Stormdrake Guard Are Beyond Absurd

[whispersofblood]

6 hours ago, yukishiro1 said:

Even if every faction had the tools necessary to beat dragon spam, it still wouldn't be a good game experience, because matches would still come down to rock-paper-scissors re: whether you spammed the counter tools or not. That's the fundamental problem with skew lists. Typically skew lists aren't *that* big a problem in AOS because damage spillover and the lack of a toughness stat means that everything is at least relatively good at killing everything else. An entire army of 9W flyers with a 3+ save that cross the whole board in one turn while spamming ranged MWs and locking down your whole army are so skew, though, that they end up overwhelming the ability of the mechanics to cope. You need to tailor against the list to have a chance (or have a list that just naturally does the counters). 

If everyone is having to list tailor to stand a chance against a particular list, that's a good sign there's a problem with the list. And of course, in this case, most factions can't tailor to beat dragon spam even if they wanted to. 

I think the comparison with gargants is actually interesting. There were a lot of complaints about how gargants introduced a DPS check to the game, and that is true, they basically do - but at least there are multiple ways to pass a DPS check against models that are on a 4+ whose survivability is really just based on a high wounds characteristic, because all forms of damage basically work against that profile. There are far fewer ways to pass a DPS check against models on a 3+ with a 4+ spell shrug that cross the whole board in a turn, especially when they can also put out 10-15ish ranged MWs a turn to snipe out whatever pieces you do have that could help you against that profile. 

 

I don't necessarily agree with this tbh. I think there are a lot of hypothetical units that change the way we currently play the game. And, the ability for a warscroll to do that I think is really positive. 

For example I've seen players in the face of Sentinels create interesting decentralized buff systems with units they never would have used before. Which they never would have done when given the option to just take a easy buff hero.

So I think there is value to meta destroying warscrolls. The question should be does this thing increase or decrease the way in which the game is played. Or, create a new interesting thing.

I would say SDG do not, because they mostly destroy the movement phase. Which is the most fundamental phase of the game, and the one which can leave people feeling the most powerless.

[Dingding123]

No rule of threes...but how about a rule of halves?

A single warscroll cannot contribute to more than half of your list's total wounds.  Heck, it could be Matched Play only as well for the sake of PtG and Narrative campaigns.

[yukishiro1]

2 hours ago, whispersofblood said:

I don't necessarily agree with this tbh. I think there are a lot of hypothetical units that change the way we currently play the game. And, the ability for a warscroll to do that I think is really positive. 

For example I've seen players in the face of Sentinels create interesting decentralized buff systems with units they never would have used before. Which they never would have done when given the option to just take a easy buff hero.

So I think there is value to meta destroying warscrolls. The question should be does this thing increase or decrease the way in which the game is played. Or, create a new interesting thing.

I would say SDG do not, because they mostly destroy the movement phase. Which is the most fundamental phase of the game, and the one which can leave people feeling the most powerless.

The problem with this it relies on only a few armies getting these magical scrolls that force everyone else to spam the counter to them or lose. If every faction has a scroll like that, the game just degenerates into rock-paper-scissors because you can't cover all of them, and a competitive game that comes down to comparing lists and determining the winner before the game even starts is not a good competitive game. 

In point of fact, Sentinels don't do that, though. Sentinels require adaptation for some armies, and I personally think they're a terrible scroll (which we disagree on and isn't worth getting into here), but they don't require you to spam a specific thing in order to win the way that beating SDG spam does. If anything, they require you not to rely on a specific type of unit - the buff hero - rather than forcing you to spam something in particular to counter them. 

SoB are the closest analog to SDG spam in that they both present you with a profile and say "you have to be able to kill this quickly or you lose." But the difference is that the profile SoB gives you has a much wider range of possible stuff that can hurt it, while also giving you some options to play around because they have quite a small board footprint and much more limited movement. So while SoB requires you to "spam" damage, it gives you a lot of options of what type of damage you want to spam. SDG require you to spam a very specific sort of damage to counter them. I honestly don't think there's been another spam list in recent AOS history that requires you to counter-spam it with such a narrow category of counters. 

I think we more or less agree on the bigger point re: a scroll's value being in whether it enlarges gameplay options or constricts them. SDG spam definitely seems to constrict gameplay options, and that is neither fun nor stimulating. Facing a SDG list, you barely feel like you're even playing on a game on a board any more; you're virtually playing one of those old JRPGs where your guys are on one side and the NPCs are on the other and you take turns whacking each other, and you better hope you have the elemental spell that corresponds to the enemy's weakness equipped on your characters, or you're just going to lose. 

 

Edited January 15, 2022 by yukishiro1

[zilberfrid]

2 hours ago, Ganigumo said:

Name a single unit with balanced rules that is problematic when spammed.

You won't be able to, because there aren't any.

A unit doesn't just mysteriously become broken when somebody runs more of it, what actually happens is that the unit was already broken and tough to deal with, but a small number of them is manageable to beat because you can either ignore it, or commit way more resources than that unit costed to deal with it. That's not balance, and to enforce limited numbers of units is a bandaid fix that does nothing but obscure the problem.

I don't expect it either, but we shouldn't cry out for mediocrity (even if we've been conditioned to expect it). GW really needs to just get in the habit of rewriting warscrolls during balance updates. Also limits on spamming stuff is a bit hard to implement in aos with some ranges as small as they are. We don't talk about it as much, but just as many armies spam the only solid-average scroll or two in the book as armies spamming the broken scrolls in the book.

So yeah, we agree what GW should do.

Add warscrolls to armies that need them for good unit variety.

Write better rules 

Listen to playtesters.

Rebalance warscrolls if the fundamental problem is on those scrolls.

Sadly, we also know it isn't going to happen this decade if nothing seriously changes in GW leadership. Thus, a sloppy band aid to keep the worst stuff contained is all we can hope for.

[Marcvs]

6 hours ago, Ganigumo said:

Consistent 4-1's is the sign of something being too strong, not 5-0s. The difference between 4-1 and 5-0 often just comes down to luck when you take all 5 games into account, so in general its acceptable to lump 4-1 results and 5-0 results together when talking about the top lists.

Yeah, but if having a bunch of 4-1 results is enough to bring out the nerf bat then it's nerf-bat-o'clock all day every day cause there's quite a few lists/factions consistently going 4-1 right right now.

[yukishiro1]

If any of those other 4-1 lists are as miserable a play experience to play against as SDG, they probably should be changed too (I think SoB and Foxes probably come the closest, but neither are on the same level as SDG spam). I don't think anybody in this thread is saying SDG are the unbeatable meta-defining army, the problem is that they are both strong and an extremely bad experience to play against, because nobody wants a wargame where movement is irrelevant and your gameplay experience is just rolling dice against a single profile and seeing if you have enough of the right sort of dice to win. 

 

[Skreech Verminking]

On 1/10/2022 at 9:50 AM, AaronWilson said:

people spam the best things. If you want a balanced game where things like this don't happen AoS isn't it.

Oh you definitely know I would, if the doomwheel wasn’t a behemoth😜

[Kasper]

11 hours ago, Ganigumo said:

Name a single unit with balanced rules that is problematic when spammed.

You won't be able to, because there aren't any.

A unit doesn't just mysteriously become broken when somebody runs more of it, what actually happens is that the unit was already broken and tough to deal with, but a small number of them is manageable to beat because you can either ignore it, or commit way more resources than that unit costed to deal with it. That's not balance, and to enforce limited numbers of units is a bandaid fix that does nothing but obscure the problem

I dont think this is true at all. You kinda mention it yourself - Some units are managable in low quantities but once a certain number has been amassed, it becomes siginificantly stronger. Obviously 1+1=2 but Im talking about an exponential growth in power.

Mega Gargants wouldnt be too terrible on their own, but when you combine 4 together it becomes neigh impossible for many armies. You see this with people running multiple little giants - The army is ALOT weaker. 

A single Salamander is not that impressive, but when you spam the unit the output becomes absurd and melts stuff. 

The Cockatrice is a pretty bad unit on its own, but Adam spammed the unit and actually did really well to a couple tournaments. Yes it isnt broken, but the power of the unit was much higher when in higher numbers. It goes from doing "meh" damage to anything within 10" to basically removing it.

Pink Horrors - A single unit of 10 is "just" 50 wounds, its a lot but you can usually deal with it. But if the opponent spams them and field like 60 horrors on the other hand, you reach a breakpoint where you are no longer able to deal with it

Etc. etc., the list goes on. 

Dragons follow the same pattern. Alphaing a single dragon or two isnt a big deal and they wont be doing that much damage, but if you send 10 into the opponent's face then you have the ranged output to remove screens and severely hurt units. 

[Marcvs]

2 hours ago, yukishiro1 said:

If any of those other 4-1 lists are as miserable a play experience to play against as SDG, they probably should be changed too (I think SoB and Foxes probably come the closest, but neither are on the same level as SDG spam). I don't think anybody in this thread is saying SDG are the unbeatable meta-defining army, the problem is that they are both strong and an extremely bad experience to play against, because nobody wants a wargame where movement is irrelevant and your gameplay experience is just rolling dice against a single profile and seeing if you have enough of the right sort of dice to win. 

 

I don't disagree with the miserable experience but that's such a subjective and context dependent criterion that it's essentially impossible to use.

I used to play a stupid 3 stardrakes list in 2.0 but stopped bringing it to my club because it was miserable for my opponents (couldn't kill them, boardwide MW...). Should they have been nerfed? (the list was very bad against any decent list and player). Same was true, for different reasons, for the 2.0 Stormkeep Patrol with liberators spam, another list which caused a lot of outrage and yet failed to make even a small dent in the competitive scene.

My point:

-in casual play: pre-game discussions and a social contract on the nature of the game which will be played are (like it or not, I don't for instance) mandatory to have a decent experience for both players in AoS.

-in competitive play: more and clearer results are needed before declaring that SDG spam (or any list/unit) should be addressed.

[Ganigumo]

4 hours ago, Kasper said:

I dont think this is true at all. You kinda mention it yourself - Some units are managable in low quantities but once a certain number has been amassed, it becomes siginificantly stronger. Obviously 1+1=2 but Im talking about an exponential growth in power.

Mega Gargants wouldnt be too terrible on their own, but when you combine 4 together it becomes neigh impossible for many armies. You see this with people running multiple little giants - The army is ALOT weaker. 

A single Salamander is not that impressive, but when you spam the unit the output becomes absurd and melts stuff. 

The Cockatrice is a pretty bad unit on its own, but Adam spammed the unit and actually did really well to a couple tournaments. Yes it isnt broken, but the power of the unit was much higher when in higher numbers. It goes from doing "meh" damage to anything within 10" to basically removing it.

Pink Horrors - A single unit of 10 is "just" 50 wounds, its a lot but you can usually deal with it. But if the opponent spams them and field like 60 horrors on the other hand, you reach a breakpoint where you are no longer able to deal with it

Etc. etc., the list goes on. 

Dragons follow the same pattern. Alphaing a single dragon or two isnt a big deal and they wont be doing that much damage, but if you send 10 into the opponent's face then you have the ranged output to remove screens and severely hurt units. 

So there are two scenarios you've outlined here

The first is spamming units with ranged output until you hit a critical point where the output is too much. This would be just as big a problem if you were spamming different kinds of shooting units though, and just boils down to the shooting problem in aos. Ultimately not everyone will ever be happy with where shooting ends up but the community seems pretty united that salamanders and bowsnakes are too good at it for what they're pointed at. Cockatrice build is still a meme build though.

 

The second problem is spamming units you need to overcommit to in order to beat i.e horrors and gargants. The problem here is just the rules, not the spam. Gargants basically auto-control objectives, so unlike something like archaon you can't just screen and ignore/delay them while playing the objectives. You need to kill them. I don't think current horrors are a big problem, but you usually need to commit like 500 points just to take out a 250 point unit quickly so if they're spammed you just don't have the resources to take them out effectively. The tradeoff is that a horror spam list will probably struggle with battle tactics because of their poor damage output. The thing that makes them problematic is hosts duplicitous preventing retreats, so you're forced to grind through them to be able to move.

 

Edit: to make my point a little more clear, needing to overcommit to take out a unit like horrors or gargants is fine, but the problem is when the rules put a timer on when it needs to be done. Aggressive armies have a good shot at tabling SoB over 5 turns for example, but that often doesn't even translate into a win because of the gargants rules.

Edited January 15, 2022 by Ganigumo

[feadair]

2 hours ago, Marcvs said:

I don't disagree with the miserable experience but that's such a subjective and context dependent criterion that it's essentially impossible to use.

I used to play a stupid 3 stardrakes list in 2.0 but stopped bringing it to my club because it was miserable for my opponents (couldn't kill them, boardwide MW...). Should they have been nerfed? (the list was very bad against any decent list and player). Same was true, for different reasons, for the 2.0 Stormkeep Patrol with liberators spam, another list which caused a lot of outrage and yet failed to make even a small dent in the competitive scene.

My point:

-in casual play: pre-game discussions and a social contract on the nature of the game which will be played are (like it or not, I don't for instance) mandatory to have a decent experience for both players in AoS.

-in competitive play: more and clearer results are needed before declaring that SDG spam (or any list/unit) should be addressed.

Could not agree more.

This also reflects the MTG experience. If you are playing EDH, the most popular casual format, the playgroup is strongly encouraged to talk about the power level of games they want to play in advance. By contrast, competitive formats are balanced based on data from tournaments.

Edited January 15, 2022 by feadair

[yukishiro1]

12 hours ago, Marcvs said:

I don't disagree with the miserable experience but that's such a subjective and context dependent criterion that it's essentially impossible to use.

I don't think this is true in this particular case. Does anyone enjoy playing against SDG spam? If not, it isn't subjective and context dependent in any meaningful sense. A subjective judgment that virtually all players share is something to act upon, not something to dismiss as subjective. People don't play games to be miserable. 

We know SDG spam is strong (just not precisely how strong). We know it's a terrible game experience for the opponent that makes the game not even feel like a wargame any more because the movement phase becomes irrelevant and it just becomes a dice-rolling exercise to see if your list can beat a certain profile. We know there's no real strategy or tactics involved in playing against the SDG spam list, except if you count spamming a counter in the list construction phase. I don't think you need to know anything more than that to know it's a bad design that should be remedied. The difference with your stardrake list is that list was miserable to play against if you didn't know how to play the game. SDG is not fun to play against no matter what. 

I mean maybe I'm wrong, maybe some people love being boxed into their deployment zone T1 by a bunch of flying, ranged MW-spewing dragons and having the whole game be "can I get enough damage through a 3+ save and 4+ spell shrug to break out and be able to actually play the game?" But if those people exist, I haven't met them - and you haven't either, judging by the fact that you agree it's a miserable experience. 

They don't even need to be nerfed per se, just changed. You could lower their points at the same time you toned down the scroll, if you wanted to. What needs to happen is just some change made so you can't box your opponent in T1 with resilient stuff they can't break through unless they spam counters themselves. You could do that by preventing spam, you could do that by making them squishier, or you could do that by limiting the hero phase move or removing it entirely. Some of these options would have quite limited or no impact outside the spam list, and might actually improve them when not spammed if you also modestly dropped their points at the same time. 

Edited January 15, 2022 by yukishiro1

[Skreech Verminking]

6 hours ago, yukishiro1 said:

I don't think this is true in this particular case. Does anyone enjoy playing against SDG spam? If not, it isn't subjective and context dependent in any meaningful sense. A subjective judgment that virtually all players share is something to act upon, not something to dismiss as subjective. People don't play games to be miserable. 

We know SDG spam is strong (just not precisely how strong). We know it's a terrible game experience for the opponent that makes the game not even feel like a wargame any more because the movement phase becomes irrelevant and it just becomes a dice-rolling exercise to see if your list can beat a certain profile. We know there's no real strategy or tactics involved in playing against the SDG spam list, except if you count spamming a counter in the list construction phase. I don't think you need to know anything more than that to know it's a bad design that should be remedied. The difference with your stardrake list is that list was miserable to play against if you didn't know how to play the game. SDG is not fun to play against no matter what. 

I mean maybe I'm wrong, maybe some people love being boxed into their deployment zone T1 by a bunch of flying, ranged MW-spewing dragons and having the whole game be "can I get enough damage through a 3+ save and 4+ spell shrug to break out and be able to actually play the game?" But if those people exist, I haven't met them - and you haven't either, judging by the fact that you agree it's a miserable experience. 

They don't even need to be nerfed per se, just changed. You could lower their points at the same time you toned down the scroll, if you wanted to. What needs to happen is just some change made so you can't box your opponent in T1 with resilient stuff they can't break through unless they spam counters themselves. You could do that by preventing spam, you could do that by making them squishier, or you could do that by limiting the hero phase move or removing it entirely. Some of these options would have quite limited or no impact outside the spam list, and might actually improve them when not spammed if you also modestly dropped their points at the same time. 

I agree.

looking at the models, they really do kinda look fragile.

and since dragothian already exist. Let’s just reduce the stormdrages wound characteristic down to 4. (And change a few other things as well)

if I learned anything about aos, it is extremely bad for a game system to have a unit that is tanky, killy and fast (which is what I hate about the currently existing mawcrushers)

 Let it be more interesting.

have certain units be the tanks, others the killers, and then we could still add a fast unit into the mix. That was either somewhat tanky or somewhat killy, but not in the extreme.

 

[yukishiro1]

GW basically never changes wound characteristics except in tomes. There's no reason in theory why they couldn't, but in practice, they just don't. I can't see that changing.

Probably the most realistic change is to lose the spell shrug and make the hero phase move a command ability, and drop their points by 25 per double (10/15 per single, I don't think it matters which). At that point the spam list is probably fixed because only one unit gets to cross the whole board per turn and you're vulnerable to all MWs, not just non-magic ones. But at 315 they're a lot more attractive to non-spam lists, even if you do have to spend a CP for the hero phase move, which is still an absolute steal. 

Edited January 16, 2022 by yukishiro1

[Doko]

Remove the move after phase and put them at 270 and i gonna be happier as sc player and seems the non sc player gonna be happy also lol

Oh meanwhile put karazai at 400 and krondys at 450 so they arent useless

[yukishiro1]

270 is probably too low even if they removed the hero phase move entirely; it might be appropriate if they lost both the spell shrug and the hero phase move, though I'd guess they'd probably still need to be 290ish in that case. But I'd certainly prefer them at 270 with no hero phase move or spell shrug to what they are now at 340. 

Karazai and Krondys are definitely overcosted, though not by as much as you claim; pricing them at 400 and 450 is a bit silly when you compare them to, say, a frostlord at 430. Karazai could probably be around 475ish and Krondys around 525ish, though. 

Edited January 16, 2022 by yukishiro1

[Skreech Verminking]

4 hours ago, Doko said:

Remove the move after phase and put them at 270 and i gonna be happier as sc player and seems the non sc player gonna be happy also lol

Oh meanwhile put karazai at 400 and krondys at 450 so they arent useless

And reduce the points cost of every skaven unit by at least 30%

[Rachmani]

On 1/15/2022 at 8:29 AM, yukishiro1 said:

If any of those other 4-1 lists are as miserable a play experience to play against as SDG, they probably should be changed too (I think SoB and Foxes probably come the closest, but neither are on the same level as SDG spam). I don't think anybody in this thread is saying SDG are the unbeatable meta-defining army, the problem is that they are both strong and an extremely bad experience to play against, because nobody wants a wargame where movement is irrelevant and your gameplay experience is just rolling dice against a single profile and seeing if you have enough of the right sort of dice to win. 

 

I‘d personally go as far as to say, they‘re also a bad experience to play *with*. Those breath attacks are frustratingly swingy. Playing them you‘re slave to the same randomness your opponents are, just with overall better odds, as you can move those damn drakes and decide where to aim =D.

Edited January 16, 2022 by Rachmani

[Doko]

Yes for sure everyone,sc player and enemy (not our skavens lovers) would prefer the breath changed to allways 2 mortals or d3 that is the same median damage than actual breath but less random

[Gailon]

The weird thing about SDG is that they aren’t the ‘usual’ spam list. 
 

usually some unit has a ton of utility and is undercoated and players can just spam it and be successful. Eel spam is a good example, or salamanders. 
 

But SDG were designed and advertised to be spammed. From the moment they were first announced it was ‘you can have an army of just dragons!’ That’s just poor design right out of the gate. It’s hard to imagine something that will have interesting and dynamic play with a single model. SOB has also failed in this regard. 
 

my biggest disappointment is that this all makes them over costed to run just one unit of two as fun support. 
 

a single unit has relatively low damage and low wounds for the point cost. Most armies will have some mortal wounds or wound sink to deal with it. The ability to move across the board on turn one is far less impactful and probably just get them dead. When it’s one unit. 
 

but 11 of them is obviously oppressive and unfun. The entire army is across the board and a couple support heroes are killed. 
 

I feel like it’s a reverse dps check. Dragons won’t be able to do enough damage to deal with SOB or Nurgle or pinks (I suspect). 
 

sometimes GW does things that make me wonder if they even play the game. I play mostly narrative oriented games under matches play rules and think that’s the best version of AOS (as others have discussed on this thread), but it is immediately obvious that dragon breath is a horrendous design. Who thinks that’s a good ability? 
 

I am forced to believe that GW likes every foot hero to be dead by turn two. They keep designing new ways for it to happen. Dragon breath is just a high variance hero murderer. It’s like when they changed alarielle’s spear to basically be a sniper rifle for hero murder. 
 

what changes I would like to see (but won’t):

1. hero phase move can only be done by one dragon unit per battle. Incentivize taking one and diminishes power of spam. 
 

2. dragon breath be changed to something like the Magmadroth breath. Have to roll equal to or less than  the number of models in the target unit to do d3 mortals or d6 mortals depending on range. It’s so much more thematic and appropriate for dragon breath. That, or like the stegadon flame throwers. Roll a dice for every model in range and do a mortal on a 5+. 
 

I do suspect they played some games with a single unit of dragons and thought they were fine. Then they saw community reaction, saw what a full table of them can do and had to jack their points up 60 points. But that won’t fix the feel bad experience. 
 

[yukishiro1]

I really like the idea of making dragon breath have to roll under the number of models in the unit. Dragons sniping out heroes with their pinpoint scoped breath is just stupid and they shouldn't be encouraged to try it. You could let monsters count as 3 models for purposes of the breath if you wanted to give it a chance to do mortals against big targets too. 

Edited January 16, 2022 by yukishiro1

[Kasper]

11 hours ago, Skreech Verminking said:

And reduce the points cost of every skaven unit by at least 30%

Yes please, I want Plague Claws in my Nurgle army

[Skreech Verminking]

1 hour ago, Kasper said:

Yes please, I want Plague Claws in my Nurgle army

Yes.

dear games workshop, if possible, please reduce the cost of plague claws down to 0.

they can not be spammed, and therefore are the perfect unit to cost literally nothing.

and don’t worry my fellow workers of games workshop, clearly 4 free  plague claw catapult are very likely not going to break the game.

sincerely 

Skreech Verminking

 

[novakai]

laugh

i bet everything get point increase since that just how they are doing their balancing, does look like they are trying to make armies a bit smaller all around

[Skreech Verminking]

3 hours ago, novakai said:

laugh

i bet everything get point increase since that just how they are doing their balancing, does look like they are trying to make armies a bit smaller all around

At this point I’m really hoping for decreases, since increases really aren’t going to help the skaven at all.

Personally I really hope that we don’t have to pay 500points for 20 clanrats, because gw doesn’t want to see hordes in their new established game system