Save stacking - Menace or necessary?

[Benkei]

On 9/9/2021 at 9:41 PM, Kasper said:

While I agree save stacking with the current healing mechanics is nuts on bigger heroes, I have found that the simple solution is to kill whatever else is on the board and leave the typically single juiced up unit be. This is obviously easier for more mobile armies or shooting armies in general but you usually dont HAVE to kill that one unit the opponent piled multiple buffs onto.

This could work if the majority of battleplans didn't have the objectives pretty close to each other in the middle of the board (a smaller board too now) 

[Sharklone]

This might sound dramatic, but save stacking has dramtically reduced my enjoyment of the game. Noone likes running into immortal monsters. The combo with heroic recovery and the amulet of destiny is awful

[Gailon]

It really seems like the 'save stacking problem' is actually a 'God monster heroes problem.'

Whenever I go back and forth about why I really love the save staking mechanic, the bad play experiences used as counter points have some giant super monster at the center of the example.  If a rule is a problem when applied to half a dozen models then I really feel like the issue is those models and not the rule. 

A unit of troops can go from a 4+ save to a 3+ ignoring 2 rend. That's a great use of applied resources when that unit is one of several. Like, if a player has 4 units of 5 knights, or 3 different units of 10 troops. The problem seems to be when that level of buffs is placed on 500-800 points of hero monster, rather than to 200-400 points of troops. 

But man, I do not miss everything dying to a stiff breeze, being completely unable to do anything to protect a unit of knights in combat. 

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

I think it might be worth reviving this thread after the Orruk and Stormcast battletomes are now out.

It looks like those tomes contain higher rend across the board, which might be GW's way of handling save stacking. But is this actually a good approach or should the core rules have been changed instead? And given that common high rend is now in the game in at least two books that are going to be with us for a few years, should the core rules still be changed or would that skew things too far in the other direction (particularly if the next few battletomes also get easy access to -2 and -3 rend)?

There has also recently been an emergence of skew lists what focus highly on mortal wounds, which in my mind is also a response to high, unrendable saves being extremely achievable right now. Is this evidence of the devaluation of regular combat damage that some have predicted in this thread?

[Maddpainting]

Its great as long as the ability to have good saves, ignore rend, and ward saves don't stack... which some units it does sadly. 

[jjb070707]

I like the concept actually. The ability to invest finite resources into producing the equivalent of an "invuln" save on one specific unit to protect it or at least force a ton of resources into dealing with it is good tactically for the game. The idea of operating on multiple fronts, baiting out defenses, using mortal wounds to deal with the well defended unit while using conventional attacks on the otherwise neglected other fractions of the opposing force are all good things and would be unnecessary if you could just point and delete anything. 

I do think however, there needs to be more immediate access to universal tools for those that do not have a battletome yet. I rather like the idea of universal spells allowing "mortal on six, +1 damage, additional rend, ward save +6, ect" to better allow those besides the GW chosen few broad tools for interacting with opposing forces.

A much expanded universal spell and perhaps command ability list would accomplish this rather nicely. I especially liked the new ork book modifying a universal monstrous rampage as opposed to using what used to be a unique ability, and think this concept has potential across the board. One could release a whole host of options in the universal list, and then have unique units of factions "enhance spell X or command X or rampage X" to do something more potent as opposed to just getting additional tools as compared to others. If the orks just had a new rampage based on the maw krusha ability, stacking maw krushas would be even more potent, allowing 1 to do their new ability and the second to stomp, instead the ork player can condense this down to a more powerful stomp with the same soul as the old ability, but doesn't get free additional costless resources by having more rampages inherently compared to the beastclaw or khorne or something.

This would also allow one to condense the skewed special rules down, and have to choose what unit to put it on, if for example the Power of Hysh spell modified a universal spell that everyone had for 6+ mortal wounds, to allow for mortals on a 5+ it could be more potent, but less spammable (in matched play with the rule of 1 for spells and commands and such). This could alleviate the discrepancies and open up a ton of new units to competitive play, where they would be great "if they just had 1 more rend, 1 more damage, some mortals, ect".

One could even set up a system in which these battletome specific versions "replace" the generic version so that doubling up on that type of bonus isn't possible, or potentially only possible once and doing so shuts off the special version for the rest of the game (an overload of power once if necessary at the cost of sustained power). "If a unit is affected by the Power of Hysh spell, they cannot be affected by the POWER OF MORTALS ON 6 spell" or alternatively Power of Hysh cannot be cast if POWER OF MORTALS ON 6 has been cast this game.

[Kasper]

23 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

I think it might be worth reviving this thread after the Orruk and Stormcast battletomes are now out.

It looks like those tomes contain higher rend across the board, which might be GW's way of handling save stacking. But is this actually a good approach or should the core rules have been changed instead? And given that common high rend is now in the game in at least two books that are going to be with us for a few years, should the core rules still be changed or would that skew things too far in the other direction (particularly if the next few battletomes also get easy access to -2 and -3 rend)?

There has also recently been an emergence of skew lists what focus highly on mortal wounds, which in my mind is also a response to high, unrendable saves being extremely achievable right now. Is this evidence of the devaluation of regular combat damage that some have predicted in this thread?

Rend 3 for a single turn on my entire Ironjawz army certainly cracks units open, but the biggest offenders are still not harmed. Its very easy for Archaon to stack +4 save in S2D. This still means hes neigh unkillable when sitting on a 2+ save rerolling 1s. Nagash is somewhat the same and also has access to Finest Hour, PE -1 rend, Mystic Shield and possibly AoD at which point hes also sitting on a 2+ save rerolling 1s despite being hit by my rend 3. 

Warhammer Weekly spoke about this a couple of weeks ago and suggested that all rerolling save effects are removed and a unit has a cap of a 3+ save unless the warscroll is printed with a better save (like Bastiladon 1+).

The math on units just become incredibly dumb once you enter the 2+ save zone and add rerolls ontop. Like, really really dumb.

 

Its a really delicate matter because the moment those two big guys (and other units for that matter) arent allowed to stack saves, they instantly disappear because they become way too easy to bring down in a single turn. 

[Liquidsteel]

Can bonereapers use All Out Defense?

Against rend 3 Nagash should still fail on 2s and any failed reroll 1s.

[BigNStinky]

I think its fine but that there are other issues exacerbating the problem that might need some looking at.

 

Heroic recovery on hero monsters make it too easy to heal off the damage that does make it through high saves which are needed for some sort of survivability in this game. I do like that hero monsters are finally worth a damn in combat (not just dying to juiced hordes instantly) but many are a bit too tough at the moment. On the flip side I find foot heroes to be either too lousy in combat or too squishy (or both) to ever really take them. Things like Sigvald skirt the line of a good foot combat hero and hes a very special case but I would hate to see Gotrek-esque heroes marching all over the place annihilating blocks of infantry left and right.

 

Mortal wound access is both a) too easy to access for some factions and b) not available to all factions evenly. Which sucks as it is c) the best answer to basically everything combat/shooting related. This I think adds to the problem as well. Units spitting out combined mortals/regular damage had to be mitigated somehow and they have made mortals such an overwhelmingly good option that there are few tools to reduce its output. So regular saves were instead tampered with to help reduce incoming damage and units without mortals continue to suffer a bit.

I think it was a huge mistake to lean into giving mortal wounds out like candy and it should never have become a stock rule on so many war scrolls and instead should have been replaced with increased rend/wound values or something to that effect and kept the mortals on 6's on stuff like foot/horse combat heroes to make them a bit more attractive as a line breakers and differentiate them a bit more from regular sloggers.

 

I am unsure as to how to deal with the problem myself but it is at the point where I have shelved my sons as they overwhelmingly benefit from being hero monsters with good saves and access to wards and it has definitely poisoned the gaming group a bit with their recent performances requiring little to no tactical acumen on my part (which I will fully admit).

 

[jjb070707]

30 minutes ago, BigNStinky said:

I am unsure as to how to deal with the problem myself but it is at the point where I have shelved my sons as they overwhelmingly benefit from being hero monsters with good saves and access to wards and it has definitely poisoned the gaming group a bit with their recent performances requiring little to no tactical acumen on my part (which I will fully admit).

 

I feel like this is the complete opposite response to one that should be taken. Son's are the perfect benchmark right now for an army to build to overcome. They do their thing and die on schedule to well made responses. It isn't fair to the sons player that their opponent's refuse to build lists that can deal with a giant per turn.

It is completely a misnomer that there is no tactical decision making during list building or in game with or against sons, its just the number of decisions required decreases, but the magnitude of each decision is amplified. A single misplaced screen against the sons could be a loss, just as a missed read on which unit to finest hour, where to move an objective, which unit to put your attacks into from a multicharge, or having gargants end up outside support windows to respond to whatever kills the first gargant will pretty much lose you the match against any skilled opponent that built a list anticipating sons as possible during an event. 

A strong army that is easy to pilot, damn near builds itself, but consistently falls short of winning the event is the perfect challenge for list builders and pilots and should be celebrated. IE, "Can this beat 4 giants" is the baseline one should ALWAYS be considering when building a list, if not its time to move onto a new list theme.

If you are constantly winning with sons, its not sons fault, its your opponents. Son's are basically what we wish stormcast were in my group, an "easy" army in terms of number of units and number of decisions per turn with enough raw stats to always keep their pilot feeling like they have a good shot at winning a match, but never overpowering against a properly tooled army and a confident pilot. If anything, Son's may need a tiny nudge upward to remain relevant as new books come out with high rend tossed onto troops like candy. For example, those new annihilators will point for point shred a mega through AoD with a rerollable 7 inch charge. a double unit of them is the same point value as a mega, and someone ran the maths that I saw, and they put down a mega in a single combat something like 95%+ of their combats with the proper subfaction. Every army right now has ways to deal with a mega, they are susceptible to magic, big hammers, opposing heroes, combined arms, multicharges, and hordes out positioning them on objectives. 

[Phasteon]

21 minutes ago, jjb070707 said:

I feel like this is the complete opposite response to one that should be taken. Son's are the perfect benchmark right now for an army to build to overcome. They do their thing and die on schedule to well made responses. It isn't fair to the sons player that their opponent's refuse to build lists that can deal with a giant per turn.

It is completely a misnomer that there is no tactical decision making during list building or in game with or against sons, its just the number of decisions required decreases, but the magnitude of each decision is amplified. A single misplaced screen against the sons could be a loss, just as a missed read on which unit to finest hour, where to move an objective, which unit to put your attacks into from a multicharge, or having gargants end up outside support windows to respond to whatever kills the first gargant will pretty much lose you the match against any skilled opponent that built a list anticipating sons as possible during an event. 

A strong army that is easy to pilot, damn near builds itself, but consistently falls short of winning the event is the perfect challenge for list builders and pilots and should be celebrated. IE, "Can this beat 4 giants" is the baseline one should ALWAYS be considering when building a list, if not its time to move onto a new list theme.

If you are constantly winning with sons, its not sons fault, its your opponents. Son's are basically what we wish stormcast were in my group, an "easy" army in terms of number of units and number of decisions per turn with enough raw stats to always keep their pilot feeling like they have a good shot at winning a match, but never overpowering against a properly tooled army and a confident pilot. If anything, Son's may need a tiny nudge upward to remain relevant as new books come out with high rend tossed onto troops like candy. For example, those new annihilators will point for point shred a mega through AoD with a rerollable 7 inch charge. a double unit of them is the same point value as a mega, and someone ran the maths that I saw, and they put down a mega in a single combat something like 95%+ of their combats with the proper subfaction. Every army right now has ways to deal with a mega, they are susceptible to magic, big hammers, opposing heroes, combined arms, multicharges, and hordes out positioning them on objectives. 

I watched a batrep today where 2 Mega Gargants + Kragnos got shot to pieces by KO without dealing any significant damage back to them. 

Kragnos put finest hour AND all out defense on himself but still failed enough 2+ Saves against the KOs shooting to die in one phase. 

Yes, 2+ Save (even against rend) rerolling 1s is problematic, as its really quite unlikely to pierce through, but a 2+ Save alone without ward won‘t save you against masses of wounds. 

Add in some MWs and those 14+ Monsters aren‘t really that scary - it‘s just a matter of having the right tools for the job, if not change your list. 

 

But lets be real here: 

Nagash costs 1k points and counts as 5 models towards objectives. 

If you absolutely cant kill him you can just kill the other 1k points and then split your forces to hold more objectives than Nagash, with proper screening / tarpitting he can‘t be everywhere at once. 

If you pay 1k points for a single model its only fair that anyone is struggling to kill that model. 

I think this whole „save stacking discussion“ is just about people being too focused on „being able to kill everything point and click style with ease“ instead of adapting to those tough units. 

I prefer a unit getting to a 2+/3+ „invuln“ by buffing them up instead of them just having a 3+ invuln like in 40k without doing anything for it (except paying points). Those save bonusses are costing ressources and often can be countered by killing off support heroes or forcing the opponent to leave wholly within X“ bubbles to maximize damage or models on objectives. 

I prefer Retributors fighting with a 2+ Save (all out defense) against rend 0 chaff - instead of them dying to clanrats because of their (former) 4+ Save as they did in 2th. 

Long story short, I think save stacking is probably one of the best tactical tools in 3.0 and I don‘t care if people can‘t deal with it. 

 

[yukishiro1]

1000 point models shouldn't be in 2000 point games, period. The problem really comes from that more than from save-stacking per se. When you have models worth half an army you have to make them absurd to possibly be able to deliver on their points. And the things you have to do to do that don't generally make for good games. 

There really shouldn't be anything in 2k games that are more than 500 points. If that means toning down the power of God models, or having some sort of summoning mechanism that means they only enter the game from around T3 and then have a discounted points cost to account for that, it'd be better for the game. 

 

 

Edited November 6, 2021 by yukishiro1

[JackStreicher]

On 9/16/2021 at 7:21 AM, Sharklone said:

This might sound dramatic, but save stacking has dramtically reduced my enjoyment of the game. Noone likes running into immortal monsters. The combo with heroic recovery and the amulet of destiny is awful

Same.

 

Edited November 6, 2021 by JackStreicher

[JackStreicher]

On 9/16/2021 at 11:56 PM, Gailon said:

But man, I do not miss everything dying to a stiff breeze, being completely unable to do anything to protect a unit of knights in combat. 

This still happens (yet I don’t feel like this was an issue in 2.0), now however you either survive due to stacking, or you die to a gazillion mortal wounds. There’s really little left inbetween.

 

@Phasteon imo it is the worst tool due to the way it is accessible to factions. Some have auras in different phases stacking up +3 save for half of the army, others can only get +1 save due to mystic shield etc.

The whole „just screen and it is fine“  argument is simply the worst and not thought through: There’s a battle going on, at some point there’s nothing left to screen.

Also thinking savestacking is fine because, you know, one army can still shoot you to bits and another army has a lot of mortal wounds is quite a weak argument in a game with 16? armies.

 

Save stacking has simply been the worst experience I‘ve had since the old Slaanesh. It’s unevenly distributed, has no counterplay and most armies have no tools to deal with it.

It‘s an all around feel bad to the point, that after 40 AoS games in this Edition I don’t feel like playing anymore.

 

How to fix it?

1. Add a +1 rend Spell and Command ability for all factions

Or

Limit the amount of +1 save a unit can receive to a Max of +2 and add a -1 rend command ability

Edited November 6, 2021 by JackStreicher

[Beliman]

11 hours ago, Phasteon said:

I watched a batrep today where 2 Mega Gargants + Kragnos got shot to pieces by KO without dealing any significant damage back to them. 

Can you share the Game? I'm really interested in this type of games because KOs have a really hard problem to kill things in this save-stacking season. 

[Phasteon]

28 minutes ago, Beliman said:

Can you share the Game? I'm really interested in this type of games because KOs have a really hard problem to kill things in this save-stacking season. 

there you go, its german though. 

 

@JackStreicherI know your opinion on the matter, and I already showed in the Stormcast 3.0 discussion why you are objectively wrong, so please avoid comments like „its not thought through“ when really all you do is denying that almost* every army got tools to either stack saves or deny saves via MWs. 

Also, if you did 40 games this edition and STILL haven‘t figured out how to use and play around save stacking you should really just ask your opponents to go easy on you and/or play narrative games - you are obviously not made for competitive games.

 

 

*the armies that have neither have other tools / tricks. 

If you really want to continue the discussion then please name ONE army that is absolutely lost in 3.0 because of the new mechanics and explain why exactly. 

Beasts of Chaos do not count. There you go!

Edited November 6, 2021 by Phasteon

[Sagittarii Orientalis]

33 minutes ago, Beliman said:

Can you share the Game? I'm really interested in this type of games because KOs have a really hard problem to kill things in this save-stacking season. 

I am not sure if this is the battle report which Phasteon referred to, but it features a game between KO and SoB.

KOs removing Kragnos in a single turn can be seen from 19:09 to 24:34, although It seems that controlling player of Kragnos rolled 1's for his saves suspiciously often - he rolled 1 for every 2~3 dice frequently. 

However the uploader did not seem to have recorded every moment of the game, so this might not be the full picture.

 

Edit: Phasteon already uploaded the video before I did.

Edited November 6, 2021 by Sagittarii Orientalis

[Phasteon]

Just now, Sagittarii Orientalis said:

I am not sure if this is the battle report which Phasteon referred to, but it features a game between KO and SoB.

KOs removing Kragnos in a single turn can be seen from 19:09 to 24:34, although It seems that controlling player of Kragnos rolled 1's for his saves suspiciously often - he rolled 1 for every 2~3 dice frequently. 

Dice rolls happen - he overall failed many saves, but he also saved many D3 and D2 shots and the KO player still had a unit of Riggers to shoot. (with potentially 6 MWs via drill launchers)

 

I don‘t claim that Kragnos was dead there a 100% in general but in this batrep for sure he was. 

And my point still stands - how problematic can save stacking really be if a 700+ model with a 0+ save still dies in one round of focused fire? 

Even if he took just like 8-10 wounds he would die as soon as finest hour went away. 

[Sagittarii Orientalis]

21 minutes ago, Phasteon said:

Dice rolls happen - he overall failed many saves, but he also saved many D3 and D2 shots and the KO player still had a unit of Riggers to shoot. (with potentially 6 MWs via drill launchers)

 

I don‘t claim that Kragnos was dead there a 100% in general but in this batrep for sure he was. 

And my point still stands - how problematic can save stacking really be if a 700+ model with a 0+ save still dies in one round of focused fire? 

Even if he took just like 8-10 wounds he would die as soon as finest hour went away. 

As I said in my caveat, I do not have the full picture of that german battle report - there are moments where the uploader did not record the full process and instead skipped here and there. 

Sure, Kragnos might have had average roll for his save during the actual game - or perhaps much less than average. Either scenario could be plausible.

Regardless, taking literally one example(of which we do not have full understanding) to support your opinion that save stacking high save monsters is not problematic seems to be at best ... hasty generalisation.

Edited November 6, 2021 by Sagittarii Orientalis

[JackStreicher]

12 minutes ago, Phasteon said:

I know your opinion on the matter, and I already showed in the Stormcast 3.0 discussion why you are objectively wrong, so please avoid comments like „its not thought through“ when really all you do is denying that almost* every army got tools to either stack saves or deny saves via MWs. 

Also, if you did 40 games this edition and STILL haven‘t figured out how to use and play around save stacking you should really just ask your opponents to go easy on you and/or play narrative games - you are obviously not made for competitive games.

Yes, I remember you showing nothing and I remember you claiming that your (faulty) opinion suddenly is objective instead of subjective. About that and the way you wrote in my quote:

I highly dislike vain people, it’s the most useless and paltry and more often than not unwarranted personality trait that exists. We are talking about a toy game here. So if you want a discussion and people listening to you, you should stop that behavior. And realize that your behavior is based on pushing little plastic toys around.

 

one army? Nighthaunt. Why? Apparently you know all about the game, so you get the reasons yourself.

 

Back to topic:

You are also confusing comp. Play with regular play. comp. play is but a fraction - usually comp. Players don’t mind anything because comp. Play is about rules abuse, min-maxing and finding ways to beat the meta. Spoiler alert: Regular games don’t care about this, they’re about fun. So if the fun is impaired for the majority of players the game is in trouble.

 

 

[Skreech Verminking]

12 hours ago, Phasteon said:

Long story short, I think save stacking is probably one of the best tactical tools in 3.0 and I don‘t care if people can‘t deal with it. 

It definitely is an interesting  tool yet some armies really need something to be able to deal with it.

yet I do believe that changing the amulet of destiny to a 2+ ward, which will be lost immediately after having failed the roll for the first time, can change the meaning of a game a bit 

 

Edited November 6, 2021 by Skreech Verminking

[Beliman]

1 hour ago, Sagittarii Orientalis said:

As I said in my caveat, I do not have the full picture of that german battle report - there are moments where the uploader did not record the full process and instead skipped here and there. 

Sure, Kragnos might have had average roll for his save during the actual game - or perhaps much less than average. Either scenario could be plausible.

Regardless, taking literally one example(of which we do not have full understanding) to support your opinion that save stacking high save monsters is not problematic seems to be at best ... hasty generalisation.

That are exatly my thoughts too. I was expecting something completely diferent that I could use in my games.
I just want to remind that there is a rule that explicity states what can happen in a game:

In other words, everything can be killed.

That's nice and all, but the truth is a bit more complex. How "easy" is to accomplish that? If every 20 games, I can only kill 2 times your  2+save with +4 save stacking Hero-Monster with my dedicated 1500 points of focus fire, I don't really care about this two games, they are just anecdotes to talk when drinking some beers with friends, but it's not what is happening in the whole game.

Edited November 6, 2021 by Beliman

[Phasteon]

1 hour ago, JackStreicher said:

one army? Nighthaunt. Why? Apparently you know all about the game, so you get the reasons yourself.

 

 

You just surrendered the discussion and made clear to everyone that you are a troll, nothing more.

 

Congrats on that, mate.

[Phasteon]

18 minutes ago, Beliman said:

That are exatly my thoughts too. I was expecting something completely diferent that I could use in my games.
I just want to remind that there is a rule that explicity states what can happen in a game:

In other words, everything can be killed.

That's nice and all, but the truth is a bit more complex. How "easy" is to accomplish that? If every 20 games, I can only kill 2 times your  2+save with +4 save stacking Hero-Monster with my dedicated 1500 points of focus fire, I don't really care about this two games, they are just anecdotes to talk when drinking some beers with friends, but it's not what is happening in the whole game.

It showed more than that. 

It showed that even a model supposed to stick around FOREVER gets killed in a single round of shooting. 

Not 3-4 rounds of combat as other 500+ Units buffed up can last. 

A single round. 

People claim that units get „unkillable“ because of save stacking, the same people cry about Lumineth Sentinels OP MW spam, when all they really do is punish low wound / high save units. 

Its paper to your rock. 

If you don‘t want a little bit of rock, paper, scissors then please enlighten me? What do you want? 

Your keypiece getting taken out every.single.game on the first round of shooting because it just has a 3+ Save against a million attacks with rend? 

I made realistic points about targetting support pieces first, screening deathstars, ignoring „unkillable“ threats to the point where they finally ARE killable or just bring something equally tough yourself, which is very possible with mystic shield + all out defense for everyone. 

But you guys don‘t want to listen to reason. 

You want to believe that save stacking is ruining your games and everyone reasoning with you is treated as some kind of liar or toxic person. 

@JackStreicher topped it off with his post. The only reason I did not report him is so reasonable people can have a laugh at his infantile talk. 

[Skreech Verminking]

Well @JackStreicher does have some good points, factions lime nighthaunt, gloomspite and beasts of chaos are currently struggling a lot when it comes down to putting out damage or having the possibility to keep themself alive with save stacking (since they are pretty much already starting the game with a literally bad or not so great save characteristics)

And it is not like these mentioned armies have a ton of stuff, that can go around the save stacking abilities of other faction.

Nighthaunt for example don’t have much rend on their army roster, and while there are some units that are able to do mortal wounds, they output is currently more laughable then anything else.

yet I do believe that a small rule change to the most taken artifact of the current third edition could make at least some different in the game, and keeps it fresh, since the meta would chance.

as for nighthaunt, I really have a feeling that the only saving grace for this faction would be a new tome or a points decrease so generous that one would be able to field up to 300models and/or more (yet not even that would be a grace considering their current price)

Edited November 6, 2021 by Skreech Verminking