AoS 3 New Rules Discussion

[stus67]

I really don't think these are deserving of kneejerk doom and gloom reactions honestly. The most atrocious part about it is GW showing off rules and abilities without any larger ruleset context that could make a lot of reactions look premature.

[Bosskelot]

All the dripfeed does is make people angry until someone leaks the full ruleset two weeks before release.

Happened with 40K lol

[BaylorCorvette]

2 minutes ago, Bosskelot said:

All the dripfeed does is make people angry until someone leaks the full ruleset two weeks before release.

Happened with 40K lol

God I would love for that at this point. Because right now it looks like it's even more shooting dominant edition. So, *** Death I guess.

[stus67]

2 minutes ago, Bosskelot said:

All the dripfeed does is make people angry until someone leaks the full ruleset two weeks before release.

Happened with 40K lol

9th edition 40k is exactly what I'm thinking of when I see reactions to 3.0 lol. those were a hard few weeks to live through up until the release of indomitus.

[Enoby]

What realistic rules would people like to see to balance shooting, with the changes we can currently see in mind? 

[yukishiro1]

They know full well that drip-feed pisses people off, the marketing calculation is that "engagement" is more important than positive reactions, so provoking a lot of angst is better than not provoking any reaction at all. 

[Bosskelot]

1 minute ago, Enoby said:

What realistic rules would people like to see to balance shooting, with the changes we can currently see in mind? 

Personally I'd have wanted to see more comprehensive terrain and LOS rules. Not that this solves some egregious units (hello LRL!) but it is something at least. The fact that in their hype video for the new rules terrain was mentioned nowhere is a little concerning honestly.

Compare it to the similar video that 9th edition 40k got which everybody reacted to really positively because it looked like a bunch of ideas focused around fixing issues with 8th edition. The video for 3.0 is like half fixing stuff from 2.0 and half stuff which doesn't seem to matter or is actively not fixing issues.

This obviously doesn't mean these fixes or improvements are not there of course, and the actual act of playing the game can often give a drastically different result and outcome than theorycrafting on paper, but it's slightly concerning that a lot of this pre-release hype is avoiding talking about what many people to consider to be the biggest core issues with the ruleset and how, or if, they're being addressed.

[peasant]

It was needed unleash hell?! I Hope when we get the full picture the effect of such an aberration gets somehow diminished but Im getting disapointed

[Howdyhedberg]

Will they update savage orc arrowboys? They write that the new ability is good for them, but +1 to hit would make them hit at 6+?

[Ganigumo]

15 minutes ago, Grimrock said:

Yeah the drip feed is atrocious at this point, it's killing any and all excitement I had for the new edition and making me start contemplating what other games I could be playing instead. At this point GW should just release (or at the very least 'leak') a rules pdf and give people a couple weeks to dig through full rules before the new edition comes out. 

Given how AoS rules are free I have no idea why they didn't just drop the Core Rules PDF on us when they announced the edition.

1 minute ago, Enoby said:

What realistic rules would people like to see to balance shooting, with the changes we can currently see in mind? 

My preference was to see the specific handful of shooting units that were overpowered. Lets be honest, shooting was not broken, GW just continued to release more and more powerful shooting units and never nerfed it. Seriously, we haven't had any actual proper point adjustment for anything released since the KO/Tzeentch books and every single one of the bent shooting armies was released between then and now. 
Given these changes I don't know what they can can do, Unleash Hell needs to be immediately errata'd to only work if that enemy unit is within 3" of the unit shooting, and we need significant point increases to the good shooting units. Also a core battalion lets you pass wounds off a hero onto a nearby unit, maybe on a 3+.

[Warbossironteef]

Just now, Howdyhedberg said:

Will they update savage orc arrowboys? They write that the new ability is good for them, but +1 to hit would make them hit at 6+?

They dont need an update. They shoot 3 times and can get +1 from their spell lore. They are the classic high volume of shots vs quality. That said, other units that have both high volumes of shots and better to hit rolls do benefit more. 

[annarborhawk]

7 minutes ago, Howdyhedberg said:

Will they update savage orc arrowboys? They write that the new ability is good for them, but +1 to hit would make them hit at 6+?

Well, does it matter what they hit on? Looks like they can be given poisoned arrows too, so it's another volley of "6's are mortals" before the chargers (if any are left) can even get into the fight.

How many Sentinal volleys will charging Cav have to take now before they even get to the Warden line?

Edited June 8, 2021 by annarborhawk

[Scurvydog]

Unleash hell in itself is not the biggest problem, there is a penalty and only 1 unit can be targeted, so this could create a niche for "linebreakers" like the new annihilators. The problem is all these newer shooting units do not care about the hit penalty, all they care about is auto mortal wounds on 5+/6+, making armored linebreakers entirely pointless or any other defense you can think of.

A lot of armies do not have the ranged units to really make this ability broken, some like handgunners had it, but still did not break the game, simply because they are a balanced unit with counterplay and not extremely accurate. Units that always do the majority of their damage on unmodifiable rolls with no counterplay is the root of all evil.

[Beliman]

8 minutes ago, Enoby said:

What realistic rules would people like to see to balance shooting, with the changes we can currently see in mind? 

Maybe more CA Reactions (I know that we are not going to have so many CAs and some monsters are going to be insane with that....):

1. A new CA to make them crouch (only for non-monster/ non-cavalry units): -1 to be hit
2. A new CA for HERO units that can pass non-saved wounds to another friendly unit that was giving "Look Out Sir" bonus
3. New CA for MONSTERS units that give them -1 to be wounded.
4. All out Defense= +1 saves (we already have that)

Another thing that they could do is a new Core Batallion like:

• 1 Hero
• 2 battlelines

Each battleline unit from this batallion gain the Bodyguard ability (before allocating wounds to this Hero, you can pass this wounds to... yadda yadda). This ability only works for the Hero of this batallion.

[Golub87]

24 minutes ago, stus67 said:

I really don't think these are deserving of kneejerk doom and gloom reactions honestly. The most atrocious part about it is GW showing off rules and abilities without any larger ruleset context that could make a lot of reactions look premature.

The way they release new rules shows that they do not understand what was wrong with 2.0 and what frustrated people and if they do not understand what was wrong, why should there be any faith that they will be able to fix it?

In what world can someone both understand the problem and provide information on the new rule set in this way?

Edited June 8, 2021 by Golub87

[Ganigumo]

10 minutes ago, annarborhawk said:

Well, does it matter what they hit on? Looks like they can be given poisoned arrows too, so it's another volley of "6's are mortals" before the chargers (if any are left) can even get into the fight.

How many Sentinal volleys will charging Cav have to take now before they even get to the Warden line?

Bonesplitterz can't benefit from Kruleboyz allegiance abilities.
Kruleboyz crossbows might be as bad as sentinels though, but we'll need to wait and see how many shots they get.

[SpiritofHokuto]

5 minutes ago, Beliman said:

Maybe more CA Reactions (I know that we are not going to have so many CAs and some monsters are going to be insane with that....):

1. A new CA to make them crouch (only for non-monster/ non-cavalry units): -1 to be hit
2. A new CA for HERO units that can pass non-saved wounds to another friendly unit that was giving "Look Out Sir" bonus
3. New CA for MONSTERS units that give them -1 to be wounded.
4. All out Defense= +1 saves (we already have that)

Another thing that they could do is a new Core Batallion like:

• 1 Hero
• 2 battlelines

Each battleline unit from this batallion gain the Bodyguard ability (before allocating wounds to this Hero, you can pass this wounds to... yadda yadda). This ability only works for the Hero of this batallion.

All Out Defence won't work vs Unleash Hell as UH happens in the Charge phase and AOD can only be done in the Shooting or Combat phase. 

[Beliman]

12 minutes ago, SpiritofHokuto said:

All Out Defence won't work vs Unleash Hell as UH happens in the Charge phase and AOD can only be done in the Shooting or Combat phase. 

I know, I was talking only about the Shooting Phase. CA Reactions seems to work only on "enemy phase" (we only have the Unleash Hell and it needs the enemy doint a "charge move").

About Unleash Hell, there are some abilities (mainly for heavy cavalry or monsters) that do mortal wounds after you charge. Because it's your turn, you will do some mortal wounds before the enemy can shoot with Unleash Hell. There are still two counter-plays:  chaff (enemy can still unleash Hell 9" away) and not enough units with that ability in the whole game.

Edited June 8, 2021 by Beliman

[annarborhawk]

17 minutes ago, Ganigumo said:

Bonesplitterz can't benefit from Kruleboyz allegiance abilities.
Kruleboyz crossbows might be as bad as sentinels though, but we'll need to wait and see how many shots they get.

From the article re venom weapons: "What's more, they gain this ability whether you field an army consisting exclusively of Kruleboyz or use them as part of a larger Orruk Warclans force."  Maybe it's referring to Allied-in Orruks. Or maybe the rule applies to new "Orruk Warclan" faction? Or it applies to Kruleboyz only that are part of a generic Orruk force?  You're probably right that it's the later.

It says its a Kruleboyz Alliegence ability, so I'm not clear how it would still apply to Kruelboyz if you are fileding a "Orruk Warclan" Force, as they say. 

Edited June 8, 2021 by annarborhawk

[Zeblasky]

1 hour ago, yukishiro1 said:

people have been frustrated for years now with how dominated by ranged attacks AOS is right now, and that although this certainly looks like it'll make it even worse, actually it won't because <reasons>.

While most of your post is correct, it did not start that long ago. Cities release introduced some strong shooting, but CoS remained more of combined arms faction, and they were not meta defining. Most people started ranting about the shooting meta only when new Seraphon tome was released, and it was just a year ago.

Edited June 8, 2021 by Zeblasky

[Ganigumo]

2 minutes ago, annarborhawk said:

From the article re venom weapons: "What's more, they gain this ability whether you field an army consisting exclusively of Kruleboyz or use them as part of a larger Orruk Warclans force."  Maybe it's referring to Allied-in Orruks. Or maybe the rule applies to new "Orruk Warclan" faction? Or it applies to Kruleboyz only that are part of a generic Orruk force?  You're probably right that it's the later.

Orruk warclans is a bit unlike any other battletome in that its 3 separate allegiances in one book one for keyword Bonesplitterz one for keyword Ironjawz and one for keyword Orruk (probably 4 once the new tome drops adding Kruleboyz). Bonesplitterz only get access to the bonesplitterz allegiance abilities in a Bonesplitterz allegiance, and not if they in Big Waaagh! (although big waagh! gives access to their spells, artifacts, and battalions). No other battletome handles its allegiances this way. Warclans is basically two battletomes stapled together with a few pages for big WAAAGH!

The rule uses keyword "Kruleboyz" which bonesplitterz won't have. Presumably when they're referency a larger Orruk Warclans force they're talking about Big Waaagh! and how this ability will still work in that allegiance.

[Ragest]

This time sentinels are not a problem, big shooting hitters are units with 18” or less (sallys, flamers, dwarves...)

Edited June 8, 2021 by Ragest

[Nightseer2012]

Ugh... and before anyone wastes their own time checking if monsters help against Unleash Hell, I already did.  Monstrous Rampages trigger at the end of the Charge Phase.  Unleash Hell triggers at the end of a Charge Move (not in the combat phase).  So Roar WON'T protect us from getting shot on the charge.  Hopefully these generic CA's can only be used once per phase/turn or something.  I expect a lot of armies to have a dedicated "line breaker" unit in the next edition.  Something either with enough wounds to tank the blow, or a great save/shrug to absorb the Unleash Hell so the rest of the army can charge without too much trouble.

[PJetski]

It's definitely possible that GW has already considered shooting and has some way to reign it in. Ways they can keep shooting in check:

• Reduce unit sizes. Getting shot by 20 Sentinels is bad, but what if it was only 10?
• Drastically increase shooting unit costs
• Errata warscrolls and battletomes to change which phase units can deal mortal wounds on hit rolls. For example, Sunmetal only deals mortal wounds in the shooting and combat phases. This helps with out-of-phase actions.
• Introduce a new rule: You have -1 to hit when shooting at a target that is more than half your maximum range, or >9" (whichever is larger)
• Introduce a new rule: You cannot shoot over enemy units unless the target is Flying or MONSTER (Flying, Behemoth, and Artillery are exempt) so infantry/cavalry screens block most shooting

Edited June 8, 2021 by PJetski

[whispersofblood]

See I'm liking a lot of what I'm seeing. Most of these changes improve the usefulness of some of the lowest utility units in the game.

Things like Seekers, Furies, Chaos Spawn, Chariots, etc. 

The emergent meta of who has the most dominant support corps is going to be really interesting, fun, and brutal.

I'm glad I held onto all those Furies, Seekers and Boarboyz.