What makes a good battletome?

[Lord Krungharr]

I will concur with the sentiment that the warscroll rules should reflect the action-packed details of the model(s), and the army rules should reflect the lore.  That makes for the most fun in a vacuum.  Definitely my most primary concern about battletomes.  Then comes the internal balance of not having a bunch of duds so I can have a variety of desirable models that actually do stuff so I want to use them....then comes the external balance about not crippling the army from any chance of having a good tough game and victory.  Also they should have cool dice too.

[Kasper]

I think ultimately our complains are a product of us being super invested and passionate about this hobby and its generally because we wanted something to be just a tad better. Can it ever be perfect? Likely not as we all have different taste and have different opinions. A tome will never receive 100% positivity because of this. Its also hard not to glance over at other books and think "how come they got this but we couldnt?". 

Orruk Warclans - The entire Ironjawz section is almost perfect except for internal balance, which is kinda bad considering how few warscrolls there are in the army. Kruleboyz are pigeonholed into Boltboyz spam due to lack of cheap battleline options and Bonesplitterz were stripped of a lot of fun and tricky things that made them enjoyable to play on the table. 2/3 factions in the book are basically a bit "meh" hence thats the overall feeling.

Maggotkin of Nurgle - At first glance some aspects of the book are very thematic with how you would imagine Nurgle to play on the table which is fun overall, but its clear to see that the book is suffering from some last minute design choices. This becomes more apparent as you dig into the book and play games, but there were obviously made some serious cuts. Is the army fun to play? Sure, but there are things that could have been so much more like the whole Disease system. Some playtesters leaked that the Great Unclean One/Rotigus were absolutely beasts and spewed MWs all over the place, but the current version of both are very lackluster and the general consensus is that neither are really worth playing and especially at almost 500 pts. each.

Am I happy for the new Nurgle book? Yes absolutely and Im having a blast despite my complaints, but I would have preferred if it was delayed another half a year or whatever but things werent halfassed and instead the new design choices were fleshed out properly. It feels rushed unfortunately which is just a bad feeling after having waited so long because the likelihood of a new book coming within 3-4 years is next to zero. 

 

 

[AaronWilson]

Think what makes a "good" battletome is hugely subjective. 

[Greybeard86]

I think everyone agrees on the principles (internal and external balance, fluffy and fun), but we may disagree on the relative importance and on whether the extent to which they are met with current battletomes.

Personally, I think that both internal and external balance are pretty bad at the moment; some books are worse than others in that regard. I think GW uses a "rotating spotlight" approach to balance, which I personally dislike. The idea, very much present in video games, that we need "metas" for things not to become to stale and thus lose interest. Thus, we have purposely good units and armies that keep changing over time. 

I also believe that GW uses a "system mastery" approach to design, whereby there need to be "mediocre choices" so that informed players pick "good ones". Magic has a more open policy in that regard, and I think that many of the design principles they have apply to GW's games. 

Both the "rotating spotlight" and "system mastery" philosophies push us towards tomes with bad internal balance. External balance suffers relatively more from "rotating spotlight".

[pnkdth]

21 hours ago, Feii said:

To the rules. Flavourful and fun rules that promote lines of play for both players and player agency. 
 

 

Foxes/Pinks are very flavourful and fun. For one player.

 

Agreed. Good design consider the whole ecosystem, not just the rules contained within. Takes two to tango in this hobby and if one part is miserable it stops being a game and starts becoming a chore. In this regard, I think game balance trumps lore-representation every time. Mostly cause the lore often exaggerate the deeds done by X faction and power levels go up and down depending on perspective. In other words, a happy medium should be the desired outcome.

-

General point about warscrolls, I do not think a large number of them means a good battletome. The question I think it has to answer, "does this book contain enough units with specific roles to achieve its overall design and themes?" By design, I mean everything from allegiance abilities, sub-factions, spell lores, relics and by themes I'm referring to lore-representation and aesthetics. This means as relatively thin of units battletome can be really good in terms of design.

For example, I'd argue FEC is a fantastic tome. It is showing its age but each unit has a clear place and no matter the court you choose it allows you to capitalise on a certain aspect of the army. FS is a similar example but an example of where the book is too thin. Which could easily change by simply buffing the Magmadroth + having the new hero add additional synergy to vulkite berzerkers (assuming it does). It would still be quite thin but immediately three of their warscrolls would become much more interesting + each of the heroes can add even more distinct roles to each choice.

More is not always more but just more of the same with a slight difference (which also what leads to bloat and having units which are just there and forgotten).

 

[Feii]

7 minutes ago, pnkdth said:

 

Agreed. Good design consider the whole ecosystem, not just the rules contained within. Takes two to tango in this hobby and if one part is miserable it stops being a game and starts becoming a chore. In this regard, I think game balance trumps lore-representation every time. Mostly cause the lore often exaggerate the deeds done by X faction and power levels go up and down depending on perspective. In other words, a happy medium should be the desired outcome.

-

General point about warscrolls, I do not think a large number of them means a good battletome. The question I think it has to answer, "does this book contain enough units with specific roles to achieve its overall design and themes?" By design, I mean everything from allegiance abilities, sub-factions, spell lores, relics and by themes I'm referring to lore-representation and aesthetics. This means as relatively thin of units battletome can be really good in terms of design.

For example, I'd argue FEC is a fantastic tome. It is showing its age but each unit has a clear place and no matter the court you choose it allows you to capitalise on a certain aspect of the army. FS is a similar example but an example of where the book is too thin. Which could easily change by simply buffing the Magmadroth + having the new hero add additional synergy to vulkite berzerkers (assuming it does). It would still be quite thin but immediately three of their warscrolls would become much more interesting + each of the heroes can add even more distinct roles to each choice.

More is not always more but just more of the same with a slight difference (which also what leads to bloat and having units which are just there and forgotten).

 

Big problem how some designers are writing tomes right now. (The sin writer whatever that means)

 

too many “bends” when it comes to design principles for unilateral benefit of the active player. 
 

I like the kruleboyz poison mechanic but after the talisman nerfs you still can build a competitive army with just one backbone which mean Big Yellers boltboyz…

[Arzalyn]

2 hours ago, pnkdth said:

General point about warscrolls, I do not think a large number of them means a good battletome. The question I think it has to answer, "does this book contain enough units with specific roles to achieve its overall design and themes?" By design, I mean everything from allegiance abilities, sub-factions, spell lores, relics and by themes I'm referring to lore-representation and aesthetics. This means as relatively thin of units battletome can be really good in terms of design.

For example, I'd argue FEC is a fantastic tome. It is showing its age but each unit has a clear place and no matter the court you choose it allows you to capitalise on a certain aspect of the army. FS is a similar example but an example of where the book is too thin. Which could easily change by simply buffing the Magmadroth + having the new hero add additional synergy to vulkite berzerkers (assuming it does). It would still be quite thin but immediately three of their warscrolls would become much more interesting + each of the heroes can add even more distinct roles to each choice.

More is not always more but just more of the same with a slight difference (which also what leads to bloat and having units which are just there and forgotten).

I totally agree with you that the amount of the warscrolls isn't something that is a good indicator, but I can understand why people look at it. Assuming they will always have some bad warscrolls, if you have more warscrolls its gives you more opportunities to have different roles fulfilled (what i would call good warscrolls) than if you have just 3~4 units. It can be just a correlation created by the design of those armies, but its easier to find tomes with a good amount of warscrolls that have different roles (Seraphon, skaven, soulblight) while the ones with very little end with redundancy (Fyreslayers, Ironjawz).

3 hours ago, Greybeard86 said:

I think everyone agrees on the principles (internal and external balance, fluffy and fun), but we may disagree on the relative importance and on whether the extent to which they are met with current battletomes.

Personally, I think that both internal and external balance are pretty bad at the moment; some books are worse than others in that regard. I think GW uses a "rotating spotlight" approach to balance, which I personally dislike. The idea, very much present in video games, that we need "metas" for things not to become to stale and thus lose interest. Thus, we have purposely good units and armies that keep changing over time. 

I also believe that GW uses a "system mastery" approach to design, whereby there need to be "mediocre choices" so that informed players pick "good ones". Magic has a more open policy in that regard, and I think that many of the design principles they have apply to GW's games. 

Both the "rotating spotlight" and "system mastery" philosophies push us towards tomes with bad internal balance. External balance suffers relatively more from "rotating spotlight".

For me the way they release tomes is one of the roots of the external balance problem. You have a gap of time too big between battletomes, which create design imbalances between them. Its a little ridiculous that we are in the 3rd edition of the game and we still have tomes from before the 2nd edition (nurgle and idoneth got/are getting new ones soon, but still this happened for some time). How much does the design philosophy changed between those books? Every couple of months you get a release than can change the whole balance and if it don't fit the actual meta game you are left waiting years for until they take another look at your rules to make them more in line with the actual ones.

Its funny because you can create a "rotating spotlight" without needed the singular tome releases. The annual GHB release changing the battlepack do it just fine, new battleplans and new strategies that favor something more let you rotate which tome is been favored while constraining it in a period of time (around a year or less if hey want). They could release an update to all battletomes together with the new design philosophy (like the faqs they did when the 3rd edition dropped) and use the battlepacks + balance updates to change what didn't work that well or is being to oppressive.

[Greybeard86]

19 minutes ago, Arzalyn said:

Its funny because you can create a "rotating spotlight" without needed the singular tome releases. The annual GHB release changing the battlepack do it just fine, new battleplans and new strategies that favor something more let you rotate which tome is been favored while constraining it in a period of time (around a year or less if hey want). They could release an update to all battletomes together with the new design philosophy (like the faqs they did when the 3rd edition dropped) and use the battlepacks + balance updates to change what didn't work that well or is being to oppressive.

My impression is that some people ignore those, to an extent; sometimes due to not playing that competitively (i.e. not recognizing the importance of some of the strategic elements you cite). Army books seem to have more weight in changing perceptions. 

[Popisdead]

Well good is so subjective.  People would argue things that are OP and broken are good.  Also you can have internal vs external balance within a Battletome.  And as gamers we LOVE telling people what we think

On that note my opinions,...

Right now Sylvaneth don't have a good battletome but they improved for 3rd ed and have some good options, have the ability to do well in pick-up games and aren't bottom tier like they were a year ago.   Why is the book bad?  A lot of their traits, abilities, items etc could be on warscrolls and it would improve those warscrolls and book.  What you can actually take is limited.  Dryads and Spite Revs are bad.  Dryads being a poor choice as,. outside of 10 or just summoning them, they don't improve.  I am not sure the army will do well long term in this edition.  

What made Sylvaneth good in previous editions was conga-line dryads and alpha strike.  arguably both negative play experiences for opponents.  I had a game like that and my opponent and i had to reset our match 10 min later and scrub that off.  granted he could have just deployed better but it was part learning experience, part "this is pretty powerful".

Beasts of Chaos are a bad battletome because they cannot perform in last edition nor this.  At least last edition you could take units of ungors to chaff onion protect your sort of better units.  In that battletome a lot of their warscrolls got worse, command abilities got worse, spells have unhelpful ranges, they have no ability to improve their spellcasting.  They also have units that give away things like Broken Ranks incredibly easy.  They suffer from bad stats, which is amplified by dice spiking, something that AoS was doing a great job moving away from that plagued pre-8th ed editions of the old Fantasy.  They also have ignorant stats (Bullgors who physically have a 2" long weapon have a shorter reach than Dryads who have,.. and regular length,. humanoid forearm".  

 

 

[TheMuphinMan]

personally my ideal battletome would be kinda like a soup tome but for non-soup armies. You have the main allegiance (like "big waagh" where you can use everything in the book but have less powerful abilities as a trade-off) or you can specialize to limit your roster a little but get more flavorful abilities.

 

So like for Nurgle, you'd have the Nurgle allegiance (with abilities coalition units could use), the maggotkin allegiance, a daemon allegiance, a mortal allegiance, a rotbringer allegiance, etc.

not all the allegiances need to be top tier but should at least give some boon for building a thematic over a goodstuff list while still allowing people to uses all the toys they bought if they go the most broad allegiance

Edited January 5, 2022 by TheMuphinMan

[Maogrim]

Everyone on TGA loves the Soulblight Gravelords tome, right? And I do too, from the snippets of it I caught.

But there is one thing I don't like about it: the leaders of the dynasties/legions are awesome models, and I love that they all have at least one named character and that they are viable... But what I don't like is how it invites builds that mix dynasties. Some of the more competitive lists seem to regularly feature both Belladomma and Prince Vhordrai, and that doesn't really sit right with me, with the constant infighting and rivalries going on between the vampire dynasties. 

Sure it's cool if two dynasties' leaders team up once in a while, but it shouldn't be the norm and from the lists I see on the Soulblight subforum it's becoming the norm for non-Nagash lists. 

[Indecisive]

internal balance
flavourful rules
well edited, presentation good
wealth of options
somewhat OP

[Azlak the Damned]

I'm a narrative player over matched play so for me a good battletome has a good section on lore, what each unit should act like (narratively, not rules wise) and most importantly, a good section on how the army should be composed. 

I play BoK and love having narrative battles using the Gorechosen battalion (completely useless in a matched play setting). Putting 8 heroes out and seeing what devastation they can wreak against hordes of enemies or a few elite units is fun! 

[Harioch]

A good tome to me has:

-some interesting and flavorful rules.

-a good internal balance between units and external balance to not stomp anyone that's considered in the lower bracket.

-none of the translation or typo errors that plague many of the tomes.

-new lore that continue where the last tome stopped. Making me want to keep my faction tomes, and not thinking "hey that's the same thing that 5 years ago...that's lazy ". New art also.

[Fairbanks]

Battletomes for new armies:

Fluff that explains who they are, their history, and some mystery.

Abilities that reflect the different factions (OBR was a book that didn’t do this well).

Artifacts/Abilities: 1/2 that are competitive, 1/2 that are fluffy.

Warscrolls that properly reflect the models (balance is something that comes through in the points)

Battletome updates for old armies

Fluff: One new sentence per paragraph, one new paragraph per page, and a new page of info, and progression of the story beyond just what we already know.

Everything else: Fix everything so they play the way they’re supposed to. Skaven Clanrats too strong to take 1000s of them? Give them a nerf