AoS 3 New Rules Discussion

[Zappgrot]

3 minutes ago, Dolomedes said:

For example's sake - if your army's favourite monster and un named heroes go down in points, but the unit costs go up for rank and file, you'll probably change your list to have more monsters and heroes. The new cohesion rule will apply to less of your army, so you won't be that bothered about it.

That's not to say that the points values won't get hashed though. It's early days yet - points still have a big part to play.

 That sure as hell a long way of saying it won't  Cause that's the opposite of a fix. 

I mean sure the game might then still be balanced but it would no longer be the game I like.

Edited June 8, 2021 by Zappgrot

[Mikeymajq]

It is interesting that skeleton spears lost their 2" reach, and zombies have a better pile in, as the Gravelord book was written with 3.0 in mind. There might be more to it than shown as well. But from what I'm reading it's the same knee-****** gloom and doom as always when we get a tiny preview of a rule without the entire context. It's such a repeating pattern

 

edit: haha, the word that starts with J and rhymes with twerk got censored, making it look so much worse

Edited June 8, 2021 by Mikeymajq

[yukishiro1]

5 minutes ago, Zappgrot said:

 That sure as hell a long way of saying it won't  Cause that's the opposite of a fix. 

I mean sure the game might then still be balanced but it would no longer be the game I like.

Yeah, "maybe the bad rules won't matter because nobody will take units impacted by them anyway" is not really something to fill people with hope. 

As for the complaints about kneejerk reactions...that's on GW for drip-releasing rules this way. They know what they're doing. This is precisely what they want to generate - "engagement." Modern marketing techniques revolve around rustling the jimmies, on the theory that it's better to have someone upset than not engaged at all. 

 

Edited June 8, 2021 by yukishiro1

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

1 minute ago, Mikeymajq said:

It is interesting that skeleton spears lost their 2" reach, and zombies have a better pile in, as the Gravelord book was written with 3.0 in mind. There might be more to it than shown as well. But from what I'm reading it's the same knee-****** gloom and doom as always when we get a tiny preview of a rule without the entire context. It's such a repeating pattern

I'll stop knee-jerking when warhammer community stops hitting my leg with their tiny rubber hammers. Metaphorically.

[Ganigumo]

Just now, yukishiro1 said:

Yeah, "maybe the bad rules won't matter because nobody will take units impacted by them anyway" is not really something to fill people with hope. 

As for the complaints about kneejerk reactions...that's on GW for drip-releasing rules this way. They know what they're doing. This is precisely what they want to generate - "engagement." Modern marketing techniques revolve around rustling the jimmies, on the theory that it's better to have someone upset than not engaged at all. 

 

"We can't inform the customer because we're not confident in our product, so lets ****** them off instead so they're engaged"

 

 

3 minutes ago, Mikeymajq said:

It is interesting that skeleton spears lost their 2" reach, and zombies have a better pile in, as the Gravelord book was written with 3.0 in mind. There might be more to it than shown as well. But from what I'm reading it's the same knee-****** gloom and doom as always when we get a tiny preview of a rule without the entire context. It's such a repeating pattern

Yeah the skeleton thing baffled me, they combined the profile, they didn't "nerf spears". More units should do this because it lets you model them however you want, rather than just choosing the best option.

[Dolomedes]

11 minutes ago, Zappgrot said:

 That sure as hell a long way of saying it won't  Cause that's the opposite of a fix. 

I mean sure the game might then still be balanced but it would no longer be the game I like.

Being a new edition, it's highly unlikely that it will remain the game you like. Here's hoping they've done a good job and there's a good balance or rule fix for the coherency update.

For now, I'm thinking of ways that this coherency rule can be abused.

Ghorgons and Gargants just got really good.

Edited June 8, 2021 by Dolomedes
N/A

[Reinholt]

Am I missing something in the rules here with regard to Unleash Hell, or does this mean my shootcast army can both block someone with Aetherwings in front of my 12 strong unit of Vanguard Raptors, and I will get to Unleash Hell because they charged the birdies, they will obliterate the Aetherwings, I will get to double tap in my turn with Anvils, and then if anything is left of their army, I get to Unleash Hell again? So they are eating a minimum of 4 volleys before they can charge my unit?

 

I cancelled my plan with a friend to buy a box and split it after the news today. Why? Because unlike the people at the GW design studio, I have friends and I would like to keep them. If the rules work as written, I'm not going to have any of those if I play this game with them. Unleash Hell was such a problem with Seraphon they already had to fix it. It's incredible they would then give it to everyone. Doubling down on failure.

 

Edit: to those talking about a knee ****** or without context, there's no context in which army-wide stand and shoot is going to work unless they completely re-write and massively nerf a huge number of shooting warscrolls (Ironclad, half the damned Seraphon book, flamers, Vanguard Raptors, Mortek, Sentinels, etc.) currently in the game because giving this ability to maximum sized already overpowered shooting units is like "nerfing" Kroak by allowing him to cast his mortal wounds spell in every phase of the game using commands.

Edited June 8, 2021 by Reinholt
Me No English

[Erdemo86]

I really hope we got something general like:

the same command ability’s can not be used more than ones a turn.

or

A unit cannot benefit more than once from the same command ability..

but I would really like to see the first one. It would make a lot of errAta/faq questions useless.

Edited June 8, 2021 by Erdemo86

[SorryLizard]

What interests me about these coherency rules is that they went for such a modle by model approach.

Other games out there often have a similar need for unit coherency but use defined distance from a unit leader (such as Flames of War) or have a more general unit area (like Clash of Spears). Now, these games have their own quirks and foibles but they don't have such long daisy chained units and avoid the level of player punishment for falling out of coherency and are much simpler to employ on the table.

[yukishiro1]

Yep, lots of other games have figured this one out already. But GW, for better or for worse, always seems to prefer trying to reinvent the wheel rather than just adopting a better, more elegant design that someone else came up with.

 

 

Edited June 8, 2021 by yukishiro1

[Golub87]

47 minutes ago, Mikeymajq said:

It is interesting that skeleton spears lost their 2" reach, and zombies have a better pile in, as the Gravelord book was written with 3.0 in mind. There might be more to it than shown as well. But from what I'm reading it's the same knee-****** gloom and doom as always when we get a tiny preview of a rule without the entire context. It's such a repeating pattern

 

edit: haha, the word that starts with J and rhymes with twerk got censored, making it look so much worse

Gloom and doom is entirely warranted. Why? Well, one reason is that the company in question has a history of making bad rules and game design choices. WH has never been a good game, and more often than not it has been a rather poor game and right now it is trending in that poor direction.

A new rule set is announced and we have been given partial information X regarding those rules. What constitutes this partial information X is entirely in the hands of the people designing the game.

The fact that partial information X seems to just aggravate the current issues points to one of the two conclusions: people in charge do not know what the problems with the game are or people in charge do not care what the problems with the game are.

Granted, they may stumble upon a good rule set by chance, but under these conditions, with their apparent awareness of the issues and past performance, it is far more likely that they will not.

Bottom line is - organization that thinks that it is a good idea to come out with these particular snippets at this point in time, likely has no idea how to actually fix the game.

I will not hold my breath expecting that people that have consistently made poor decisions come up with some brilliant piece of game design.

[Zappgrot]

1 hour ago, Dolomedes said:

Being a new edition, it's highly unlikely that it will remain the game you like. Here's hoping they've done a good job and there's a good balance or rule fix for the coherency update.

For now, I'm thinking of ways that this coherency rule can be abused.

Ghorgons and Gargants just got really good.

Yea but the whole. I ate one model and now the rest runs away Stick is AWFULL. It's not fun to use and not fun to have used againt you. It basically feels like cheating. 

[chosen_of_khaine]

23 minutes ago, Golub87 said:

Gloom and doom is entirely warranted. Why? Well, one reason is that the company in question has a history of making bad rules and game design choices. WH has never been a good game, and more often than not it has been a rather poor game and right now it is trending in that poor direction.

A new rule set is announced and we have been given partial information X regarding those rules. What constitutes this partial information X is entirely in the hands of the people designing the game.

The fact that partial information X seems to just aggravate the current issues points to one of the two conclusions: people in charge do not know what the problems with the game are or people in charge do not care what the problems with the game are.

Granted, they may stumble upon a good rule set by chance, but under these conditions, with their apparent awareness of the issues and past performance, it is far more likely that they will not.

Bottom line is - organization that thinks that it is a good idea to come out with these particular snippets at this point in time, likely has no idea how to actually fix the game.

I will not hold my breath expecting that people that have consistently made poor decisions come up with some brilliant piece of game design.

Or! The rules designers, let's call X, and the community/marketing team, lets call Y, are not the same people, as X=/=Y.

X and Y probably both don't like using unnecessary variables though. Not gonna touch the "WH has never been a good game".

Edited June 8, 2021 by chosen_of_khaine

[Reinholt]

6 minutes ago, chosen_of_khaine said:

Or! The rules designers, let's call X, and the community/marketing team, lets call Y, are not the same people, as X=/=Y.

X and Y probably both don't like using unnecessary variables though. Not gonna touch the "WH has never been a good game".

 

WH has had some periods of being a good game, but also some really dire periods (anyone remember Daemons of Chaos dominance?) based on the rules being exceptionally poorly written.

I think most of what they are trying for AoS 3.0 I am actually a big fan of. The coherency rules are dumb as written, but a good idea in concept. Would be easy to errata them to "all members of a unit must be within x" of all other members of the unit" and just fix that right out of the gate based on how many models are in the unit. That way you can have various formations but no conga line as you know the maximum size of a unit.

What is shocking to me is the Unleash Hell rule, given it is a mistake they already made, already had to errata, and now being given to other armies that are potentially even MORE powerful with it than Seraphon were. It's just mind bending and I don't see how any non-shooting army will be competitive until that rule goes.

[peasant]

The last rules had convinced me to Skip any investment until solid proof that shooting is nerfed. I really Hope they prove me wrong because I never missed and edition box either in sigmar or 40k but this edition of struggling against absurdly powered armies is the last.

Edited June 8, 2021 by peasant

[peasant]

1 minute ago, Reinholt said:

 

WH has had some periods of being a good game, but also some really dire periods (anyone remember Daemons of Chaos dominance?) based on the rules being exceptionally poorly written.

I think most of what they are trying for AoS 3.0 I am actually a big fan of. The coherency rules are dumb as written, but a good idea in concept. Would be easy to errata them to "all members of a unit must be within x" of all other members of the unit" and just fix that right out of the gate based on how many models are in the unit. That way you can have various formations but no conga line as you know the maximum size of a unit.

What is shocking to me is the Unleash Hell rule, given it is a mistake they already made, already had to errata, and now being given to other armies that are potentially even MORE powerful with it than Seraphon were. It's just mind bending and I don't see how any non-shooting army will be competitive until that rule goes.

Unleash hell Killed my hype for 3.0

[Envyus]

1 minute ago, peasant said:

Unleash hell Killed my hype for 3.0

It shouldn’t. Particularly since it looks like it can only be used once a turn.

[Reinholt]

5 minutes ago, Envyus said:

It shouldn’t. Particularly since it looks like it can only be used once a turn.

On the best shooting units in the game, in combination with blocking charges. If you can't see why getting to fire 12x Vanguard Raptors in the other player's turn if they charged or why Ironclads or Salamanders spamming shots on charges is a problem, I'm not sure you've been playing AoS since 1.0. The only counterplay is not to charge things, which means all shooting all the time meta?

These things already drive the best tournament winning lists, and now for the bargain basement price of 1 CP, essentially every army in the game is Anvils from Stormcast or the Anvils are Double Anvils. It's asinine.

At 1 CP so that something like a basic handgunners unit can do this once, or if it were limited to 1 use per game, I could see this being okay. But 1 CP per turn with no unit restriction always, all you have done is taken the already dominant shooting units in the meta and made them roughly twice as effective for the same points.

I'm genuinely flabbergasted at what GW was thinking (and I play shooting armies and have drifted away from them because it's already alienating people in our gaming group when I just face stomp them with Shootcast or Kharadron, so GW naturally buffed them to be way better).

Edited June 8, 2021 by Reinholt

[zilberfrid]

3 minutes ago, Reinholt said:

On the best shooting units in the game, in combination with blocking charges. If you can't see why getting to fire 12x Vanguard Raptors in the other player's turn if they charged or why Ironclads or Salamanders spamming shots on charges is a problem, I'm not sure you've been playing AoS since 1.0. 

These things already drive the best tournament winning lists, and now for the bargain basement price of 1 CP, essentially every army in the game is Anvils from Stormcast or the Anvils are Double Anvils. It's asinine.

At 1 CP so that something like a basic handgunners unit can do this once, or if it were limited to 1 use per game, I could see this being okay. But 1 CP per turn with no unit restriction always, all you have done is taken the already dominant shooting units in the meta and made them roughly twice as effective for the same points.

I'm genuinely flabbergasted at what GW was thinking (and I play shooting armies and have drifted away from them because it's already alienating people in our gaming group when I just face stomp them with Shootcast or Kharadron, so GW naturally buffed them to be way better).

If you up the lethality, games will be shorter and more people can play in a given store.

Similarely, furniture at McDonalds was designed to not be all that comfortable so people would leave sooner.

[JonnyTheKing]

Well, guess I’m staying with 40K for the foreseeable future then

[Enoby]

4 minutes ago, zilberfrid said:

If you up the lethality, games will be shorter and more people can play in a given store.

Similarely, furniture at McDonalds was designed to not be all that comfortable so people would leave sooner.

You're correct, but people have to want to play another game. If someone got their army mostly shot off the board turn 1 then there's a good chance they wouldn't want to play another game for the day. Tbh, if I table my opponent quickly I feel bad for them and it doesn't really make for a fun game.

McDonald's putting nails in their chair would make people not want to hang around very effectively, but they'd also probably not get many visitors full stop. 

[Reinholt]

14 minutes ago, zilberfrid said:

If you up the lethality, games will be shorter and more people can play in a given store.

Similarely, furniture at McDonalds was designed to not be all that comfortable so people would leave sooner.

McDonalds does not charge premium prices.

If you deliver McD's quality for fine dining prices, you don't have a market.

GW nuked WFB for a while during Daemons of Chaos era, and it's part of what lead the game down the path in terms of popularity that caused AoS to happen. This was during the darkest Kirby days of "we are a models company jewels of wonder rules LOL" thinking, but the brand damage persists to this day.

Unleash Hell is the kind of thing that needs a literal day 1 errata or you're heading down the path of massive NPE for many players that will turn them off for the game again.

Edit: this would also be far less of a problem if they turned the lethality up to 11 for everything. But this is a narrow section that was already very good. A better comparison would be one area of premium super nice seating at McD's and every other seat having nails on it. So people all jam into that one area, and if that area is full, people won't eat there at all. So you both crush your customer base and create a bunch of resentment at the same time.

Edited June 8, 2021 by Reinholt

[Televiper11]

Shooting should be stronger. That’s how warfare has evolved and this is a war game. 

[Golub87]

Just now, zilberfrid said:

If you up the lethality, games will be shorter and more people can play in a given store.

Similarely, furniture at McDonalds was designed to not be all that comfortable so people would leave sooner.

There is truth to this.

Reduction in table sizes was a decision made precisely for this reason. I suspect that UH was made because T1 charges are going to be the norm or at least they think that they will be.

Even once per game UH will have a huge impact. Most games are decided by T3 and with these table size reductions that will not go away.

It is a complete mess of a game right now and that does not seem to be changing in 3.0. That really should not come as a surprise to anyone who paid attention over the years and who tried to play any other wargame.

AoS has an identity crisis on the most basic level - is it a skirmish game or a full battle wargame?

[Golub87]

Just now, Televiper11 said:

Shooting should be stronger. That’s how warfare has evolved and this is a war game. 

By that logic we should be all playing Flames of War because it has tanks and artillery and planes and machineguns.

...which is a rather brilliant idea actually, might take you up on that. Thanks!