3.0 Actual Games Conversation

[Charleston]

I wonder a bit about your experience @yukishiro1, because it sounds quite contradicting to what I've experienced and heard from other players.

Current System allows to adapt fast and score each turn depending on your possibilities in addition to the main objectives. Many Tactics reward positioning and can be achived without combat in most cases, especially as you score at the end of your turn so your opponent cannot mitigate your tactic in his turn. The Grand Strategy is just a last lever after completing the game that can decide close games. In general I've experienced many games that didn't care too much about the GS beside leaving a key piece of it standing somewhere in the back. Not many players seem yet to take into account how important it may be to deny your opponents strategy.

I don't disagree about the fact that there is a certain cliff in game design which simply rewards some factions for having different game design than others. This is an issue with GW Tabletops since I know the hobby. But I hardly see the scoring system beeing a reason for this compared to the old one. It's rather up to the access to certain mechanics which allow to adapt to the game, which decides who has an edge. Viable shooting and casting to take out opponents key pieces, access to Mortal Wounds or high Rend/high Damage profiles, access to absurdly fast or durable units and reliable buffs, all those are aspects of Battletomes that I see more important. All current meta armies are defined by a a selection of this pool. I hope that GW turns their battletomes from the overspecialised onetrick ponies to versatile books that provide enough unit selection to have an adaptable list. Not every army needs the same rank-and-file sword/spear/bow selection, but each should have some access to shooting/durable units/ways of dealing with mages or durable units. But meanwhile I hope that small factions with only a narrow unit selection and playstyle will be adressed soon too.

[yukishiro1]

GSes are the ultimate example of the new scoring system favoring the strong and hurting the weak. GSes have no function in the game except to give extra points to the army that smashes the opponent's army better than they get smashed. That's literally what they are. Every single one bar one (and even that one in practice) requires you to keep a portion of your army alive while smashing a portion of your opponent's army in order to get a differential score, i.e. for them to matter. They're either wholly irrelevant, or they give bonus points to the army that smashes better. They're exactly what a secondary objective shouldn't be - something that simply rewards you for killing better than your opponent. It's classic rich get richer game design. 

[yukishiro1]

9 hours ago, AaronWilson said:

How many games of AoS 3 have you played / how many were decided by a GS?

This is the: "it doesn't matter that GSes do nothing but reward the stroner factions because they don't actually do anything most of the time anyway" argument, which is not a good endorsement for a game feature.

FWIW, about 10, and 2. But the nature of it is that GSes are going to matter more when the games are close, and they are going to generally break ties in favor of the army that's better at killing. Hence their function in the game is to reward the army that's better at killing. Both of those games were games where someone was hanging on with a weaker army and then had their backs broken by the GS score putting their opponent over the top thanks to their stronger army book. That's not a good feature. Secondary objectives should provide an opportunity for the weaker army to compete via better play, and GSes do the opposite of that in practice.

Now is it possible that a better list of GSes could be better? Absolutely. But the current list is a joke from a tactical point of view. All it really does it reward strong armies and skew lists for being strong and skewed. 

Edited August 26, 2021 by yukishiro1

[Kadeton]

8 hours ago, yukishiro1 said:

But the nature of it is that GSes are going to matter more when the games are close, and they are going to generally break ties in favor of the army that's better at killing.

That hasn't been my experience at all, though I'd say my local meta might be more geared towards tournament-level play between strong, highly-skewed lists. In that context, Grand Strategies only really matter when the game isn't close at all, i.e. when one side is getting tabled. It's impossible to deny a Strategy without wiping your opponent off the board in most cases, so it becomes purely a win-more mechanic in an already devastatingly one-sided game. In games that are close, it never comes up.

Don't get me wrong - that's still a terrible design, and we're in complete agreement that the current list of Strategies is a joke.

The silver lining, once again, is that Grand Strategies aren't part of the Core Rules. Just like the poorly-designed missions and the lackluster Battle Tactics, they'll be rotated out with the next GHB, and the design team can take another crack at coming up with something better.

[yukishiro1]

In both my games where they ended up decisive, someone was hanging on by a thread in terms of forces left but with the scoreboard very close going into T5 - me one time, the other guy the other time - only to have the game determined because the GS gave the opponent 3 points for being the stronger army. So yes, they weren't close games in terms of who smashed better...but they were close games on the score board. So the GS in both cases ended up directly determining the game by punishing the player who was losing the smash game. Hence my comment about them doing the exact opposite of what they're intended to do.

Most of the time the GS does nothing at all because you're either winning by so much that it doesn't matter and you get it but would have won even without those 3 points, or both sides get it, so there's no score differential. The only time the GS is actually going to matter is when it is going to serve to force a loss on someone fighting a valiant rearguard action. 

It's already almost impossible to win AOS while being tabled. But the GS system just takes away whatever remote chance you might have had - not only do you have to have been ahead going into the tabling, you have to have been so far ahead that you can absorb not only whatever they can score after tabling you, but an additional 3 points. It's an insult to injury sort of mechanic. 

Edited August 27, 2021 by yukishiro1

[Kadeton]

4 minutes ago, yukishiro1 said:

Most of the time the GS does nothing at all because you're either winning by so much that it doesn't matter and you get it but would have won even without those 3 points, or both sides get it, so there's no score differential. The only time the GS is actually going to matter is when it is going to serve to force a loss on someone fighting a valiant rearguard action.

It's possible that I just haven't played enough games to actually see a situation where one army is capable of fighting a valiant rearguard action to hold on to a slim point advantage despite getting smashed. So far, the games I've played have been very decisive.

That said, in a tournament situation that extra 3 point differential can be important even if you're already totally winning, because VP diff is often used as a tiebreaker for overall placement. Again, I'm not saying that's a good thing - I really don't like tournament scoring that encourages you to insist on continuing to crush an opponent who has already lost - but it's possible that this was a consideration in the design.

I would certainly like to see the current Strategies replaced with ones that require active gameplay decisions and open up counter-play beyond "Table me or I get points." I actually liked the Sons of Behemat one as a model for this, which is why I'm not too concerned - it showed that the designers are at least thinking about how to make them more interactive, and they just need the current stupid ones out of the way to open up the design space.

[yukishiro1]

Well, I haven't either: because of the GS system. 🤣

It's rare it gets close to that, don't get me wrong, but it would have happened in at least one of those two games if not for the GS pushing him over the line at the last moment. It was me playing with my off-meta Idolators list that floods the board with tons of bodies and basically move-blocks the opponent from doing anything until he chews through them. It has some punch, but it mainly relies on curse to kill stuff that abuses save stacking, and even in Idolators that's neither super reliable nor does it work against everything - Archaon for example with his 4+ MW protection is almost impossible to kill even when cursed. So in some circumstances the list has to play by just trying to die slowly enough that you get far enough ahead on the mission that even if they chew through almost all your stuff by the end of the game, you can still win. And GSes just make that that much more difficult by kicking you when you're down. 

 

[whispersofblood]

4 hours ago, yukishiro1 said:

Well, I haven't either: because of the GS system. 🤣

It's rare it gets close to that, don't get me wrong, but it would have happened in at least one of those two games if not for the GS pushing him over the line at the last moment. It was me playing with my off-meta Idolators list that floods the board with tons of bodies and basically move-blocks the opponent from doing anything until he chews through them. It has some punch, but it mainly relies on curse to kill stuff that abuses save stacking, and even in Idolators that's neither super reliable nor does it work against everything - Archaon for example with his 4+ MW protection is almost impossible to kill even when cursed. So in some circumstances the list has to play by just trying to die slowly enough that you get far enough ahead on the mission that even if they chew through almost all your stuff by the end of the game, you can still win. And GSes just make that that much more difficult by kicking you when you're down. 

 

Doesn't your choice of list preclude you from being able to target GS though? Your list is just a DPS check, and those typically require a source of reliable targetted dmg to function . Like you could easily take a list more compatible with the core functionality of the game. For me list design is the final expression of the core rules and I find it troubling when a critic of the core rules comes starts because of a list archetype.

My list have gone through a lot of evolutions to find a way to prevent people from scoring BT and target players where they think they are strong (GS).

I think AoS3.0 unlike 2.0 really punishes what could be described as passive game strategy and given that the game and studio are full of Timmys is probably going to continue being the case. 

I do agree that some of the GS are actually quite bad now that the reality of what the game incentives has been figured out. But, the concept is sound, and gives you an alternative game to play against armies that either are better on the objective game or more effecient on the BT. Denying your opponent and retaining yours is basically once turn of either Primary or BT. 

In tournament play I think events should use them as we did agendas; you can use each once. 

In casual play it's a bit harder to implement but there is more room for negotiation one v one for a personalized solution. Like if your general is over 500 pts you must take sever the head or something. 

You do seem to have almost exactly the opposite opinion as Vince does so maybe watch the most recent episode and give your thoughts.

[NinthMusketeer]

I'd say maybe 1 in 10 matches have been decided by grand strategy, as a rough estimate of my experience. Would definitely be interested to hear what others have found.

[AaronWilson]

1 minute ago, NinthMusketeer said:

I'd say maybe 1 in 10 matches have been decided by grand strategy, as a rough estimate of my experience. Would definitely be interested to hear what others have found.

I'm only 12 games into AoS 3 but I'm at a similar number to your self, 1 out of 12. 

[pnkdth]

Not a huge fan of godhammer since it has severely impacted list diversity. Though I do enjoy trying to figure out "anti-meta"-lists, the challenge, and alternative ways of beating them. To that end, battle tactics and, every once in awhile, grand strategy allow you to beat through other means.

I very much enough the new battalions because it has lead me to experiment more with different kinds of allegiances and sub-allegiances. Which also makes things more interesting trying to create new and, also, more lore/fluff lists. Doesn't mean I make purposefully bad lists just that I don't want to win with the same copy/pasted net-lists all the time. Gets old.

I would like to see terrain having a bit more impact to make the smaller boards more interactive to navigate.

All in all though, I like it. Once we get used to the new heroic/monster stuff it is just going to be something we do.

[whispersofblood]

1 hour ago, NinthMusketeer said:

I'd say maybe 1 in 10 matches have been decided by grand strategy, as a rough estimate of my experience. Would definitely be interested to hear what others have found.

In the first 6-7 games zero times. But in my 8th match I realized it was better over all to try and deny my opponent his grand strategy then to chase an uncertain 2 point battle tactic. I failed by 2 wounds but the play was sound. 

Since that realization it's come up fairly regularly turns 4 and 5. With the caveat that I haven't played against SoB.

I will add that I tend to play very mobile armies where people can't just back board a unit.

Edited August 27, 2021 by whispersofblood

[yukishiro1]

8 hours ago, whispersofblood said:

Doesn't your choice of list preclude you from being able to target GS though? Your list is just a DPS check, and those typically require a source of reliable targetted dmg to function . Like you could easily take a list more compatible with the core functionality of the game. For me list design is the final expression of the core rules and I find it troubling when a critic of the core rules comes starts because of a list archetype.

 

It isn't just a DPS check. As I said, it has some punch - two 30x marauders, some knights, and the means to buff them through the roof - curse, the normal reroll hits and wounds, double pile-in, etc. It's enough DPS to kill most things comfortably - any of those 3 units will delete almost anything when pumped up. It just isn't enough to reliably kill the unkillable AOS3 models - stuff with large wound counts, good saves, and MW protection. Sometimes it will - sometimes you'll curse something and then roll hot and delete it with 20+MWs - but sometimes it won't - your 3+ curse you can cast twice will fail, they'll snipe out your lord with overwhelming ranged damage on T1 or more likely T2 so you never get a chance to double cast, and then you're relying on 3+ curses you can't reroll from the shrines, etc. You need  a plan for what to do if the DPS doesn't work.

You can say "you have a bad list" - but A) it isn't and B) that's actually sorta making the point re: restrictive game design. This isn't a bad list - the whole point is that this list took Tzeentch Achaon to the bottom of T5 and would have beat him if not for the GS system. The game design should not be punishing me for bringing a list like this. This is a far better, more carefully thought out, interesting list than the Godhammer junk you see all over the place these days. Core rules like GSes that are rewarding Tzeentch Archaon and punishing my Idolators are rewarding and punishing the wrong lists. 

You can't build around targeting a GS because they're nonsense and building around targeting a GS in many cases means building around wiping the army, which takes us exactly back to where we were before in terms of GSes just increasing the focus on killing and rewarding the already-strong. Instead you end up just building your list to be difficult to deny the GS without being wiped, because that's what you can can control. Which again takes us back to that same point. It all comes back to rewarding tabling and list skew. In theory it could be more strategic, in reality it isn't. 

My views actually aren't that different from Vince's I don't think. I'm a fan of AOS3 generally, as I've said here repeatedly. The overall core rule system is significantly improved over AOS2. I'm not even saying it's necessarily terrible to have a game so overwhelmingly focused on smashing your opponent. This whole discussion was just pointing out that when you do have that game - and AOS3 is that game just as much as AOS2 was, in some ways more than AOS2 was - balance is critical because you're not leaving any escape valve for weaker armies to still compete. FWIW Vince expressed the same big two reservations I have re: the game - the 3 objective missions being generally problematic, and save-stacking and the problems that creates. IIRC they even mentioned GSes needing a rework because right now they are either pointless or stupid. 

 

Edited August 27, 2021 by yukishiro1

[Dolomedes]

Got my first game of 3.0 in yesterday. I'm a diehard Beastmen player since 8th, with them being my only army to this day. Sticking with a sub par faction for so long has taught me a totally different list building and gameplay strategy to other players, so I think I've got a unique perspective to bring to this discussion. 

Firstly, I lost last night's game to Skaven, but only by a point on turn 5. It was my own tactical folly that cost me the game in choosing risky early game battle tactics and forgetting a 'Roar' at the crucial moment. What I think is worth mentioning here, is that despite having possibly the weakest army in game, I found no trouble at all in taking the game up to turn 5, and giving my opponent a great game that really came down to the wire. The doom mongering about BoC having a rubbish battletome in 3.0 is partly true, but I think it's being over exaggerated. The old tomes can deliver if you get the list right.

BoC can do well with the new Battle Tactics and Grand strategies, and I think that the new 3.0 rules give underpowered armies some nice new tactical options to explore. At first I was somewhat concerned about other army's Hero Hammer options, but then I realised there's an easy counter. Just take more units and waste their time. You can easily chaff up some jacked God-tier hero monster and make their several hundred point investment worth nothing just by feeding it naff units. 'Oh no! Not my unit of naked  goat/man/dog/pig things! The horror!' Tarpits and chaff are the classic anti-hero option, so now they'll be auto includes in my lists. If you can chaff up hero hammers, you can deny them from scoring points on battle tactics, and make your opponent sweat as your more solid units are sat on the objective taunting them.

Anyway, back to actual game discussion.

From the outset, I approached the game thinking 'How can I stop him getting Battle Tactics and a Grand Strategy?'. This was built into my list, and I took care not to feed easy victory points to him ('Line breaker', 'Bring it Down'). Access to the new battalions was great, as it gave me access to a bunch of units I haven't really used before that I wouldn't usually take due to the old battalion restrictions. Small, fast, independent units that you wouldn't normally care about losing just got really good. Those little foot heroes you always look over are worth another take. Warhounds have become one of my new favourite units. They are the goodest of boys.

I've had many games against my opponent in the past since pre 1.0, so we were well matched. It was a little bit of a stretch adjusting to the new rules, but it got easier. I think remembering Monster and Hero actions will take a while, but forgetting them and suffering consequences will soon sort that out.

Coherency just wasn't a thing - I think the doom mongering when we first saw it was overblown. It was an easy adjustment, and I found my units still functioned in pretty much the same way, minus a few guys fighting on the ends.

I really enjoyed playing the battle tactics, and it brought a new level of tactical depth to the game for me. Despite my army being solid bottom tier, this new form of play has opened up so many new interesting options. I've had to reassess a lot of my old auto includes, and look at new units in a completely different light. I'm confident that there's some nifty options these new tactics will reveal, but we've got some more reading to do before we start spotting them.

For years now I've always said to myself when list building 'How will this unit help me score more points than my opponent?' - AOS has always been more of a football match than a boxing bout, and after my game last night I can see underneath the surface this is still the case. It's exciting times for us leper BoC players at the bottom of the pile! 

[Skreech Verminking]

On 8/27/2021 at 4:14 AM, yukishiro1 said:

- Archaon for example with his 4+ MW protection is almost impossible to kill even when cursed.
 

 

 

Edited September 1, 2021 by Skreech Verminking

[yukishiro1]

Well, it's not impossible any more, with Ed Sheeran's Eye getting nerfed. Hard, but no longer impossible. 

[AaronWilson]

Archaon isn't immune to a hand of dust "Que evil laugh"

[AaronWilson]

Played a game last weekend, Petrifex v LotFP on Tectonic Interference. I ran Liege (Petrifex CT + Artefact), Soulmason, Boneshaper, 30 Mortek, 20 Mortek, 2 x 5 Deathriders, Harvester, Crawler. 

Managed to get a 26-21 win. LVP was the crawler - did not do a single wound all game and failed it's 8+ to snipe the bilepiper. MVP was my liege, tanked Bel'akor + Khorne DP to deny slay the warlord. 

Game was close all along, opponent failed two battle tactics which was pretty pivotal to the end score as objective scoring was very close. Both grand strategies scored, with the new FAQ everything was very clear in regards to wards, shrugging off wounds, etc. 

Very good game, game was ultimately decided by battle tactics & objective scoring, with the points difference mainly coming from two failed battle tactics. AoS 3 feels in a very good place right now. 

[NinthMusketeer]

I am seeing a number of posts with high levels of positivity, violating the end-user license agreement of digital Warhammer(tm) discussion. Please edit such posts to have a ratio of at least 1:5 in regards to positive and negative sentiment or the community will be forced to bomb the thread with irrational toxicity to compensate for an excessive display of non-pessimism.

Edited September 7, 2021 by NinthMusketeer

[Battlefury]

To be honest, what AoS 3.0 changed in my local community:

The predictable outcome of the games shifted partially to other armies. Most of us can still tell, who is gonna win with a 90% rate of being right with the predictions, after seeing the lists being played.

[NinthMusketeer]

8 hours ago, Battlefury said:

To be honest, what AoS 3.0 changed in my local community:

The predictable outcome of the games shifted partially to other armies. Most of us can still tell, who is gonna win with a 90% rate of being right with the predictions, after seeing the lists being played.

Not a strong mentality of self-balancing I take it 😥

[Battlefury]

2 hours ago, NinthMusketeer said:

Not a strong mentality of self-balancing I take it 😥

Ah no, was not against you

[Gitzdee]

I want to ask if anyone has actually played a game on a 44x30 table with a 1000 points in this edition. With the increase in points i am wondering if this is any good. Does it scale well? I am planning on setting up a small table that can be used for warcry and smaller battles as my space is limited.  

Edited September 16, 2021 by Iksdee

[Skreech Verminking]

On 9/2/2021 at 9:18 AM, AaronWilson said:

Archaon isn't immune to a hand of dust "Que evil laugh"

Nor from any brass orbs the skaven have as an option.

I’ve been taking it once, was able to get it off, so why not try it on an Archaon.

[AaronWilson]

7 minutes ago, Skreech Verminking said:

Nor from any brass orbs the skaven have as an option.

I’ve been taking it once, was able to get it off, so why not try it on an Archaon.

Go for the grand daddy prize 100%.