AoS3 - The points discussion

[RuneBrush]

11 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

And Soulblight was probably supposed to be between BR: Teclis and BR: Be'Lakor, ~4 to 5 months away from AoS 3.

Interestingly, the date on the Pitched Battle Profiles in Soulblight did tie up with the month it was released so I think it was always intended to come out then.

[DerZauberer]

While i get that several people are outright angry about the point changes as it impacts their own army the most and it's always unfun to put less models on the table as before, now is not the time to discuss point changes in my oppinion.

We only have the Core Rules 3.0 and the point changes leaked, with some informations on warscroll battalions and so on.

We cant judge what implications missions and seconday objectives will have on future "generals handbook battle pack" games. We cant judge what Faction FAQs will bring to the factions itself.

We still work with incomplete information. For example: We could see a change of the KoS CA to affect himself again. We could see missions empower high speed or summons. We could see secondaries are easily obtainable by speed or summoning.

You guys are right that the AoS 3.0 points are nonsense under AoS 2.0 matched play. Lets wait and see if those points are still nonsense when FAQs, Missions and Secondaries for AoS 3.0 are out. 

Edited June 21, 2021 by DerZauberer
denglish removal!

[PrimeElectrid]

2 hours ago, Enoby said:

This is a bit by the side, but can anyone provide any insight on why Belekor and Kragnos have decreased in points? Obviously there hasn't been enough time to playtest them, and they've both gotten better with the new hero and monster rules.

Not that I'm complaining, but it leaves me very confused why these changed.

Not only that, but Kroak and Alarielle both stayed the same, Nagash went up by 5, and Morathi went up by only a trivial amount.

None of this makes any sense. We can all agree that Kragnos was overcosted, but now he has got better, so shouldn’t he stay at the same level, like Alarielle and Kroak? Why didn’t Alarielle come down for the exact same reason? Why did Nagash go up by 5 right after a massive jump instead of staying the same or coming down? Why didn’t Alarielle or Kroak go up by 5 for the same reasons as Nagash? Why only hit Morathi with the 10% bump instead of a targeted nerf? I don’t think anyone was saying Belakor was overcosted in the same way as Kragnks so why did he come down at all? 
 

And how the flip did Archaon only go up 30 and not the Morathi 10%?
 

For the most part it is clear that there was some kind of algorithm with tweaks after the fact in particular cases (Sylvaneth and Slaanesh aside), but there is no logic to the above exceptions. It’s pure numberwang.

 

Edited June 21, 2021 by PrimeElectrid

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

52 minutes ago, PrimeElectrid said:

Why did Nagash go up by 5 right after a massive jump instead of staying the same or coming down?

Not that it makes any difference, but Nagash actually went down 5 points. However, a difference of 5 points on a 970 point model can't realistically be anything but an automated change. Maybe they were rounding up before and are rounding down now, or something. There is no way a human sat down and decided "You know what, Nagash is not worth it at 975. Let's make him viable and put him at 970."

[Rachmani]

54 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Not that it makes any difference, but Nagash actually went down 5 points. However, a difference of 5 points on a 970 point model can't realistically be anything but an automated change. Maybe they were rounding up before and are rounding down now, or something. There is no way a human sat down and decided "You know what, Nagash is not worth it at 975. Let's make him viable and put him at 970."

While true in a vacuum, there could actually very specific builds that become possible by 5 or 10 points.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

2 minutes ago, Rachmani said:

While true in a vacuum, there could actually very specific builds that become possible by 5 or 10 points.

I have landed on 2000 points or just 5 over while building Soulblight lists a few times already, so sure. But really, whether or not specific lists end up being possible is kind of too difficult to design for.

Anyway, here's the hottest new Nagash list made possible by that 5 point drop:

Allegiance: Soulblight Gravelords
- Lineage: Avengorii Dynasty

Leaders
Nagash, Supreme Lord of the Undead (970)
- General

Battleline
Terrorgheist (305)
Zombie Dragon (295)
Zombie Dragon (295)

Endless Spells / Terrain / CPs
Umbral Spellportal (70)
Soulsnare Shackles (65)

Total: 2000 / 2000
Extra Command Points: 0
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 58

[Rachmani]

The good sh*t!

But anyway, it was ofc not 100% serious.

[AngryPanda]

On 6/20/2021 at 1:19 AM, Dingding123 said:

I get that Slaneesh definitely got hit unreasonably hard, but the changes to GSG all seem more than reasonable to me.  The models that weren't seeing much play didn't get touched, while the battlelines got hit to discourage people from going 120+ Grots like they did before (which was honestly incredibly dull).  Most Behemoths took a hit but with the new Rampages that was bound to happen; same with Endless Spells due to them now being bound.  Just because they were off the mark somewhere doesn't mean they're terrorists and out to destroy the game as we know it is my point basically lol.

Unless you're a Slaanesh player lol 

[Havkai]

As a seasoned Slaanesh player with plenty of accomplishments, I dare to say that it is the worst time to play Slaanesh

[TheCovenLord]

A friend of mine is just shelving his Slaanesh completely unless there is FAQ to help mitigate it. He has played the factions through the peaks and troughs but he got hit hard with the double whammy of points increases (which are ludicrous even from someone who used to run Drakespawn knights at their original points cost) and he made extensive use of chaos warrior blocks as battleline (even before the mortal Slaanesh release he really enjoyed the idea of a mortal following with daemons being summoned in from their exploits).

 

He is unfortunately not made of money so updating his battleline is currently out of the question and we played at a shop with a mixed bag of players (tournament preppers and casuals) usually defaulting to following the GW rules to keep things civil so no chance of sweeping house rules to make them playable. Sad, I really do hope the points are reverted somewhat in an FAQ but I sincerely doubt it.

Edited June 21, 2021 by TheCovenLord

[Reinholt]

24 minutes ago, TheCovenLord said:

A friend of mine is just shelving his Slaanesh completely unless there is FAQ to help mitigate it. He has played the factions through the peaks and troughs but he got hit hard with the double whammy of points increases (which are ludicrous even from someone who used to run Drakespawn knights at their original points cost) and he made extensive use of chaos warrior blocks as battleline (even before the mortal Slaanesh release he really enjoyed the idea of a mortal following with daemons being summoned in from their exploits).

 

He is unfortunately not made of money so updating his battleline is currently out of the question and we played at a shop with a mixed bag of players (tournament preppers and casuals) usually defaulting to following the GW rules to keep things civil so no chance of sweeping house rules to make them playable. Sad, I really do hope the points are reverted somewhat in an FAQ but I sincerely doubt it.

 

I think this last part is the key point. It's easy to house rule things in small groups but when you want an army you can play at the shop, you have to assume that you live with the default rules for the game. To that end, with points and the new coherency updates, I kind of feel like Slaanesh and Sylvaneth are literally bin tier right now (as in don't even bother to bring them), and GW needs to hear a lot more about how they are causing players to leave / quit the game by not bothering to take the 1 hour of effort to at least lower points for these armies even if they won't fix anything else.

It is downright comical that Blissbarb Archers are basically the same price as Idoneth Eels and someone thought it was okay to put that out there for people who had bought the former.

Edit: while the plural of anecdote is not data, the Sylvaneth player in my group has declined to buy the new edition of the game and let us know he won't be picking up AoS 3.0 until when/if GW fixes his army. Dumping money into the Song of Ice & Fire game instead, which he plays with some other people (I don't play it myself). So heads up GW you are literally losing at least one customer over this.

Edited June 21, 2021 by Reinholt

[MothmanDraws]

11 minutes ago, TheCovenLord said:

 

He is unfortunately not made of money so updating his battleline is currently out of the question and we played at a shop with a mixed bag of players (tournament preppers and casuals) usually defaulting to following the GW rules to keep things civil so no chance of sweeping house rules to make them playable. Sad, I really do hope the points are reverted somewhat in an FAQ but I sincerely doubt it.

I wouldn't be surprised if some tournaments went "hedonites can use old points" if we get nothing in FAQ  it would mean hedonites are reallly bad for 6 months.

 

[Enoby]

On the bright side, I genuinely think we'd be really good at our old points values

[Benkei]

Go to the Lumineth thread in this same forum and watch people saying Slaanesh was already top and will continue to be in 3.0, so please stop complaining. Slaanesh is hyper competitive.

 

 

 

/s

[Fred1245]

6 hours ago, PrimeElectrid said:

Not only that, but Kroak and Alarielle both stayed the same, Nagash went up by 5, and Morathi went up by only a trivial amount.

None of this makes any sense. We can all agree that Kragnos was overcosted, but now he has got better, so shouldn’t he stay at the same level, like Alarielle and Kroak? Why didn’t Alarielle come down for the exact same reason? Why did Nagash go up by 5 right after a massive jump instead of staying the same or coming down? Why didn’t Alarielle or Kroak go up by 5 for the same reasons as Nagash? Why only hit Morathi with the 10% bump instead of a targeted nerf? I don’t think anyone was saying Belakor was overcosted in the same way as Kragnks so why did he come down at all? 
 

And how the flip did Archaon only go up 30 and not the Morathi 10%?
 

For the most part it is clear that there was some kind of algorithm with tweaks after the fact in particular cases (Sylvaneth and Slaanesh aside), but there is no logic to the above exceptions. It’s pure numberwang.

 

The morathi one is easy: because the rest of army took her increases. Witch Aelves (which, like I have said many times, no one was taking in the new book) went up 20% so that Morathi would still be on every table.

[Benkei]

Also, Morathi doesn't benefit from the healing CA. It's not much of a reason but it's something. 

Edit: Daemonettes went up 30% and that didn't prevent the KoS from taking a beating

Edited June 21, 2021 by Benkei

[Fred1245]

32 minutes ago, Benkei said:

Also, Morathi doesn't benefit from the healing CA. It's not much of a reason but it's something. 

Edit: Daemonettes went up 30% and that didn't prevent the KoS from taking a beating

Slaanesh doesn't count. 

 

Also I assume that part of the FAQ for day 1 with be removing her 3 wounds per turn limitation and forcing the shadow queen to stay within coherency of Morathi-Khaine.

She still won't be allowed to heal.

Edited June 21, 2021 by Fred1245

[MothmanDraws]

3 hours ago, Benkei said:

Go to the Lumineth thread in this same forum and watch people saying Slaanesh was already top and will continue to be in 3.0, so please stop complaining. Slaanesh is hyper competitive.

 

 

 

/s

I know its memeing but I actually think hedonites are a semi counter to alot of lumineth builds, sigvald + masque in lurid haze can shut down a suprising amount of their stuff, masque tags sentinels. Lumineth struggle for bodies so just sacking sigvald into blocks of wardens and masque to tie up sentinels from shooting will often just leave teclis or a few spare units and by that point you can just yeet summoned keepers at him.  Though soulsnare shackles might make match up more even. 

 

sigvald in general and the masque are probably two of the best hedonite units that play counter to what looks to be meta, new heroic actions and command abilities also make them pretty good. Just a shame they will be needing to hard carry the faction.

Edited June 21, 2021 by MothmanDraws

[Zappgrot]

On 6/20/2021 at 7:19 AM, Dingding123 said:

I get that Slaneesh definitely got hit unreasonably hard, but the changes to GSG all seem more than reasonable to me.  The models that weren't seeing much play didn't get touched, while the battlelines got hit to discourage people from going 120+ Grots like they did before (which was honestly incredibly dull).  Most Behemoths took a hit but with the new Rampages that was bound to happen; same with Endless Spells due to them now being bound.  Just because they were off the mark somewhere doesn't mean they're terrorists and out to destroy the game as we know it is my point basically lol.

Really? GSG seem reasonable to you?  It already was one of the weakest armies in the game. And let's not forget that grot units don't even function anymore under aos 3.0 since they get +2 to wound which does not work.    The grot style list didn't really work well to begin whit and now it's completely kapoot.  The other list forms ( spiders squigs and trolls) all worked on the warscroll battalions to make those meh units good enough to be played.  You can't do that any more. GSG  are now just straight up dumpster thrash that will not function untill there is a FAQ or a new tome.  There is just nothing that the GSG army does that isn't done far superior by a other army. Even whitin destruction it's self. 

[Bryan C]

1 hour ago, Zappgrot said:

Really? GSG seem reasonable to you?  It already was one of the weakest armies in the game. And let's not forget that grot units don't even function anymore under aos 3.0 since they get +2 to wound which does not work.    The grot style list didn't really work well to begin whit and now it's completely kapoot.  The other list forms ( spiders squigs and trolls) all worked on the warscroll battalions to make those meh units good enough to be played.  You can't do that any more. GSG  are now just straight up dumpster thrash that will not function untill there is a FAQ or a new tome.  There is just nothing that the GSG army does that isn't done far superior by a other army. Even whitin destruction it's self. 

Sorry

Just can’t sit by and see this sort of myth peddled anymore - i have played several games over the past 18 months of AOS 3 with GSG and they are absolutely fine - they don’t work in the same way as before but this is a radically different game so very little does.

They are one of the few remaining armies that can deploy large numbers cheaply, they have good access to a wide variety of hard hitting units and monsters that all benefit from all out attack / defence. In fact the only thing they truly lack is a decent shooting phase.

 Before you write them off play some games - winning is more than just damage output and armour saves and the most important thing is they are great fun to play.

Also to all of those saying you could do better in a day / week / month - believe me the amount of effort that has gone into this from playtesters alone is immense - despite COVID and real world commitments - the amount put in by the studio is almost unbelievable - rubbishing this is both rude and ungrateful- end of the day if you don’t like the game - implement house rules, play WHFB or go play something else - being obnoxious is going to get you absolutely nowhere whatsoever.

[Kaleb Daark]

15 minutes ago, Bryan C said:

Sorry

Just can’t sit by and see this sort of myth peddled anymore - i have played several games over the past 18 months of AOS 3 with GSG and they are absolutely fine - they don’t work in the same way as before but this is a radically different game so very little does.

They are one of the few remaining armies that can deploy large numbers cheaply, they have good access to a wide variety of hard hitting units and monsters that all benefit from all out attack / defence. In fact the only thing they truly lack is a decent shooting phase.

 Before you write them off play some games - winning is more than just damage output and armour saves and the most important thing is they are great fun to play.

Also to all of those saying you could do better in a day / week / month - believe me the amount of effort that has gone into this from playtesters alone is immense - despite COVID and real world commitments - the amount put in by the studio is almost unbelievable - rubbishing this is both rude and ungrateful- end of the day if you don’t like the game - implement house rules, play WHFB or go play something else - being obnoxious is going to get you absolutely nowhere whatsoever.

finally.

[Sapca]

On 6/21/2021 at 1:51 PM, PrimeElectrid said:

and Morathi went up by only a trivial amount.

Here's my take on it.

Morathi got the treatment that most of "centerpiece" models should get. And +30 on our Snakes (which was the most "broken" combo for a while, and likely still is even at 15 snakes now) is the nerf most armies should get to their major over-achievers.

Centerpieces (1 per army) should be bit under-priced for the Fun Factor of it. I feel sad for Nagash in this regard. 700 should be absolute max if 2k is target of balance (1/3rd of army) and even that seems A LOT. Drop it down to 400-600, nerf accordingly.


Without playing a game but looking over rules.

I can see non-snake armies suffer greatly without warscroll/temple changes, there might be Ganeth exception that can get rend on witches/sisters (on charge). Witchbrew is not really there anymore, mindrazor already nerfed (on charge only) and 8 cast, no hit rerolls, less attacks nerf (3, previously 4) on WE, fanatical 5+ of HN working just for normal wounds... these things already moved players into snakes before 3.0 hit.

And with new edition. Point hike up by 20%, even less prayers (unless we get new rules), no -rend CA's, all priests getting more expensive(while seemingly being nerfed hard), access to 1 seriously conditional Invocation (cheaper now, but still), everyone has option to unbind (DoK have "weak" casting, no bonuses/guarantees and reroll 1's was taken away from shadow stone) and our girls are still girls in bikinis with 5+ save MAX (6+ default, +1 buckler OR aura unless it gets changed in warscrolls...).  Cauldron is 4+ max (5+ and has aura for +1) now and that's the most important thing we have (had?).

And I believe rend just became more important (2+ saves, 1+ with total defense?!) overall. WE/SoS can get trough that only on charge in Ganeth and with Mindrazor... WE's additionally suffer from new coherency rules (that will be clunky). SoS also for people that build Whip+Dagger.

--

So our best "combo" still seems to be Morathi + now 15 snakes (20 previously) for 60 shots to face with shoot twice. +Unleash Hell will work with 30 shots where 6' still do MW. Stalkers now cost 170 (+30) for 5.

It costs 1170 on it's own. Add 2x 5 Blood Sisters to fill BL and you have 500 left to "build" your army. Max you can fit here is 4x10 in bodies with 5+ combat save (6+ shooting) and no support for 'chaff' (90 wounds + morathi) which you obviously don't want to. You spend those on 0-2 small heroes + 0-1 avatar + 0-3 troops to fill Battle Regiment for one drop which you absolutely need in this case imo (Morathi needs to get in and tarpit, snakes need to shoot before they are shot...). And that's the variety on competitive level which includes Morathi. At least without knowing more.

Rest of "her" builds look like they will competitively suck (unless there's new warscrolls, faction specific priest changes, temples reworked) and that's kinda fine on hobby / fun casual games part. And she will FEEL AMAZING in that environment. But so will other "Gods and SuperHeroes" in other factions. But since we're mildly-competitive here... cough, I'm afraid we'll see even more games now where she's last thing standing for DoK on end of Turn2/midturn3 even with general "nerf" to damage output in game.

Chumphammer has Mirror Dance / Heart / Snakes plan that looks fun. Assuming we get to keep Mirror Dance as it is, he's able to cast it without being unbound (Incantors, Teclises, Kroaks,...). But his combo of just getting 5 snakes into face t1 costs like 1500 after he fills BL requirements

All in all.

Will have to wait for DoK details, warscroll changes, temple changes, changes around Priests (atm it looks we loose a ton and don't gain anything, generic 'prayers' even mirror our existing)... if nothing changes there, DoK looks like it will suffer hard and not even Morathi MVP at 660 cant fix that, especially on melee side unless HN/Sacrament/Avatar "abuse" stays in and somehow works.

I think Khorne players must also shake in fear at the moment how everything works now for their Priests.

 

TL;DR Morathi is fine at 660 untill we get all DoK info for 3.0. Maybe even to expensive. All armies should have one 400-600 centerpiece that's bit underpriced for fun factor (Kroak, Archon, Morathi, Nagash, Teclis, Stardrake(meh),...) of having something really cool on table. If you want super funny pricing, check Sorceress on Dragon...

[Skreech Verminking]

On 6/20/2021 at 7:19 AM, Dingding123 said:

attlelines got hit to discourage people from going 120+ Grots like they did before

Why would I be discouraged?

I’m even more encouraged, playing games with literally 140 clanrats

[Kaleb Daark]

Khorne Dragon..

What do we reckon?

Points increase or points decrease?

Staying or going going squat?

Forgeworld releasing a separate points sheet for their AoS stuff in general, or is it going legends like everything else they seem to be throwing out?

IN fact are they just thinning down everything AoS so that the tab can disappear from their website?

what say you lot?

[PJetski]

I like playing with/against Big Named Character but it gets boring when they are an auto-include in every list. Kroak, Morathi, Nagash in OBR (before the Petrifex nerfs) were all boring to play against because they were in every list, and they were so strong that they restricted list building. Every single 2nd ed Seraphon list started with Kroak.

I would prefer if Big Named Character models were all overcosted for a few reasons:

1. Big cost = big power. Nothing is worse than a giant centerpiece model that makes little impact on the battle. Knowing that they will cost a lot of points allows the writers more room to juice up their abilities/stats to match the points.

2. It is very easy for powerful characters to end up being slam-jammed into every list and it hamstrings creativity in army building.

3. Battletome design is eventually warped around those characters, to the point where the army is unplayable without them. 

Morathi fills a necessary role for DOK, but she is so powerful that she is also a crutch holding the entire army back. I don't know if Morathi needs a nerf because she is too powerful or not, but seeing her in every single DOK list is definitely boring.