AoS 3 New Rules Discussion

[Aren73]

When it comes to unit sizes my impression is that we will still see hordes. I think what we'll get is one max size unit in the army which will act as the objective holder, that you just run up to the objective and dump on it. 
 

I also think that with the new coherency rules we move away from hordes as damage-dealers and into hordes as damage-sponges. The big winners here I think are skeletons - they were created to soak up damage anyway, now their function is more desirable. 

I am excited for pretty much everything, but disappointed by lack of rework to the terrain rules. 
That and I am dreading playing against any shooting heavy lists now. As a mechanic, shooting has only gotten stronger. Who knows, perhaps every shooting unit will double in points in the GHB or something? 😂

[pnkdth]

54 minutes ago, Mcthew said:

Quick question: how many players are now holding off buying AoS 3.0 until the General's Handbook Points are released/leaked? Who is hoping for the best/expecting the worst?

I'm holding off and letting the rules sink in. 20+ years in the hobby has taught me to never ever listen to the initial outrage or hype. It is just something that happens at every edition change since every time you change something ⏤ or anything, anywhere ⏤ you will annoy some someone. 

More importantly, before I see the points changes it is pointless to speculate since I don't see the point(s). 

It is going to shake things up though and I'm all for it.

[JackStreicher]

I've got sooooo many questions:

1. Unleash Hell: Does the Mortis Engine simply hit all enemies within 12?
2. Does summoning an endless spell costs one spell? Since it's bolded as summon and not as cast.
More coming up ^^

[Yondaime]

Well, now they killed my alarith list with no save reroll, save cap, +- hitcap

So the only half good alternative to syar is dead

And with shooting buffed sentinels will be much stronger, and i'll die before spamming 60+ sentinels

seems like i have to play khorne again, if i have to bring meme list, at last i'll do it at the sound of death metal

[Boar]

43 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Do we know how rend interacts with the save bonus/modification cap? Did they just make it so that you can only get +1 to saves at max, but with no cap on negative modifiers?

It is cap after summing up all modifiers. It's elaboreted in note next to point about modifiers at beginning of core rules.

So yes only increased defense is capped, rend is not

[Grimrock]

1 hour ago, Envyus said:

It's not. Whoever has the least number of drops goes first they don't get to pick. 

Not true, like I mentioned before there are two sections you need to look at. First is the Matched Play battlepack. In the section for Stealing the Initiative, it says:

Do not roll off to determine who has priority in the first battle round. Instead, the player who finished deploying their army first has priority in the first battle round. 

Now you need to look at the rules for priority. In section 4.1 for The Priority Roll it says:

At the start of each battle round, the players must roll off. This is called the priority roll. The winner has priority in that battle round and must decide who will take the first turn and who will take the second turn.

So in matched play the person who finishes deploying first gets to decide who gets the first turn. 

 

59 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Do we know how rend interacts with the save bonus/modification cap? Did they just make it so that you can only get +1 to saves at max, but with no cap on negative modifiers?

...

If we can still partially deploy that one-drop battalion I think this is allright. Otherwise, people will probably build for high drops.

Just to answer these two. First, the caps work for a final value after all +/- modifiers. So if you have a +3 to your save and your opponent has a -2 rend, you'll be left with a +1 after modifiers and meet the limit. If you have +3 and your opponent has -1, then you will have a +2 which is over the cap and will get reduced down to a +1 as a result.  Second, you can't partially deploy the one-drop battalion. It's in section 26.2.1 on page 278. Essentially when you go to deploy any unit from a Unified battalion you must then immediately deploy all other units from that battalion, one unit at a time, until you're done. No choice.

Edited June 14, 2021 by Grimrock

[Kadeton]

18 minutes ago, JackStreicher said:

1. Unleash Hell: Does the Mortis Engine simply hit all enemies within 12?

That's a great question. It would seem so, since Unleash Hell simply lets the unit shoot in that phase, and the targeting restriction doesn't apply since Wail of the Damned doesn't use the attack sequence. Could always be FAQ'd. Good catch!

18 minutes ago, JackStreicher said:

2. Does summoning an endless spell costs one spell? Since it's bolded as summon and not as cast.

Have we seen the new Endless Spell warscrolls yet? They're all meant to be rewritten in the GHB. They may use different wording now.

[Yondaime]

26 minutes ago, JackStreicher said:

I've got sooooo many questions:

1. Unleash Hell: Does the Mortis Engine simply hit all enemies within 12?
2. Does summoning an endless spell costs one spell? Since it's bolded as summon and not as cast.
More coming up ^^

its stated that you need to spend a cast on them, so yes

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

12 minutes ago, Grimrock said:

So in matched play the person who finishes deploying first gets to decide who gets the first turn. 

[...] you can't partially deploy the one-drop battalion. You absolutely have to deploy it in one go.

I think this is a super reasonable way to keep the "out dropping" mechanic, actually. Before, going one/two/three drops was something only a few select armies could do, and in some cases it came with basically no down side (if you had a battalion that was full of stuff you wanted anyway).

Now, most armies can decide to go low drops, and the opportunity cost for going below 3 drops is fairly large:

• You miss out on extra command points and enhancements you could get from other battalions.
• You have to fit everything or almost everything into Battle Regiment, which means at most 5 troops and only one big hero. Every extra big hero will increase your drops.
• You have to deploy everything all at once, so your opponent will gain a positional advantage over you.

Of course, some of these restrictions will be more or less difficult to deal with for some armies. Some armies don't need enhancements that much. Others don't care about bringing big heroes or only want to bring big heroes. Some armies can redeploy or deploy off-board which mitigates the positional advantage your opponent gets. But that just seems like the normal amount of variation between factions you would want in a strategy game: Some armies can go low drops easier than others, but basically everyone can do it if they want to.

[JackStreicher]

5 minutes ago, Yondaime said:

its stated that you need to spend a cast on them, so yes

I have to check that since I didn‘t see anything about it while I was actively looking for it  (I only found that dispelling costs one spell)

[Raptor_Jesues]

quick question: hit, wound and saves are capped at +1 bonus (after all math has been done), are wards in there too or are those freely buffed?

[Enoby]

I had two 2k gamea with most of the new rules (not the Battle Tactics rule as we didn't know about it at the time). The games were Slaanesh vs Warclans. The results don't matter much as the battletome for Warclans will likely be changed, as will points (was a draw and a win to Slaanesh if curious).

Here's what I found:

- The game is much more interactive and, because of that, much more enjoyable on your opponent's turn. Both armies generated a decent amount of CP, with the Slaanesh army generating more throughout. It felt more tactically driven to have the ability to switch up abilities on the fly. 

- Hero and monsters (as in both keywords) feel much much stronger; I was running a KoS and Dexcessa, and the Warclans player was running a Megaboss, and these felt like they determined the game. The heal ability on heroes is very strong on ones with a high save, and the roar was crucial to prevent massive save bonuses

- The armies being so close meant first turn charges were easy, but not necessarily a good idea. Probably a hit to going second 

- The objectives were nice and simple - I prefer them to relocation orb

Overall, I felt these games were more fun than AoS 2 and more tactically demanding. However, I worry that hero monsters are going to be far too strong compared to other options. In the first game the Mawkrusha killed most of the Slaanesh army (who had the points advantage initially) and in the second game the Krusha was killed and the Keepers got to work on the orks. Slaanesh can heal its heroes a lot anyway, and orks can get decent healing too, so the hero action d3 heal was very strong for bringing monsters back from the brink.

My worry is that every army will end up looking like 2019 Slaanesh But other than that, the rules were a lot of fun and I think an improvement over AoS 2  

[Yondaime]

15 minutes ago, JackStreicher said:

I have to check that since I didn‘t see anything about it while I was actively looking for it  (I only found that dispelling costs one spell)

I saw the leaked page about it and it clearly says you have to cast it, fun fact, now both players can dispell in each hero phase

[Boar]

So Battleshock does not appear to have unit size modifier and Inspiring Presence is limited to one per phase. Interesting

[whispersofblood]

1 hour ago, Yondaime said:

Well, now they killed my alarith list with no save reroll, save cap, +- hitcap

So the only half good alternative to syar is dead

And with shooting buffed sentinels will be much stronger, and i'll die before spamming 60+ sentinels

seems like i have to play khorne again, if i have to bring meme list, at last i'll do it at the sound of death metal

In AoS 3.0 Syar is smooth brain bottom tier Great Nation. The Best Nations are Iliatha, Helon, Alumnia probably in the order; Ziatrec still has legs. 

Also no save rerolls improves the killing power of Stoneguard relative to the rest of the game.

One of the questions I have for people struggling at the moment is how many different Factions do you play regularly and genuinely consider deeply. Personally these changes allow me to play all my factions (LRL, IDK, HoS, BoC, S2D, BW, IJ) in way more characterful and engaging ways. Someone mentioned BoC earlier, and I have to say I woke up with a bolt of lightning in the back of head with a BoC army that is the dark mirror to my LRL. I'm very excited to try out the control and precision based BoC list I dreamt up.

The tension between enhancements and drops has been bugging me all morning, and I'm loving it!

[JackStreicher]

anyways. I think that CoS will fare quite well in the new edition

Edited June 14, 2021 by JackStreicher

[Zappgrot]

15 minutes ago, Boar said:

So Battleshock does not appear to have unit size modifier and Inspiring Presence is limited to one per phase. Interesting

Yea got to kill of those horde amries (cries in  8000 points of gloomspite gitz) 

[Boar]

5 minutes ago, Zappgrot said:

Yea got to kill of those horde amries (cries in  8000 points of gloomspite gitz) 

Triumph for battleshock immunity sounds like good deal for gobbos, and still they have shrine when skulking in their territory

[JackStreicher]

So what exactly is the deal with understrength units?

Are there some shenanigans to let's say field 5 instead of 6 goregruntas (coherency) to bring one back later?

[Zappgrot]

1 minute ago, Boar said:

Triumph for battleshock immunity sounds like good deal for gobbos, and still they have shrine when skulking in their territory

Can we just accept that it became harder to keep low  ld hordes  from running away?  

[Boar]

2 minutes ago, Zappgrot said:

Can we just accept that it became harder to keep low  ld hordes  from running away?  

Of course, that's why Gitz would probably choose this triumph instead of +1 wound or reroll charges one

[Marcvs]

I have been checking the rules for restrictions to movement after set up (like, after Stromcast's scions of the storm) and cannot find them. anyone saw something to this effect?

NVM different language versions had me convinced that scions was now at the start of the movement phase, but it seems it's still at the end so no problem

Edited June 14, 2021 by Marcvs

[Skreech Verminking]

26 minutes ago, JackStreicher said:

anyways. I think that CoS will fare quite well in the new edition

Depedning on the points increase/decrease and unit size chances (stormvermin to min size 20) I could see the vile ratman doing great in the new edition as well

[Perturbato]

22 minutes ago, JackStreicher said:

So what exactly is the deal with understrength units?

Are there some shenanigans to let's say field 5 instead of 6 goregruntas (coherency) to bring one back later?

just that with maybe a model per unit change for many units your current unit count will be undersized and you'll be able to bring them if you absolutely want to bring them but at the normal cost so no advantage here i think

[Fuxxx]

10 minutes ago, Marcvs said:

I have been checking the rules for restrictions to movement after set up (like, after Stromcast's scions of the storm) and cannot find them. anyone saw something to this effect?

NVM different language versions had me convinced that scions was now at the start of the movement phase, but it seems it's still at the end so no problem

Really? Wow. Now I'll have to discuss this with all my German friends. Better buy the English rules or noone will believe me