3.0 Actual Games Conversation

[Sleboda]

Over the next few days, I'm playing some actual games with the new rules. I'll come back here and talk about how it went.

 

I'd encourage others to share here as well. Not full on battle reports, just commentary on how the new rules impacted your games.

Right now, folks are speculating. Let's end that with, oh, I dunno, real experiences.

[chosen_of_khaine]

Personally, I'm gonna stick with AoS 2.0 rules until the points changes are revealed (hopefully this saturday). Certain things, like Hero Monsters, clearly will be going up in points accordingly, and I'm guessing some unit sizes will be changing too. This is to say, games played with 3.0 rules and 2.0 points likely won't represent how the new edition really plays.

[Grimrock]

Tried out a game of slaanesh vs maggotkin the other night. Since the points aren't known the rumors were used and slaanesh used their current points while maggotkin played down about 260 points. I did have a few takeaways. 

First, all the buffs to heroes and monsters made the great unclean one into an absolute weapon. He was running the support loadout (bell and blade) but combined with the sloppity and the new abilities he killed dexcessa turn 1 and completely solo'd a summoned keeper turn 3. Rolls were a touch hot against the keeper, but the buffs can absolutely change the game in unexpected ways. I think the GUO killed more points in that game than in all of my games with him in AoS 2 combined. 

Second, both armies were absolutely swimming in command points. It wasn't infinite, but there was enough to make some significant impact on the game. There were definitely some weird cases where the limitations on issuing and receiving made optimal use difficult though, so I'm starting to think the battalions that let you get a one time use for free without counting as issuing or receiving could actually be really huge for some builds. 

Third, the smaller board definitely felt... smaller haha. Maybe it was partially the 18" no man's land, but the armies were all over eachother starting tun one and it didn't stop until the end of the game. Objectives were closer and shifting around was way quicker for nurgle. It wasn't a massive change, but everything felt snug and almost a little claustrophobic. I know some people have been saying it won't make a difference but it certainly felt different to me. 

Finally, I'm still not sure I like the changes. The lack of warscroll battalions really felt bad as they were a source of character for units. Things just felt so... vanilla without them. Not worse, the command abilities more than made up for the power loss, but just kinda boring.

[Gailon]

This is a great idea, people are playing real games and we can all see how our theorycrafting works out. Plus, this game is huge. Looking online I'm realizing just how different other people's experiences can be because they play different armies against different armies with different styles. 

I played Sylvaneth vs. my friend's Beasts of Chaos army. We used the new leaked points.

List building was definitely different. I found the new Core battalions more interesting than I thought at first glance. Because of the subcommander requirements I found it tricky to get the warlord battalion (my Sylvaneth lists don't run a lot of leaders with a few wounds). I went with a four monster list to try to take advantage of those rules, and Beasts went the other way, with TONS of small units and a couple units of Bullgor to do the damage. 

The game was GREAT. Continuing my theory that basement tier AoS is the most fun. Some thoughts: 

The changes to endless spells are interesting. Moving through them is a no brainer change that really helps keeping the flavor without having them just be movement blockers. Moving at the end of the hero phase is interesting, it gives that chance to try to dispel one before it moves. Rather than just being a thing that was there, I felt like there was interaction and back and forth with our endless spells (I had the glade wyrm and he had that freaking bull of course). 

Redeploy was amazing. I picked a battle tactic to destroy a particular unit of ungor. But when I moved up he redeployed 5" back. Out of range of treelord shooting and then I failed the charge. Then later, I thought I learned my lesson, picked another destroy unit battle tactice, but had a shooter that was definitely in range. moved up to 3" away. He redeployed 6" into obscuring terrain and I couldn't see the unit anymore to shoot it and now had a 9" charge. Failed. 

Unleash hell only came into play once, as the only shooter of significance was Drycha. It was definitely good when used. My opponent was able to keep her in combat though by dropping chaos spawns into her. He had so many units and his heroes turned into spawns on death, I think he was uniquely suited to this, more elite armies will have a harder time. 

One of the sneakier changes is the change to pile in. Being able to pile around a unit now, rather than just closer to the closest model, was critical at a couple points. This really opens up the ability to pile to objectives and to pile in a way that you clip another unit into combat. This rule also makes reach even more powerful. A 2" or 3" weapon can have a huge area it can reach now that the model it is on can pile a lot more freely. I was able to pile Drycha in a way where she killed a key unit that wasn't in combat, entirely because of her 2" reach. Of course he was able to pile chaos spawns around things to barely get within 3" of Drycha and keep her from being able to use unleash hell. 

The other sneaky change (by my eye) is that unit champions can issue basic commands. This really powers up ambush abilities. When he brought a unit in from ambush, or summoned one, now it didn't have to have a hero to use inspiring presence, which is really huge to keeping those units on the table. 10 besti/un/gor coming into my backfield was a lot tougher to get ride of. 

Generals are super important for generating those command points. This, combined with battle tactics for killing generals, may make it more important than ever to have beefy generals. After I killed his general he was hurting a bit for command points. 

The grand strategy ended up being critical to the game. If you get yours and they don't, that's the same point impact as a round where you get all the objectives and they get none. 

All in all, I loved the game. The hero abilities added a very interesting dynamic, the finest hour coming into play a few times. Choosing battle tactics will obviously be a huge part of the game that I'm already terrible at. I was too tempted to save the 'easy' ones for later, and I think I will start just picking the absolute easiest one to get. 

[Skreech Verminking]

Played a game with my beasts of chaos against the foul armies of the poster-things.

It was a lot of fun, and I really enjoyed the new core rules

[whispersofblood]

Played two games with HoS and against LRL. 29 Chaos warriors, Halberds + shields backed with Curse are a ferocious unit. 

The battleplans were interesting and gave a good static perspective to maneuver around. Battle Tactics made the choices available challenging and engaging. Even though I had a firm grip on the flow of the game it ended 16-19 in the first match and if my opponent had made some different decision could have been even closer. 

The game has a very board game feel, reminded me of playing economy games like Porto Rico, or Agricola. 

[yukishiro1]

The smaller board is the biggest change, it means that it's rare that you aren't hitting your opponent with most of your army T1, or T2 at the very latest if you go first with a slow army. I dislike this personally, I really like the cagey feel that 40k has in the first turn, but in a game with essentially zero terrain rules I guess it's probably unavoidable unless you want to make the haves even more dominant of the have-nots. But it does feel a bit stupid to have armies starting within such easy striking distance of one another - what have they been doing on the approach? Does everyone in every AOS game suddenly get summoned into a battle arena or something?

I like the idea of battle tactics, but the current balance on them is atrocious. Too many battle tactics are auto-succeeds, in the three games I've played each player has only failed in maybe 1 turn out of 5 each time. In practice, this feature makes list building even more important; the outcome of many games will be determined before any dice is rolled because a list engineered to be able to do the battle tactics effortlessly will crush one that isn't engineered that way. 

Grand strategies feel pointless, and I'm not sure it's just a question of them being badly balanced. I just don't see what they really add to the game, they encourage you to build gimmick lists instead of TACs, and that's the opposite of what a mechanic like this should be rewarding. 

Overall, the game experience is better than 2.0, but it feels like three steps forward, two steps back in terms of a lot of the new mechanics not quite getting there. 

edit: And that 5+ ward artefact is deeply stupid, it is literally twice as good as it should be, with the result that you feel like you're gimping yourself for not taking it unless you have access to one of the absolutely top tier artefacts in the game (e.g. cloud of midnight), which is a total shame because it completely destroys diversity. Everyone just takes the 5+ ward because it's almost always the best choice. The only way this makes any sense at all is if for some reason GW has decided that artefacts need to be roughly twice as powerful as they are, and included this as a placeholder so existing tomes don't get left behind while they roll out the new super artefacts. We'll know as soon as the first 3.0 tome comes out whether this is the case. But it feels like a tremendous shame right now. 

Edited June 29, 2021 by yukishiro1

[Envyus]

Armies if they are willing to go lower drops will have more artefacts in this game.

[Grimbok]

First game yesterday. 2000 point pretty standard. 

We played on the old board size, but with objectives spaced out with new ranges. They were very close, which is a shame. I like more space between objectives. 

 

Takeaways: 

It’s still AoS.

Coherency is an issue (mostly for my opponants 32 mm bases with 1” reach, I only had two big units on 25s..). Stupid and janky rule, perhaps the single worst rule in 3rd.

More command points and reset worked better than I thought. Redeploy is extremely strong, possible big NPE here. Command abilities are a big one in this edition. My army worked much better now, before I was starved for command points, but now I actually used my Darkoath Chieftains command ability, where as before I only had one point for more important stuff. So more of the weaker/niche command abilities can be used.

Hero actions are...fine, I don’t think they add enough versus the conplexity of the rules. Same with monster rampage. Did we really need this? 

Smaller boards are a bad thing. We played on the old size, and the board was flooded with models... using new points...

Battleplans are way better than feared. I was fearing the hopeless and boring and complex 40 k style missions. It’s a good mix. There are problems with some of the battle tactics, i don’t mind the format, easy to choose and remember (single turn only), but some are way too easy. It becomes irrelevant because both have scored the same amount anyways...Grand strategy...whatever...again, did we really need this? With better and more difficult battle tactics it could work fine. 

No more battalions...big plus. Armies are closer in powerlevel just because of this. Good thing. Core battalions are...fine. Again, are they needed? Do they make the game better...it’s just more stuff on top of other army construction rules... 

 

In conclusion: It’s still AoS. More complexity without much benefit for the game experience. I can live with that, but omg it’s hard to begin playing this game! So many things...so not beginner friendly at all. Battleplans are fine, which is perhaps the most important thing, and the battlepack style is very modular, so players and organizers could make their own battlepacks. 

 

Grimbok 

 

 

[JackStreicher]

I had a 2k game Soublight VS Idoneth and it was great fun. I didn't even notice the board was smaller.
We did some minor mistakes here and there but the game was really fun and I enjoyed it more than any2.0 game!

edit: to elaborate:

- We forgot that only the hero performing heroic leadership can use the CP.

- The 20 Namarti Reavers could‘ve rerolled all of their Unleash He’ll rolls due to being Nautilar

- We forgot about monstrous rampages for two turns (oops)

 

Edited June 29, 2021 by JackStreicher

[Gailon]

18 hours ago, Envyus said:

Armies if they are willing to go lower drops will have more artefacts in this game.

I'm curious about this, because I'm not sure I see it. I'd like it to be true. Most people will take a Warlord battalion and take an extra artifact, but that seems equivalent to people taking a warscroll battalion, which seemed fairly common,

Two extra artifacts requires 6 leaders, 4 of which have less than 10 wounds. Not sure how many people will push for that? (genuine question) And it pretty much concedes the choice of who goes first in most games.  

[RedemptionUK]

35 minutes ago, Gailon said:

I'm curious about this, because I'm not sure I see it. I'd like it to be true. Most people will take a Warlord battalion and take an extra artifact, but that seems equivalent to people taking a warscroll battalion, which seemed fairly common,

Two extra artifacts requires 6 leaders, 4 of which have less than 10 wounds. Not sure how many people will push for that? (genuine question) And it pretty much concedes the choice of who goes first in most games.  

The core battalions are now huge in my opinion. As a SCE player, it was very rare that I'd bother to take battalions (outside of the Vanguard mega) because they weren't that great. This change allows me to actually take an additional artefact in most lists I write now.

[Neverchosen]

5 hours ago, RedemptionUK said:

The core battalions are now huge in my opinion. As a SCE player, it was very rare that I'd bother to take battalions (outside of the Vanguard mega) because they weren't that great. This change allows me to actually take an additional artefact in most lists I write now.

I am with you on this one hundred percent, the old battalion system did not work for me. It often felt very forced and extremely unbalanced. I do wish there was a little more variety in the current battalions. I mentioned in a previous post how I wish there was more varied icons for example to allow for cavalry focused battalions or flying focused battalions. But simply giving different armies the same tool box to build around is a great step forward. I also think not limiting battalions to points is always great as I would much rather have my 2000 points represent my hard work and chosen units rather than a special rules tax for taking certain units and wanting to dictate the first turn.

My Slaves to Darkness army can run extremely varied battalions but my Beast Claw Raiders are much more limited in what I can build for them. But this feels actually really appropriate as my BCR army is much smaller and dedicated to a specific play style in contrast to my more generalist S2D force. I am going to build a Stormcast army using Dominion as a base and I am thinking of adding two Celestar Ballista just to open up a different battalion for them and to develop a more shooting focused army that is not quite at the level of the notorious 'shootcast' builds. But this is how battalions should function as a fun theme for building an army but not as a strictly limiting element of a game that often already has enough 'taxes' for building a list. 

[Gaz Taylor]

On 6/28/2021 at 6:43 PM, Gailon said:

The other sneaky change (by my eye) is that unit champions can issue basic commands. This really powers up ambush abilities. When he brought a unit in from ambush, or summoned one, now it didn't have to have a hero to use inspiring presence, which is really huge to keeping those units on the table.

Yup. Abilities that let you pick and remove models are huge now. Let’s you tactically remove a champion to prevent commands being issued (such as preventing Redeploy to move a unit that wants more models on an objective).

Ive not played any games yet but I’ve been really enjoying the battle reports on Season of War on YouTube

Well worth checking out as you can see the game working and it’s clear at each stage what is happening

[Sweetcurse]

Do ALL units have champions?

[Sonnenspeer]

18 minutes ago, Sweetcurse said:

Do ALL units have champions?

I expect updated Warscrolls that identify a champion like the new SC Warscrolls do. Currently it's not really clear for all units - eg Narmati Thralls have only icon bearers, I don't think these are champions, but maybe I m wrong.

[Gaz Taylor]

10 minutes ago, Sonnenspeer said:

I expect updated Warscrolls that identify a champion like the new SC Warscrolls do. Currently it's not really clear for all units - eg Narmati Thralls have only icon bearers, I don't think these are champions, but maybe I m wrong.

I think it will be answered via FAQs and tidied up as warscrolls get updated. I have no idea what would happen with an Icon Bearer as rules wise it makes sense to have one be nominated as a champion (and having multiple gives some redundancy here) but I suspect from a background point of view you could say they aren’t due to the nature of Thralls. And you could argue that case for a lot of units too!

So I’d say let’s wait for FAQs and if it’s not in there now it will get updated at some point after constructive feedback

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

1 hour ago, Sweetcurse said:

Do ALL units have champions?

The answer is no. Some units have no command models at all. Others have command models, but none that are explicitly "champions". This can mean that they have a command model that does what you would expect a champion to do (get a small attack buff), but which is called a different name, or it can mean that they only have other types of command models (standard bearers, musicians), but no champion.

I expect the FAQ to clarify to update models that are champions in all but name to be actual champions, but I would not expect every unit that currently has no champion to get one. I say this because the most recent battletome, Soulblight Gravelords, contains units without champions and was very clearly designed with the AoS 3 rules changes in mind.

[LuminethMage]

I've played one game with my Lumineth against Soulblight last weekend (incl. set-up and a short pause it took us almost 7 h 😅), and found it more interesting and fun than 2.0, which I also liked. Of course one game isn't enough to judge anything, but 

- I really like the Battle Tactics, the first few are easy, but once you have done those, they sometimes pose real trade-offs and make the game more tactical.

- I like the new core battalions, being able to customize your army for power or flavor without getting everything in one battalion is good. 

- Grand Strategies on the other hand, felt anything but, if you do not take a risky one on purpose. 

- I like the smaller board size, the action started on turn one without one side having to do a hail-mary all-in assault style of attack like often before. And there was still enough space for maneuver shenanigans. 

- The hero actions and CA during your opponents turn are a great addition. I can't say anything about the Monster ones, because I didn't have one (and didn't cast Metamorphosis, although I had all kind of evil plans around that pre-game but totally forgot about them during the game, lol), and killed my opponent's single Monster before he could do much with it, but I'm sure they are also impactful. 

- In our game we both didn't have an abundance of CP, and also had to use them well. My "I deny you to issue/receive CA" spell felt really powerful. If your army has such an ability, it's 100% worthwhile trying to include it. I felt already over the first game, I naturally started to include CA into my stats when I planned to attack or defend something, and if you then can't do it - it's really changing the outcome. 

- Obviously Unleash Hell won me the game. ... Actually it only came up once in the game, it was pretty impactful (helped me bring his VLoZD down to 1 W (not on itself)), but so are the other CA. My opponent used "Redeploy" very well for example. 

- This might be exaggerated due to the armies we played (LRL generally relying on MW and Soulblight having a lot of high armor saves), but with all the ways to get high saves (or at least ignore rend on a 50/50 save chance) means it felt that it's all about MW. The rest is mostly for cosmetics (a bit overstated). 

- I don't think miscast is designed very well, but again that might be because of the lists I play. 

Overall though, I think 3.0 is great, and Blood Knights are scary : )

Edit: We played according to the GHB 2021 rules and leaked points. Battleplan was Feral Foray. 

Edited July 1, 2021 by LuminethMage

[stratigo]

9 hours ago, LuminethMage said:

I've played one game with my Lumineth against Soulblight last weekend (incl. set-up and a short pause it took us almost 7 h 😅), and found it more interesting and fun than 2.0, which I also liked. Of course one game isn't enough to judge anything, but 

- I really like the Battle Tactics, the first few are easy, but once you have done those, they sometimes pose real trade-offs and make the game more tactical.

- I like the new core battalions, being able to customize your army for power or flavor without getting everything in one battalion is good. 

- Grand Strategies on the other hand, felt anything but, if you do not take a risky one on purpose. 

- I like the smaller board size, the action started on turn one without one side having to do a hail-mary all-in assault style of attack like often before. And there was still enough space for maneuver shenanigans. 

- The hero actions and CA during your opponents turn are a great addition. I can't say anything about the Monster ones, because I didn't have one (and didn't cast Metamorphosis, although I had all kind of evil plans around that pre-game but totally forgot about them during the game, lol), and killed my opponent's single Monster before he could do much with it, but I'm sure they are also impactful. 

- In our game we both didn't have an abundance of CP, and also had to use them well. My "I deny you to issue/receive CA" spell felt really powerful. If your army has such an ability, it's 100% worthwhile trying to include it. I felt already over the first game, I naturally started to include CA into my stats when I planned to attack or defend something, and if you then can't do it - it's really changing the outcome. 

- Obviously Unleash Hell won me the game. ... Actually it only came up once in the game, it was pretty impactful (helped me bring his VLoZD down to 1 W (not on itself)), but so are the other CA. My opponent used "Redeploy" very well for example. 

- This might be exaggerated due to the armies we played (LRL generally relying on MW and Soulblight having a lot of high armor saves), but with all the ways to get high saves (or at least ignore rend on a 50/50 save chance) means it felt that it's all about MW. The rest is mostly for cosmetics (a bit overstated). 

- I don't think miscast is designed very well, but again that might be because of the lists I play. 

Overall though, I think 3.0 is great, and Blood Knights are scary : )

Edit: We played according to the GHB 2021 rules and leaked points. Battleplan was Feral Foray. 

The all about mortal wound thing is a serious worry for me. Means only, what, like a quarter of the armies in the game are actually viable? Hope your army gets blessed by the mortal wound fairy, or just go home?

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

32 minutes ago, stratigo said:

The all about mortal wound thing is a serious worry for me. Means only, what, like a quarter of the armies in the game are actually viable? Hope your army gets blessed by the mortal wound fairy, or just go home?

You would hope that armies that are not offensive enough to break through high saves should at least be defensive enough to bring high save units themselves and excel in the objective game that way.

Still, I also hope AoS does not become a game where things don't die from normal combat, but mostly just from mortals.

[Liquidsteel]

Unfortunately it seems intended. Ignoring Soulblight, we can see in LRL, new Stormcast and Kruleboyz even more on hit MW abilities as well as better saves.

[Kirby]

4 hours ago, stratigo said:

The all about mortal wound thing is a serious worry for me. Means only, what, like a quarter of the armies in the game are actually viable? Hope your army gets blessed by the mortal wound fairy, or just go home?

Perspective is important.  if you say, a handful of armies are OP, we can reframe this as the majority are in *roughly* the same position.  Of course, some will be stronger than others, but thats GW for you.

 

This is my first proper aos edition change. I think the last event to shake things up this much must have been the first ghb.  1st to 2nd edition was more about polishing the post ghb rules and introducing Endless spells.  Correct me if im wrong.

I imagine that those who worry about balance most see themselves as competitive players,  i think that I understand some of their concerns.  Their army tier may feel uncertain because 3.0 has some significant changes.  Uncertainty, is unsettling.

My perspective is that 3.0 is a fresh start.  We all have an opportunity to work out how our armies can succeed against our enemies.  New rules mean we cant fall back on our old go-to battalions or buff stacking tricks.  

Rather than “throwing the baby out with the bath water” im happy to experiment, let the dust settle, and then, once we as a community have some real life experience with the new game, we can start to reach a consensus on how the game stands. 

No doubt new deathstars, unbeatable list etc will be uncovered soon.  Like always, some of us will rush to duplicate them, others will fear change. There will be winners and losers.  Its the price we pay for a constant stream of new models and content.  

Personally, I feel excited about these changes, but its all about your perspective.

[stratigo]

Eh, I feeL like I have less flexibility in what works for KO then I had before. You he competitive community in my area was probably axed by COVID, so it’s not as big a deal I guess. But it’s still a bit eh. 
 

 

[yukishiro1]

A couple more games played, feel ever more confident in saying grand strategies and battle tactics are not particularly well designed, it's too hard not to succeed at them with a well-built list. They also significant increase the importance of good list-building, which I am not convinced is a great change. In a lot of ways, these mechanics seem to serve more as traps for the unwary or noobs than something that actually adds a lot to game strategy. 

IMO grand strategies should just go away completely - they promote skew in your list-building, which is precisely the opposite of what secondary objectives are supposed to do in a game, and also punish bad list-builders for no real apparent reason. They just don't actually add anything that I can see, and the skew promotion is actively toxic towards incentivizing TAC lists. 

Battle tactics are more solid conceptually, they just need to be more interesting and less auto-succeed. Maybe even give your opponent some ability to influence your choices, i.e. once per game, they can veto the choice you make, forcing you to take a different one that round (with the one you didn't choose going back into the pool so you can choose it next turn if you want). It doesn't seem brilliant right now to have a situation where a well-built list will almost always score 10 out of 10 unless it gets tabled, and where scoring any less than that feels like a catastrophic loss.

I am also a little concerned about how powerful tabling your opponent now is with the interaction with grand strategies and to a lesser extent battle tactics. With the new objective scoring, you really can't get so far ahead on the primary that you can survive being tabled, aside from maybe being tabled on the bottom of T5. If you get tabled any time before that, even the bottom of T4 or top of T5 when you're going second, it's very unlikely you are going to have any chance of winning, unless your opponent has been playing extraordinarily badly while also tabling you. 

Interestingly, unleash hell hasn't so far been a big issue in any of the games I've played. 

 

Edited July 1, 2021 by yukishiro1