3.0 Actual Games Conversation

[NinthMusketeer]

1 hour ago, Sleboda said:

I'm headed into a team tournament in a few months. We're both taking Sons. There was absolutely zero discussion about what our first artefact would be.

Taking a giant from 35 wounds up to 47? Yes, please!

This item should not be allowed on characters with 10 or more wounds.

Yup. And 52.5 actually (not counting heals of course). Use the kraken-eater extra artifact command trait to make that guy a wizard and he can cast mystic shield to buff durability further.

[Sleboda]

4 minutes ago, NinthMusketeer said:

Yup. And 52.5 actually (not counting heals of course). Use the kraken-eater extra artifact command trait to make that guy a wizard and he can cast mystic shield to buff durability further.

Way ahead of ya'!

 

[PlasticCraic]

8 hours ago, yukishiro1 said:

It depends on your list. It's extremely strong for shooting lists that can safely give away the first turn, because when one of those lists gets the double from T1 to T2, it pretty much just wins. This may be slightly less true in AOS3, but in AOS2 a top competitive shooting list that got the T1 to T2 double had a win rate in the mid to high 80s. Absurd levels. 

Essentially winning 40% or more of your games without even trying because you gave away the first turn and then got the double made going for low drops absolutely worth it for those lists.

Now that you have to actually one-drop your one-drop battalion, that advantage is slightly mitigated. But you're still going to see those shooting lists going for it, because it's just such a massive advantage.

As long as games can still be over by the middle of T2 against shooting lists that get the double, you're going to see people chasing low drops with those lists IMO. 

Some lists that rely on buffs for survivability also needed to go low drop to avoid sometimes just losing the game on T1 because their key pieces got killed before they could be buffed. This is much less of an issue in AOS3 due to all out defense and best day, so for these lists you probably won't see so much emphasis any more on it. 

Lots of good points there.  Also worth noting the classic Alpha Bunker, still relevant in 3rd Ed. 

You want Horrors splitting and rezzing on objectives, not away from them.  So some lists want to outdrop you in order to get onto objectives first (or gum you up in your own deployment zone), before you can get going.

[yukishiro1]

Yeah, for sure, if those lists still work in an environment where objectives are comparatively so much less important to your final score. Not saying they won't, just not sure they will either. 

[NinthMusketeer]

Eh, objectives are still like ~75% of winning scenarios. Not only from VP directly but from battle tactics that are objective-based as well.

[Backbreaker]

Our group cannot stop playing recently! Last time we tried a siege battle and it was amazing.

A thing I noticed is that games tend to last 2 to 3 rounds. Not more. It's good and bad. Games are shorter but some armies are made for a "late" gameplay. It's bothering because most games end with one of the player completely wiped out.

I tend to prefer tense games that last till the last roll. We will see how it will evolve!

[JackStreicher]

3/4 Games lasted until the end of turn 5

It‘s highly match-up dependent imo

[Ragest]

Yesterday I won a match with sylvaneth against Legion of chaos in round 5 for 1 point. 

[Beliman]

4 hours ago, JackStreicher said:

3/4 Games lasted until the end of turn 5

That's my impression too. Victory points can be missleading too, they can turn the table really fast.

Monsters of 12-16 wounds that can't have an artifact are a bit meh, overall, better to take a 10-man unit

Edited July 27, 2021 by Beliman

[KrispyXIV]

4 hours ago, JackStreicher said:

3/4 Games lasted until the end of turn 5

It‘s highly match-up dependent imo

So far, all 3e games I've played have been competitive until turn 5. 

I've also spectated what would previously have been 1-2 games (vs. Barack Zilfin alpha) last until turn 5, simply because of the addition of on-demand defensive buffs and additional durability/sustainability from heroic actions.  

This feels like exactly what people were clamoring for at the end of 2E - a less Lethal, more drawn out game.  

Of course some things that were ideal in the previous version of the game are gonna seem like lovers - but its a hard sell to me that the game itself is damaged when it seems to play so much  better. 

[Karragon]

I've played 7 games of 3.0 so far, they've ended on Turn 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5 so from my experience the games are on average shorter than they were in 2 and honestly less fun, this edition feels unnecessarily bloated with things that most of the time don't have any impact

[Aeryenn]

4 minutes ago, Karragon said:

I've played 7 games of 3.0 so far, they've ended on Turn 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5 so from my experience the games are on average shorter than they were in 2 and honestly less fun, this edition feels unnecessarily bloated with things that most of the time don't have any impact

I have the opposite feeling. My games were longer possible due to mystic shield and heroic actions.

[Karragon]

Just now, Aeryenn said:

I have the opposite feeling. My games were longer possible due to mystic shield and heroic actions.

So far in all the turns of all those games I think 1 heroic action has made a difference. The heal is irrelevant, the dispel/unbind is pretty irrelevant, the extra CP might be nice but I haven't usually found myself scrabbling around for an extra CP, their finest hour can help if you use it at exactly the right time and the stars align for you so overall...meh, if they removed them tomorrow personally I wouldn't notice the difference

[Sarouan]

Heroic actions did have an impact in my games so far. Playing them in both players' turn is actually massive - especially Finest Hour.

Granted, usually has more impact on big monster heroes since, well, they hit a lot harder and have more wounds.

Finest Hour is always nice on infantry heroes, sure, but since they usually have less attacks as well...Really depends if you take big offensive heroes or support ones.

Unbind is much more situationnal, usually against heavy magic armies and bigger tables, when you can't have all of your dispellers at the right range.

[Ragest]

Just tried against ogors with sylvaneth and got absolutely stomped

Tried a list of lumineth aswell, a complete disaster like every list i try with them.

Edited July 27, 2021 by Ragest

[yukishiro1]

From my games, the gap between winners and losers - more in terms of units and lists than in terms of tomes - seems wider than it was in 2.0. Part of this is down to the power of save stacking and the reduced output caused by coherency changes rendering large numbers of units in the game basically hopeless at killing, the other part is due to scoring changes. In my experience so far, if your list can't score its grand strategy and 4/5 battle tactics, or reliably get all 5 battle tactics if it can't reliably get its grand strategy, it is not going to be genuinely competitive with those that can. Starting out more than 3 points behind is too large a gap to realistically overcome on the missions that have a scoring system which typically produces only a 1 or at best a 2 point swing on the primary towards the winning player. Similarly, if you don't have resilient monsters to run up the score with, your list better be able to kill the opponent's resilient monsters, or you've pretty much lost before the battle begins. 

The game hasn't really gotten slower and deadliness hasn't really gone down. Instead, it's become more unforgiving, with the gap between top-tier anvils and other units widening. 

The overall ruleset is a big improvement on 2, but it feels like it's being significantly distorted by bad save-stacking rules, and by battle tactics and grand strategies being almost 100% dependent on your own list, with very little ability of your opponent to disrupt them. A couple tweaks and the AOS3 ruleset could be in a really good place, but right now, there are big flaws to go with the big advantages. 

 

 

Edited July 27, 2021 by yukishiro1

[mmimzie]

55 minutes ago, yukishiro1 said:

100% dependent on your own list, with very little ability of your opponent to disrupt them.

I like this actualy. It's pretty cool making a list that does a thing well. Faction specific grand strat would also rock. Where you have this points foundation, and some armies might hard counter this by being able to stop what you think you can do best, but for the most part you have a secure safe part of your strategy. 

[PlasticCraic]

7 hours ago, Karragon said:

The heal is irrelevant

This has been the precise opposite of my experience!

[yukishiro1]

I think that kinda goes back to winners and losers. The heal is irrelevant on a 5 wound foot hero with 7 bravery and a 5+ save. It's not irrelevant on Archaon or one one of the ten or twenty premier monstrous hero options in the game. 

Edited July 27, 2021 by yukishiro1

[Kadeton]

From my games, I've been a bit disappointed in the strategies and tactics. I like the idea behind both mechanics, but the implementation seems off.

The strategies are, for the most part, completely passive: "Keep at least one unit of a specific type alive to the end of the game." That means it's not something that you have to achieve, it's up to your opponent to take it away from you. I like the idea of a grand strategy reflecting what your army is good at, but I really think it should be something that doesn't just happen by default.

The battle tactics are better in that regard, but too many of them are almost insultingly easy. "Run three units to the same area," for instance, or "Have the most units near the board centre, on the first turn before the opponent gets a chance to move." I'd really like to see these become less of a sure thing and more of a challenge.

[JackStreicher]

On Friday I‘ll have my first path to glory game. Let’s see how that plays out

I‘ll play the the Stormkeep of the Celestial Vindicators

[yukishiro1]

Grand strategies are just bad and should be axed or completely redesigned from the ground up. Right now they actively reward skew lists, the precise opposite of what they should do from a game design point of view. I honestly can't understand why they were put into the game in this form in the first place, it's so obvious they reward skew and punish balanced armies, and it is so hard to understand why any game designer would want to do that. And it's not like they actually add anything, either. Battle tactics are a good addition even if the specifics are a bit wonky right now, but grand strategies just seem like they have no real purpose except the incidental negative one they accomplish by rewarding skew. 

Edited July 28, 2021 by yukishiro1

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

2 hours ago, yukishiro1 said:

Grand strategies are just bad and should be axed or completely redesigned from the ground up. Right now they actively reward skew lists, the precise opposite of what they should do from a game design point of view. I honestly can't understand why they were put into the game in this form in the first place, it's so obvious they reward skew and punish balanced armies, and it is so hard to understand why any game designer would want to do that. And it's not like they actually add anything, either. Battle tactics are a good addition even if the specifics are a bit wonky right now, but grand strategies just seem like they have no real purpose except the incidental negative one they accomplish by rewarding skew. 

I agree with this. The worst thing about them is that the choice is fairly brainless. Have tanky battleline or lots of it? Hold the Line. Have lots of wizards incidentally? Prized Sorcery. Have an unkillable monster? Beast Master, but most likely that monster is also a wizard so really Prized Sorcery again. And just never take the ones that your opponent can control, like killing all heroes or killing the general.

I can't help but wonder if Grand Strategies were originially supposed to be secret. I feel like that could have worked better. There would have been room for a moment at the end of the game where players could go: "You fool! You thought you were winning this battle but you were playing into my Grand Strategy the whole time!"

[Liquidsteel]

I'm hoping that this first edition of Grand Strategies and Battle Tactics is purposefully simple, to ease us in to the flow of it.

Next GHB will hopefully open up some more wacky options, perhaps with different levels of reward.

For example the "hold an objective with X unit type" equivalent tactic might only be worth 1 point, but a "slay an enemy hero with your hero" might net you 3. With some in the middle such as "Pincer - Charge two units in to the same enemy unit".

[Sarouan]

To be honest, I'm not convinced about having grand strategies and battle tactics being "generic rules" for gaining additionnal victory points.

Problem with Grand Strategies is that there is one clear winner in terms of securing the points for the maximum security.

I would rather use secondary objectives tied to the battleplan.

I'm also not convinced it's really a gain for the game to add more complex battle tactics / grand strategies. Maybe it's because we're still learning the game but we don't feel it's needed in our games so far when we already have so many things to keep in mind. Maybe it will feel more natural once we get more games on our counter.