Question regarding faction specific Grand Strategies and Battle Tactics

[frenk_castle]

I am the "owner" of Stormcast and Orruk battletomes. Did not had a chance to read Maggotkin new battletome yet. And what I noticed while reading them is that faction specific Grand Strategies and Battle Tactics look worse than GHB 2021 counterparts.

Since these are "matched play" rules efficiency on the tabletop is in my opinion important so I am honestly confused with the design decision GW took with faction specific ones.

Both Stormcast and Orruk Grand strategies from respective battletome do not have a single one I would pick over Hold The line, Pillar of Belief or Prized Sorcery.

For Battle tactics there is maybe one or two in each battletome that may be useful in certain specific situation but generally they look worse overall compared to GHB ones.

So my question to you is do you share my opinion or you think I am wrong. I am also interested to hear how Grand Strategies and Battle Tactics from Maggotkin battletome look compared to GHB ones.

Edited December 15, 2021 by frenk_castle

[Maddpainting]

Players don't like that armies years ahead of others gets straight up better rules to win the game, making them slightly less viable but also more of an option to do is not a bad thing.

[frenk_castle]

28 minutes ago, Maddpainting said:

Players don't like that armies years ahead of others gets straight up better rules to win the game, making them slightly less viable but also more of an option to do is not a bad thing.

I understand your point. If the faction specific strategies and tactics are good then armies that have them, because they got new rules, have an advantage.

Question I would ask is why then have them in the first place if nobody will use them since they are bad? Personally I would exclude faction specific grand strategies and battle tactics, like I would exclude faction specific secondaries from 40k as well.

I do not see the point of GW spending resources to come up with these faction specific rules and include them in the battletomes if they will not see play. Maybe I am just missing something.

[OkayestDM]

I believe in general, the Battletome Strategies and tactics are deliberately intended to be only situationally useful as compared to the more reliable generic ones.

As far as Battle Tactics goes this makes sense to me. You never know when a turn may roll around and suddenly that one tactic is actually useful, but you still have plenty of other options to go with otherwise. In that case it's just a nice, thematic bonus.

For Grand Strategies though, I can't quite figure it. You only pick one, so you're sure to pick the easiest to accomplish based on your list. 

[Grimrock]

To be fair Grand Strategies in general were pretty botched. There are two or three auto takes and the rest are just completely ignored (unless someone gets bored and wants a challenge). It's pretty tough to write a faction specific grand strategy easier than Hold the Line or Prized Sorcery for the right armies. 

As far as battle tactics go I haven't seen stormcast or kruelboyz, but the maggotkin list has some interesting choices. About half of them are definitely attainable in most games, but what I find most interesting is they're more difficult to counter than the standard tactics. For example when someone picks Break Their Ranks the opponent knows what unit they're going after so they can redeploy/all out defense and do everything to try to protect that unit. In maggotkin there is a tactic to kill more units than you lose. That can be more challenging than killing a single battleline unit, but it doesn't specify a target so a single good redeploy roll or all out defense isn't likely to ruin the whole thing. There are others that are completely dice dependent and unlikely to ever be picked, but there are enough decent ones that I'm happy the list is there.

Edited December 15, 2021 by Grimrock

[Dogmantra]

The simple answer is that not everything in a battletome is intended to be for playing to win matched play. Of course if you are strictly playing to win you will only choose the battle tactics and grand strategies that you find to be the easiest to accomplish in that given moment. But many people do not play with a 100% focused playing to win mentality. The trivial example is that a chunk of each tome is dedicated to path to glory narrative play which has making interesting stories as its explicit main goal, that's plenty of content that isn't necessarily designed for people who are looking to make the best decision at every point. And miniature gaming in general is full of people who like the challenge or the aesthetic or the narrative of playing with a themed force, and giving faction specific grand strategies and battle tactics is a nice easy way of throwing some content to those players. I doubt it took a particularly long time to design a handful of BTs and GSs for each faction, and if it gives a few people a spark of joy that's almost definitely worth it.

Additionally, I think the battle tactics are more nuanced than just outright worse. It's true that a majority (at least in the stormcast tome) are harder to achieve than their generic counterparts, a vibe I got from them was that of second chances, giving a choice in a game where you may find it easier to kill a second monster for example, but if you want to score two "kill a monster" battle tactics, the second one has extra restrictions.

[Maddpainting]

7 hours ago, Grimrock said:

To be fair Grand Strategies in general were pretty botched. There are two or three auto takes and the rest are just completely ignored (unless someone gets bored and wants a challenge). It's pretty tough to write a faction specific grand strategy easier than Hold the Line or Prized Sorcery for the right armies. 

As far as battle tactics go I haven't seen stormcast or kruelboyz, but the maggotkin list has some interesting choices. About half of them are definitely attainable in most games, but what I find most interesting is they're more difficult to counter than the standard tactics. For example when someone picks Break Their Ranks the opponent knows what unit they're going after so they can redeploy/all out defense and do everything to try to protect that unit. In maggotkin there is a tactic to kill more units than you lose. That can be more challenging than killing a single battleline unit, but it doesn't specify a target so a single good redeploy roll or all out defense isn't likely to ruin the whole thing. There are others that are completely dice dependent and unlikely to ever be picked, but there are enough decent ones that I'm happy the list is there.

I think that has something more to do with the meta and you must pick it for your army than the options themselves. If you could pick it when you start the game it would be massively different of importance. 

[Kadeton]

One thing to consider is that the generic Strategies and Tactics aren't permanent, they're part of a specific Battlepack (e.g. Pitched Battles 2021). Next year's GHB could have completely different ones that are more on par with the ones in the new Battletomes - in fact, I'd say that's the most likely direction.

So yeah - currently there's no reason to pick the army-specific ones because they're all more difficult to achieve than the dead-easy universals. The key word there is currently.

[Orbei]

Although the army specific options are strictly worse, simply having them as options gives you an edge over factions without them yet. You may have already completed some of the easy generic tactics and late game are scrambling for points, when perhaps the faction specific tactic is your best option left. Alternatively, complete a battletome specific one early if you are able. Then you have the generic one still available. The battletome specific ones offer you flexibility which can have great value.

They should be kept out of tournaments because of the uneven playing field they create. 

[yukishiro1]

Army-specific GS and BT are a terrible idea for competitive play and I'm glad they're mostly bad. Even having 1 extra BT you can reliably do (which most books have for at least some builds) significantly increases your chances of going 5/5 and makes it that much more important that every other competitive list can go 5/5 too, which radically restricts build diversity. 

They absolutely should be banned from tournaments. 

Edited December 16, 2021 by yukishiro1