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Is it time to rethink 2000 points as the "standard" in AoS?


RuneBrush

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Yeah, certain things like LotfP summoning become absurdly oppressive at 1k. Having a ~60% chance to summon 25 wounds each turn at 1K is just silly, you're literally summoning more wounds than the vast majority of armies start with. And a lot of the battle plans just aren't going to work at 1k for a lot of armies. How is a SoB player supposed to play a 6 objective mission at 1k when they very probably have only 2 models? I guess you can say "play 1 mega and 3 minis each alone, suck it up" but that's not a real answer to the player who plays with megas at 2k. Whereas conversely a 2 mega list on a 3 objective plan at 1k is probably oppressively powerful for most lists to face because the SoB player will just win simply by moving onto two objectives and sitting there, as not many 1K lists can kill a mega at 1k by T3, and if you don't you can't win. 

The fact that AOS doesn't have dedicated 1k missions in the GBH like 40k does says a lot about how seriously GW takes it, which is to say...not very. 

 

Edited by yukishiro1
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One silver lining is that the kind of players who are willing to step outside of the "tournament standard" and play games at 1000 or 1500 points are also (often) the kind of players who are willing to adjust their lists and avoid janky combos that break the balance of the game. You already need to negotiate a social contract to play at alternative game sizes; just take that one step further and negotiate how your lists are going to match up against each other.

Obviously you can do this at 2000 points as well (and you should!) but the smaller sizes are a kind of automatic filter for players who want no-holds-barred tournament-level combos and aren't open to discussion.

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So something that I think needs to be said because it is being missed by a few people.

There is no "General" rule that no more than half your army can be a single unit.  This is battlepack specific.  If I play a 1k game using the generals handbook, that rule doesn't exist, and therefore I can bring Alarielle in my 1k game despite her costing 740 points.  I can bring Archaeon and 2 squads of 70 point cultists (say, untamed beasts?) - it comes out to exactly 1k points, and is a completely legal army.

However, if we switch from the Generals Handbook to Path to Glory battlepack rules, or to contest of generals, then we do have a rule that says that no more than half of your army can be a single unit.  Now you can't bring those god characters to a 1k or a 1500 point game.

Now, is bringing a god going to be a good game?  Probably not.  Whether you are looking at it from a "competitive" viewpoint or a casual one, someone isn't going to have a good time.  Can you play a 1k game and have fun?  Undoubtably.  I've done it a number of times.  However, I find that 1k works much better as a "casual" environment, because as soon as one player starts to get competitive about it a lot or armies just don't have the tools to handle that due to the lack of scaling benefits.

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43 minutes ago, readercolin said:

However, I find that 1k works much better as a "casual" environment, because as soon as one player starts to get competitive about it a lot or armies just don't have the tools to handle that due to the lack of scaling benefits.

What frustrates me with comments like this one (nothing personal), is that they try to obfuscate the exact same issues with 2k games.  If we focus the discussion on competitive play (which is fair given that is mostly the focus of this site), how many various battletomes and units become functionally useless at 2k in a competitive setting?  There might even be a case to make that it is worse at 2k since we have so much more data to support the issue at that level.  

14 hours ago, Kadeton said:

One silver lining is that the kind of players who are willing to step outside of the "tournament standard" and play games at 1000 or 1500 points are also (often) the kind of players who are willing to adjust their lists and avoid janky combos that break the balance of the game.

This is a great point.  It is my experience with 1k games that you tend to see units that would never even be considered at 2k (talking competitive).  

Just to be clear, my point is not to replace 2k games with 1k.  I am all for playing what you enjoy.  What I am challenging is the community bias towards 2k and what I view as a "habit" to punch down on other formats.

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21 hours ago, NinthMusketeer said:

And really, the solution is GW pricing more reasonably.

Do you mind elaborating more on your comment?  I don't see a direct correlation between playing smaller games and GW pricing.  Factors such as available gaming time, ability to commit to building/painting, resources (space, terrain, etc...) also play a role in some folks desiring to play at smaller sizes.

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6 hours ago, Equinox said:

Do you mind elaborating more on your comment?  I don't see a direct correlation between playing smaller games and GW pricing.  Factors such as available gaming time, ability to commit to building/painting, resources (space, terrain, etc...) also play a role in some folks desiring to play at smaller sizes.

People wanting to play smaller sizes can freely do so (and certainly do) without trouble, whereas there is a non-zero amount of people who would like to play larger game sizes but are restricted by price. Additionally, the price tag attached to a 'full army' is a level of sticker shock that repels a good deal of otherwise interested individuals. Redefining the standard size as a community would help a little, but it would not change the marketing that bills 2k as the full size game. It also ties back into the first point where people want the freedom to play any size they want, which means having enough for a 'full game' even if they usually choose to go smaller.

Put simply; the optics matter, a lot, even if they are not representative of reality. One need look no further than the term 'Matched' Play to see that in action :(

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15 hours ago, readercolin said:

So something that I think needs to be said because it is being missed by a few people.

There is no "General" rule that no more than half your army can be a single unit.  This is battlepack specific.  If I play a 1k game using the generals handbook, that rule doesn't exist, and therefore I can bring Alarielle in my 1k game despite her costing 740 points.  I can bring Archaeon and 2 squads of 70 point cultists (say, untamed beasts?) - it comes out to exactly 1k points, and is a completely legal army.

However, if we switch from the Generals Handbook to Path to Glory battlepack rules, or to contest of generals, then we do have a rule that says that no more than half of your army can be a single unit.  Now you can't bring those god characters to a 1k or a 1500 point game.

Now, is bringing a god going to be a good game?  Probably not.  Whether you are looking at it from a "competitive" viewpoint or a casual one, someone isn't going to have a good time.  Can you play a 1k game and have fun?  Undoubtably.  I've done it a number of times.  However, I find that 1k works much better as a "casual" environment, because as soon as one player starts to get competitive about it a lot or armies just don't have the tools to handle that due to the lack of scaling benefits.

On a related note, one thing that I'm surprised about is that we've not seen events writing their own Battlepacks.  When I read the 3rd edition rules, I got the impression that we'd see a variety of Battlepacks being used at events, including home grown ones.  We did see it at Facehammer last year, but that's been it so far.

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16 hours ago, NinthMusketeer said:

People wanting to play smaller sizes can freely do so (and certainly do) without trouble, whereas there is a non-zero amount of people who would like to play larger game sizes but are restricted by price. Additionally, the price tag attached to a 'full army' is a level of sticker shock that repels a good deal of otherwise interested individuals. Redefining the standard size as a community would help a little, but it would not change the marketing that bills 2k as the full size game. It also ties back into the first point where people want the freedom to play any size they want, which means having enough for a 'full game' even if they usually choose to go smaller.

Put simply; the optics matter, a lot, even if they are not representative of reality. One need look no further than the term 'Matched' Play to see that in action :(

To support your point: I've been looking into Star Wars Legion and it only takes you maybe 250 USD to have a standard 800pt army. That pricepoint is like a third of a standard 2000pt army. And when 2000pts is the expectation/goal for new players because of that standard... the sticker shock has a material reality for people even remotely interested in the Warhammer sphere.

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8 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

On a related note, one thing that I'm surprised about is that we've not seen events writing their own Battlepacks.  When I read the 3rd edition rules, I got the impression that we'd see a variety of Battlepacks being used at events, including home grown ones.  We did see it at Facehammer last year, but that's been it so far.

I think that right now 3.0 is still "new" enough that not too many people want to be writing their own battlepacks.  There is also quite a bit that goes into the battlepacks now.  Not only are there the missions, but there is also the unit caps/minimums, the reinforcement limit, the grand strategies, and the battle tactics.  Then there is the question of any special rules, like the spell Metamorphosis, or the realm command "Feral Roar", or the core battalions (alpha-beast pack and hunters of the heartlands).

The battlepack actually is VERY impactful not only in game play, but also in list building.  How much is your army going to change if you don't get bonus points for doing things with a monster?  How about bonus points for killing a monster?  What are the battle tactics that you create - what if you get extra points for doing something with a battle line?  What if broken ranks isn't killing a battle line unit like it is in the GHB, but its killing a troops unit like it is in the Pitched Battles rules in the core rulebook?  What changes if a battle tactic is "control the center" like in the pitched battle rules?

This means that as you put together a battle pack for your tournament, you may get people to bow out of your event if your battle pack is too dissimilar to the current GHB because people are building their armies to play the current GHB.  And I'm not sure that too many people want to take that risk right now.  As people get more familiar with 3.0 and what makes a good battlepack, I think that we will get more tournament organizers experimenting with things, or more people putting out community battlepacks.  I know from watching Warhammer Weekly that there is some sort of community that is putting together a "best hits" of map packs, and that is community driven.  But I haven't seen anything else where people are trying to put together additional rules beyond that (though I might just not be looking in the right places).

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I think there is another important factor--the battlepack is good. It makes monsters a theme, but also counterbalances that with them being a liability and giving players an extra counterplay (hunters battalion). The GHB missions are really well designed and always have been bar a few duds (looking at you, Relocation Orb). Credit where credit is due GW has consistently provided a strong set of scenarios for AoS matched play, such that there has been little need to introduce changes.

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There are events that don't use the normal battlepack rules. Nashcon, Holy Wars, etc. But those tend to be less cutthroat competitive events where that happens. There's a natural tension between coming up with your own battleplan and creating the most competitive format, and for various historical reasons, community comp tends to be a bit of a scarlet letter for a lot of AOS players. It's a lot safer and easier for TOs just to go with the GW pack, and then any blame goes to GW rather than themselves, and they don't have to deal with trying to please everybody and respond to their comments about how this or that should be adjusted.

GW itself has recently moved towards taking over the competitive game rather than towards giving it more room to grow on its own (see e.g. them essentially buying out the ITC), so I don't think GW is likely to show much enthusiasm towards people creating their own battlepacks, either. 

 

 

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Lack of variety in battlepacks does feel like a bit of a symptom of weak balance overall. When you use GW's pack, the game's flaws are GW's fault; when you try to address them using your own pack and "fail", they're now your fault.

To bring it back to the original topic, that's the same pressure that makes 2000 points the standard - how many times in this thread have we seen "The game isn't balanced at 1000 points"? Sure, that's true, but it isn't balanced at 2000 points either, that's just the size at which it remains GW's fault. At any other size, it's your fault for suggesting something different.

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3 hours ago, AaronWilson said:

Shifting to 1K just brings a new set of problems rather then fixing anything. 

I mean, maybe? It's not like there's a huge amount of info or discussion about it. As it has been highlighted before, this is sort of a default reaction upon hearing "1k" "oh it's not balanced", but in my experience if I am playing at my club (i.e. casual context) I need just as much social-contract-balancing to play at 1k as 2k.

What is certain, is that it has quite a lot of practical advantages: cheaper, faster, more accessible for new player, easier to carry your army around...

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9 hours ago, Marcvs said:

I mean, maybe? It's not like there's a huge amount of info or discussion about it. As it has been highlighted before, this is sort of a default reaction upon hearing "1k" "oh it's not balanced", but in my experience if I am playing at my club (i.e. casual context) I need just as much social-contract-balancing to play at 1k as 2k.

What is certain, is that it has quite a lot of practical advantages: cheaper, faster, more accessible for new player, easier to carry your army around...

It's purely, 100% anecdotal, but my general impression has been that the game just straight up doesn't function at less than about 1250. Anything smaller than that ends up with the first objective brawl that opens up on turn 2 being the only fight that matters. Beat their punchy unit turn one and all they have left is a buff character and a handful of 80pt objective campers.

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It CAN work, but more or less requires actual modification of army rules on top of the standard self-balancing needed for 2k. For example, no amount of listbuilding is going to make Legion of the First Prince summoning not broken in 1k games; players need to actually restrict their use of it somehow. There are a lot of instances like that.

Not to mention the swathe of unit options that are game-breaking just showing up at that point level. Options that are normally not a problem.

Though I do want to emphasize the original point--it can work, the issues can be worked around. There is a lot of fun to be had at smaller sizes, it simply needs to be approached with the mindset that the Matched Play toolbox is geared towards 2k and so may require some fiddling. In a way that is the essence of Warhammer; GW provides a big toolbox of gameplay options, has some pre-built categories, and players figure out how they want to enjoy that.

Edited by NinthMusketeer
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I'm a skaven player, most of my games at the local shop are at 1k or 1.5k.  Generally I find that 1k is enough to bring 2 battleline, 1-2 heroes, an elite unit, an artillery/support piece, and maybe a cheap piece of chaff to grab objectives. Games still take ~2-3 hours but we're playing casual and chatting and enjoying ourselves as we play. Easy enough to swap out stuff and try new units without getting bogged down. I quite like it.

 

RE: board size, we're just playing right out of the GHB, and I find it has its own tactical considerations, makes it nice. In 2k sized games, its easy for an army to cover your entire deployment zone, grabbing objectives is a foregone conclusion as you have more than enough different units to reach everything. At 1k there's actual pressure on you, what you allocate where matters a lot more.

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