Save stacking - Menace or necessary?

[JackOfBlades]

1 hour ago, Kadeton said:

Yes, but armies being outdated is not supporting evidence for both.

One model can tie up your whole army?

I do agree that mass save buffs are a bad idea. Defensive tech needs to be strictly limited in order to create meaningful choices. Stuff like the Akhelian Leviadon's aura is just poor design.

Yeah, I'm with you on that. Buffing multiple frontline units to un-rendable levels is not good for the game. Anything that creates no-brainer choices is anathema to satisfying tactical gameplay.

(I'd still separate the concepts, though. Save stacking is fine. Abilities that provide save bonuses to multiple units are flawed.)

I dont think the aoe buffs would be a "design problem" per se, there are ways to balance that: make the buffer a squishy target, make the buffer give a penalty either to themselves or the units in exchange for the buff (either immediately or in a next phase), increase the opportunity cost.

But you probably think so too, i get what your point is. You mean that because it hasnt been made into a tactical choice in its current state, the benefit is out of proportion with the thoughtful risk required, and so such a rebalancing is called for.

Edited November 8, 2021 by JackOfBlades

[Orbei]

3 hours ago, Kadeton said:

Yeah, I'm with you on that. Buffing multiple frontline units to un-rendable levels is not good for the game. Anything that creates no-brainer choices is anathema to satisfying tactical gameplay.

(I'd still separate the concepts, though. Save stacking is fine. Abilities that provide save bonuses to multiple units are flawed.)

Its interesting that you use the leviadon as an example. I think the leviadon's aura is fine in the context of the army it is in. If it was in StD, Stormcast, Ironjawz, etc yes it would be problematic. But Idoneth don't really have things it can push to the all important 2+ or other ways to stacks saves beyond the normal. They don't even have a strong magic game for mystic shield. Upping the save on thralls from 5+ to 4+ or eels from 4+ to 3+ really isn't the issue that people have with save stacking, is it? For the same reason, if Gloomspite or BoC got access to a similar aura I wouldn't find it offensive. The problem people have are the things that become ridiculously resilient regardless of how much offense is shoved towards them. Save stacking is specifically a problem when 3+ becomes 2+, often ignoring a good bit of rend. The value you get from it becomes completely disproportionate to the cost.

Also, I don't think save stacking is some amazing tactical gameplay. It's generally blatantly obvious what is going to get buffed. Oh wow, Archaon/mawcrusha/Nagash got all the buffs this round. Such tactics wow.

Edited November 8, 2021 by Orbei

[Kadeton]

2 hours ago, Orbei said:

Its interesting that you use the leviadon as an example. I think the leviadon's aura is fine in the context of the army it is in. If it was in StD, Stormcast, Ironjawz, etc yes it would be problematic. But Idoneth don't really have things it can push to the all important 2+ or other ways to stacks saves beyond the normal.

I mean... Ishlaenn Guard were doing the 2+ unrendable save thing way before everyone else jumped on the bandwagon. They don't need or even benefit from save stacking.

2 hours ago, Orbei said:

Save stacking is specifically a problem when 3+ becomes 2+, often ignoring a good bit of rend. The value you get from it becomes completely disproportionate to the cost.

That's kind of funny. I'd say from the games I've played so far, save stacking was almost exclusively relevant when used to bring a unit to a 2+ save and ignore some rend, when facing an overwhelming amount of incoming attacks. I've applied single +1 save bonuses to units with 4+ saves, but I can't recall an instance where I've stacked save bonuses on such a unit. There's usually just no point - the value you get from it doesn't justify the opportunity cost of being able to buff a second unit.

I would prefer it if we had different defensive mechanics that would allow you to make just about any unit unkillable for a phase if you stacked enough bonuses on it. Unfortunately, the mechanic we have only allows you to do this for units with a base 3+ (or 2+) save, as that's the only time the efficiency boost is large enough to matter.

Edited November 8, 2021 by Kadeton

[JackStreicher]

All they need to add is to add the following simple sentence:

“a save can never be improved to be lower than 3+„

or remove the ability of rend being cancelled by bonus saves. You can only get +1 save, period. 

And all the feel bad situations are gone, while monsters and heroes remain tanky.

Edited November 8, 2021 by JackStreicher

[Orbei]

4 hours ago, Kadeton said:

I mean... Ishlaenn Guard were doing the 2+ unrendable save thing way before everyone else jumped on the bandwagon. They don't need or even benefit from save stacking.

Yes, on the charge only. A single all out defense gets them there. Take away the leviadon and nothing is really going to change here. I don't see them as relevant to this entire discussion.

4 hours ago, Kadeton said:

I'd say from the games I've played so far, save stacking was almost exclusively relevant when used to bring a unit to a 2+ save and ignore some rend, when facing an overwhelming amount of incoming attacks.

We're on the same page here, saying the same thing. It's a haves and haves not situation because of this. I don't see new tomes as fixing the issue because I don't expect Gitz, BoC, Nighthaunt, etc to suddenly find 3+ armor saves, which is what this mechanic demands to be worth it. And even if they did, I am not happy with the mechanic in games. Completely skews the value you get from certain pieces. 

Edited November 8, 2021 by Orbei

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

I think it would be good for this thread to lay down the reasoning as to how save stacking devalues combat and why this is bad for the game, so that  we don't have to go around in circles all the time accusing each other of not understanding how to play AoS.

I'll start with a thesis statement: Units in AoS cannot break through a 3+ save without rend -1. They cannot break through a 2+ save without rend -2.

Before I argue for that in detail, I'll talk a little bit about how I originally came to believe this. In the days of AoS 2nd edition, the main list I ran was Legions of Nagash Death March. That is a list without a lot of access to rend, since it's almost exclusively composed of Skeleton Warriors, Black Knights and Grave Guard. If you remember, though, Skeleton Warriors and Grave Guard had ridiculous buff potential in AoS 2. There were ways to give a unit of 40 skeletons 200 attacks and fight twice. Black Knights had three attacks, 3/3/-/2 on the charge and could easily get buffed further with extra attacks or reroll 1s to hit and wound. Basically, the list dealt mostly no-rend damage, but huge amounts of it. One of my calculation targets at the time was a Tempest's Eye Steam Tank, which is on a 2+ save turn 1. It turns out that even in the best case scenario, with all attack buffs active and all models attacking, my no-rend units could not muscle past a 2+ or even 3+ save reliably and effectively. That just seems to be a property of the rules of AoS: Units without rend cannot effectively be buffed to deal with 2+ saves, 3+ being borderline. Even if they have otherwise good quality attack profiles or huge weight of dice. I want to make it clear how good Legions of Nagash buffs were at the time: You basically had double damage on tap mutliple times, because you could easily give +2 attacks to units with base 2 attacks, and you could make them pile in twice on top of that. But it was still not enough to outpace the extra defense of a 2+ save.

Now on to the math. First, I want to define what I consider "breaking through a save". For me, a good bench mark is 10 damage. Most units come at around 10 wounds per size increment, e.g. 10 one wound models, 2 two wound models, 3 three or 4 wound models... If you can deal 10 damage against that unit's save characteristic, you will most likely wipe it out. It's basically the old heuristic of "Can this beat a unit on a 4+ save?", but generalized to any save. For monster heroes, the number to beat seems to be 14. For foot heroes, 6.

Here's how that works out on a few common damage profiles:

Damage of certain representative unit types:

Save	Chaff (2 4/4/-/1)	Elite (2 3/3/-1/1)	Brute (3 3/3/-2/2)
2+	0.88	3.11	7.11
3+	1.75	4.67	9.48
4+	2.63	6.22	11.85
5+	3.5	7.78	14.22
6+	4.38	9.33	14.22
-	3.11	9.33	14.22

Here, I have calculated the damage of a unit of 10 chaff, 10 elites and 5 brutes (all with +1 attack from the champion). I think those are fairly representative unit stat lines for AoS. As you can see, chaff does not break through any saves efficiently without buffs at 10 models, but they if you can somehow buff their damage. 10 elites can threaten units of equal size up to a 4+ save, effectively. Brutes can even threaten 3+ without buffs.

Now, let's look at how the same stat lines fare against a target with two save buffs. I think two is a fair number to assume: Basically any hero has +2 saves on tap at least once per game from Finest Hour and All-Out Defense, there is always a chance to get there from Mystic Shield and AOD and many armies have other ways to get an extra +1 to saves beyond those basic options.

Damage against a target with 2+ to saves:

Save	Chaff (2 4/4/-/1)	Elite (2 3/3/-1/1)	Brute (3 3/3/-2/2)
2+	0.88	1.56	2.37
3+	0.88	1.56	4.74
4+	1.75	3.11	7.11
5+	2.63	4.67	9.48
6+	3.5	6.22	11.85
-	4.38	7.78	14.22

As expected, chaff stops dealing meaningful damage to anything with a 2+ save. Even a unit that starts as low as a 5+ takes basically no damage anymore. Elite units now have problems threatening anything above a 6+ save. Even our rend -2 brutes don't wipe 4+ units anymore. So far, I think this is in line with my statement from the top: If you lose your rend completely, you lose the ability to deal with saves of 3+ or higher.

You might say that this is a bad comparison, since in this scenario the target gets +2 to saves, but the attacker doesn't get any buffs. This is fair enough. To make things even, we can try putting two buffs of our choice into the attacker as well. But here's the thing: Even doubling the damage of the attacking units would not be enough to cross the 10 damage threshold in the relevant cases. Elites still can't break through 2+ or 3+ and brutes just barely gain the ability to deal with 3+. Both as I predicted up top.

Let's take a look at some interesting numbers in the case of heroes, which is what is generally considered most relevant. All the most threatening monster-heroes sit on a 3+ save, 14 wounds. What unit can hope to break through that using regular combat-phase damage? Units on the elite profile can basically never hope to do it, even if reinforced to 30 and buffed to double damage. They still deal just shy of 14 damage, with 13.8. And that is a dream scenario, where you get to completely surround an enemy monster-hero with 30 25mm base size dudes. Brutes get through if you can fit in 10 models and buff their damage by *1.5. Until you add a ward save into the mix, that is:

Target 5+ ward, +2 to saves:

Save	Chaff (2 4/4/-/1)	Elite (2 3/3/-1/1)	Brute (3 3/3/-2/2)
2+	0.58	1.04	1.58
3+	0.58	1.04	3.16
4+	1.17	2.07	4.74
5+	1.75	3.11	6.32
6+	2.33	4.15	7.9
-	2.92	5.19	9.48

If your hero-monster has a built in ward or can take the amulet of destiny, it can basically become impervious to melee combat damage on demand. I'll leave calculating the numbers including buffs and reinforcement to you. But consider how realistic it is to get more than 10 models on a brute profile into combat with the same hero-monster at all. These kinds of models are usually either slow and on large bases, or kinda fast and on cavalry bases. Plus, it's actually fairly rare that you can get them to double damage, since they benefit less from +1 attacks, +1 damage or +1 to hit and wound than models on worse attack profiles. Remember, a bravery 10 hero that lives can heal about 3 damage per battle round from heroic recovery. Many can heal more or have better wards or other defensive abilities.

It's also worth noting that, given these numbers, even dumb 6 wound foot heroes become very hard to kill. Even the average 4+ save wizard will be hard to beat in melee combat because you won't be able to get enough attacks into them. And let's not forget that apart from the ward save, regular troops can also stack saves in this way.

What should you take away from this as a player? Basically, you should not hope to be able to deal significant damage to hero-monsters with regular melee combat troops. Even rend -2 troops are iffy. You need to have rend -3 or mortal wounds to get through even the most basic save stacking. However, in most cases, rend -3 is confined to big attack profiles like bites on monsters, where you usually get one swing which makes it super unreliable and, let's be honest, not really enough to deal significant damage. So in reality, the actual answer for most armies will be mortal wounds.

Why is this a problem?

It is a problem because the design of AoS has reached a point where a unit is basically not a good hammer anymore if it does not have mortal wounds output. A unit even with good damage or rend cannot be expected to beat marginally tanky (3+ save) stuff anymore if your opponent decides to stack saves even once. For better or worse, save stacking devalues regular wounds to such an extent that I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that mortal wounds are now the main way of dealing damage in AoS. It highly devalues what should be the default way of delivering damage. This is a value judgment, different from the question "Can most armies participate in this meta/manage save stacking/access mortal wounds?". I am saying that, even if most armies can still function, something has gone wrong with the basic design of the game.

I believe that this is just a bad trajectory for the game to take. If the fix is to further increase access to mortals, that's not really a fix. It's just furthering the problem of the devaluation of regular damage. Especially since changing the core rules relating to save stacking would just be so much easier than to slowly update all the individual battletomes. Just apply rend after the save bonus is calculated. Or even introduce a universal command that improves rend by 1. Both of those would easily bring things back into balance again. Given that the most unpopular things in 2nd edition were mortal wound spam and shooting, it is honestly kinda baffling that GW created an environment in 3rd edition where mortal wounds and mortal wound shooting are more valuable than ever. And, it seems to me, for no reason: I highly doubt anyone would be clamouring for the ability to stack save bonuses if it was not in the game already.

EDIT: Fixed some math mistakes.

Edited November 9, 2021 by Neil Arthur Hotep

[Yondaime]

41 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

I think it would be good for this thread to lay down the reasoning as to how save stacking devalues combat and why this is bad for the game, so that  we don't have to go around in circles all the time accusing each other of not understanding how to play AoS.

I'll start with a thesis statement: Units in AoS cannot break through a 3+ save without rend -1. They cannot break through a 2+ save without rend -2.

Before I argue for that in detail, I'll talk a little bit about how I originally came to believe this. In the days of AoS 2nd edition, the main list I ran was Legions of Nagash Death March. That is a list without a lot of access to rend, since it's almost exclusively composed of Skeleton Warriors, Black Knights and Grave Guard. If you remember, though, Skeleton Warriors and Grave Guard had ridiculous buff potential in AoS 2. There were ways to give a unit of 40 skeletons 200 attacks and fight twice. Black Knights had three attacks, 3/3/-/2 on the charge and could easily get buffed further with extra attacks or reroll 1s to hit and wound. Basically, the list dealt mostly no-rend damage, but huge amounts of it. One of my calculation targets at the time was a Tempest's Eye Steam Tank, which is on a 2+ save turn 1. It turns out that even in the best case scenario, with all attack buffs active and all models attacking, my no-rend units could not muscle past a 2+ or even 3+ save reliably and effectively. That just seems to be a property of the rules of AoS: Units without rend cannot effectively be buffed to deal with 2+ saves, 3+ being borderline. Even if they have otherwise good quality attack profiles or huge weight of dice. I want to make it clear how good Legions of Nagash buffs were at the time: You basically had double damage on tap mutliple times, because you could easily give +2 attacks to units with base 2 attacks, and you could make them pile in twice on top of that. But it was still not enough to outpace the extra defense of a 2+ save.

Now on to the math. First, I want to define what I consider "breaking through a save". For me, a good bench mark is 10 damage. Most units come at around 10 wounds per size increment, e.g. 10 one wound models, 2 two wound models, 3 three or 4 wound models... If you can deal 10 damage against that unit's save characteristic, you will most likely wipe it out. It's basically the old heuristic of "Can this beat a unit on a 4+ save?", but generalized to any save. For monster heroes, the number to beat seems to be 14. For foot heroes, 6.

Here's how that works out on a few common damage profiles:

Damage of certain representative unit types:

Save	Chaff (2 4/4/-/1)	Elite (2 3/3/-1/1)	Brute (3 3/3/-2/2)
2+	0.88	4.59	7.11
3+	1.75	6.89	9.48
4+	2.63	9.19	11.85
5+	3.5	11.48	14.22
6+	4.38	13.78	14.22
-	5.25	13.78	14.22

Here, I have calculated the damage of a unit of 10 chaff, 10 elites and 5 brutes (all with +1 attack from the champion). I think those are fairly representative unit stat lines for AoS. As you can see, chaff does not break through any saves efficiently without buffs at 10 models, but they if you can somehow buff their damage. 10 elites can threaten units of equal size up to a 4+ save, effectively. Brutes can even threaten 3+ without buffs.

Now, let's look at how the same stat lines fare against a target with two save buffs. I think two is a fair number to assume: Basically any hero has +2 saves on tap at least once per game from Finest Hour and All-Out Defense, there is always a chance to get there from Mystic Shield and AOD and many armies have other ways to get an extra +1 to saves beyond those basic options.

Damage against a target with 2+ to saves:

Save	Chaff (2 4/4/-/1)	Elite (2 3/3/-1/1)	Brute (3 3/3/-2/2)
2+	0.88	2.3	2.37
3+	0.88	2.3	4.74
4+	0.88	4.59	7.11
5+	1.75	6.89	9.48
6+	2.63	9.19	11.85
-	3.5	11.48	14.22

As expected, chaff stops dealing meaningful damage to anything with a 2+ save. Even a unit that starts as low as a 5+ takes basically no damage anymore. Elite units now have problems threatening anything above a 6+ save. Even our rend -2 brutes don't wipe 4+ units anymore. So far, I think this is in line with my statement from the top: If you lose your rend completely, you lose the ability to deal with saves of 3+ or higher.

You might say that this is a bad comparison, since in this scenario the target gets +2 to saves, but the attacker doesn't get any buffs. This is fair enough. To make things even, we can try putting two buffs of our choice into the attacker as well. But here's the thing: Even doubling the damage of the attacking units would not be enough to cross the 10 damage threshold in the relevant cases. Elites still can't break through 2+ or 3+ and brutes just barely gain the ability to deal with 3+. Both as I predicted up top.

Let's take a look at some interesting numbers in the case of heroes, which is what is generally considered most relevant. All the most threatening monster-heroes sit on a 3+ save, 14 wounds. What unit can hope to break through that using regular combat-phase damage? Units on the elite profile can basically never hope to do it, even if reinforced to 30 and buffed to double damage. They still deal just shy of 14 damage, with 13.8. And that is a dream scenario, where you get to completely surround an enemy monster-hero with 30 25mm base size dudes. Brutes get through if you can fit in 10 models and buff their damage by *1.5. Until you add a ward save into the mix, that is:

Target 5+ ward, +2 to saves:

Save	Chaff (2 4/4/-/1)	Elite (2 3/3/-1/1)	Brute (3 3/3/-2/2)
2+	0.58	1.53	1.58
3+	0.58	1.53	3.16
4+	0.58	3.06	4.74
5+	1.17	4.59	6.32
6+	1.75	6.12	7.9
-	2.33	7.65	9.48

If your hero-monster has a built in ward or can take the amulet of destiny, it can basically become impervious to melee combat damage on demand. I'll leave calculating the numbers including buffs and reinforcement to you. But consider how realistic it is to get more than 10 models on a brute profile into combat with the same hero-monster at all. These kinds of models are usually either slow and on large bases, or kinda fast and on cavalry bases. Plus, it's actually fairly rare that you can get them to double damage, since they benefit less from +1 attacks, +1 damage or +1 to hit and wound than models on worse attack profiles. Remember, a bravery 10 hero that lives can heal about 3 damage per battle round from heroic recovery. Many can heal more or have better wards or other defensive abilities.

It's also worth noting that, given these numbers, even dumb 6 wound foot heroes become very hard to kill. Even the average 4+ save wizard will be hard to beat in melee combat because you won't be able to get enough attacks into them. And let's not forget that apart from the ward save, regular troops can also stack saves in this way.

What should you take away from this as a player? Basically, you should not hope to be able to deal significant damage to hero-monsters with regular melee combat troops. Even rend -2 troops are iffy. You need to have rend -3 or mortal wounds to get through even the most basic save stacking. However, in most cases, rend -3 is confined to big attack profiles like bites on monsters, where you usually get one swing which makes it super unreliable and, let's be honest, not really enough to deal significant damage. So in reality, the actual answer for most armies will be mortal wounds.

Why is this a problem?

It is a problem because the design of AoS has reached a point where a unit is basically not a good hammer anymore if it does not have mortal wounds output. A unit even with good damage or rend cannot be expected to beat marginally tanky (3+ save) stuff anymore if your opponent decides to stack saves even once. For better or worse, save stacking devalues regular wounds to such an extent that I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that mortal wounds are now the main way of dealing damage in AoS. It highly devalues what should be the default way of delivering damage. This is a value judgment, different from the question "Can most armies participate in this meta/manage save stacking/access mortal wounds?". I am saying that, even if most armies can still function, something has gone wrong with the basic design of the game.

I believe that this is just a bad trajectory for the game to take. If the fix is to further increase access to mortals, that's not really a fix. It's just furthering the problem of the devaluation of regular damage. Especially since changing the core rules relating to save stacking would just be so much easier than to slowly update all the individual battletomes. Just apply rend after the save bonus is calculated. Or even introduce a universal command that improves rend by 1. Both of those would easily bring things back into balance again. Given that the most unpopular things in 2nd edition were mortal wound spam and shooting, it is honestly kinda baffling that GW created an environment in 3rd edition where mortal wounds and mortal wound shooting are more valuable than ever. And, it seems to me, for no reason: I highly doubt anyone would be clamouring for the ability to stack save bonuses if it was not in the game already.

 

Nice and articulate

 

I just say that playing vs Archaon or nagash at save 2+ ignoring rend -3 rerolled its just utterly stupid and unfun XD

 

My ultra giga buffed Mawkrusha (8 2/2 -2 7d) charged archaon, and did 0 damage

 

0, ZERO

[JackStreicher]

1 hour ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

I think it would be good for this thread to lay down the reasoning as to how save stacking devalues combat and why this is bad for the game, so that  we don't have to go around in circles all the time accusing each other of not understanding how to play AoS.

I'll start with a thesis statement: Units in AoS cannot break through a 3+ save without rend -1. They cannot break through a 2+ save without rend -2.

Before I argue for that in detail, I'll talk a little bit about how I originally came to believe this. In the days of AoS 2nd edition, the main list I ran was Legions of Nagash Death March. That is a list without a lot of access to rend, since it's almost exclusively composed of Skeleton Warriors, Black Knights and Grave Guard. If you remember, though, Skeleton Warriors and Grave Guard had ridiculous buff potential in AoS 2. There were ways to give a unit of 40 skeletons 200 attacks and fight twice. Black Knights had three attacks, 3/3/-/2 on the charge and could easily get buffed further with extra attacks or reroll 1s to hit and wound. Basically, the list dealt mostly no-rend damage, but huge amounts of it. One of my calculation targets at the time was a Tempest's Eye Steam Tank, which is on a 2+ save turn 1. It turns out that even in the best case scenario, with all attack buffs active and all models attacking, my no-rend units could not muscle past a 2+ or even 3+ save reliably and effectively. That just seems to be a property of the rules of AoS: Units without rend cannot effectively be buffed to deal with 2+ saves, 3+ being borderline. Even if they have otherwise good quality attack profiles or huge weight of dice. I want to make it clear how good Legions of Nagash buffs were at the time: You basically had double damage on tap mutliple times, because you could easily give +2 attacks to units with base 2 attacks, and you could make them pile in twice on top of that. But it was still not enough to outpace the extra defense of a 2+ save.

Now on to the math. First, I want to define what I consider "breaking through a save". For me, a good bench mark is 10 damage. Most units come at around 10 wounds per size increment, e.g. 10 one wound models, 2 two wound models, 3 three or 4 wound models... If you can deal 10 damage against that unit's save characteristic, you will most likely wipe it out. It's basically the old heuristic of "Can this beat a unit on a 4+ save?", but generalized to any save. For monster heroes, the number to beat seems to be 14. For foot heroes, 6.

Here's how that works out on a few common damage profiles:

Damage of certain representative unit types:

Save	Chaff (2 4/4/-/1)	Elite (2 3/3/-1/1)	Brute (3 3/3/-2/2)
2+	0.88	4.59	7.11
3+	1.75	6.89	9.48
4+	2.63	9.19	11.85
5+	3.5	11.48	14.22
6+	4.38	13.78	14.22
-	5.25	13.78	14.22

Here, I have calculated the damage of a unit of 10 chaff, 10 elites and 5 brutes (all with +1 attack from the champion). I think those are fairly representative unit stat lines for AoS. As you can see, chaff does not break through any saves efficiently without buffs at 10 models, but they if you can somehow buff their damage. 10 elites can threaten units of equal size up to a 4+ save, effectively. Brutes can even threaten 3+ without buffs.

Now, let's look at how the same stat lines fare against a target with two save buffs. I think two is a fair number to assume: Basically any hero has +2 saves on tap at least once per game from Finest Hour and All-Out Defense, there is always a chance to get there from Mystic Shield and AOD and many armies have other ways to get an extra +1 to saves beyond those basic options.

Damage against a target with 2+ to saves:

Save	Chaff (2 4/4/-/1)	Elite (2 3/3/-1/1)	Brute (3 3/3/-2/2)
2+	0.88	2.3	2.37
3+	0.88	2.3	4.74
4+	0.88	4.59	7.11
5+	1.75	6.89	9.48
6+	2.63	9.19	11.85
-	3.5	11.48	14.22

As expected, chaff stops dealing meaningful damage to anything with a 2+ save. Even a unit that starts as low as a 5+ takes basically no damage anymore. Elite units now have problems threatening anything above a 6+ save. Even our rend -2 brutes don't wipe 4+ units anymore. So far, I think this is in line with my statement from the top: If you lose your rend completely, you lose the ability to deal with saves of 3+ or higher.

You might say that this is a bad comparison, since in this scenario the target gets +2 to saves, but the attacker doesn't get any buffs. This is fair enough. To make things even, we can try putting two buffs of our choice into the attacker as well. But here's the thing: Even doubling the damage of the attacking units would not be enough to cross the 10 damage threshold in the relevant cases. Elites still can't break through 2+ or 3+ and brutes just barely gain the ability to deal with 3+. Both as I predicted up top.

Let's take a look at some interesting numbers in the case of heroes, which is what is generally considered most relevant. All the most threatening monster-heroes sit on a 3+ save, 14 wounds. What unit can hope to break through that using regular combat-phase damage? Units on the elite profile can basically never hope to do it, even if reinforced to 30 and buffed to double damage. They still deal just shy of 14 damage, with 13.8. And that is a dream scenario, where you get to completely surround an enemy monster-hero with 30 25mm base size dudes. Brutes get through if you can fit in 10 models and buff their damage by *1.5. Until you add a ward save into the mix, that is:

Target 5+ ward, +2 to saves:

Save	Chaff (2 4/4/-/1)	Elite (2 3/3/-1/1)	Brute (3 3/3/-2/2)
2+	0.58	1.53	1.58
3+	0.58	1.53	3.16
4+	0.58	3.06	4.74
5+	1.17	4.59	6.32
6+	1.75	6.12	7.9
-	2.33	7.65	9.48

If your hero-monster has a built in ward or can take the amulet of destiny, it can basically become impervious to melee combat damage on demand. I'll leave calculating the numbers including buffs and reinforcement to you. But consider how realistic it is to get more than 10 models on a brute profile into combat with the same hero-monster at all. These kinds of models are usually either slow and on large bases, or kinda fast and on cavalry bases. Plus, it's actually fairly rare that you can get them to double damage, since they benefit less from +1 attacks, +1 damage or +1 to hit and wound than models on worse attack profiles. Remember, a bravery 10 hero that lives can heal about 3 damage per battle round from heroic recovery. Many can heal more or have better wards or other defensive abilities.

It's also worth noting that, given these numbers, even dumb 6 wound foot heroes become very hard to kill. Even the average 4+ save wizard will be hard to beat in melee combat because you won't be able to get enough attacks into them. And let's not forget that apart from the ward save, regular troops can also stack saves in this way.

What should you take away from this as a player? Basically, you should not hope to be able to deal significant damage to hero-monsters with regular melee combat troops. Even rend -2 troops are iffy. You need to have rend -3 or mortal wounds to get through even the most basic save stacking. However, in most cases, rend -3 is confined to big attack profiles like bites on monsters, where you usually get one swing which makes it super unreliable and, let's be honest, not really enough to deal significant damage. So in reality, the actual answer for most armies will be mortal wounds.

Why is this a problem?

It is a problem because the design of AoS has reached a point where a unit is basically not a good hammer anymore if it does not have mortal wounds output. A unit even with good damage or rend cannot be expected to beat marginally tanky (3+ save) stuff anymore if your opponent decides to stack saves even once. For better or worse, save stacking devalues regular wounds to such an extent that I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that mortal wounds are now the main way of dealing damage in AoS. It highly devalues what should be the default way of delivering damage. This is a value judgment, different from the question "Can most armies participate in this meta/manage save stacking/access mortal wounds?". I am saying that, even if most armies can still function, something has gone wrong with the basic design of the game.

I believe that this is just a bad trajectory for the game to take. If the fix is to further increase access to mortals, that's not really a fix. It's just furthering the problem of the devaluation of regular damage. Especially since changing the core rules relating to save stacking would just be so much easier than to slowly update all the individual battletomes. Just apply rend after the save bonus is calculated. Or even introduce a universal command that improves rend by 1. Both of those would easily bring things back into balance again. Given that the most unpopular things in 2nd edition were mortal wound spam and shooting, it is honestly kinda baffling that GW created an environment in 3rd edition where mortal wounds and mortal wound shooting are more valuable than ever. And, it seems to me, for no reason: I highly doubt anyone would be clamouring for the ability to stack save bonuses if it was not in the game already.

 

Nice (scientific) approach. We should forward this to GW.

[Horizons]

I think the new tomes show that GW knew that save stacking could be problematic and that's why there is access to rend -2, -3 and MW's. 

I think there is a balance that needs to be achieved. It's just as frustrating to place your 800-1000 pts model and have it dissapear, then it is to have it be an unkillable menace. The fact only Archaon is problematic (competitively that is) shows that there currently is a pretty good balance.

An interesting exercise could be to try and see what tools new books/armies would need to combat this trend.

I disagree with the idea that mass +save auras are problematic, in the armies they currently appear in I think they're pretty essential. Fyreslayers, Sylvaneth, Daughters, OBR and Idoneth all have access to bubbles of + save and aren't problematic.

 

[Orbei]

3 minutes ago, Horizons said:

I think the new tomes show that GW knew that save stacking could be problematic and that's why there is access to rend -2, -3 and MW's. 

I think there is a balance that needs to be achieved. It's just as frustrating to place your 800-1000 pts model and have it dissapear, then it is to have it be an unkillable menace. The fact only Archaon is problematic (competitively that is) shows that there currently is a pretty good balance.

An interesting exercise could be to try and see what tools new books/armies would need to combat this trend.

I disagree with the idea that mass +save auras are problematic, in the armies they currently appear in I think they're pretty essential. Fyreslayers, Sylvaneth, Daughters, OBR and Idoneth all have access to bubbles of + save and aren't problematic.

 

I agree with most of this, especially regarding auras. I don't see auras as a bad design choice at all and work just fine in those factions. I think there are more problems than just Archaon, though.

The arms race of higher rend and mortal wounds in new battletomes worries me, though. If you give out enough rend to crack the save stacking problem, armies that can't achieve high saves just melt even faster. This is the problem I see... Units are either killy enough that they can blow most anything off the board or tanky enough that they are almost impossible to remove. Anything in the middle is irrelevant. 

I like the proposed cap at 3+. It's not a perfect solution, as it devalues units with a native 3+ and makes 4+ the new sweet spot. Still a much healthier place to be than where we currently are.

[Horizons]

16 minutes ago, Orbei said:

The arms race of higher rend and mortal wounds in new battletomes worries me, though. If you give out enough rend to crack the save stacking problem, armies that can't achieve high saves just melt even faster. This is the problem I see...

Yup this is unfortunately the route I se happening, then maybe they add invulnerable saves...

I hope the tools they add aren't just higher rend. I think access to rend 2/3 is important but Also other ways to circumvent high saves. Vitriolic Spray, Krondys's new - 1 to save spell. These are good because they answer High saves without being too crippling to low save targets. Losing your 2+ on a 200 pts 9w Annihilators feels alot worse then your 6+ save 10w 100w/e chaff.

Or spells similar to the new Kruleboyz spells or Battlemage Chamon which have better effects vs high saves.

I think the current system can work. What they need to do is

1) Not make save stacking too accessible to high save armies. Hopefully an FAQ for StD/Tzeentch save stacking.

2) Increase access to rend, I think Ironjawz are perfect here, good rend across the board and amazing rend for 1 turn.

3) Other ways to penalize high save targets.Vitriolic Spray, Battlemage Chamon are interesting routes we could take.

[Doko]

Im building(veeeey slowly) my vampires army but meanwhile i tested in tts a list with nagash and spam bloodknigths.........

 

I only gonna say that it wasnt fun for me or the rival,have nagash and every blood knigths with a save of 2 rerolling the 1!!!! And with ignore rend1\2 when needed and moreover a feel no pain of 6 annnnnnnd i could revive models\heal each turn.........save stacking is a bad design and must go away.

Only a +1 must be tye limit and never beyond and not this ignore rend,nagash doing mathhamer was useless for 1000 points(his damage output and 16 wounds for 1000 is a joke) but this edition save stacking does him broken and he isnt a instawin as archaon due to mortals wounds that hurst the bloodknigths and also due to save stacking doing the only rend1 of blood knigth pretty useless

[Kadeton]

I agree that the "arms race" doesn't lead to any good outcomes for the game overall, and especially adding more sources of mortal wounds is a lazy and harmful design choice.

@Neil Arthur Hotep's analysis is well written, but I feel like its conclusions are predicated on an unstated opinion that "cracking" a unit's defences is something that should always be possible, or to put it another way, anything can be killed if you try hard enough.

I think that's essentially the fundamental point of difference. I like the fact that some units can become more or less immune to normal damage if you pour enough defensive resources into them. It's not a bug, it's a feature.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

1 minute ago, Kadeton said:

I agree that the "arms race" doesn't lead to any good outcomes for the game overall, and especially adding more sources of mortal wounds is a lazy and harmful design choice.

@Neil Arthur Hotep's analysis is well written, but I feel like its conclusions are predicated on an unstated opinion that "cracking" a unit's defences is something that should always be possible, or to put it another way, anything can be killed if you try hard enough.

I think that's essentially the fundamental point of difference. I like the fact that some units can become more or less immune to normal damage if you pour enough defensive resources into them. It's not a bug, it's a feature.

I definitely recognize the problem of big centerpieces just getting nuked off the board without a player getting use out of them. But I think the current state of having them be fairly unkillable in a lot of builds is also not really ideal. Especially given the fact that it's not just 1000 point Nagash and 800 point Archaon who can become unkillable. Unkillability is currently within reach for any 3+ save monster that can take an artefact. A 280 point Vengorian Lord can get there no problem. Even a dumb 230 point Steam Tank gets there. Maybe that's just my bias, but I feel that if you get your melee hammer in range of a target (which is most often the actual challenge) and get all your buffs off, you should be able to delete it (assuming points parity). Otherwise, why even have a melee hammer?

God models have always had a problem striking the right balance. Having them do nothing is a feel bad for the player bringing one, having them do too much (and live through too much) is a feel bad for the opponent. Plus, competitively it's also not really clear what is more desirable: God models being unplayable, or god models being guaranteed to have a valid tournament list.

For what it's worth, I think you could give god models rules that buff their survivability directly instead of taking a detour through save stacking. Morathi is an example of how that can look. I think she is actually quite well designed, her points are just too low. But I like that she plays a very different game from the mere mortals that she faces when it comes to combat: She will last at least three rounds, and her opponent has to work to make sure she does not stick around for even longer.

[JackStreicher]

1 hour ago, Horizons said:

I think the new tomes show that GW knew that save stacking could be problematic and that's why there is access to rend -2, -3 and MW's. 

I think there is a balance that needs to be achieved. It's just as frustrating to place your 800-1000 pts model and have it dissapear, then it is to have it be an unkillable menace. The fact only Archaon is problematic (competitively that is) shows that there currently is a pretty good balance.

An interesting exercise could be to try and see what tools new books/armies would need to combat this trend.

I disagree with the idea that mass +save auras are problematic, in the armies they currently appear in I think they're pretty essential. Fyreslayers, Sylvaneth, Daughters, OBR and Idoneth all have access to bubbles of + save and aren't problematic.

 

One Aura is fine, however it‘s not if you can telegraph it to a strung out unit with 50mm bases And add in a Hiveswarm and And And.

Aura Aura is okay, multiples of it Are not.

 

@Doko Soulblight can‘t heal Vampires including Knights. Their invocation abilities only work on summonable units: Bats, wolves, zombies, all kinds of Skeletons.

Edited November 8, 2021 by JackStreicher

[Horizons]

12 minutes ago, JackStreicher said:

One Aura is fine, however it‘s not if you can telegraph it to a strung out unit with 50mm bases And add in a Hiveswarm and And And.

Aura Aura is okay, multiples of it Are not.

Which turns their 4+ saves to 3+ ignoring rend 1/2(if AoD,Finest Hour). I think that's a reasonable place to be. It requires a lot of resources and generally can be played around. I think that's why Sylvaneth haven't been a problematic army. I think they examplify save stacking done well.

@Kadeton I think @Neil Arthur Hotep idea that any defenses should be breachable is wrong but also the idea that making something immortal is also wrong.

I think SC saves seem to be at an acceptable place, we'll have to see how it turns out gameplay wise.

You can stack a 5+ ward,  +4 save on a target but it requires Mystic Shield, Castellant buff, All out defense and Finest Hour. In this situation it's almost impossible to one shot the God model but the right situation can happen where you do take it out in a round or two of combat. He didn't Finest Hour, you get a roar. Basically I think insane save stacking can be good if it's either limited/can be played around, or the target had relatively low saves to start.

+4 to save once a game is fine, it's the fact that it's always present that is problematic.

Just how constant rend -3 would be problematic but 1 buffed up turn of extra rend/turn off his saves is great.

[JackStreicher]

9 minutes ago, Horizons said:

Which turns their 4+ saves to 3+ ignoring rend 1/2(if AoD,Finest Hour). I think that's a reasonable place to be. It requires a lot of resources and generally can be played around. I think that's why Sylvaneth haven't been a problematic army. I think they examplify save stacking done well

It‘s not. The armies that use this have a lot of Tree-Heroes that become immortal (and or Alarielle)

Suddenly you are facing an entire flank (and more) of an army that’s immune to rend with +1 to their saves as well #Fun that’s hurtling a flurry of mortal wound spells and rend -2 attacks with 5-6 damage each your way. Oh and they can teleport. Did I mention that they have quite some healing spells?

You see where I am going with this. It’s the big monsters (And Kurnoth hunters) once again. Alarielle for example is immortal in this build unless you can I start kill her or have a lot of mortal wound potential. 
At some point in the game one can’t handle that nonsense anymore.

 

I am also not sure if my 2x6  Ishlean Guard with a 2+ unrendable save holding whatever they charge (for forever) is fine. Sure mortal wounds can kill them and suddenly it’s feel bad for both sides.

Edited November 8, 2021 by JackStreicher

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

6 minutes ago, Horizons said:

Which turns their 4+ saves to 3+ ignoring rend 1/2(if AoD,Finest Hour). I think that's a reasonable place to be. It requires a lot of resources and generally can be played around. I think that's why Sylvaneth haven't been a problematic army. I think they examplify save stacking done well.

@Kadeton I think @Neil Arthur Hotep idea that any defenses should be breachable is wrong but also the idea that making something immortal is also wrong.

I think SC saves seem to be at an acceptable place, we'll have to see how it turns out gameplay wise.

You can stack a 5+ ward,  +4 save on a target but it requires Mystic Shield, Castellant buff, All out defense and Finest Hour. In this situation it's almost impossible to one shot the God model but the right situation can happen where you do take it out in a round or two of combat. He didn't Finest Hour, you get a roar. Basically I think insane save stacking can be good if it's either limited/can be played around, or the target had relatively low saves to start.

+4 to save once a game is fine, it's the fact that it's always present that is problematic.

Just how constant rend -3 would be problematic but 1 buffed up turn of extra rend/turn off his saves is great.

There is for sure a lot that can still be criticized about what I wrote above. It's all, by necessity of wanting to be brief enough to fit into a forum post, really abstract. It's super debateable whether or not those damage numbers are representative of what is actually happening in the game, or whether the conclusion that things should ideally be more killable is anything more than an expression of my own, personal preferences.

But I think the math is somewhat interesting and worth looking at. I really think there is something to the idea that, given the mechanics that are currently in AoS, if you have no rend you will struggle muscling past a 3+ save. Not even mentioning rerolling 1s or 2+ saves. I think it has to do with how the common attack profiles on units look. 2 attacks, 3/3/-1/1 is definitely super common, and in some armies that might even be the best hammer you have access to. Unmodified, that works out to about 1 wound worth of rend -1 damage per model per activation. You can buff the amount of wounds getting through from ~50% to ~70% by giving that unit +1 to hit and wound. Maybe you can buff attacks from 2 to 3. If you are very lucky you might even buff your damage from 1 to 2. If you could get all of those buffs on a unit at once, you could buff it's damage by about a factor of 4.

But it's still not enough to beat a 3+ save unit with two save buffs. The first buff moves it to a 2+, the second turns off your rend. So you now deal 4 points of damage per activation per model after buffing. But you would need to deal 6 points to destroy your target, assuming some kind of wound parity. This state of affairs just kinda seems unworkable to me. It's a game state where a bread and butter hammer unit with a frankly unrealistic amount of attack buffs piled into it won't be able to beat a kinda tanky unit with a very achievable amount of save buffs.

No matter how you feel about this, I think it's worth recognizing that this goes against what the mechanics seem to be trying to do at a basic level. If you look at the basic phases of the game, it's quite difficult to get this kind of attack lined up. You need to pay attention in your movement phase to avoid screens, in your hero phase to make sure all your buffs go off, in charge phase to make sure you get into combat and in your combat phase to make sure you can actually follow through. The reward for this should be huge, given the difficulty of pulling it off. It's where a lot of the tactical decision making and player skill in the game lies. Instead, if your opponent is competent, they get to shrug off attacks that should be devestating by buffing a unit once as a set up, and buffing it again on reaction.

Plus, you get to circumvent the whole set up if you just deal mortal wounds from range in the hero or shooting phase.

Personally, I think it's a bit of a design failure. The game mechanics right now just kinda conspire to make regular old damage not very good. Too much effort for too little payoff. The system with the highest amount of mechanical intricacy (damage, rend, hit, wound, attacks), which the game is arguably build around is just not worth using. If you want to actually be able to hammer down a tanky unit, you best ignore it entirely and just deal mortal wounds at range.

And I think this is where even arguments that save stacking is OK because it makes god models unkillable as the should be falls a bit flat. Firstly, it's not just god models that become unkillable, it's any old 3+ save guy. And secondly, these models actually don't even become unkillable. They just become unkillable by regular damage. If you are running mortal wounds spam, you can still take them down in a round (excluding some outliers). To me, the problem is not that the game is unplayable with save stacking. It's that keeping save stacking as it is hugely reduces the tactical nuance of the game and strongly devalues regular combat damage. And all for, from my perspective, very little discernable upside.

[yukishiro1]

Yeah, the breakdown between MWs and all other forms of damage is turning into a significant issue. And it doesn't feel like the distribution of MWs really makes any sense. A unit of charging chaos knights shouldn't be less scary to a buffed 3+ save model than a bunch of zombie chaff. And putting curse on said 3+ model shouldn't result in it evaporating to said chaos knights whereas without the curse it's virtually untouchable. 

IMO they have never really figured out how to replace toughness, and this is just another sign of that problem. In AOS 2 monsters tended to suck because they weren't any tougher to kill than anything else; now that is still true except for the ones with high saves, which become inexplicably difficult to kill except with MW-spam gimmicks. But it all dates back to not having a toughness stat that could allow you to buff the survivability of big monsters without the need to buff their saves, and that allowed for making them difficult to kill vs different types of attack profiles without having to come up with a gimmick like MWs that just bypasses all the rules and becomes the king of damage output. 

MWs on the to hit roll in particular are very questionable from a design point of view because it makes RNG such a massive feature in damage output. They have all these stacked mechanisms designed to smooth out the RNG...and then they toss them to the side for the best, strongest kind of damage. It's bizarre. 

 

Edited November 8, 2021 by yukishiro1

[Dogmantra]

6 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

I'll start with a thesis statement: Units in AoS cannot break through a 3+ save without rend -1. They cannot break through a 2+ save without rend -2.

I appreciate you bringing some maths into this and showing your working, but I think your methodology is flawed and makes a lack of rend look worse than it is.

Your only example of attacks without rend are 4+/4+, which is an average wound rate of 25%. A 3+/3+ is an average wound rate of about 45%. I'm not saying this is the only thing making the elite and brute attacks look better than chaff, the rend is no doubt helping (a 2+ save becoming a 3+ doubles the damage that gets through after all), but when your rend attacks are already getting almost twice as many attacks to the point at which the save is rolled, it does feel a little like your thumb is on the scale here.

If the discussion is specifically about rend, then I think it's only fair to keep everything else the same.

[pnkdth]

Reserve MWs for magic or structural damage (such as getting rammed by a massive steam tank where armour really would not help much).

• Replace MWs with rending attacks (lethality), which simply adds 1-3 to rend for each roll of X*, better yet just give units a fixed rend in their profile to begin with to represent their role.
• Replace un-rendable armour and auras with negating the rend of an attack of 1-3.*

* though knowing GW this would probably be rend -100 a few books after such a change. 😆

This would be an opportunity to add character to, 1) units, 2) weapons, 3) armour, and by extension create a better dynamic between quality versus quantity. It is so frustrating to see them add an "all or nothing" kind of mechanic when they already have created system where you easily can represent different unit's levels of lethality and tanky-ness. It would also give a more defined role to highly armoured units without having to go overboard.

TL;DR: My goal is to create less situations where it is either by-passes everything or does nothing while also representing certain unit's skill or brutality with extra rending capabilities. Similarly, to represent particularly tough unit's ability shrug off wounds without becoming impossible to shift. We could call them Lethality X and Resilience X.

[JackStreicher]

2 hours ago, pnkdth said:

units a fixed rend in their profile to begin with to represent their role.

I like this.
Most fixes however arc back to mechanics of the old Warhammer Fantasy or The Ninth Age
Basic rend: Strength

To put this in AoS terms would mean you'd need another stat that holds the basic rend of each unit and then you add the weapon rend atop of it. -> This however isn't needed, simply give more rend to the weapon.

I thought another fix might be to add rend to charging units - Ironjaws would win turn one if this was the case XD

Edited November 8, 2021 by JackStreicher

[Doko]

6 hours ago, JackStreicher said:

Soulblight can‘t heal Vampires including Knights. Their invocation abilities only work on summonable units: Bats, wolves, zombies, all kinds of Skeletons.

Yes you are rigth,one thing we played bad lol,but even then nagash+all army of blood knigths with a save of 2 invulnerable and rerolling 1 is insane and a joke

Edited November 8, 2021 by Doko

[Kadeton]

9 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

I definitely recognize the problem of big centerpieces just getting nuked off the board without a player getting use out of them. But I think the current state of having them be fairly unkillable in a lot of builds is also not really ideal. Especially given the fact that it's not just 1000 point Nagash and 800 point Archaon who can become unkillable. Unkillability is currently within reach for any 3+ save monster that can take an artefact. A 280 point Vengorian Lord can get there no problem. Even a dumb 230 point Steam Tank gets there. Maybe that's just my bias, but I feel that if you get your melee hammer in range of a target (which is most often the actual challenge) and get all your buffs off, you should be able to delete it (assuming points parity). Otherwise, why even have a melee hammer?

That's the outcome that I like - hard units actually being hard. Those units are anvils, a role that previously didn't exist in the game because everything died so easily regardless of how "tough" it was meant to be. Having the ability to buff up an anvil to the point where it can resist a hammer unit is what creates all the new tactical possibilities of 3rd Ed. Previously the only thing players could do against a hammer was screen - now they can also block. That means, as the hammer-wielder, you need to put actual thought into what you hit with your hammer, instead of just smashing everything you can reach.

9 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

God models have always had a problem striking the right balance. Having them do nothing is a feel bad for the player bringing one, having them do too much (and live through too much) is a feel bad for the opponent. Plus, competitively it's also not really clear what is more desirable: God models being unplayable, or god models being guaranteed to have a valid tournament list.

For what it's worth, I think you could give god models rules that buff their survivability directly instead of taking a detour through save stacking. Morathi is an example of how that can look. I think she is actually quite well designed, her points are just too low. But I like that she plays a very different game from the mere mortals that she faces when it comes to combat: She will last at least three rounds, and her opponent has to work to make sure she does not stick around for even longer.

I honestly couldn't care less if god models weren't playable (or even represented in the game), though I do recognise that they're a drawcard for a lot of people. Even if they weren't a thing, I'd still want anvil units that offer some counter-play to hammers.

Morathi's design, to me, represents the worst possible solution for the survivability problem - a bespoke rule that breaks the fundamental mechanics. She represents what happens when the designers have backed themselves into a corner, and can't see a way to get the outcome they want within the existing rules framework, so they just make a special case. I don't want special cases: I want the basic mechanics to allow for units to be tough enough to survive.

9 hours ago, Horizons said:

@Kadeton I think @Neil Arthur Hotep idea that any defenses should be breachable is wrong but also the idea that making something immortal is also wrong.

Basically I think insane save stacking can be good if it's either limited/can be played around, or the target had relatively low saves to start.

+4 to save once a game is fine, it's the fact that it's always present that is problematic.

Yeah, I hope I've been very clear through this whole discussion that I never want to see the possibility for a player to make most of their army "unkillable" most of the time. Those defensive resources need to be strictly limited, counterable, and/or require foresight to use effectively. I think the current generic options are well structured in this regard: Finest Hour has to be used before your opponent commits their attack, allowing them to select weaker targets; Mystic Shield can be counter-spelled; All-Out Defense can be Roared away, and draws from a limited pool of CP. And all of them are single-target buffs, so using them on one unit denies them to every other unit. That should be the gold standard, IMO.

Where I do think there's a potential for problems is in a lot of the army-specific special abilities. Anything that buffs multiple units, has no chance of failure or counter, uses "alternative" mechanics (e.g. re-rolling saves), or can be used without consuming limited resources should be treated with the utmost care. I'm hoping to see fewer abilities like those in future battletomes.

8 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

No matter how you feel about this, I think it's worth recognizing that this goes against what the mechanics seem to be trying to do at a basic level. If you look at the basic phases of the game, it's quite difficult to get this kind of attack lined up. You need to pay attention in your movement phase to avoid screens, in your hero phase to make sure all your buffs go off, in charge phase to make sure you get into combat and in your combat phase to make sure you can actually follow through. The reward for this should be huge, given the difficulty of pulling it off. It's where a lot of the tactical decision making and player skill in the game lies. Instead, if your opponent is competent, they get to shrug off attacks that should be devestating by buffing a unit once as a set up, and buffing it again on reaction.

It's also worth recognising that your opponent cannot stop your attack - all they're doing is blunting its effectiveness against one specific target unit. You've done the setup work, you can hit them really hard anywhere you want... if you choose to hit them in their hardest, most defended point and break your fist, instead of hitting them in any of their softer areas, that's on you. You know what their defensive capabilities are, what buffs are already deployed and what can be done reactively, so it's up to you to figure out how to direct your attack accordingly to get the maximum impact.

8 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Plus, you get to circumvent the whole set up if you just deal mortal wounds from range in the hero or shooting phase.

Personally, I think it's a bit of a design failure. The game mechanics right now just kinda conspire to make regular old damage not very good. Too much effort for too little payoff. The system with the highest amount of mechanical intricacy (damage, rend, hit, wound, attacks), which the game is arguably build around is just not worth using. If you want to actually be able to hammer down a tanky unit, you best ignore it entirely and just deal mortal wounds at range.

Mortal wound spam is a design failure, I totally agree. Almost all sources of mortal wounds should be removed, so that anvil units can do what they're supposed to do.

[Evantas]

I agree they missed the mark on MW mechanics. Some monsters like Terrorgheists relying on high mundane damage, probably should have a rend -3 or even -4 instead of MWs. So that armour has at least a small part to play.

If GW could one day sit down and rationalise the units for each faction to properly balance them, high rend and MWs can sit next to each other as similar mechanics but still nuanced enough for different counter units.