AoS3 - The points discussion

[Yes-yes warpstone]

We should make this kind of discussion on stuff like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram on the official page of GW, maybe the company seeing that there is also a big fan base ready to help and give their improve to the game will start looking to evolve the game (like happens for 100% of videogame and 98% of tabletop games, Magic The Gathering is the best example I know). About that I would underscore that this kind of process I think it should not be compared with videogames. This kind of games are extremely easy to fix since the mother house has all the global data about the game itself and just need to work with a little change on the algorithm. 

Pls guys we should stop complain here and make genuine discussions on social. I think if we ask answers and want answers the only way is on social. 

 

Edit: about comparison with videogame I mean that GW should take example. 

Edited June 20, 2021 by Yes-yes warpstone

[Fred1245]

4 hours ago, Warpfiend said:

Do people not feel that some of the points changes could possibly due to new Battletomes coming out soon which will change armies anyway?

I noticed that the Warhammer Community article on Maggotkin contains some strange advice and glaring errors e.g Pusgoyles having 8W rather than 7.

The same article also recommend Nurglings which have gone up by 10 points! This was written by a playetester.

I suspect therefore some of the weirder points changes are because some factions have a BT coming out soon with warscroll changes.

 

 

Still doesn't explain Slaanesh or DoK.

Slaanesh has been well documented but the DoK changes are just as baffling.

20% factionwide bump despite the last battletome pruning back power from every aspect of the army.

Morgwraeth going up more than double despite being a mediocre take after the witchbrew change.

Witch Aelves and SoS seeing 15-20% bumps despite no competitive list taking them since BR:M.

Mediocre tech choice units like Doomfires also going up above the average. 

Cauldrons recieving significant hits despite the priest changes being extremely harsh on them.

Morathi only going up 10% despite being the uncontested best unit in the book and an auto-include in any even semi-competitive list. Keeping in mind that she gets BOTH hero abilities AND rampage on The Shadow Queen and a seperate set of Hero abilities on MKUltra herself.(My assumption based on current precedent is that they'll be removing her 3 wounds per turn only ability. She still won't be able to heal though.)

Even if you liked the new book(which I did not) the changes don't make much sense.

DoK weren't necessarily bad after the last codex but they weren't in the discussion with Seraphon, Tzeentch, KO, or Lumineth and took a bigger hit than three out of 4 of those armies.

[Kaleb Daark]

2 hours ago, Greybeard86 said:

...and yet the revival of the Old World by GW is coming. So let's all go "oink oink"?

Some community feedback is rubbish, but frequently GW releases obviously imbalanced options. This is not an satellite, it is a highly simplified wargame.

My take? GW designs for imbalance and sometimes they make mistakes. They simply add too much salt and you have virtually unplayable factions. But, more often than not, whatever bullcrab we see in the rules is a conscious decision.

Trust me he'll complain when that comes out as well, as basically he wants his old 8th ed back and nothing will do.

I will laugh very hard indeed if that ends up having AoS / 40k rules modified for ranks and flanks.

 

Back on topic...

Points Increases

reinforcing Units

I wouldn't be at all surprised if the incongruences between these three items makes itself clear when the GHB lands.

Maybe this is the hidden points cost we pay for all the things that we can now do seemingly for free?

What if a monster player suddenly has the four monster actions baked into his warscroll for the price of the points increase, would we be saying sure, it's worth it, or would we be turning around and saying it's too expensive? 

Now.. Batallions, I've read that they've gone. Is this down to new points not appearing for them?

However, the core rules make a distinction between warscroll battalions and core battalions. 

Quote

Battalions are formations of specific units that give you access to additional abilities. There are two types of battalion: warscroll battalions and core battalions. The battlepack you are using will say whether you can use battalions and which types of battalion you can use. Battalions are picked after you have picked the units for your army.

who knows, maybe factions might get their battalions for free if there aren't any points listed for them?

Edited June 20, 2021 by Kaleb Daark

[Fred1245]

Matched play battlepacks all include 'No warscroll battalions' so probably not.

GHB has already been spoiled.

Edited June 20, 2021 by Fred1245

[Neverchosen]

9 hours ago, Fred1245 said:

Matched play battlepacks all include 'No warscroll battalions' so probably not.

GHB has already been spoiled.

Yeah it was my understanding that the GHB's contents were all known. That said I do think there is a point that the most recent releases got the biggest points increases. I am thinking that they best reflect what point averages will look like when the older books get updated... It makes me think that the Orruk Warclans and Stormcast players building armies to the tune of the GHB will be sorely disappointed when their books drop... but we will see.

Edited June 20, 2021 by Neverchosen

[azdimy]

I honestly think some of the backlash could have been minimized if they had done point adjustments as part of the winter faq instead of giving us the excuse that they had no data due to covid 2 weeks after they updated the 40k points. This is on them

[Kaleb Daark]

49 minutes ago, Fred1245 said:

Matched play battlepacks all include 'No warscroll battalions' so probably not.

GHB has already been spoiled.

ok, interesting, so for example in Blades of Khorne, the brass stampede can't exist in matched play but I can still take the jugger army, if the lord of khorne is my general, just with no battalion ability ?

Also the number of units that can be reinforced - so on the leaked images from GHB, we see that in 2000 points you can have 0-4 reinforced units.

So does this mean that I can have 4 units all reinforced a maximum of three times, or I have four reinforcement tokens as it were to sprinkle around, with no more than one unit getting three of them?

[Kaime]

Thats right on the khorne jugger army, its just the batallion ability that you lose out on.

 

Reinforcements are 1 per increase, so a triple size unit costs 2 out of your 4 reinforcements

[Kaleb Daark]

12 minutes ago, Kaime said:

Thats right on the khorne jugger army, its just the batallion ability that you lose out on.

 

Reinforcements are 1 per increase, so a triple size unit costs 2 out of your 4 reinforcements

Ahh ok, I'm seeing why the reinforcements thing has caused some raised eyebrows, especially with skaven and undead  players etc where the big bodies slab was almost a necessity.

Interesting times.   I'm very interested to see what they pull out of the bag on the warscroll battalion front with respect to an alternative.- if at all.

So now, really we need to see the first battle tome of 3rd to drop - to see what the lay of the land is moving forward.

[stratigo]

3 hours ago, Yes-yes warpstone said:

We should make this kind of discussion on stuff like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram on the official page of GW, maybe the company seeing that there is also a big fan base ready to help and give their improve to the game will start looking to evolve the game (like happens for 100% of videogame and 98% of tabletop games, Magic The Gathering is the best example I know). About that I would underscore that this kind of process I think it should not be compared with videogames. This kind of games are extremely easy to fix since the mother house has all the global data about the game itself and just need to work with a little change on the algorithm. 

Pls guys we should stop complain here and make genuine discussions on social. I think if we ask answers and want answers the only way is on social. 

 

Edit: about comparison with videogame I mean that GW should take example. 

using twitter and facebook is, uh, not great though.

[zilberfrid]

6 hours ago, Kaleb Daark said:

I know a guy who literally despises AoS because it took over from his beloved fantasy.

His biggest gripe...

Seriously...

new AoS models are too big to put on 20mm and 25mm square bases, so he can't use stuff like the new skeletons in his fantasy vampire counts, and the new character models are too big for 50mm monster bases.

Apparently GW are stupid, as they're losing so much money by not supporting the old fantasy, and 9th age and kings of war community.

🤦‍♂️

It's when you listen to stuff like that, that you realise try as you might, you can't teach pork.

I do find scale creep annoying, and it's a major hesitation when deciding whether I will buy humans from GW. Within currently sold lines, new humans like Kairic acolytes don't look like the same species as old sets like Freeguild Guard or artillery crew.

It also makes them all but unusable in games like D&D if you base them on 32's.

Old Hammerers have an eye height of 18 mm, while new dwarves have an eye height 24 mm, so even units with the same name are incompatible with themselves.

So yes, their inability/unwillingness to keep scale does prevent even people who never played WHFB from buying their models.

[Greybeard86]

14 minutes ago, zilberfrid said:

I do find scale creep annoying, and it's a major hesitation when deciding whether I will buy humans from GW.

I find that very annoying, as someone who paints both old and new sculpts.

Edited June 20, 2021 by Greybeard86

[NinthMusketeer]

I will say I do tend to be more critical of things when I know I can/have done better myself. I should probably dial it back a bit, at least here.

In other news, no point costs for any battalions? Given warscroll battalions can be used in PtG that seems a recipe for disaster. 

[Grimrock]

1 hour ago, NinthMusketeer said:

I will say I do tend to be more critical of things when I know I can/have done better myself. I should probably dial it back a bit, at least here.

In other news, no point costs for any battalions? Given warscroll battalions can be used in PtG that seems a recipe for disaster. 

One thing I noticed in the core rules, as far as I can tell, is the warscroll battalions don't offer a one drop or free artifact anymore. Those benefits only happen if the battalion specifies them (like the new core battalions), and obviously none of the warscroll ones do. In addition I think you have to go through a pretty convoluted method to get a battalion in a PtG army and getting one of the better ones like changehost is extremely difficult or expensive with campaign resources. Maybe not so bad all things considered. 

[Skreech Verminking]

5 hours ago, Kaleb Daark said:

Ahh ok, I'm seeing why the reinforcements thing has caused some raised eyebrows, especially with skaven and undead  players etc where the big bodies slab was almost a necessity.

Interesting times.   I'm very interested to see what they pull out of the bag on the warscroll battalion front with respect to an alternative.- if at all.

So now, really we need to see the first battle tome of 3rd to drop - to see what the lay of the land is moving forward.

Well it is not a dead end for the skaven.

Just means, nor more (or just a few) plague monks or (very certainly no) stormvermins.

But don’t worry, units of 60 clanrats are now possible.😘

and there’s still a pretty great chance you’ll see a 100-140 meathsields ina skaventide army, so no worries there😂

Edited June 20, 2021 by Skreech Verminking

[novakai]

eh for me is just wait for the FAQ to see if they put the effort to at least fix stuff and if they decided to go the extra mile and redo some stuff to work better for the new rules

and if its low effort i just carry on having fun and play on i guess

[NinthMusketeer]

2 hours ago, Grimrock said:

One thing I noticed in the core rules, as far as I can tell, is the warscroll battalions don't offer a one drop or free artifact anymore. Those benefits only happen if the battalion specifies them (like the new core battalions), and obviously none of the warscroll ones do. In addition I think you have to go through a pretty convoluted method to get a battalion in a PtG army and getting one of the better ones like changehost is extremely difficult or expensive with campaign resources. Maybe not so bad all things considered. 

It's just a quest, unfortunately. 

[yukishiro1]

10 hours ago, zilberfrid said:

I do find scale creep annoying, and it's a major hesitation when deciding whether I will buy humans from GW. Within currently sold lines, new humans like Kairic acolytes don't look like the same species as old sets like Freeguild Guard or artillery crew.

It also makes them all but unusable in games like D&D if you base them on 32's.

Old Hammerers have an eye height of 18 mm, while new dwarves have an eye height 24 mm, so even units with the same name are incompatible with themselves.

So yes, their inability/unwillingness to keep scale does prevent even people who never played WHFB from buying their models.

Yeah, it's very annoying re: keeping a coherent collection.

On the other hand, I will say...just a little bit of scale creep makes a tremendous difference in how easy it is to paint things to a better standard. My custodes are by far my best-painted army (and there's no gold anywhere on them), and the reason for that is 100% that the larger scale allows someone of my quite limited ability a much easier canvas to work with. Details are actually possible to pick out, volumes are large enough to highlight and shade effectively without extremely fine brush control, etc etc. I didn't realize how massive a difference it was until I went straight from painting Harlequins - tiny little stick figures - to Custodes, which are probably three times the mass. It's like I suddenly became twice as good of a painter, overnight. 

Edited June 21, 2021 by yukishiro1

[zilberfrid]

3 hours ago, yukishiro1 said:

Yeah, it's very annoying re: keeping a coherent collection.

On the other hand, I will say...just a little bit of scale creep makes a tremendous difference in how easy it is to paint things to a better standard. My custodes are by far my best-painted army (and there's no gold anywhere on them), and the reason for that is 100% that the larger scale allows someone of my quite limited ability a much easier canvas to work with. Details are actually possible to pick out, volumes are large enough to highlight and shade effectively without extremely fine brush control, etc etc. I didn't realize how massive a difference it was until I went straight from painting Harlequins - tiny little stick figures - to Custodes, which are probably three times the mass. It's like I suddenly became twice as good of a painter, overnight. 

Space marines or their AoS version are no longer the same species as humans though.

I get that it's easier, but we are painting miniatures, and constantly increasing scale until we're shoving maaequins around is simply cheating the sculpt quality.

GW can make good detail at a small scale (see snotlings, for instance), but it's easier creeping toward 54 mm to put more detail in.

[Satyrical Sophist]

14 hours ago, zilberfrid said:

I do find scale creep annoying, and it's a major hesitation when deciding whether I will buy humans from GW. Within currently sold lines, new humans like Kairic acolytes don't look like the same species as old sets like Freeguild Guard or artillery crew.

My understanding is that Kairics are meant to be absolutely gigantic, being exaggerated versions of humans. They will just about fit on 25 rounds though, started making free guild from them before hobby distraction dragged me off onto something else.

[whispersofblood]

On 6/20/2021 at 12:57 PM, Fred1245 said:

Still doesn't explain Slaanesh or DoK.

Slaanesh has been well documented but the DoK changes are just as baffling.

20% factionwide bump despite the last battletome pruning back power from every aspect of the army.

Morgwraeth going up more than double despite being a mediocre take after the witchbrew change.

Witch Aelves and SoS seeing 15-20% bumps despite no competitive list taking them since BR:M.

Mediocre tech choice units like Doomfires also going up above the average. 

Cauldrons recieving significant hits despite the priest changes being extremely harsh on them.

Morathi only going up 10% despite being the uncontested best unit in the book and an auto-include in any even semi-competitive list. Keeping in mind that she gets BOTH hero abilities AND rampage on The Shadow Queen and a seperate set of Hero abilities on MKUltra herself.(My assumption based on current precedent is that they'll be removing her 3 wounds per turn only ability. She still won't be able to heal though.)

Even if you liked the new book(which I did not) the changes don't make much sense.

DoK weren't necessarily bad after the last codex but they weren't in the discussion with Seraphon, Tzeentch, KO, or Lumineth and took a bigger hit than three out of 4 of those armies.

+++ MOD EDIT +++ Please don't be rude to other members!

The GHB appears to have nothing (see also; zero 😂) to do with balance at the end of AoS 2.0. And, everything to do with how powerful or not different archetypal units are in the context of AoS 3.0. Followed with some more targeted changes to specific or wonky units.

Now I disagree with some of these changes (Wardokks are too cheap, I don't think any 2 wound infantry model should be more than 100 pts in 5s for example), but the general shape of the points for AoS 3.0 are very playable as a set.

Edited June 21, 2021 by RuneBrush

[zilberfrid]

58 minutes ago, Satyrical Sophist said:

My understanding is that Kairics are meant to be absolutely gigantic, being exaggerated versions of humans. They will just about fit on 25 rounds though, started making free guild from them before hobby distraction dragged me off onto something else.

They are the same size as the Excelsior Warpriest, so it's not just them. I haven't measured them recently, but I think the Godsworn Hunt are similarely big.

I really feel that hobby distraction. My pride month kitbashing project got sidelined so far that I'm unsure if I'm ever going to finish it.

[Maogrim]

I for one am beyond happy - not ecstatic as that would be wrong - about Slaanesh being nuked by the point increase, because Slaanesh is all that is wrong with America, I mean the Mortal Realms today!!!!!!!!!! Oh, you'll see, the Storm(cast) will be coming for all those disgusting perverts, and the God Emperor will Make Azyr Great Again!!!!! 

Too early or too late?! 

[Enoby]

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.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

1 hour 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.

It's not really an explanation, but I think the time between recent releases was compressed a lot compared to what was intended. For example, Cursed City released in April, Soulblight in May and now the new edition in July. There were units that were introduced in Cursed City, updated in Soulblight and updated again in the GHB. Radukar the Wolf received a new warscroll from Cursed City to Soulblight, and became a stand-alone hero option from Soulblight to AoS 3.

This would be an insane level of tinkering with the rules if those rules were not just released in a 3 month period, but also written in this time frame. But we know Cursed City was supposed to be out in November of last year. And Soulblight was probably supposed to be between BR: Teclis and BR: Be'Lakor, ~4 to 5 months away from AoS 3.

I believe the original plan was probably to have something like a 3 month gap between Kragnos and AoS 3, and I would guess that the time that passed between when the rules of those two books were written would also be about 3 months or so. In 3 months, there is definitely enough time for the rules team to get more data from actual games and make some points adjustments to units like Kragnos which were pointed too highly initially. At least that makes more sense to me than the idea that Kragnos and AoS 3 were basically written at the same time, and the devs just decided to point him high in BR: Kragnos, and then immediately drop his points in AoS 3.