AoS 3 New Rules Discussion

[Ragest]

Do people really think any lumineth player with more than 2 matches played is going to risk his unit of sentinels just to make 2-3 (4-5 with 20) mw to the unit that is charging?

People must stop posting such bs

[PainfullyMediocre]

59 minutes ago, Mcthew said:

Awful.

Slain is slain. It's not 'boss, I've sprained my ankle.'

What are GW thinking???

I don't mind this in principle, stuff like Horrors will need an FAQ to address the jank. 

AoS has a level of abstraction to it already, when a monster hits a unit it can kill models outside of its melee range, but thats fine, but the idea of heavily wounded soldiers rallying for one last push is a bit too far though? Thats present in a lot of fantasy stories as well as recorded historical battles. Its also on 6s so its not as reliable. If unit sizes get smaller as well, there is less potential to bring back models alongside a higher chance of units getting wiped out in the first place.

[Yondaime]

if unleash hell can be spammed like 2.0 command abilities, that means that with enough command points you can shoot with all units that are 9"

>charging a KO, all boats/units are 9"

>so you have chosen death

[PainfullyMediocre]

1 minute ago, Ragest said:

Do people really think any lumineth player with more than 2 matches played is going to risk his unit of sentinels just to make 2-3 (4-5 with 20) mw to the unit that is charging?

People must stop posting such bs

There isn't risk though, they need to be within 9" of a unit that charged. If they're behind a unit of sentinels that got charged they can shoot.

[peasant]

6 minutes ago, Ragest said:

Do people really think any lumineth player with more than 2 matches played is going to risk his unit of sentinels just to make 2-3 (4-5 with 20) mw to the unit that is charging?

People must stop posting such bs

Please can you elaborate on that? Which Risk if the sentinels are not being exposed to use UH? 

Maybe hoy shall reconsider what is bs

Edited June 9, 2021 by peasant

[Marcvs]

2 minutes ago, Ragest said:

Do people really think any lumineth player with more than 2 matches played is going to risk his unit of sentinels just to make 2-3 (4-5 with 20) mw to the unit that is charging?

People must stop posting such bs

You can activate UH with a unit even if that unit is not the one which is getting charged, so sentinels behind a screen of wardens can activate it without risking a thing. Maybe read carefully before calling BS?

[SpiritofHokuto]

2 minutes ago, Ragest said:

Do people really think any lumineth player with more than 2 matches played is going to risk his unit of sentinels just to make 2-3 (4-5 with 20) mw to the unit that is charging?

People must stop posting such bs

How is shooting at a unit that charged another unit 9" away a "risk"? And LRL aren't exactly spoilt for choice when it comes to CAs so they'll more than likely have the spare CP, even with the new CA's.   

[Beliman]

31 minutes ago, PrimeElectrid said:

Yes and not only do all of those things exist but the new orruks are getting MW on 5s shooting too. 

Are you talking about man-skewer boltboyz?

Spoiler

If that's the case, we only know that they are 3 per unit. Even if they shoot 3 times everyone (rumors about two profiles, one with a good quality and the other one with low, so expect 1dmg at most), that's 9 shoots in total. That's average 3 mortal wounds? Or less if they have 2 attacks each!!

I get that we come from Sentinels, Anvils and DoK shooting, but the main problems are around double taps,  high volum of attacks), rerolls and this kind of stuff (that I pointed out before).

[frenk_castle]

50 minutes ago, SchleuderMann2 said:

What do you think about New Chronometer cogs? I think the defensive Option is much better than the offensive one, thinking of a lrl or tzeenrch army getting about 5 extra casts...

I personally liked reroll save option it had. Sad to see it gone.

[Yondaime]

17 minutes ago, Ragest said:

Do people really think any lumineth player with more than 2 matches played is going to risk his unit of sentinels just to make 2-3 (4-5 with 20) mw to the unit that is charging?

People must stop posting such bs

Mate, it’s not like sentinels have a 3+ (4+ In this case) 3+ -1 1dmg profile right

so if you play 40 sentinels you are looking at 40 4+ 3+ -1 1 dmg attacks, and this is without all the buffs we lumineth have, so not exactly 4/5 wound at best 🤣

Don’t ruin our already bad reputation please 😂

Edit: forgot that squad leader dosnt shoot, so those are actually 38 attacks

Edited June 9, 2021 by Yondaime

[Marcvs]

17 minutes ago, Chikout said:

There are abilities shown so far that give +1 save, -1 shooting, a 6+ ward save and an ability to put models back into units. These will help against shooting. 

You see these are actually all good examples of why I am concerned about UH:

the +1 save ability cannot be used in the charge phase, so it won't help in this instance

the 6+ ward save is very unreliable (on a 4+)

rally brings back models on a 6 (so only useful on big units, which will lead to very low value models brought back, or on pink horrors, but that's another problematic story).

Now if one of the two limitations of the ward/rally would have been included in UH (a chance of failing or only hitting on 6s like 40k overwatch) I wouldn't be as concerned for 3.0 as I am right now. Instead shooting is once again more reliable than the other parts of the game -you don't need to fiddle around with new coherence rules to maximize the models in combat etc

[Sylio]

And what about charging à Line of ironbreakers with 30 irondrakes Packed behind near hurricanum ans runelord.

This is 60 shots 3+/3+/-2/1

Suicide

[Marcvs]

6 minutes ago, Sylio said:

And what about charging à Line of ironbreakers with 30 irondrakes Packed behind near hurricanum ans runelord.

This is 60 shots 3+/3+/-2/1

Suicide

As much as I think that UH is a move in the wrong direction, i wouldn't take the worst case scenario as an example of the problem. This is of course a castle which includes half of an army, you shouldn't be charging there anyway and force them to move by scoring objectives.

[PrimeElectrid]

36 minutes ago, Beliman said:

Are you talking about man-skewer boltboyz?

  Reveal hidden contents

If that's the case, we only know that they are 3 per unit. Even if they shoot 3 times everyone (rumors about two profiles, one with a good quality and the other one with low, so expect 1dmg at most), that's 9 shoots in total. That's average 3 mortal wounds? Or less if they have 2 attacks each!!

I get that we come from Sentinels, Anvils and DoK shooting, but the main problems are around double taps,  high volum of attacks), rerolls and this kind of stuff (that I pointed out before).

Longstrikes also come in 3s and you can take them up to 12.

If your point is that high volume MW shooting is dumb and giving high volume MW shooting more opportunities to shoot is more dumber then we totally agree.

Unfortunately high volume Mw shooting exists, has existed for months, and GW has given no indication that they intend to address it - in fact quite the opposite as they are introducing more MW shooting.

[peasant]

6 minutes ago, Marcvs said:

As much as I think that UH is a move in the wrong direction, i wouldn't take the worst case scenario as an example of the problem. This is of course a castle which includes half of an army, you shouldn't be charging there anyway and force them to move by scoring objectives.

worst case excenario is not the same as unlikely scenario because a lot of list tayloring will go on that direction. The problem is being shooting so OP at the moment UH just punishes more to the armies that dont/cant invest in more quality shooting.

And if you want to play a melee oriented army but you must play the objectives game whats the point? This rule favours extreme lists in top tier factions. We dont know the full picture yet but this is plainly moving in the wrong direction please GW prove me wrong because I really love to jump in the 3.0 train

[Beliman]

4 minutes ago, PrimeElectrid said:

Longstrikes also come in 3s and you can take them up to 12.

If your point is that high volume MW shooting is dumb and giving high volume MW shooting more opportunities to shoot is more dumber then we totally agree.

Unfortunately high volume Mw shooting exists, has existed for months, and GW has given no indication that they intend to address it - in fact quite the opposite as they are introducing more MW shooting.

Longstrikes were only used with the doublet-tap from Anvils (and latter 1drop batallions), let's hope that this kind of bs stays in 2.0 than 3.0.

Btw, we 100% agree that we don't need more mortal wounds. 9 attacks (or even 6 attacks) with 5+ mortal wounds is not something that I'm affraid (and without counting  points nor Core Batallions)

[Greybeard86]

I would have liked rally, but in a context were moral is better modeled.

Countermeasures to charge could be interesting, breaking the dreaded i-go-you-go, but not if they are so deadly they simply mean suicide from charging.

I also like limitations to "unit shapes", but the current coherency results in weird ****** formations.

The theme being that those are, IMO, potentially good design goals that are not implemented well.

[feadair]

I would not be too worried about Unleash Hell just yet. Its power depends on the overall context. In the new WH40k 9e the faction with the best overwatch abilities (Tau) is doing incredibly poorly. The main reason is the mission design. To win, you need to be able to capture and hold midfield objectives. This means that burly units that can charge in, eliminate the objective holder and thus capture it are extremely valuable. In other words, flipping an objective is a high priority. Shooty units can at best eliminate an objective holder one turn and then take it the next. They cannot do both at once.

[Ganigumo]

2 hours ago, SchleuderMann2 said:

What do you think about New Chronometer cogs? I think the defensive Option is much better than the offensive one, thinking of a lrl or tzeenrch army getting about 5 extra casts...

Its gonna be great for my guild of summoners list that's for sure!

[Golub87]

1 hour ago, Laststand said:

Historically speaking formations were loose and only the most elite units with the most training (royal guards, nobles, elite mercenaries) could hold them in combat. Many other troops on the battlefield were part timers. Its also only natural that formations would fragment over terrain or in combat when troops try to lap round an open flank. Two squares, bashing head on in strict formation wouldnt have lasted (see scrums in Rugby or NFL scrimmage lines) 

You are 100% correct, of course.
That said, that is not an argument in favor of current system. I have played games where you simply put "unformed" token next to the formation that fell apart for whatever reason. It is not a perfect representation of what is actually happening, but it is far closer to the truth than whatever this is AND it is simpler for the player AND it allows for better and more interesting game due to the way it interacts with other elements of the game.

 

From my standpoint, and feel free to correct me if I am wrong, when designing a rule for the game there are three things to be taken into account. Priority varies and sometimes not even all three things are considered, depending on designer goals, but any given rule must conform and reinforce at least one of these elements:

1. Gameplay - does the rule make playing the game more elegant? Does it provide more interesting choices to the players? Does it interact favorably with other rules?
Semi-independent unit movement that we have right now fails here because the game is not more elegant (tedium of pushing individual figures), choices are not really meaningful due to lack of constraints (you can push your unit trough terrain the same way you push it over open field - no risk of being unformed vs reward of being in cover there), and it does not interact favorably with other rules (best example being within vs wholly within song and dance - game is a mess of aura bubbles now due to the nature of formations).

2. Narrative - does the rule help tell a story? Does it result in a spectacle on the table? Is it pretty?

Absolutely not - two most common formations were noodle lines of infantry and sideways cav formations.... No legion-like tight blocks of Ossiarchs or the like. And now we get these complex geometries in the new rule-set. It is ugly.

3. Simulation - does the rule help simulate reality? Does it drive the game in the direction where the outcomes would be similar to RL?
Again, a dud. See above as to why. No one has ever used the formations that are used in this game.

Again, not every game has to equally support all three. Chess is all about gameplay, for example. But when writing a rule, you have to get at least one of these in order to justify it.

And this is not the only rule where AoS simply fails to satisfy even one of the important game design points.

[Mcthew]

9 minutes ago, feadair said:

I would not be too worried about Unleash Hell just yet. Its power depends on the overall context. In the new WH40k 9e the faction with the best overwatch abilities (Tau) is doing incredibly poorly. The main reason is the mission design. To win, you need to be able to capture and hold midfield objectives. This means that burly units that can charge in, eliminate the objective holder and thus capture it are extremely valuable. In other words, flipping an objective is a high priority. Shooty units can at best eliminate an objective holder one turn and then take it the next. They cannot do both at once.

You're right, it's context, and in reality on the tabletop it benefits only a handful of scenarios, or specific units. And that's the problem. This is a general command ability, and one that (as you might see from the previous posts) only appears to have one major use, outside of someone foolishly charging a non-shooting unit leaving the shooters able to pick you off. It is, as it stands, a completely unnecessary general command ability to include.

So it begs the question, why include it?

It makes more sense for it to be a specific CA for a faction, such as LRL, or maybe plague claws in a Pestilens faction. KO can use this as any of them can shoot, so it effectively buys a second round of shooting for a unit who may have already shot in that round. But for most other factions it is a pointless generic command ability.

That GW has called this out as an example of the best rules writing, is problematic, when it is that divisive. It will also make the game dull if everyone is running KO or LRL lists because they are the only remotely competitive armies around. Even beers and pretzel gaming becomes dull if you're shot off the board by round 2 or 3.

I am a KO player, by the way. And this, so far, is just plain embarrassing. 

[Reinholt]

So after sleeping on it, I've changed my mind on Unleash Hell.

Certainly in a game where some shooting units (flamers, salamanders, vanguard raptors, KO Ironclads) already power some of the dominant lists in the meta, GW understands what they are doing by giving all these armies the ability to have their best already NPE producing units the ability to shoot twice for a single CP, and this will obviously make monsters and heroes better because reasons.

Yeah, no, I'm not buying it. These things were already too points efficient. Unless GW literally doubles the points of every shooting unit in the game, I predict Unleash Hell will make AoS 3.0 the shooting army only edition and anything with the ability to batch massed firepower to abuse the rule will create a truly oppressive meta for everything else.

Again, for years everyone agrees Anvils was the best Stormcast faction by a mile. Well, guess what? Now everyone with a good shooting unit is Anvils on the charge where they double tap you before you get to them, AND they also are still their old allegiance at the same time. This is fine, right?

[Greybeard86]

2 hours ago, Laststand said:

Historically speaking formations were loose and only the most elite units with the most training (royal guards, nobles, elite mercenaries) could hold them in combat. Many other troops on the battlefield were part timers. Its also only natural that formations would fragment over terrain or in combat when troops try to lap round an open flank. Two squares, bashing head on in strict formation wouldnt have lasted (see scrums in Rugby or NFL scrimmage lines) 

Also, historically, how prevalent were true battles vs simply sieges or skirmishes?

Furthermore, besides if those troops are not perfectly formed, the question is what is the better representation of combat.

i) insisting in model by model combat;

ii) modeling combat at the unit level.

I think that is the true debate. If they want a model by model approach, then designing bases and models for it would be a must. Unless we are happy seeing the egg formation or other ugly things on the table.

Alternatively, a more abstract representation of a "unit" would be a more elegant solution, and measures things from poisitions in the "block", not model by model. Some games allow for different formations to reflect adaptability (column, line, square, etc.), if we are concerned about blocks alone.

[Mcthew]

5 minutes ago, Reinholt said:

Unless GW literally doubles the points of every shooting unit in the game, I predict Unleash Hell will make AoS 3.0 the shooting army only edition and anything with the ability to batch massed firepower to abuse the rule will create a truly oppressive meta for everything else.

If I wanted to play a shooting game, I'd have invested in 40K. But I didn't.

Actually, if I wanted to play a well thought out shooting game, I'd have invested in 40K. What we have now is amateur-hour shooting game masquerading as fantasy. This is not what I thought AoS would be. It's nudging it further into a system that doesn't really know what it wants to be. Is it steampunk? It's not even High Fantasy really.

It might have been easier to call AoS 2.0 "Age of Nagash", and 3.0 "Age of Teclis Kragnos." Might have helped to know it was evolving from 'swords and sorcery', to 'blasters and buffoonery.' 

[Scurvydog]

8 minutes ago, Reinholt said:

So after sleeping on it, I've changed my mind on Unleash Hell.

Certainly in a game where some shooting units (flamers, salamanders, vanguard raptors, KO Ironclads) already power some of the dominant lists in the meta, GW understands what they are doing by giving all these armies the ability to have their best already NPE producing units the ability to shoot twice for a single CP, and this will obviously make monsters and heroes better because reasons.

Yeah, no, I'm not buying it. These things were already too points efficient. Unless GW literally doubles the points of every shooting unit in the game, I predict Unleash Hell will make AoS 3.0 the shooting army only edition and anything with the ability to batch massed firepower to abuse the rule will create a truly oppressive meta for everything else.

Again, for years everyone agrees Anvils was the best Stormcast faction by a mile. Well, guess what? Now everyone with a good shooting unit is Anvils on the charge where they double tap you before you get to them, AND they also are still their old allegiance at the same time. This is fine, right?

The units you mention including sentinels are however just about the only really meta defining ranged units, and even though Shootcast has been out for quite some time, as they are too expensive and vulnerable. I do not think it is a bad thing to have an overwatch like mechanic, if it was so overpowered why are sisters of the watch and handgunners not dominating who got it built into the warscroll. I am aware this version is stronger, as you can do it even as enemies charge a screen in front, however at least there is a hit penalty. 

Speaking of hit penalty, this is where the trouble begins, as I think this rule will be quite OK for any kind of range unit which does not trigger mortal wounds on unmodified rolls. Ironclads already got the last word to shoot chargers, that was good but not game breaking and many even switch to the ram these days. However sentinels and sneks etc will hardly loose any firepower from hit modifiers. Sending in heavy armor units wont help either. This is a small pool of units, yet they are pretty dominant in the competitive scene right now.

I will withhold final judgement to when I get the full picture, however so far it looks like GW might think the smaller table size and perhaps increased access to early melee engagements require such a rule to exist to not devalue ranged entirely. I could imagine that being their reasoning and hopefully there is more to back that up. Right now though I will agree it looks rough, charging 30 wardens was already a tall order, but if you also have to be shot by the 20 man sentinel unit behind as you charge, then it will be very oppressive.

This could be alright if we see changes to max unit sizes for some units, or we see some new unique things. Against shooting armies the units with 6" pile ins and activation range will be even more valuable though to prevent that extra shooting in the charge phase.