Stormdrake Guard Are Beyond Absurd

[PrimeElectrid]

On 1/15/2022 at 7:29 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. 

 

Err sons, legion, lrl, Morathi and the bow snakes are all 4-1 and miserable to play against.

[novakai]

I mean any point decrease they have done recently have been laughable inconsequential, your banking on reinforcement rule tweaks or changing horde rule to affect unmodified rolls so you can get more then +1 to hit or wound would be better then point changes

[Doko]

10 hours ago, Skreech Verminking said:

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

Seeing how they have destroyed fyreslayers i would be happy id they dont touch my army.

 

If they release new skaven book with same designer team of fyreslayers you gonna get clanrats nerfed in points and doing half atk and damage......

[Skreech Verminking]

24 minutes ago, Doko said:

Seeing how they have destroyed fyreslayers i would be happy id they dont touch my army.

 

If they release new skaven book with same designer team of fyreslayers you gonna get clanrats nerfed in points and doing half atk and damage......

same hope, but till we see the battletome for the fyreslayers I’ll keep my hopes to myself, after-all maybe the allegiance ability will be changed to an extreme, just as they did with maggotkin of nurgle.

 

Edited January 17, 2022 by Skreech Verminking

[Ratboy genius]

3 hours ago, Doko said:

Seeing how they have destroyed fyreslayers i would be happy id they dont touch my army.

 

If they release new skaven book with same designer team of fyreslayers you gonna get clanrats nerfed in points and doing half atk and damage......

I mean there's not too much more they could do to nerf skaven at this point, already just sitting above meme factions on the tier list 

[Zeblasky]

On 1/16/2022 at 7:56 PM, yukishiro1 said:

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. 

Black dragon has such a breath, and from experience I can tell that such type of breath can either be very strong or quite situational, depending on implementation. If you would remake Stormdrakes this way, while keeping the range, even with mortals on 5+ 4 dragons would decimate any kind of 1 wound unit if it's all in range, while killing more than half of 2 wound ones, and all that without double shooting. This would lead to a much more wild MW spikes, not less, and I do not think that you want 4 dragons killing 30 Ironbrakers or 40 grots in one shooting attack.

Edited January 18, 2022 by Zeblasky

[yukishiro1]

That's not what was being suggested I don't think. The suggestion was the "to hit" roll is done by rolling equal to or under the amount of models in the unit, and if you succeed, it'd then do d3 MW per dragon or something like that. The output against a horde would end up roughly the same as it is now (actually a tiny bit better, but much less spikey) while the output against single heroes would go way down, so no more no-scoping support heroes with pinpoint dragon breath. You could even make monsters worth like 4 if you wanted, a 4+ to do d3 mw to a monster doesn't seem abusive. 

Edited January 18, 2022 by yukishiro1

[ibel]

2 hours ago, yukishiro1 said:

That's not what was being suggested I don't think. The suggestion was the "to hit" roll is done by rolling equal to or under the amount of models in the unit, and if you succeed

Why this is so a big Problem. Take a "normal" Screen and u easylie can put "Littel" Heros out of the 12" Range....

But jes i Agree I would like to see the Mave is decreased to 10 or better 9.... and the Breath too. Would help a lot but will not happen. Shame...

[Greybeard86]

Much like others have said, dragons are the symptom of a bigger problem in AoS.

There simply isn't enough diversity in roles across AoS units. Whether this is because of the suppression of S/T, spill over damage, or other reasons is still up for debate.

Given this, whenever a unit stands out in efficiency, it gets spammed without consequence. Rule of 3 approaches would only be a bandaid. The game would be more fun if there was a reason to bring armies with more variety.

My impression is that at some point some GW decision makers said: "wouldn't it be awesome to have an all slayers / dragons / giants / whatever army?". Probably inspired by strongly thematic armies that were put together by enthusiastic players. Then they forgot that those armies where cool because they were a deviation from a more varied norm, and that oftentimes they weren't very competitive. As a result, now we have, for AoS, contant releases of new armies with narrow ranges and strong rule support for spammy compositions. That is not my cup of tea and I have mostly abandoned AoS as a gaming system (I just paint the miniatures). I wonder how many people are put off my all dragons or all eels and similar things. That doesn't make for a good wargame, IMO.

[Joseph Mackay]

22 hours ago, Greybeard86 said:

Much like others have said, dragons are the symptom of a bigger problem in AoS.

There simply isn't enough diversity in roles across AoS units. Whether this is because of the suppression of S/T, spill over damage, or other reasons is still up for debate.

Given this, whenever a unit stands out in efficiency, it gets spammed without consequence. Rule of 3 approaches would only be a bandaid. The game would be more fun if there was a reason to bring armies with more variety.

My impression is that at some point some GW decision makers said: "wouldn't it be awesome to have an all slayers / dragons / giants / whatever army?". Probably inspired by strongly thematic armies that were put together by enthusiastic players. Then they forgot that those armies where cool because they were a deviation from a more varied norm, and that oftentimes they weren't very competitive. As a result, now we have, for AoS, contant releases of new armies with narrow ranges and strong rule support for spammy compositions. That is not my cup of tea and I have mostly abandoned AoS as a gaming system (I just paint the miniatures). I wonder how many people are put off my all dragons or all eels and similar things. That doesn't make for a good wargame, IMO.

I mostly agree with you here, but, and it’s a pretty big but, Rule Of 3 simply can’t work in AoS unless all armies get fleshed out to Lumineth/Stormcast/Slaves level of unit options.

armies like Fyreslayers would end up as a static army list because they would have no options. The only difference between fyreslayer lists would be which of the 20~ hero options are taken.

Rule Of 3 works in 40K because of the different roles (HQ, Elite, Troops, Fast, Heavy) in combination with the Detachments, and number of units within each faction. Troops are excluded from the Rule Of 3 in 40K, and in AoS you would have to exclude Battleline from this rule, including conditional Battleline (if they met the requirements for Battleline) otherwise armies like Fyreslayers/Flesh Eaters etc end up as above, which would completely ignore the point of the Rule Of 3 (pretty much every unit that has ever been complained about if spammed was Battleline/conditional Battleline anyway). Under the above specifics, dragon spam avoids this rule and there’s no other way to make this sort of thing work without A) expanding all the small armies asap B) applying the rule on a case by case basis to different factions 

[pnkdth]

1 hour ago, Joseph Mackay said:

I mostly agree with you here, but, and it’s a pretty big but, Rule Of 3 simply can’t work in AoS unless all armies get fleshed out to Lumineth/Stormcast/Slaves level of unit options.

armies like Fyreslayers would end up as a static army list because they would have no options. The only difference between fyreslayer lists would be which of the 20~ hero options are taken.

Rule Of 3 works in 40K because of the different roles (HQ, Elite, Troops, Fast, Heavy) in combination with the Detachments, and number of units within each faction. Troops are excluded from the Rule Of 3 in 40K, and in AoS you would have to exclude Battleline from this rule, including conditional Battleline (if they met the requirements for Battleline) otherwise armies like Fyreslayers/Flesh Eaters etc end up as above, which would completely ignore the point of the Rule Of 3 (pretty much every unit that has ever been complained about if spammed was Battleline/conditional Battleline anyway). Under the above specifics, dragon spam avoids this rule and there’s no other way to make this sort of thing work without A) expanding all the small armies asap B) applying the rule on a case by case basis to different factions 

Agreed. I also think they should tinker with which units can actually become battleline. Conditional battleline is too prevalent on units which should not be able to be fielded as an entire army. Unit spam isn't always an issue but rather, what's been mentioned by others too, unit roles. When a singular unit can do it all it devalues the rest of the army.

Stardrake spam without the shooting attack (might have been you who planted that idea) would not have been nearly as bad since as the opponent you can now start thinking in terms of how to manoeuvre to counter their movement (blocking base sizes, screens, etc). Suddenly the unit has a weakness to overcome and to counter.

It is like watching a movie, no one likes a Gary Stu or Mary Sue who is just great at everything. It is the heroes and villains with flaws which makes us invested in their struggle and care for the outcome.

Edited January 19, 2022 by pnkdth

[yukishiro1]

Rule of 3 in 40k doesn't apply to troops anyway, so it wouldn't do anything to curtail most AOS spam lists, which typically rely on conditional battleline (i.e troops) to make the spam work. I guess there's some rare exceptions like Salamander spam, but they're much very much exceptions. 

Edited January 19, 2022 by yukishiro1

[novakai]

I think the problem is that there the other side of the coin where people like thematic spam list, conditional battleline option, and less limitation in list building 

I think GW found out that this psychographic profile is very strong during when BCR came out and people like these thing, they started make options to play like this. 

but I think starting with BCR in 1st edition and later into Trogherd, it went from it a thematic list and fun but it can’t play the game of Sigmar, to It can play the game of Sigmar a bit but it more for fluff bunny and now the mindset has change to these armies have to  competitively able to win games in Sigmar.

[Ganigumo]

On 1/18/2022 at 7:16 AM, Greybeard86 said:

Much like others have said, dragons are the symptom of a bigger problem in AoS.

There simply isn't enough diversity in roles across AoS units. Whether this is because of the suppression of S/T, spill over damage, or other reasons is still up for debate.

Given this, whenever a unit stands out in efficiency, it gets spammed without consequence. Rule of 3 approaches would only be a bandaid. The game would be more fun if there was a reason to bring armies with more variety.

My impression is that at some point some GW decision makers said: "wouldn't it be awesome to have an all slayers / dragons / giants / whatever army?". Probably inspired by strongly thematic armies that were put together by enthusiastic players. Then they forgot that those armies where cool because they were a deviation from a more varied norm, and that oftentimes they weren't very competitive. As a result, now we have, for AoS, contant releases of new armies with narrow ranges and strong rule support for spammy compositions. That is not my cup of tea and I have mostly abandoned AoS as a gaming system (I just paint the miniatures). I wonder how many people are put off my all dragons or all eels and similar things. That doesn't make for a good wargame, IMO.

I think the issue with roles in aos is literally just poor warscroll design. S/T and not having damage spill doesn't stop 40k from having issues as well purely because of how bloated many of the army ranges are.

Just as a reference for my point: Modular units are ones in which each piece (or power pair) is independently useful and you can mix and match the pieces, as opposed to linear design which encourages you to double down into one build path to maximize buffs. Both are valid, and having both in the game is a good thing.

Most ranges in aos are small enough that you don't need variations of the same role for units to stand out (i.e swarm killer vs armor puncher vs monster killer). Many of the ones that do have this problem try to have thematic subfactions and linear synergy so players commit to a "subfaction" within the army (i.e saurus vs skink, or squig vs trogg, etc) so two similar hammer units have their own uses because of what you bring around them, rather than having different purposes, sure one might be better, but when done right the resulting armies look and play differently.

The problem, is when you make a modular book with significant warscroll bloat. It works fine for nurgle and Ironjawz, because of how limited the ranges are, but in something like stormcast it pretty much instantly invalidates half the army because you just can't come up with a unique role for all 76 warscrolls. Combine the modular design with a unit like stormdrake guard, which are an "everything" warscroll (they're mobile hammer-anvils with shooting) and you have a recipe for disaster. If stormdrake guard needed buffs from other heroes and spells, possibly within auras the army would be WAY more manageable since the stormdrake player would need to spend points on support heroes to get the most out of the dragons, and it would be tough to buff multiple units unless you bring multiples of those support heroes.

As a design decision pushing the stormcast book into a modular design was a failure on multiple levels. The first being my previous point about invalidating big sections of the units being inevitable. The second is that modular design is much more esoteric than linear design, and it makes it harder to listbuild and discern what is and isn't good. While thats not always a bad thing, stormcast are literally THE "starter faction" and linear design makes listbuilding much easier, especially for new players. 

[yukishiro1]

A lot of that is true...but it also wouldn't be a problem if they hadn't made dragons an "everything" warscroll. That's always bad design, no matter how you shape your book. Everything scrolls just shouldn't exist, they are poison to strategic gameplay. 

[Gailon]

7 hours ago, Ganigumo said:

I think the issue with roles in aos is literally just poor warscroll design. S/T and not having damage spill doesn't stop 40k from having issues as well purely because of how bloated many of the army ranges are.

Just as a reference for my point: Modular units are ones in which each piece (or power pair) is independently useful and you can mix and match the pieces, as opposed to linear design which encourages you to double down into one build path to maximize buffs. Both are valid, and having both in the game is a good thing.

Most ranges in aos are small enough that you don't need variations of the same role for units to stand out (i.e swarm killer vs armor puncher vs monster killer). Many of the ones that do have this problem try to have thematic subfactions and linear synergy so players commit to a "subfaction" within the army (i.e saurus vs skink, or squig vs trogg, etc) so two similar hammer units have their own uses because of what you bring around them, rather than having different purposes, sure one might be better, but when done right the resulting armies look and play differently.

The problem, is when you make a modular book with significant warscroll bloat. It works fine for nurgle and Ironjawz, because of how limited the ranges are, but in something like stormcast it pretty much instantly invalidates half the army because you just can't come up with a unique role for all 76 warscrolls. Combine the modular design with a unit like stormdrake guard, which are an "everything" warscroll (they're mobile hammer-anvils with shooting) and you have a recipe for disaster. If stormdrake guard needed buffs from other heroes and spells, possibly within auras the army would be WAY more manageable since the stormdrake player would need to spend points on support heroes to get the most out of the dragons, and it would be tough to buff multiple units unless you bring multiples of those support heroes.

As a design decision pushing the stormcast book into a modular design was a failure on multiple levels. The first being my previous point about invalidating big sections of the units being inevitable. The second is that modular design is much more esoteric than linear design, and it makes it harder to listbuild and discern what is and isn't good. While thats not always a bad thing, stormcast are literally THE "starter faction" and linear design makes listbuilding much easier, especially for new players. 

This is really well said. And also clarifies how the Seraphon Boom is much better than the Stormcast book, although the army also has a lot of warscrolls. 
 

I can build a list that logically uses Saurus warriors and knights. They aren’t as good, but in Koatl’s Claw they have a lot of synergistic buffs (even more in 2.0). 
 

The Stormcast book struggles to do anything like this. It’s all built around conditional battleline. I can’t do anything to make Vanguard Hunters better. I can make them battleline, but that doesn’t make them better. 
 

Again, I think the thing about Stormdrake is that it was on purpose. They wanted people to be able run armies of all dragons and have those armies at least be viable. As opposed to a just for flavor list like Troggs. I don’t know what kind of rebalancing they can do in that context. 
 

it will just be a new SOB. If someone is trying to compete at a tournament they will have to have an answer for whether they can deal with dragons. 

[Ganigumo]

1 hour ago, Gailon said:

This is really well said. And also clarifies how the Seraphon Boom is much better than the Stormcast book, although the army also has a lot of warscrolls. 
 

I can build a list that logically uses Saurus warriors and knights. They aren’t as good, but in Koatl’s Claw they have a lot of synergistic buffs (even more in 2.0). 
 

The Stormcast book struggles to do anything like this. It’s all built around conditional battleline. I can’t do anything to make Vanguard Hunters better. I can make them battleline, but that doesn’t make them better. 
 

Again, I think the thing about Stormdrake is that it was on purpose. They wanted people to be able run armies of all dragons and have those armies at least be viable. As opposed to a just for flavor list like Troggs. I don’t know what kind of rebalancing they can do in that context. 
 

it will just be a new SOB. If someone is trying to compete at a tournament they will have to have an answer for whether they can deal with dragons. 

With stormdrakes you can price the drake spam list into meme-tier, which it probably should be as scrolls like that, which do everything without needing support, should be. Even if the scroll is overcosted a bit it might see some play, because of how flexible they are.
SOB are in a situation where this doesn't work because there is literally no flexibility in the army, every "piece" needs to be ~500 points.
Gitz actually uses linear design and pushes you down a build path, which they doubled down on with the white dwarf/broken realms update, so the all trogg list should be viable (and is probably the strongest gitz build at the moment actually despite the synergies being really weak...).

[Greybeard86]

15 hours ago, Ganigumo said:

Just as a reference for my point: Modular units are ones in which each piece (or power pair) is independently useful and you can mix and match the pieces, as opposed to linear design which encourages you to double down into one build path to maximize buffs. Both are valid, and having both in the game is a good thing.

This was very interesting to read, thank you for taking the time.

However, I think that lack of specialization is bigger than modular v. linear design. Yes, that is a problem in AoS, given that many armies encourage you to go the linear route. That said, at the end of the day if one unit can fit too many roles, then both modular and linear based designs result in spam. Because while modular would give you flexibility, you won't use it because you will take whatever is best, given that it is "universally" good.

The more a unit is good or close to "best" at "many things", the more limited army composition will be. Add to this the very prevalent linear design in AoS and you get these monocromatic armies.

Ultimately, this is a design choice. As someone has said around here, GW truly thinks this is what players want. Since I do not, I ignore their rules and paint whatever I want for my "display" armies (variety and ressemblance to my idea of lore). However, they lost me as a "player" and whatever money I might have spent to that end.

Edited January 20, 2022 by Greybeard86