Unpopular opinion thread

[CommissarRotke]

On 10/20/2021 at 8:33 AM, Kaleb Daark said:

It was only in 3rd ed when the wfrp started to come out that we started getting really beautifully fleshed out bits of writing detailing the world, and so in many ways cementing the germanic dark feel that we were to get used to.

 

Working my way through this thread and this is exactly it: WHF got expanded through a ton of supplements, including WFRP. I haven't really seen Soulbound talked about here at all, and I really think it solves a lot of issues people have with AOS lore/narrative.

[JackStreicher]

15 hours ago, Bosskelot said:

The SBGL refresh is just straight up Vampire Counts;

*with Vampires being weak pushovers with no personality whatsoever.

 

Srsly, I get what you mean, yet Vampire counts had a theme and a focus. The current SBGL suggests that vampires are basically bravery 10 Freeguild Generals with even weaker attacks 🥲

Vampires used to be scary, now they‘re only good if they ride a dragon.

[Stormblood]

17 hours ago, NinthMusketeer said:

And of course the whole 'dark gritty' nature of the setting was always an urban legend. All it ever amounted to was 'the good guys are doomed to fail, the bad guys are predestined to win, and nothing can be done about it'. Which to me reads among the most boring, cliche themes a setting can have.

What makes AoS fluff seem worse than WHFB is people only referencing the best elements. That stuff sticks in the memory while mediocre or disappointing lore is forgotten. Once the whole body of lore from each game is compared WHFB fluff is revealed for the immense tangle of dead-ends, inconsistencies, and simply bad writing that it is. But there were also a lot of good parts and those are what the community remembers, not all the bad that came with it.

agree with this 100%.  This is a stylistic preference, and if you like that kind of setting that's fine.  However, for many others the dark edgelord hopeless stuff (the 90's style fantasy/sci-fi/music/movies overall overarching theme) doesn't really play anymore with some people in the hobby, particularly newer players. 

 

To add to the unpopular thread, when "the Old World" comes back the following is what I predict:

-Slight scale change so the old models cant be used anymore in game.

-Rank and Flank will be back, so will the demand for massive (20-50 model) infantry/archer/cav blocks.

-These will all be forgeworld so expect to pay 100$ for half of a usable unit with the current rate of price increases.

-Warhammer Old World players/fanbase will soon gain the reputation as Horus Heresy/30k do now: Its a game only people with the most disposable of large incomes can play/enjoy, who are the saltiest about every aspect of rules/lore, and generally perceived as the most difficult/problematic to play with.

[DOGGED]

I was going to put my unpopular opinion as my belief, in a perspective joining rules to lore, that AoS is actually a good game with a good lore being worked in support of it, in comparison to the not as good (even bad) game with its lore being badly worked that WHFB generally was, but it seems it's not much of an unpopular opinion at all.

[JackStreicher]

Unpopular opinion: Foot Vampires need a re-vamp (hehehe). Meaning: simply give them Radukar the Wolf‘s profile and Mortal wounds output and they‘re fine. (Yet keep the 3+ save). All other vampires need „the hunger“ added

 

[RexHavoc]

3 hours ago, CommissarRotke said:

Working my way through this thread and this is exactly it: WHF got expanded through a ton of supplements, including WFRP. I haven't really seen Soulbound talked about here at all, and I really think it solves a lot of issues people have with AOS lore/narrative.

C7 do amazing stuff. I have some of their Old worlds maps and the empire cities book. However, the problem i have is as amazing as their products are, I shouldn't have to go and buy RPG books to get decent lore for a game I actually like. I'm not a fan of RPGS in the slightest, never really played one and never intend to. I brought the cities book as I skimmed through a PDF version and it was chock full of lore and art and actually very few rules.

But a lot of the other books they do are designed to be games books, with hundreds of pages of rules and character profiles. And as I have no use for those parts of the books, I'm paying a fair whack for a handful of pages. (That said, being in the same country as C7s office & warehouse I do get things cheaper than trying to buy anything from the UK now, so whilst its not a saving, its a saving in comparison!)

I'd like to buy more C7 books, but I just feel they are expensive for the handful of pages that I'd actually enjoy.

[CommissarRotke]

19 minutes ago, RexHavoc said:

the problem i have is as amazing as their products are, I shouldn't have to go and buy RPG books to get decent lore for a game I actually like.

which is completely fair, and why I'm so frustrated that Black Library is barely publishing AOS titles. their PDFs are fairly priced but it's still a pretty penny for everything if you don't split it between people.

[CDM]

Unpopular opinions (maybe?)..

Battletomes are a detriment to a balanced game. Best time for balanced game was 7th -8th 40 k when the indices were released. They also slow down release schedules. All rules should be made for free on an app at the release of an edition for every faction. Get rid of em!

I actually really like stormcast and lumineth! But also like all the crazy and ild style whfb factions! I believe there's a good mix atm..

Soup Battletomes are disappointing but probably needed to keep those small unsupported factions around still. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[NinthMusketeer]

2 hours ago, JackStreicher said:

Unpopular opinion: Foot Vampires need a re-vamp (hehehe). Meaning: simply give them Radukar the Wolf‘s profile and Mortal wounds output and they‘re fine. (Yet keep the 3+ save). All other vampires need „the hunger“ added

 

Better yet, give us a more powerful vampire on foot AND keep the current one. We used to be able to take hero-level and lord-level vampires (and a lot of others besides) and I miss that.

More importantly though is a vampire on steed. Make it a conversion option from the blood knight kit if need be. But it's dumb that we have entire units of mounted vampires yet the lords suddenly forget how to ride horses.

[Public Universal Duardin]

Probably not an unpopular opinion: AOS vs WHFB arguments on which is objectively better are really boring and predictable, it's like arguing between fish and chips. Just gimme both. Doesn't mean either can't excel in some particular way, but I don't think either trumps the other. I do think AOS fans can at times kneejerk, due to all the grognard rage, and rewrite history into "Fantasy was never good" just as well as those grognards can groan about "Sigmarines"!

Dwarf vs elf arguments should never be taken seriously, but neither should anyone be bullied from their faction of choice (looking at you, fellow duardin fans - I know we're more numerous than the knife-ears, but let them enjoy their shiny toys). The broader point is probably not something that warrants a comment among such fine folk as this, but I'm still reeling from reading last night--elsewhere online--someone's post psycho-analysing elf-dislikers/Dwarf fans. Details are unimportant, but needless to say this is a fundamentally silly hobby we participate in and I hope nobody makes value judgements on someone's real person based on what armies they play as or don't play as.

Unpopular hot take to balance my streak of popular opinions: Meta is for scrubs, real gigachads play like you're back in 2006 and blame your constant losses not on GW but your mate Freddie for being a godawful cheat. I know you cheated Freddie, Necrons don't respawn ad infinitum!

[Orbei]

3 hours ago, CDM said:

Battletomes are a detriment to a balanced game. Best time for balanced game was 7th -8th 40 k when the indices were released. They also slow down release schedules. All rules should be made for free on an app at the release of an edition for every faction. Get rid of em!

This so much this. The way that GW handles tomes is essentially the worst possible model. They're stuck in an 80s release model in 2021. Battletomes released every 3 or so months, an faq after, and then minimal thought given to that faction for the next few years. Power creep is constant. The factions need to be balanced and updated at the same time. This would be easy if they went to a fully digital rules model. Books should be for modeling or as collectors items, not for distribution of rules and updating factions. 

Unfortunately this is baked into the companies entire design philosophy and business model. Focus on one faction heavily, build hype to sell models, and then move on to the next faction.

[lare2]

8 hours ago, CDM said:

Best time for balanced game was 7th -8th 40 k when the indices were released.

Playing 40k in this period was a real blessing. 

[Bosskelot]

@RexHavoc nothing there is really contradicting the core of what I said though. There was an aesthetic shift late in WHFB's life and even back then it was controversial and not everyone liked it. There was an increased focus on giant monster centrepieces with really crazy, out-there designs and other oddities like flying Elf chariots and Steampunk mechanical horses. In fact if you want to pinpoint some of the blame for WHFB's decreasing sales over this time period I wouldn't be surprised if that played a part in it; GW kept making kits that not only weren't very good on the tabletop, but they increasingly clashed with the (at that point) very firmly established tone and aesthetics of their setting.

 

Quote

*with Vampires being weak pushovers with no personality whatsoever.

 

Srsly, I get what you mean, yet Vampire counts had a theme and a focus. The current SBGL suggests that vampires are basically bravery 10 Freeguild Generals with even weaker attacks 🥲

Vampires used to be scary, now they‘re only good if they ride a dragon.

 

Oh for sure, I just meant general aesthetics.

Reading through the 6th ed VC book and the SBGL book it's really apparent how bland a lot of the actual Vampire rules are in comparison in the new book. But that's not necessarily an AOS problem, that's a modern GW problem.

Edited October 23, 2021 by Bosskelot

[Kergeross]

The old Warhammer Fantasy plastic models are actually terrible and significantly worse in quality compared to AoS plastic (Except for the kits still available on the webstore). One of the main reasons why I am selling away +10 000pts worth of High Elves (With over a third of the models still unassembled, including 2 HE battalions) is because I don't want to spend a month just preparing the parts for assembly by carefully removing the horrible mould lines and fixing all the errors with greenstuff in disfigured plastic parts. Not to mention the old plastic is much more fragile and breaks easily. Also, I'm pretty sure it ain't just bad luck with the plastic, since I had similiar problems with my Bretonnian Army (1000pts) and there is a difference of 5 or 6 years between buying these two armies from different sources.

 

Looking forward to what Warhammer: The Old World has in store for us.

[Bosskelot]

1 hour ago, Kergeross said:

The old Warhammer Fantasy plastic models are actually terrible and significantly worse in quality compared to AoS plastic (Except for the kits still available on the webstore). One of the main reasons why I am selling away +10 000pts worth of High Elves (With over a third of the models still unassembled, including 2 HE battalions) is because I don't want to spend a month just preparing the parts for assembly by carefully removing the horrible mould lines and fixing all the errors with greenstuff in disfigured plastic parts. Not to mention the old plastic is much more fragile and breaks easily. Also, I'm pretty sure it ain't just bad luck with the plastic, since I had similiar problems with my Bretonnian Army (1000pts) and there is a difference of 5 or 6 years between buying these two armies from different sources.

 

Looking forward to what Warhammer: The Old World has in store for us.

I don't really think this is an unpopular opinion.

[Kaleb Daark]

1 hour ago, Bosskelot said:

@RexHavoc nothing there is really contradicting the core of what I said though. There was an aesthetic shift late in WHFB's life and even back then it was controversial and not everyone liked it. There was an increased focus on giant monster centrepieces with really crazy, out-there designs and other oddities like flying Elf chariots and Steampunk mechanical horses. In fact if you want to pinpoint some of the blame for WHFB's decreasing sales over this time period I wouldn't be surprised if that played a part in it; GW kept making kits that not only weren't very good on the tabletop, but they increasingly clashed with the (at that point) very firmly established tone and aesthetics of their setting.

 

In a way you've highlighted why combined stats are so good in AoS.

Chaos lord on dragon... perfect example.

Had the khorne dragon been released in fantasy era, it would have tanked due to the fact that irrespective of how many wounds the dragon had, the dude on top, as a character riding a monster he could be sniped or singled out.  five wounds later and you remove the 24 wound model. Great, thanks for that.

This again was sloppy rules writing as it was a throwback to 5th (6th?)  I think, where if you had the foot version of model then if the mount was taken down he could still continue to fight, and so the profiles of the two were never combined.

Roll it onto 8th and there was no way anyone in their right mind would mount their character on a centrepiece monster category mount.

 

6 hours ago, Orbei said:

This so much this. The way that GW handles tomes is essentially the worst possible model. They're stuck in an 80s release model in 2021. Battletomes released every 3 or so months, an faq after, and then minimal thought given to that faction for the next few years. Power creep is constant. The factions need to be balanced and updated at the same time. This would be easy if they went to a fully digital rules model. Books should be for modeling or as collectors items, not for distribution of rules and updating factions. 

Unfortunately this is baked into the companies entire design philosophy and business model. Focus on one faction heavily, build hype to sell models, and then move on to the next faction.

I couldn't agree more with this sentiment.

When AoS first dropped there was a big thing to be made about the fact that the warscrolls were all independent and could be updated as needed  - after all, you just went online and printed off the latest version.

I was very hopeful that the books would just keep pushing the narrative along and growing and evolving the storyline, collectors pieces as you say to be enjoyed irrespective of edition as effectively they would be editionless, with the factions themselves morphing and shifting in the digital background as the game grew.

[CDM]

I like Kragnos *hides!

I like the lore, his model, his place in destruction and don't feel he was shoehorned in at all. Alternatively i think he offers a unique take on destruction, he comes from a civilised albeit stompy race, and now fitss with destruction with his actions and not his look. Makes perfect sense to me. I can easily see why destruction forces get behind him

 

[MitGas]

17 hours ago, DOGGED said:

I was going to put my unpopular opinion as my belief, in a perspective joining rules to lore, that AoS is actually a good game with a good lore being worked in support of it, in comparison to the not as good (even bad) game with its lore being badly worked that WHFB generally was, but it seems it's not much of an unpopular opinion at all.

Chaos Lords and units are way too weak for what they're supposed to be too, not just vamps... why risk damnation if every second random dude outperforms you?

[JackStreicher]

1 hour ago, MitGas said:

Chaos Lords and units are way too weak for what they're supposed to be too, not just vamps... why risk damnation if every second random dude outperforms you?

At least my Choas Lors massacres other heroes and units on a regular basis  (he has the potential to do damage).
Chaos warriors (and Knights1)... well, they're wet-noodle tanks, sadly.

Vamp Lords are mobile +1 Attack carriers and that's it.

[Lord Krungharr]

My most unpopular opinion has been and still is that AoS should go to a simultaneous turn model, where in each phase each player rolls for priority, and all damage is done at the end of the turn, except for things that have a 'strike at the start of the phase' rule.  Maybe MW can kill immediately or something thus giving an advantage for rolling a higher initiative for that phase.  

Apparently 40k Apocalypse has something like this, and Battletech from what I've heard.  AoS is more interactive than 40k for sure already but could still be more so.  A simul-turn design would help that.  There are still plenty of games where one player just stands there waiting for their turn, unable to react or interrupt anything the opponent does.  Unleash Hell and Redeploy are good new things aiding the fight against boredom though.  

 

[pnkdth]

1 hour ago, MitGas said:

Chaos Lords and units are way too weak for what they're supposed to be too, not just vamps... why risk damnation if every second random dude outperforms you?

In a nutshell how I went from excited to meh. Apparently the lords of undeath are just mid-tier heroes and not at all the force which animates and drives the undead horde forward with raw will and magical power. They are the bookkeepers and administrators who make sure the footsoldiers fight a bit better. Truly inspiring stuff. Perhaps the warscroll should be renamed to Vampire Clerk or Vampire HR manager?

[OkayestDM]

This opinion may only really be unpopular amongst other Stormcast players, but . . .

Stormcast should never have gotten wizards. One of their central themes is their connection and devotion to Sigmar, and the Sacrosanct chamber should have been warrior priests, not warrior mages. It would have tightened up their theme nicely.

Granted, prayers have only really been codified in thus edition, but Stormcast magic isn't much to write home about anyway. I think it would have been better to give them prayer and priest mechanics to counter or ignore magic. It would have been far more thematic.

That said, I'm not selling my Sacrosanct any time soon . . .

[MitGas]

4 hours ago, MitGas said:

Chaos Lords and units are way too weak for what they're supposed to be too, not just vamps... why risk damnation if every second random dude outperforms you?

Aw ******, now I gotta boot myself from this thread for receiving too many likes. 

[Ggom]

On 10/22/2021 at 4:41 PM, Stormblood said:

-Warhammer Old World players/fanbase will soon gain the reputation as Horus Heresy/30k do now: Its a game only people with the most disposable of large incomes can play/enjoy, who are the saltiest about every aspect of rules/lore, and generally perceived as the most difficult/problematic to play with.

As someone who has been involved in heresy since 2018, I think the idea that Heresy players are difficult to play with is ridiculous. Heresy gaming tends to lean towards an older crowd with more disposable income, and i think there may be a different set of values predominant - narrative style gaming, emphasis on painting, conversions and story - but I’ve always found it a friendly community. There are some salty youtube personalities out there *cough-outercircle-cough* but that’s true of most gaming groups.

[Aussiemandias]

On 10/23/2021 at 8:15 PM, CDM said:

I like Kragnos *hides!

I like the lore, his model, his place in destruction and don't feel he was shoehorned in at all. Alternatively i think he offers a unique take on destruction, he comes from a civilised albeit stompy race, and now fitss with destruction with his actions and not his look. Makes perfect sense to me. I can easily see why destruction forces get behind him

 

I like Kragnos too! Not gonna buy him, but I think he's neat. Give him a low model count (more than gargants- like unit size 3) of stompy centaurs so he has his destruction varanguard equivalent. I think he's definitely destruction and while he looks like a BoC model, the key difference (in my opinion- feel free to disagree!) is that the BoC want to tear down civilisation and then make edifices to raw, primal, chaos/devolve the realms. Kragnos just wants to tear down civilisation and make dragon omelettes.

 

My unpopular opinion is that Dominion looks like it's selling poorly due to there not being a Jareth knock-off for Kruleboyz. The orruks remind me of the babe.