AoS 3 New Rules Discussion

[SpiritofHokuto]

39 minutes ago, Magnus The Blue said:

Announced in one of the GW community videos, so as official as anything else.

You mean the video in this article?
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2021/06/02/the-new-edition-of-warhammer-age-of-sigmar-delivers-the-most-comprehensive-ruleset-ever/
If so, it doesn't say anything about taking Battletome battalions away from Matched Play, just that Core book battalions are being added? 

[EntMan]

I am not suprised this hasn't changed but I am disappointed. I realise that playing AOS there is a lot of rules trump logic and I get that because it can make the game simpler and flow better. However I have always found it so jarring to my imersion in the game that I can send a volley or arrows or crossbow bolts into the middle of a melee clash with no risk of hurting my own side. It just drags me right out of being involved in a fantasy battle and into 'you're playing a dice game'.

(And I'm the same with my archers being able to draw their bows and fire at the enemy at the same time they are sword fighting with them).

Edited June 4, 2021 by EntMan

[Greybeard86]

7 minutes ago, EntMan said:

I am not suprised this hasn't changed but I am disappointed. I realise that playing AOS there is a lot of rules trump logic and I get that because it can make the game simpler and flow better. However I have always found it so jarring to my imersion in the game that I can send a volley or arrows or crossbow bolts into the middle of a melee clash with no risk of hurting my own side. It just drags me right out of being involved in a fantasy battle and into 'you're playing a dice game'.

(And I'm the same with my archers being able to draw their bows and fire at the enemy at the same time they are sword fighting with them).

Yep. At this point, when I think of gaming AoS, I no longer imagine a wargame. It is more like a board game and thinks are losely connected to lore and "battles", but not really. I don't know if that makes sense.

I personally prefer wargames, but I feel I will get my fix from TOW, and to keep my sanity I should expect AoS to be a board game or "playing a dice game".

[Ointagru]

4 hours ago, Magnus The Blue said:

Some armies can, such as any destruction army with Kragnos (he gets to be a general in addition to your regular one) or Invaders Host Slannesh (they get upto 3 generals).

 

4 hours ago, PrimeElectrid said:

Soulblight too

 

4 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

You can in Soulblight, Nighthaunt, DoK, Slaanesh and Destruction. Maybe some other armies, and quite likely more in the future, as this seems to be a general design trend to encourage people to take named characters.

I stand corrected, thanks. 

[Lord Krungharr]

I am hoping the Tome Battalions don't get the axe.  Cuz my Bullgors won't be able to run in Blades of Khorne then!!!  Also, Eurlbad; that's a rockin' battalion.

Frankly I almost want to sell all my Battletomes now since they might be getting updated very soon if that battalion rumor is true.  Except Sons of Behemat.  They don't care about battalions.

[Neverchosen]

5 hours ago, EntMan said:

I am not suprised this hasn't changed but I am disappointed. I realise that playing AOS there is a lot of rules trump logic and I get that because it can make the game simpler and flow better. However I have always found it so jarring to my imersion in the game that I can send a volley or arrows or crossbow bolts into the middle of a melee clash with no risk of hurting my own side. It just drags me right out of being involved in a fantasy battle and into 'you're playing a dice game'.

(And I'm the same with my archers being able to draw their bows and fire at the enemy at the same time they are sword fighting with them).

 

5 hours ago, Greybeard86 said:

Yep. At this point, when I think of gaming AoS, I no longer imagine a wargame. It is more like a board game and thinks are losely connected to lore and "battles", but not really. I don't know if that makes sense.

I personally prefer wargames, but I feel I will get my fix from TOW, and to keep my sanity I should expect AoS to be a board game or "playing a dice game".

I know not everyone agrees to such things, but this seems like a quintessential example of where a house rule could apply to me.

Although I do personally agree with you both that this rule is disappointing, I do not find it immersion breaking. Firing accurately and avoiding friendly fire feels more plausible than Lightening Empowered Angelic Warriors battling Celestial Mesoamerica Lizard people. I think my issue comes from the fact that this could be a really fun mechanic from a design perspective. Typical ranged units could avoid shooting into combat thus allowing for special rules to allow for either extremely accurate archers to fire into combat safely (e.g. Shadow Warriors) or severely callus archers to risk hitting their friends (e.g. Man-skewer Boltboyz). 

[EntMan]

1 hour ago, Neverchosen said:

Firing accurately and avoiding friendly fire feels more plausible than Lightening Empowered Angelic Warriors battling Celestial Mesoamerica Lizard people.

It's not about what is plausable, but I can imagine Lightening Empowered Angelic Warriors and Celestial Lizard People, but I can't imagine my 20 crossbowmen firing into my dwarves in chaotic hand to hand combat with skaven and taking out skaven but not hitting a single dwarf.

[Neverchosen]

1 hour ago, EntMan said:

It's not about what is plausable, but I can imagine Lightening Empowered Angelic Warriors and Celestial Lizard People, but I can't imagine my 20 crossbowmen firing into my dwarves in chaotic hand to hand combat with skaven and taking out skaven but not hitting a single dwarf.

Hahaha, that is totally fair and as I said the end point is the same as I agree that this rule not changing is a missed opportunity (even if the mechanics do not bother me personally), as I think having a shoot into combat mechanic tied to warscrolls or even as a generic risky command ability would be significantly more interesting than what we currently have. 🙂

It would also make the units that can pull it off with minimal to no risk feel that much more unique and special. Like it could have been an army wide trait for Kurnothi if they ever come also letting Skaven roast their fellow rats to shoot at a bigger target behind them would also have been a really fitting rule. 

Edited June 4, 2021 by Neverchosen

[Sunchaser]

I may have missed talking about it so excuse me if I have...

I'm deeply curious how this command point change will effect Ossiarchs since they're unable currently to use CP. It seems like a pretty significant advantage not to be able to use a very important buff to the rest of the factions. Thoughts?

 

Likely if a change occurs it will be with errata for them. Although I think the more hopeful among us would say we get a new book for OBR with archers and such haha.

[Kadeton]

Hoo boy, I am looking forward to my Frostlord getting both +1 to hit and +1 to wound on that pivotal turn when he charges an enemy monster, and getting a 2+ save as icing on the cake just in case his target survives somehow.

I was briefly excited about Roar shutting down Inspiring Presence, then disappointed when it was pointed out that doesn't work. But I guess it's still nice to shut down other command abilities that get used in the combat phase.

[Magnus The Blue]

5 hours ago, Kadeton said:

Hoo boy, I am looking forward to my Frostlord getting both +1 to hit and +1 to wound on that pivotal turn when he charges an enemy monster, and getting a 2+ save as icing on the cake just in case his target survives somehow.

I was briefly excited about Roar shutting down Inspiring Presence, then disappointed when it was pointed out that doesn't work. But I guess it's still nice to shut down other command abilities that get used in the combat phase.

Mostly I'm looking forward to Roaring at Flesheaters Terrorgeists to stop all that fight twice then fight when I die nonsense dead in it's tracks. 

To be honest I'd be very surprised in inspiring presence doesn't at least change.  With more command points and champions issuing command abilities it would render bravery almost completely pointless.

[woolf]

7 hours ago, Sunchaser said:

I may have missed talking about it so excuse me if I have...

I'm deeply curious how this command point change will effect Ossiarchs since they're unable currently to use CP. It seems like a pretty significant advantage not to be able to use a very important buff to the rest of the factions. Thoughts?

 

Likely if a change occurs it will be with errata for them. Although I think the more hopeful among us would say we get a new book for OBR with archers and such haha.

Yep this is something I wonder too, it feels like they are now (to a degree at least) introducing something that was OBR unique before ie, 1) champions can issue commands and 2) cmd points every turn. So the new cmd point system looks a lot like the relentless discipline system. Although I guess OBR typically gets more points.
 

obv as now written, OBR can’t use command points (but would ofc still get access to hero and monster abilities that don’t seem to use cmd points) so if generic cmd abilities get stronger it would hurt OBR on relative basis, same as if they get weaker (eg inspiring presence disappear) it makes OBR relatively stronger. 

It probably would make sense to include some sort of errata to relentless discipline as part of this to make sure balance is maintained but I think there is probably a fairly high risk this won’t be the case, and OBR will just be left waiting for a new book and start being referred to as one of the “old 2.0 armies”  🤷‍♂️

[Zeblasky]

On 6/4/2021 at 6:15 PM, EntMan said:

I am not suprised this hasn't changed but I am disappointed. I realise that playing AOS there is a lot of rules trump logic and I get that because it can make the game simpler and flow better. However I have always found it so jarring to my imersion in the game that I can send a volley or arrows or crossbow bolts into the middle of a melee clash with no risk of hurting my own side. It just drags me right out of being involved in a fantasy battle and into 'you're playing a dice game'.

(And I'm the same with my archers being able to draw their bows and fire at the enemy at the same time they are sword fighting with them).

Here's the thing though. If you give units penalties for shooting into friendly melee and make it possible to shut down unit shooting completely by tying it down in melee, you will have to severely BUFF current shooting in order to compensate for such a weakness. So in some cases, you could shut down enemy shooting too early (like with a few aetherwings for example) and remove a lot of power from an opponent, and in some cases overwhelming and concentrated shooting will be able to easily kill enemy forces wave by wave, thus leading to even more one sided games and less fun for both melee and shooting lists.

So while such rules are indeed would be more immersive, they would also be much less fun on a table.

 

As for the for the rules change, it's kinda funny how my Living City army with 3 Monsters (2 of which are Heroes) and 5 battleline units became so much stronger with the new rules (just waiting on batalions info). I will probably add an Adjutant into an army now though instead of an extra CP on the start. Having potentially 4 CPs per turn is good, but having a 4+ chance for another one seems even better because now there is so much more useful things you can use CPs for. So there will never be too many CPs.

Edited June 5, 2021 by Zeblasky

[Vaporlocke]

1 hour ago, Zeblasky said:

Here's the thing though. If you give units penalties for shooting into friendly melee and make it possible to shut down unit shooting completely by tying it down in melee, you will have to severely BUFF current shooting in order to compensate for such a weakness. So in some cases, you could shut down enemy shooting too early (like with a fee aetherwings for example). and remove a lot of power from an opponent, and in some cases overwhelming and concentrated shooting will be able to easily kill enemy forces wave by wave, thus leading to even more one sided games and less fun for both melee and shooting lists.

 

Uh, no, you wouldn't have to buff them.

 

Even with the inability to shoot into melee or shoot while tied up in combat ranged attacks would still be powerful- you do damage without taking any back, unlike in melee. You would, however, be forced to actually think and make choices, like having to take units to screen your ranged units so that they can keep doing what they do best. Taking away then ability to delete support heroes with no effort means other armies now have new playstyles and options open up in their list building. These are good things. 

 

All these proposed changes would do would be to level the playing field rather than having lolarcherspam being a no-brainer for certain armies. 

[SpiritofHokuto]

One of the main issues is that certain armies can just snipe out support heroes with relative impunity. That's not to say that they should be invincible, but having that happen means that a good chunk of the power and flavour of an army can be eliminated with potentially little recourse. The sneak peek at the new shooting rules don't seem to have changed this, and if the +/- are capped at 1 then it's potentially even easier. And it's no coincidence that a good amount of the top performing armies are ones that can have a pronounced shooting presence and/or units that have their abilities baked into their warscrolls and don't rely on support heroes to function at a good level.  

That said there has been somewhat of a trend with "Bodyguard" units that a support hero can pass wounds onto, although that seems like a stopgap rather than a actual solution.  

Edited June 5, 2021 by SpiritofHokuto

[Feii]

3 hours ago, Zeblasky said:

Here's the thing though. If you give units penalties for shooting into friendly melee and make it possible to shut down unit shooting completely by tying it down in melee, you will have to severely BUFF current shooting in order to compensate for such a weakness. So in some cases, you could shut down enemy shooting too early (like with a few aetherwings for example) and remove a lot of power from an opponent, and in some cases overwhelming and concentrated shooting will be able to easily kill enemy forces wave by wave, thus leading to even more one sided games and less fun for both melee and shooting lists.

So while such rules are indeed would be more immersive, they would also be much less fun on a table.

 

As for the for the rules change, it's kinda funny how my Living City army with 3 Monsters (2 of which are Heroes) and 5 battleline units became so much stronger with the new rules (just waiting on batalions info). I will probably add an Adjutant into an army now though instead of an extra CP on the start. Having potentially 4 CPs per turn is good, but having a 4+ chance for another one seems even better because now there is so much more useful things you can use CPs for. So there will never be too many CPs.

Does shooting truly need compensation? It's not like shooting is struggling rn so bringing it down would make it unplayable. 

[MitGas]

Personally I would've liked them to make subgroups of shooting units: snipers (elite shooters), and two kind of shooters - one using weapons to shoot (bows, crossbows, sticks, slinghsots, whatever) and the other having innate shooting abilites (magic, flame-producing, water-spewing, whatever).

Snipers could focus heroes and shoot while in CC (even other targets), shooters with wargear could not use their weapons if in close combat, and shooters with an innate ability to shoot could shoot while in close combat but would instinctively only shoot the unit they're engaged with in CC. All obviously costed accordingly (and with snipers being VERY rare). Yes, would add a bit of rules salad to the menu but they could really differentiate different shooters with it and if they'd cost them reasonably, it would give people lots of choice

[Zeblasky]

5 hours ago, Vaporlocke said:

Uh, no, you wouldn't have to buff them.

 

Even with the inability to shoot into melee or shoot while tied up in combat ranged attacks would still be powerful- you do damage without taking any back, unlike in melee. You would, however, be forced to actually think and make choices, like having to take units to screen your ranged units so that they can keep doing what they do best. Taking away then ability to delete support heroes with no effort means other armies now have new playstyles and options open up in their list building. These are good things. 

 

All these proposed changes would do would be to level the playing field rather than having lolarcherspam being a no-brainer for certain armies.

Not only Kharadon, Lumineth and Seraphon have shooting units. And when you have a few overperforming shooting armies, you don't nerf shooting across the game, making OP shooting balanced and the rest of the currently balanced shooting bad. You nerf overperforming armies instead. Why such themes in general are such a hard concept to understand on this forum?

 

Also, I can imagine quite well how a single unit of aetherwings in melee with 30 crossbowmen would look immersion breaking for some with such ruleset. You have just 3 birds (40 pts), that are stopping 30 men (300 pts) from firing at least for 2 battle rounds, possibly 3. And you can't even shoot them off with another unit, because they are in melee with your troops. Can you see why rebalancing would be a must together with such a rule change?

 

The thing about support heroes is very tricky though. You don't want them to be dead at the sight of shooting and magic MW spam, but you don't want them to be not worth the effort to focus down either. Hard to find the middle ground here.

[Vaporlocke]

16 minutes ago, Zeblasky said:

Not only Kharadon, Lumineth and Seraphon have shooting units. And when you have a few overperforming shooting armies, you don't nerf shooting across the game, making OP shooting balanced and the rest of the currently balanced shooting bad. You nerf overperforming armies instead. Why such themes in general are such a hard concept to understand on this forum?

 

Also, I can imagine quite well how a single unit of aetherwings in melee with 30 crossbowmen would look immersion breaking for some with such ruleset. You have just 3 birds (40 pts), that are stopping 30 men (300 pts) from firing at least for 2 battle rounds, possibly 3. And you can't even shoot them off with another unit, because they are in melee with your troops. Can you see why rebalancing would be a must together with such a rule change?

 

The thing about support heroes is very tricky though. You don't want them to be dead at the sight of shooting and magic MW spam, but you don't want them to be not worth the effort to focus down either. Hard to find the middle ground here.

"These dudes are whacking me in the face with a sword, I better fire arrows at some other dudes far away instead of fighting them off in hand to hand combat" is peak immersion. 

[Zeblasky]

4 minutes ago, Vaporlocke said:

"These dudes are whacking me in the face with a sword, I better fire arrows at some other dudes far away instead of fighting them off in hand to hand combat" is peak immersion. 

I've never said anything about removing "within 3" limit for ranged when in melee combat (neither I think this is a good idea), so this argument is quite irrelevant to this discussion. As for close combat, a crossbowmen against lets say a armoured Chaos warrior has much better chances of surviving by trying to shoot his crossbow in warrior face instead of trying to hit him with his small dagger. Fire discipline is also a thing.

 

[Joseph Mackay]

On 6/4/2021 at 10:53 PM, Magnus The Blue said:

Some armies can, such as any destruction army with Kragnos (he gets to be a general in addition to your regular one) or Invaders Host Slannesh (they get upto 3 generals).

 

On 6/4/2021 at 10:58 PM, PrimeElectrid said:

Soulblight too

Not quite, they count as the general for rules purposes (ie command ability ranges), but are not actually your general unless you make them the general. As the rule is presented currently, I would not allow them to generate the generals cp unless they actually are your general 

[Joseph Mackay]

8 hours ago, Zeblasky said:

Here's the thing though. If you give units penalties for shooting into friendly melee and make it possible to shut down unit shooting completely by tying it down in melee, you will have to severely BUFF current shooting in order to compensate for such a weakness. So in some cases, you could shut down enemy shooting too early (like with a few aetherwings for example) and remove a lot of power from an opponent, and in some cases overwhelming and concentrated shooting will be able to easily kill enemy forces wave by wave, thus leading to even more one sided games and less fun for both melee and shooting lists.

So while such rules are indeed would be more immersive, they would also be much less fun on a table.

 

As for the for the rules change, it's kinda funny how my Living City army with 3 Monsters (2 of which are Heroes) and 5 battleline units became so much stronger with the new rules (just waiting on batalions info). I will probably add an Adjutant into an army now though instead of an extra CP on the start. Having potentially 4 CPs per turn is good, but having a 4+ chance for another one seems even better because now there is so much more useful things you can use CPs for. So there will never be too many CPs.

I disagree. Shooting already has the advantage of the opponent not being able to hit you back, unlike in combat. That advantage is already not being accounted for in the points costs of shooting units, as well as a lot of shooting becoming better than melee these days

[Joseph Mackay]

1 hour ago, Zeblasky said:

I've never said anything about removing "within 3" limit for ranged when in melee combat (neither I think this is a good idea), so this argument is quite irrelevant to this discussion. As for close combat, a crossbowmen against lets say a armoured Chaos warrior has much better chances of surviving by trying to shoot his crossbow in warrior face instead of trying to hit him with his small dagger. Fire discipline is also a thing.

 

Your crossbow example doesn’t make sense though. My limited understanding of medieval era weapons, you have to load crossbows 1 bolt at a time, the dwarf in your example would kill you before you’ve even finished loading the crossbow

[Enoby]

13 minutes ago, Joseph Mackay said:

 

Not quite, they count as the general for rules purposes (ie command ability ranges), but are not actually your general unless you make them the general. As the rule is presented currently, I would not allow them to generate the generals cp unless they actually are your general 

At least for Slaanesh, the exact wording is "You can have up to 3 generals instead of 1." It does then say "Only 1 of your generals can have a command trait, but all 3 are considered to be generals for the purpose of using command abilities."

I don't think the second statement invalidates the first, unless you believe that the Lord of Pain being the "secondary" general invalidates Twinsouls/Painbringers from being battleline (as they're not a command ability). At least to me "You can have up to 3 generals instead of 1" is pretty straight forward - the only stipulation is only one gets a command trait, and it clarifies that they all count for command abilities (but doesn't suggest exclusively command abilities). 

I can see some confusion, and it probably will need an FAQ if not broadly addressed in the book, but at least to me I'd rule it as having three generals.  

[Joseph Mackay]

1 hour ago, Enoby said:

At least for Slaanesh, the exact wording is "You can have up to 3 generals instead of 1." It does then say "Only 1 of your generals can have a command trait, but all 3 are considered to be generals for the purpose of using command abilities."

I don't think the second statement invalidates the first, unless you believe that the Lord of Pain being the "secondary" general invalidates Twinsouls/Painbringers from being battleline (as they're not a command ability). At least to me "You can have up to 3 generals instead of 1" is pretty straight forward - the only stipulation is only one gets a command trait, and it clarifies that they all count for command abilities (but doesn't suggest exclusively command abilities). 

I can see some confusion, and it probably will need an FAQ if not broadly addressed in the book, but at least to me I'd rule it as having three generals.  

I would agree, that this is a rare and specific case where you do actually have more than one general. But the Soulblight, Nighthaunt etc only ‘count as’ the general so that command abilities still work properly