Artillery in AoS

[Gitzdee]

I think artillery is in a tough spot in AoS. I think most of the issues with statlines have already been covered here but i want to touch on a different matter. I think the whole design of artillery is flawed at this moment. There is no such thing as ''long range'' like it used to in WHFB. With positioning everything can be shot at with normal shooting most of the time. In addition the base sizes became a lot larger and the tables smaller. I think its a matter of redesigning the purpose of artillery more than the statlines.

I'll just throw my thoughts in here to maybe spark a different conversation. Artillery is used to have a threat range to cover an area of the board while being a stationary thing itself. Like a castle tower does defending an area. I dont think my english is good enough to explain the point i'm trying to make so i made a pretty picture.

 

(Red = Artillery
Green= Friendly normal shooting
Black= Enemy unit
Star= Objective)
 

If u look at number 1 it is the state the game is in now. The artillery just shoots like everything else in straight lines because it doesnt just do much else really. It doesnt have any other function than normal shooting already does imo with different statlines and some rules. 

I think number 2 is the way to go.  Make the threat range smaller and the stats so powerfull that an opponent doesnt want to go in that area or try to kill the artillery first. This also makes the battlefield feel more dynamic. The orange zone could be a kind of rapid fire artillery that could cover an objective and the blue zone a trebuchet kind of artillery that covers a smaller area with longer range but is more mobile.

(Edit: just give me back my pie plates and scatter dice. I am still talking about some of the games i had with crazy fun things happening because of those)

This would give artillery a purpose again instead of being in the same boat as regular shooting.
What are your thoughts?

Edited March 10, 2022 by Iksdee

[readercolin]

After thinking about the role of artillery for a while, I think I have come to a conclusion about what artillery should do.

Artillery should have a set of "roles", depending upon the type of artillery.  We can break this down to "Single Target", "Horde", and "Area".

A single target artillery piece should have an attack that specializes in killing something big.  The Beast-Skewer Killbow is the perfect example of this.  It does a bunch of damage, but more damage to single targets than to a horde of units.  Cannons, ballista's, warp-lightning cannons, etc. should all follow a similar role as this, where it has a high chance to hit and wound, and then its damage scales based on how big a model is, or it does good, precise damage.  These would tend to be high-rend attacks, or maybe mortal wounds, but specialized in cracking hard targets with good damage, but aren't the best against hordes of small things.  An example could be a cannon that gets 1 shot at 3+/2+/-3/6, which is going to be very nice for cracking open a megagargant, but is pointed such that it isn't really advisable to try to spam it to kill low-save high-wound infantry.

Second, is "horde".  Here, sadly, the best example is not an artillery piece, but the Gyrocopter (with brimstone gun).  A horde artillery piece should either have a high number of low quality shots, or preferably, a number of shots based on the target unit.  Examples of horde artillery pieces could be things like the hellblaster volley gun, trebuche's, or celestar ballista's on rapid fire.  By scaling the number of attacks based on the number of models in the target unit, you can get a weapon that is good against large blobs, but isn't going to be picking off support hero's from across the board.  An example here could be "* attacks at 4+/3+/-1/1", with * being the number of models in the target unit.  Or heck, do * equals twice the number of models in the target unit.  This helps differentiate the weapon from just "normal" shooting, and gives it a well defined role on the battlefield that makes people consider bringing 1-2, but not spamming them (cause who would want 4 of these and then face megagargants?).

The final thing is "area".  Right now, "area" is something that is only really being done by spells, or special abilities.  For example, the Knight-Judicator has a special ability where once per game it can choose a point on the battlefield and everything within 6" of that point takes d3 mortal wounds on a 4+.  WHY ISN'T THIS ARTILLERY?  A perfect example of this would be a hellstorm rocket battery.  Why isn't the hellstorm just blanketing an area in attacks.  Give it a rule where you pick a point on the battlefield, and for each unit within 3" or 6" of that point, you get 3 attacks against that unit on a 5+/3+/-2/d3.  Here you still keep the "to hit/wound/rend/damage" effect, and you can scale that number of attacks, or buff/debuff with spells and abilities.  Afraid of this nuking support hero's?  Well its not mortal wounds, so keep them near a unit and they still get "look out sir", so now you are hitting on a 6+.  The attacks are still "balanced", but it use is still going to play out differently than any of the other artillery types.

Of these 3 roles, nothing is brand new, never before seen in AoS.  But each of these different rules gives you a different role than a squad of ranged units, aside from maybe the single-target artillery piece that doesn't have scaling damage.  None of these artillery pieces would be something that you would always want to bring, or necessarily want to spam (unless your local meta is particularly wild), but at the same time having 1 or 2 of them in your lists could help hedge against certain army types.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

20 hours ago, readercolin said:

The final thing is "area".  Right now, "area" is something that is only really being done by spells, or special abilities.

I really like this one and would love to see it in the game. I think it would work great on a lot of the current under-performers. There is always a problem with making a unit better by just increasing its damage, but something like an area-of-effect attack is a good solution because it means that, while the unit does more damage overall, that damage can't possibly be concentrated on one unit.

EDIT: It could even be possible to make attacks like this hit all units in the area, enemies and friendlies. There you go, everyone who wants shooting into combat to be more risky!

Edited March 11, 2022 by Neil Arthur Hotep

[Riff_Raff_Rascal]

Quick update: So skaven's Plague Claw got an interesting rule addition that triggers when an enemy is targeted by this unit's missle weapons. The effect is adding 2 to the units battleshock roll. Its not game breaking, and it effectively hasn't changed much but it is an intriguing lever to pull. 

Already the skaven community wants to try to combine with the horrorghast endless spell to see if bravery bombing will be mini-combo people can use.

 

[Beliman]

Warmachine and Artillery should (somehow) be linked, because we have weird things like Beast-skewer Killbow being an Artillery without the Warmachine keyword and then we have Ironclad and Frigatte that are Warmachines but not Artillery.

I understand that one is a positional role and the other is a keyword, but it feels weird when a fleet of KOs can't use the Grand Battery Battalion.

Btw, Warmachine seems to be one of the main/generic keywords without any rule attached to it:

• Heroe: Heroic Action, Look out sir and Issue Commands
• Monster: Monstruous Rampage.
• Wizard: Casting/Unbinding/Dispelling and Spell Enhancement
• Priest: Praying/Dispelling and Prayer Scriptures enhancement
• Totem: Issue Commands
• Warmachine: ------

 

Edited July 7, 2022 by Beliman

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

10 hours ago, Riff_Raff_Rascal said:

Quick update: So skaven's Plague Claw got an interesting rule addition that triggers when an enemy is targeted by this unit's missle weapons. The effect is adding 2 to the units battleshock roll. Its not game breaking, and it effectively hasn't changed much but it is an intriguing lever to pull. 

Already the skaven community wants to try to combine with the horrorghast endless spell to see if bravery bombing will be mini-combo people can use.

 

I already thought the plague claw was pretty solid before at 2d6 damage, rend -2. 135 points for that anywhere on the battlefield works out to you bejng able to just delete a horde unit if you invest into a few of them. Now, they got the ability to get to a 2+/2+ hit/wound by themself and got an extra -1 to bravery compared to before while their points stayd the same.

They are still not as good as the best shooting units, but the best shooting units in the game are probably currently too strong, so that seems fine. At least they have a defined role and you don't have to feel bad for playing them. All the Skaven artillery seems decent right now, actually.

1 hour ago, Beliman said:

Warmachine and Artillery should (somehow) be linked, because we have weird things like Beast-skewer Killbow being an Artillery without the Warmachine keyword and then we have Ironclad and Frigatte that are Warmachines but not Artillery.

I understand that one is a positional role and the other is a keyword, but it feels weird when a fleet of KOs can't use the Grand Battery Battalion.

Btw, Warmachine seems to be one of the main/generic keywords without any rule attached to it:

• Heroe: Heroic Action, Look out sir and Issue Commands
• Monster: Monstruous Rampage.
• Wizard: Casting/Unbinding/Dispelling and Spell Enhancement
• Priest: Praying/Dispelling and Prayer Scriptures enhancement
• Totem: Issue Commands
• Warmachine: ------

 

The big problem I see with making the WARMACHINE keyword significant is that war machines are even more unequally distributed than, for example, priests. At the moment, only Kharadron, Skaven and Cities really have significant access to them. Everyone else just has an odd ballista or catapult. There would probably have to be an "Age of Technology" update before really giving the WARMACHINE keyword upside makes sense. At least it's not purely a downside anymore like it was in 2nd edition, right?

 

[Beliman]

4 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

The big problem I see with making the WARMACHINE keyword significant is that war machines are even more unequally distributed than, for example, priests. At the moment, only Kharadron, Skaven and Cities really have significant access to them. Everyone else just has an odd ballista or catapult. There would probably have to be an "Age of Technology" update before really giving the WARMACHINE keyword upside makes sense. At least it's not purely a downside anymore like it was in 2nd edition, right?

GW can give Warmachine to some Artillery units too (Ballistas, Killabows, etc...), and just with that it covers all armies just using allies/coalition units.

[Riff_Raff_Rascal]

Quick battle report: I just ran a triple Plagueclaw Catapult list combined with the Horrorghast endless spell and it this artillery piece works as intended. I must qualify this that artillery as a whole isn't fixed and I could strongly argue that this particular unit's damage is still meh (rolling low on 2d6 damage and/or missing the one shot). However, the addition of the bravery de-buff ability gives it reliable role in a list none-the-less. 

I'm happy thus far where this design space has gone and await further artillery updates. Carry on. 

[Lucky Snake Eyes]

I think something to take warmachines forward is to widen our definition of warmachine. Since GW wants to do seasons themed around unit types, they may one day do a season themed around war machines. This will likely coincide with the release of a warmachine themed chamber for stormcast and by the Dawnbringers will be out with cogforts, but many factions don't have warmachines. So let's expand what qualifies. Death's only war machine can't be allied, so we have a couple of solutions: bandaid it onto the mortis engine and black coach OR give the old wraith fleet the cities treatment and become a full book of bespoke undead pirates with ghost ships as war machines, throw in sub faction based coalitions and boom, solid death rep in the war machine season (and with the popularity of Vampire coast in TW:W I would be shocked if they weren't already expanding this out). For destruction they can introduce the grotbag scuttlers, and expand on Mawtribes and Gitz to add a warmachine kit to each. Order has lots of options, but to flesh it out a little more: Seraphon floating pyramids in the style of necron obelisks, return of the slayer axe thrower for fyreslayers, Crab ballistas for idoneth, Giant bee spirit that fires bees or giant stingers as mobile artillery for sylvaneth. Chaos is a bit harder but Chorfs bring lots of options, tzeentch can get silver towers or some sort of pseudo warmachine wizard cabal that throws massive fireballs, slap warmachine on slaanesh chariots or give Glutos warmachine and release a generic "pleasure barge" unit thats a mobile support piece. Khorne has skull cannons, nurgle could get a short range, high attacks plague spewer as not to overlap too much with the plagueclaw. Slaves could get any kind of spiky, hell powered artillery piece but a melee warmachine would be cool. SoB and beasts are the odd ones out by the nature of their design unless you wanted to give beasts a new monster kit that functioned as a warmachine in as far as it's covered in scrap metal and throws boulders. SoB could similarly get a new giant themed around long range boulder or spear throwing, maybe a dual kit to add a native caster in the form of a shaman gargant.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

On 8/16/2022 at 6:17 AM, Lucky Snake Eyes said:

I think something to take warmachines forward is to widen our definition of warmachine.

Honestly, I think the war machine keyword is currently pretty confused. The Celestar Ballista is a war machine, but the Starshard Ballista is not. The Screaming Bell is one, other chariots are not. The Plague Claw is one, the Scrap Launcher is not. A bit more consistency would be nice.

I could imagine a world where any contraption more complex than a chariot is a war machine. I think that will be hard to write flavourful rules for, but it's fine. But I would prefer a game where only significantly techy units actually get the war machine keyword. That would mean some factions will probably never get any, since their tech level is just too low, but I think it would help making war machines feel more significant for the factions that do get them, because they could come with more extraordinary rules.

It would probably be a pretty small list, though: Skaven, Cities, Stormcast, Seraphon, Kharadron Overlords, Ogors and Ossiarchs. Everyone else just doesn't really seem advanced enough. 

[Skreech Verminking]

8 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

chariots

Probably the one thing I find most disturbing
the stormcast chariot which has more wounds then a doomwheel isn’t a warmashine nor a behemoth!

While the doomwheel is both

Edited August 17, 2022 by Skreech Verminking

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

29 minutes ago, Skreech Verminking said:

Probably the one thing I find most disturbing
the stormcast chariot which has more wounds then a doomwheel isn’t a warmashine nor a behemoth!

While the doomwheel is both

A testament to the power of Skaven engineering that the Doomwheel qualifies for these impressive tags, while a crude Stormcast box on wheels obviously doesn't meet the standard. 😉

[Skreech Verminking]

7 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

A testament to the power of Skaven engineering that the Doomwheel qualifies for these impressive tags, while a crude Stormcast box on wheels obviously doesn't meet the standard. 😉

Well… skaven are known for breaking limits.

if that is the case, shouldn’t us skaven players be able to at least field 13 wheels of doom!?🙃

[Maddpainting]

IMO AoS doesn't need Artillery to be good, just to be there is enough. I'm ok with them being just "ok" at best, I dont feel like it fits the feel of the game to have it powerful.