose between different effects. 

I get why you call the design lazy tho, but its not a bad Warscroll. 

[Clan's Cynic]

16 hours ago, JackStreicher said:

 

Why is this the case? They have the resources, the manpower and the experience to guarantee that every Warscroll should be fine. Yet this is not the case. It‘s honestly a disgrace.

How can a Warscroll like Black Knights be made and no one realizes that it‘s rubbish until it is too late? GW‘s rule designers are no school boys writing rules for fun, they are professionals. So HOW can such nonsense as bad Warscrolls still exist!?

As a customer I expect a high quality product. This includes the design AND the content, especially since their rules are expensive and GW is one of the last companies that actually charges a premium for rules.

People keep happily buying it no matter how sub-par the quality is. Space Marines for example had pretty much never been top tier until the end of 8th edition, but they've still flown off the shelves like hot cakes for decades. 

Why should GW invest manpower and money into making sure they have solid internal and external balance, well-written rules, etc, when they're going to sell just as well regardless? That's probably how they see it. Other games live and die by the quality of their game/rules - and even then, it's often not enough - but one consistent is GW's popularity ensures they don't have to care.

Edited May 29, 2021 by Clan's Cynic

[zilberfrid]

2 hours ago, Phasteon said:

Why does every discussion in this forum lately evolve into a „GW is bad/evil and wants to steal our money and they hate my army“-type of thread? 🤔

Are people just generally anti-GW/toxic/frustrated because they dont have a grip on their game or do I just dont see the „evil truth“ ? 

As far as I‘m concerned GW is pretty good at giving the people what they want which ultimately leads to increased sales. 

Be it the new „high elves“ people cried for years about,

More balanced rules (AoS 2.0 and the battleplans did a lot to achieve that and we are getting a new edition soon) 

More and quicker information before releases and whatnot. 

I‘ve never felt so involved in the hobby and the designprocesses as I am now and still there are so many people hating on GW and the game (funnily enough still playing it LOL) 

When you ask for constructive criticism you get 4-5 rational posts and then BOOM - complete escalation as the GW bashers chime in and recite their litanies of eternal hate to open our eyes on why we should stop liking GW/AoS as its so bad. 

Kind of tiresome.

 

Edit: And before people call me a „Fanboy“

1. Yes I proudly am and rightfully so as the hobby is probably one of the best parts of my life. 

2. I absolutely acknowledge that AoS has some flaws (as all games have), BUT they are not half as bad as people make them look like and compared to other games I play its much more enjoyable. 

Too often, the hobby is defined by GW.

Sci fi miniatures are 40k.

Fantasy miniatures are AoS.

For the rules as well, they are dominant.

I think giving a place to play is quite a valuable addition (which is unique to GW, general shops are not tied to a single system), but there are many aspects where GW is not the best.

New models are incredibly good, but things like Freeguild Handgunners and Deffkopta also are still sold. Price and fragility of new models is also a consideration, not to mention just preference.

The rules appeal to many, but others simply abide by them because GW is the monolith, even though another ruleset could fit them better.

 

Model-wise, I have a few main issues (talking just about new minis, even disregarding old Stormcast):

Scale creep making them incompatible with even older GW models.

Some models are extremely fragile.

While some representation exists, female sculpts are still rare.

Hero minis are way overpriced.

Rules wise, apart from what I've stated before, books are very pricy, and the quality just isn't there to warrant that price.

Not saying GW is entirely bad, but that people could look past the company to get more varied or even better profucts, for less money.

[Saturmorn Carvilli]

As Clan's Cynic alluded to, I think it is important to remind everyone that it is very likely that GW customers/players largely don't buy models for their rules.  I know as a fan forum community it can be sometimes be difficult to remember that by and large we are people that have been in this hobby for a while.  I would guess any that have more than 100 posts have seen at least one edition change, and significant number have played GW games since before AoS was a thing.  So we come from a very different angle than a number of GW customers. Be they new players, mostly painters or beer & pretzels/casual garagehammer players.

I know most of my GW miniatures collection was bought purely because I like the models without concern about rules or the game in general.  Most of the models I did purchase still weren't based on the specific rules at the time, rather; they were bought to fill slots or general roles I wanted for my army. 

For example: my S2D army I bought 2 old SC, box of Warriors and Knights initially.  I already had the Warcry starter (for Kill Team terrain/just to paint) as well as a Daemon Prince from my Chaos Space Marine army.  I knew I wanted big blocks Infantry and Cavalry as I believe in the trinity of rank and file (Infantry, Cavalry and Archers/Artillery).  For my first couple of games, I literally was using the Warscrolls that came with the build instructions as the S2D Battletome hadn't been released and was delayed at my store.  Even today, those models form the core of my army as that is what I want to play: a bunch of Chaos Warriors and Knights.  The only model I added to the army was the Chaos Shrine as I was told it had good rules. However, it still had to be decent model to me (which it is).  Because if I don't like the model, I am not getting it.  That's why my mostly mortal S2D army has no Marauder models.  Even if Marauders were the most broken, OP unit in all of AoS, I am not getting them. I don't like the look of them, and it is not a direction I am really interested in taking my army (though Warcry cultist models are the cat's pajamas).

 

I am sure the GW game designers try to get the balance right with the time and resources they have.  I suspect they don't have enough of either since games/models sell regardless. At the same time, I think the boost in sales over the last 3-4 years (basically starting with 8th ed 40k) has convinced GW somewhat that better balance/tighter rules sell better. Certainly, the rules are ways from good in terms of balance, but I think they are better than they have been (major hick-ups aside [cough] Codex: Space Marines 2019).  Honestly, I don't think the rules are ever going to be well-balanced (GW fiddles/changes with things way too much), but that's not the main reason I play their games anyways.

[yukishiro1]

The big problem with AOS rules isn't with rules balance per se, it's with a lack of unifying vision about what the game is supposed to be in the first place. You can fix bad balance with points, but no matter how many points cuts you give a book like Slaanesh or Soulblight, it is never going to belong in the same game as a book like LRL, despite having been released at almost the same time. They represent two very different ideas of what the game is supposed to be in terms of complexity, interactions, amount of rules that break the normal rules of the game, hard counters, buff stacking, access to MWs, etc. That's the basic problem. 

This is not a problem GW has with 40k, interestingly. All the 9th edition codexes feel like they belong in the same game, even if they aren't all equally powerful. But AOS is literally all over the place. 

Edited May 29, 2021 by yukishiro1

[Vaporlocke]

2 hours ago, Phasteon said:

 

I‘d 100% say that there are armies that fell behind powerwise, but those are few exceptions to an otherwise solid range of armies. 

And even when playing those „bad armies“ you still have every chance to win a game with the right list against the right match up. 

Those matches are just not gonna happen publicly and are not documented because most hyper competitive players dont play those armies. 

I‘ve seen literally every army out there win/lose games. 

It's really easy to dismiss other people's problems when they don't effect you or their problems actually help you. 

I play BoC, we've never been a top tier army even going back to WHFB. At our absolute best we were the bottom of the fat middle. In AoS we have a book that is full of rules that give benefits that other armies get normally but ours have major drawbacks or very specific restrictions to activate. In fact, they took a rule we've had since fantasy, Ambush, and gave a better version of it to a bunch of other armies-- and it's an even better version than our subfaction that specializes in ambushing. That's kinda hurtful.

So now we got a chance to get a few updates to bring us up a little in power level so that we're more in line with other books... But instead we got a sidegrade at best (Beastlord scroll), a major nerf to another unit that was already kinda bad (Jabberslythe), a rule change for a unit that was already struggling to find a role (Gors) with a major restriction (which still won't help them find a role to play), a conditional buff (warherd charges) that could have been just a flat buff, and a weak buff for another struggling unit (dragon ogors). Overall it's pretty insulting. 

So yeah, I can and have won with my goats, but it requires me to play perfectly at all times, whereas other armies can just plop down a bunch of broken units and faceroll to a win. I don't think it's asking too much for everyone to be at a similar power level, either bring everyone down to our level or bring the armies that are truly struggling up so that we can all enjoy the game. 

[azdimy]

It looks to me that the rules writers do not get enough time and books are often rushed creating these battletomes that disappoints.

Imo, the rules would be in a much better state if they were not tied to a physical book that need to go to print to meet a release schedule. The writers could have more time and adjust the rules based on more recent data as well as the ability to update the digital tome more often as needed instead of only addressing the extreme cases only twice a year

I think without changing the current model to release rules the balancing problem will not be addressed properly. Having 25+ armies in a game does not help either and gw should stop releasing new armies and focus more on the one they ve already released but I m sure this is not really compatible with the business model. Same issue with my recommendation to stop releasing physical books. In the end, money wins over game balance

[Beer & Pretzels Gamer]

19 minutes ago, yukishiro1 said:

The big problem with AOS rules isn't with rules balance per se, it's with a lack of unifying vision about what the game is supposed to be in the first place.

Agree that AoS has a design philosophy problem.  The better dynamic (though still not perfect as I know owning Tau and Tyranids) in 40k I think comes from a more settled set of factions.  I am really hoping that with 3.0 AoS settles into a more consistent set of factions allowing for either a design philosophy to emerge organically (best case) or be imposed too down (if necessary).

[mojojojo101]

Im not sure new editions are all that helpful with managing the rules sometimes either.

I think you can see this with AoS 2.0. The core rules seem to be in a reasonable position and most of the books are reasonably balanced (obviously a few exceptions). Now, pretty much as soon as the game is settling down GW is going to throw all the pieces up in the air and we have to start all over again.

I recognise their are business motivations at work here and so it's unlikely to change but sometimes a softer touch would probably be more appropriate.

 

 

[JackOfBlades]

8 hours ago, JackStreicher said:

Especially since much smaller companies create way more engaging, fun, solid and interesting rules than GW.

Which ones?