AoS 3 New Rules Discussion

[whispersofblood]

1 hour ago, PrimeElectrid said:

This doesn’t resolve the issue as raised, though. Yes you can get the TO to approve a Hammers of Sigmar army playing as Astral Templars. But you still have to have the conversation at the table with your opponent because they associate schemes with rules (supposedly).

The argument being put forward is that it is somehow unfair to your opponent if you paint your models silver but use gold model rules. Getting a TO to approve it doesn’t make it less fair in that regard; it just makes it legal.

My counter argument is that this is absurd given that we already allow armies with custom schemes to use official scheme rules, so the additional brain computation to process official schemes using different rules is minimal; that army lists exists expressly to clarify this because it is *not* solely a visual game, and nobody - nobody - has memorised every single sub faction rules by official paint scheme anyway for this to be an issue. 

I don't think that is the argument. I think more accurately the argument being put forward is the specific scheme Primary: Gold, Secondary: God, Tertiary: Blue and white hammer iconography communicates something very specific to the viewer. And, that care should be taken to distinguish your models if that isn't what you are trying to communicate, given the painter has absolute control of their scheme. 

The original questions is not of a general nature, so it doesn't make sense to apply the answer generally.

[CaptainSoup]

As a Nighthaunt player I completely forgot about Priests and our lack there of. I was hoping they would give at least one of our characters in the FAQ the keyword but alas. I truly don't understand why GW went and added all these features into the game when entire factions don't have access to them and the ones that do most likely didn't need them to begin with. I know GW is better than this, it shows in the way they support 40k, it just baffles me with some of the decisions they made in regards to some factions. It's almost as if they didn't care about some of the factions. 

Then there was the WarCom article yesterday talking about how to hunt monsters, all of which my army can't achieve like shooting them or using faction terrain as "bait." Thanks for the tips, GW...

My FLGS wants to try and kick off AoS and get people to participate to grow the community which is great and I will support them, but me and my army will be the proverbial beat stick faction that will get smashed by others except on the extremely rare occasions when the dice favor me, and anyone who has played these games long enough knows that is no way to strategize. Part of me is not looking forward to it. 

[PrimeElectrid]

16 minutes ago, whispersofblood said:

I don't think that is the argument. I think more accurately the argument being put forward is the specific scheme Primary: Gold, Secondary: God, Tertiary: Blue and white hammer iconography communicates something very specific to the viewer. And, that care should be taken to distinguish your models if that isn't what you are trying to communicate, given the painter has absolute control of their scheme. 

The original questions is not of a general nature, so it doesn't make sense to apply the answer generally.

That’s actually the argument that was put forth: I play red marines with red rules 10 times but on the 11th occasion they are using green rules, now I am at a disadvantage because I associate red models with red rules.

[Beliman]

@CaptainSoup As a KO player, I 100% understand what you are saying.

But I'm pretty sure that we will see a lot of new things in the next Battletomes.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

54 minutes ago, Christopher Rowe said:

I'll be really glad when this subject has finally been hashed to death.

I asked this in the Rules Forum, but nobody has answered. Are Realms of War rules officially dead since they're not mentioned anywhere? I'm guessing yes. Because while I'm taking Battlemage Ghur as an ally in my first Seraphon list (consisting of models that are painted with wild dissonance from the "official" colors) whatever the case, because I'm aiming for mobility and like his spell, it would be pretty sweet to get that +1 to casting etc. Of course, if that were the case, almost every Order army would be allying him in!

I don't have any of the books, but I think GHB 2021 says that battles this season take place in Ghur, and we get associated realmscape features (Seismic Shift) and a realm spell (Metamorphosis). I would definitely give you that +1 to cast. It think it's nice if the inter-edition jank benefits someone for a change

For what it's worth, I still don't think every order army will want a Ghur mage. He's good, but he's still just a 1 cast, 6 wound wizard that does not get access to spell lores in most cases.

 

18 minutes ago, CaptainSoup said:

As a Nighthaunt player I completely forgot about Priests and our lack there of. I was hoping they would give at least one of our characters in the FAQ the keyword but alas. I truly don't understand why GW went and added all these features into the game when entire factions don't have access to them and the ones that do most likely didn't need them to begin with. I know GW is better than this, it shows in the way they support 40k, it just baffles me with some of the decisions they made in regards to some factions. It's almost as if they didn't care about some of the factions. 

Then there was the WarCom article yesterday talking about how to hunt monsters, all of which my army can't achieve like shooting them or using faction terrain as "bait." Thanks for the tips, GW...

My FLGS wants to try and kick off AoS and get people to participate to grow the community which is great and I will support them, but me and my army will be the proverbial beat stick faction that will get smashed by others except on the extremely rare occasions when the dice favor me, and anyone who has played these games long enough knows that is no way to strategize. Part of me is not looking forward to it. 

I think all of Death has zero priests since they took out Nagash's priest keyword just before it became relevant. It does not matter too much, though: It seems most people with armies that have priests think their priests got weaker, in spite of how GW hyped up the changes. And faction terrain has always just been an allegiance ability that you need to pay money to use, so not much of a loss there in my opinion.

As for playing Nighthaunt during the next edition: Maybe you can find solace in the idea that people who keep repping armies even during the times that they are low-tier are absolute legends. Maybe take a look at HeyWoah on youtube. He has a bunch of videos where he was taking Beast Claw Raiders to trournaments from the time where they were still awful. He's just being really positive about grinding out that 3-2 record and helping new people enjoy the game by being a good opponent. It definitely helped me accept the ever-turning wheel of fortune that is GW balance a bit more.

 

[The Red King]

8 hours ago, EMMachine said:

 

 

I have the feeling you are reading the FAQ-Point wrong. The FAQ about Proxies doesn't force you guys to paint the models in the official painting theme. It only tells you, If you are using the painting theme of an official subfaction, than use the rules.

I have painted my Stormcast Eternals in the colors of the Celestial Vindicators:

That way I will either use the Celestial Vindicators Subfaction or no subfaction because of lore-reasons (so not playing them with the "Anvils of the Heldenhammer" subfaction). I could have chosen to make my own stormhost to choose freely (+when I painted the first models, subfactions haven't existed yet, instead their were the megabattalions that nobody could use).

In most cases it is not the colortheme alone but also an iconography.

For example Hallowheart has a blue/white colortheme (that was shown in Firestorm) and as iconography a burning diamond with something that looks like the Ironhalo from the Stormcast Helmets below.

You still can have blue and white colorthemes with your own iconography being your own guard but if you use the official colors of hallowheart and the official iconography than play the subfaction hallowheart

Their is absolutly no problem with a cherry blossoms themed army played with the living City rules.

In the end you have to tell your opponent at the start of the game anyway what subfaction you play

Unless GW makes an army in 5 years with a cherry blossom scheme in which case tough luck. You have to change the rules of your lovingly crafted army because some hypothetical person has the memory to recall every single sub factions scheme and rules but also lacks the ability to remember you saying "I'm using X subfaction this game."

 

(This part is not in relation to my qoute) People claiming that only someone who doesnt care about the lore would not run them as the chosen scheme are the most slavishly devoted kind of gatekeeper. In an infinite realm you're telling me there's not a single situation where a Hammerhal Ghyra army might fight closely with a sylvaneth detachment (rules that would be best represented by using living cities rules). Never will an army from the phoenecium deploy a particularly powerful cadre of wizards (best represented by hallowheart). Armies not being inextricably and arbitrarily linked to one single set of rules encourages creativity and arguing that only WAAC players who don't care about the lore would ever "SULLY their poor gaming table with such uncouth and unconscionable behaviour" is laughable. 

 

My current Beasts of Chaos army is a full counts as army of Blades of Khorne (Gors converted to bloodreavers, bestigor converted as blood warriors). Is it because (as some here would suggest) I'm a perpetrator of great and terrible SIN against the hobby or is it possible it's because my lovingly converted army of Brass Despoilers is now completely unplayable thanks to GW changing the rules. My love of the LORE of brass despoilers and skullfrays is WHY my army might "confuse you", not because I hate the very concept of "good and decency in the tabletop" as it were.

[zilberfrid]

6 hours ago, whispersofblood said:

I'm a bit shocked this is the most controversial faq answer the logic seems pretty clear.

How you paint your models regardless of whether you intend it or not communicates something to the person standing across from you. The FAQ references when the colours you've chosen specifically communicate something that is not true. For example if your models look like Hammers of Sigmar a reasonable person would assume they are Hammers of Sigmar, so it would not be sporting to say that are Anvils of the Heldenhammer. 

What people seem to then be assuming is also true is the counter factual. Where if my army doesn't look like something that it can't be that thing. Which the battletomes to my knowledge address giving room for individual paint schemes to use specific sub-factions. 

The individual with the Living City army for example would be fine. As a) it couldn't be anything else besides living city. And b) not being something, is not the same as, not being something else, but being something else.

Anyway this is super boring, paint your models how you'd like but appreciate you might constrain yourself in the future from using the "best" rules.

My Freeguild paint scheme is older than Cities, and now fits a city I don't play.

When they put dwarves in the soup, I have no idea what subfactions will exist and what colours will coincide, or not, with my current Kharadron.

That's two out of two armies.

Someone that started playing before the last chamber opened will have Stormcast in one scheme, do they need to repaint their entire army when the new book arrives?

If someone insisted my Cities should be Hammerhal, I don't have a legal army anymore due to conditional battleline.

Now I could have repainted my army after Cities came out, and maybe again when I want to play a different subfaction, but that's plain nonsense. The books are already massively overpriced, being restricted to 1/7th of it because GW chose the colour I was using is frankly bollocks.

[stus67]

I can't believe there's this much drama over a inconsequential errata. Can we go back to the moaning back and forth about Unleash Hell era or is it too late to go back to that one?

Edited July 6, 2021 by stus67

[TimeToWaste85]

18 hours ago, The Red King said:

Without looking it up tell me which subfaction uses red armor with gold trim and which one uses red armor with gold trim and black shoulders. 

Khorne everything?

[Christopher Rowe]

1 minute ago, TimeToWaste85 said:

Khorne everything?

I'm pretty sure the answer is McDonald's for the first scheme and Burger King for the second.

[Golub87]

7 hours ago, Sleboda said:

One day painted "Follow Me!" on his helmet. From then on, whenever I used that model in my army, he had the Crown. Period. If I didn't want my general to have it, I used a different model. It was my choice to restrict that model's option. After I did it, I respected my opponents enough to not ask them to ignore what they saw in him and the lessons of several games against him. 

I chose to create the limitation. Myself.

Yes, keywords being your choice. You chose how to model and paint the goblin head and what it means to you.

Now imagine painting the "follow me" on a goblin helmet because you think it's cute for a goblin boss to have such a flagrant and childish display of authority and rank. You go to your weekend game or worse yet a tournament, and the opponent picks up your interesting figure and says well this dude is clearly having the Item X and if you are not using it that way that gives you unfair advantage.

Also, while some people may be privileged enough to have multiple models for every possible version of the given character, most are not in that position, so I am not sure what exactly are you trying to prove with this point? Are you shaming people for playing the game with the models they have? For not being able to afford as much models as you can afford? I don't get it.

[yukishiro1]

5 hours ago, whispersofblood said:

Thankfully most events have TOs who are the ultimate authority and already determine "reasonableness". 

"This FAQ doesn't actually mean anything because TOs won't apply it and will instead use common sense" is not really a justification for the FAQ. 

The sole effect of the FAQ is to judge a certain armies as second-class and demand that those players go hat-in-hand to their opponents to be allowed to play the game with the combination of rules and colors they like. It's 100% about empowering and enshrining a judgmental attitude towards painting your armies in certain ways. That's the merit of it for the people who support it, and the sticking point for people who object to it. 

How people break down basically comes down to how they react to that idea of "frowning" on people who "spoil" the hobby by their choice of color and rules - if they like the idea of judging people for the combination of colors and rules they choose, it's a good thing, if they find that offensive and prone to create unnecessary arguments, they don't support it. 

[yukishiro1]

51 minutes ago, stus67 said:

I can't believe there's this much drama over a inconsequential errata. Can we go back to the moaning back and forth about Unleash Hell era or is it too late to go back to that one?

On the one hand, yes, it is inconsequential in the sense that it doesn't really do anything on its own because it relies on (and empowers) players to be its moral enforcers, and as long as the players refuse to take on that role, it doesn't actually do anything.

On the other hand, it isn't inconsequential, because it involves judging people for how they hobby and saying they're "spoiling" the hobby for the rest of people through their choices. And any time you start telling people they are "spoiling" the hobby, you're going to get some strong reactions...as you should. This a hobby, it works because people care about their armies a lot, and nobody likes to be told that how they hobby is "frowned upon" and "spoiling" it for everyone else. The whole point of the FAQ is to try to shame certain behavior and it shouldn't surprise anyone that when you try to shame people they get upset. 

There's always been an inherent tension in the hobby between those hobbyists who favor creative freedom and those hobbyists who favor adherence to prescriptive rules laid down by the company. This sort of rule brings that tension full into the open, and it's one of the major fault lines in the hobby, so it's not a surprise it gets people worked up, especially when the company goes out of its way to use emotionally charged words to ram home its message.

If the FAQ had just said something like "some players may be confused by using a paint scheme that appears to be one subfaction to represent another, so check in with your opponent before the game if you do to make sure everyone is on the same page," I think the reaction would be totally different to them using words like "frown upon" and "spoil" and "seek permission," even though the actual impact is the same. 

Edited July 6, 2021 by yukishiro1

[Lich King]

Um, no one is going to follow this. 

[Eldarain]

@Christopher Rowe As I understand it games using the GHB Battlepack are all taking place in Ghur so the Battlemage is stronger during this season.

Edited July 6, 2021 by Eldarain

[Christopher Rowe]

22 minutes ago, Eldarain said:

@Christopher Rowe As I understand it games using the GHB Battlepack are all taking place in Ghur so the Battlemage is stronger during this season.

Thanks! I certainly would love it if we can prove it! I don't see any mention of Realms of Battle rules in the Core Book however, and the rules about Ghur in the GHB '21 don't specifically cite a general rule either. I'm confused, I guess.

[RuneBrush]

19 hours ago, stratigo said:

The reason people are so against it is that everyone knows that guy who will sit there and ****** and whine and insult you and use every ruling in the book to make the play experience as miserable as possible, and the primary thing the paint scheme ruling does is hand ammo to that guy to make the play experience even worse, usually by concern trolling.

Personally in many years of gaming, I've never come across that guy in my gaming group, local club or when I've attended events.  If somebody started insulting me about my army in a pick up game, I'd likely pack my stuff up and leave.  That type of player isn't welcome in most environments.

[Fyrm]

Alright, I’ve said my piece on the paint scheme/conversions/counts as/proxies debate. Twice. And until I see anything that addresses my points or directly asks me to explain them I’ll leave it at that. 
 

so a new question!!! Well, sort of. I’ve asked this before, but haven’t seen any answers to it. Can you run allies in the core battalions? What about coalition or whatever the new thingy is?

[whispersofblood]

4 hours ago, PrimeElectrid said:

That’s actually the argument that was put forth: I play red marines with red rules 10 times but on the 11th occasion they are using green rules, now I am at a disadvantage because I associate red models with red rules.

There is a lot more to the Blood Angels paint scheme, than red armour... Like you don't strength the argument by reducing it to an absurd simplification.

[Fred1245]

22 minutes ago, whispersofblood said:

There is a lot more to the Blood Angels paint scheme, than red armour... Like you don't strength the argument by reducing it to an absurd simplification.

There really isn't though. Most players don't know or care what the actual iconography of ANY faction that isn't their own is. If they're relatively tuned into the Lore they MIGHT know SOME of the basic color schemes.

So in the vast majority of cases Red=Blood Angels is the only meaningful connection of paint scheme to lore a player is going to make. 

Which in my opion makes the whole 'paint job determine rules' thing even dumber. The average player's grasp on the minutiae of the narrative is fairly tenuous, saying 'Hey, these guys have Advance and Charge instead of +1 to wound in combat' is much less likely to create confusion than running your red blood ravens as Blood Ravens and not saying anything about it. So running two canonically Red armies and not spelling out which set of rules you're using (even if the iconography is picture perfect) will be more confusing to the majority of people than just saying 'yeah, these red guys do what the green guys normally do.'

Lore is useful up until it creates inconvenience on the tabletop. At that point it should be discarded. 

[yukishiro1]

2 hours ago, Fyrm said:

Alright, I’ve said my piece on the paint scheme/conversions/counts as/proxies debate. Twice. And until I see anything that addresses my points or directly asks me to explain them I’ll leave it at that. 
 

so a new question!!! Well, sort of. I’ve asked this before, but haven’t seen any answers to it. Can you run allies in the core battalions? What about coalition or whatever the new thingy is?

Yes to both. It's in the new FAQ for the core book - "yes, unless the battle pack says otherwise," and the GHB book doesn't say otherwise. So allies and coalition can both go into core battalions. 

[stratigo]

2 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

Personally in many years of gaming, I've never come across that guy in my gaming group, local club or when I've attended events.  If somebody started insulting me about my army in a pick up game, I'd likely pack my stuff up and leave.  That type of player isn't welcome in most environments.

You are lucky.

 

I am not joking about the fascists in my gaming community. 

 

There was a player who, every time he started to lose, would become a pillar of salt and start sniping you over every little imperfection. He also liked to call everything bad that happened ******. He also opined one time that the world would be more peaceful if hitler won. He was in the military and got redeployed shortly before covid and left the community. But he was only the worst (to play, others are worse to just be around) of an entire circle of gaming friends. And these are only the people that hung out at the shop I went to and not the people OTHERS told me about that hung out in other shops.

 

And the thing is, here in NOVA, they currently have the iron grip on events and informal clubs. Cause they thought covid was a hoax, or just didn't care about others getting sick, and so kept playing and organizing when everyone else did the right thing and followed lockdown protocols. The rest of us, as lockdown faded and things reopened, are scrambling to regain some control of the community so it isn't just the top most fashy warhammer players running all the events and maybe using it to recruit impressionable youths into their ideology.

 

 

So, yes, warhammer has bad players. And a rather lot of them. If you don't experience this, you are lucky.

[yukishiro1]

I think it really depends completely on your local community. There are places where there really are problems like Stratigo describes, and there are also a lot of places where there aren't problems anything like that, and if you come from one, it's probably really hard to appreciate what it's like to function within the other. If you read a rule like that and think "oh, people will just be sensible, so it doesn't matter," please take a step back and just realize that the reason you can hold that opinion is that conditions exist in your local gaming community that may not exist elsewhere. People aren't necessarily being drama queens if they say "this rule is going to empower bullies where I game" just because it would be drama queening in your gaming circle. And the thing about rules is that they generally need to be constructed with consideration for the lowest common denominator, because the sensible people don't need the rules in the first place. 

Edited July 6, 2021 by yukishiro1

[Greybeard86]

15 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

As for playing Nighthaunt during the next edition: Maybe you can find solace in the idea that people who keep repping armies even during the times that they are low-tier are absolute legends. […]definitely helped me accept the ever-turning wheel of fortune that is GW balance a bit more.

This is depressing to read, though I understand you meant it to be a positive note. I cannot help but think that GW’s design cycle is engineered to brazenly  push us to collect multiple armies. Those who stick to one army are probably just a thorn inGW s side, which to me is super bizarre coming from a company that published in white dwarf articles like Stillmania.

[yukishiro1]

I don't think it's anything as coordinated as a deliberate plan. It's more just a happy side effect from GW's point of view. Balance isn't a priority in GW's design philosophy - they're upfront about it, miniatures come first then they stick some rules on the miniatures that they think fit, rather than starting with a vision of a balanced game and figuring out what rules and minis they need to achieve that vision - and if that means that you get some nice churn as a side effect that prompts people to start new collections or buy new stuff, that's a bonus. But if they were actually trying to systematically distort the balance to promote buying certain miniatures, I think they'd be better at it than they are. 

I think we'd also know more about it. There are a couple infamous examples of the developers being told to deliberately overpower something to sell it - the Wraithknight being the most notorious - but there aren't many. Given how leaky GW is, if it was a regular practice, I think we'd know about it.