The State of the Game

[JackStreicher]

First off, this shall not be a discussion about competetive gaming.

Settling into the new Edition
With the start of AoS 3.0 I was enthusiastic about the game. The Core Rules seemed mostly great, a real improvement. As of late I've had a feeling that the game isn't really grabing me anymore. It's not due to the Core Rules though. I gave it a deep thought for a while and I came down to a somewhat foggy idea of a conclusion that is hard to formulate.

The actual issues began with thew first Battletomes:
Stormcast Eternals: Due to the sheer amount of Warscrolls this book seemed fine for a long time. However it suddenly stopped interesting me. I didn't know exactly why then. I thought it might be the lack of actual Warscrolls that would be fun to play (which is certainly one part of it).

One Reason, Maybe?
However, with the release of the new Idoneth Book it struck me: To me there's nothing in those books anymore that makes me go wow. (I am not talking about competetive gaming):
When I look at the subfactions, there's nothing there that actually makes them feel different. It's a minor bonus rule to unlock a battleline here or grant a buff there. There's nothing left that makes me go: Wow, Nautilar seems to be really cool with their defensive playstyle, I want to paint and play my army that way. All of the subfactions aren't that different to one another anymore. They've become a carrier for more rules, nothing more.

Carrier for rules?
Overall it feels to me like the books have lost most of their flavour so far. Every units feels boring to me, nothing sparks imagination. It's the same old same old with minor tweaks. This might be caused by the (over-) streamlining of rules or a change in the 3.0 design philosophy.
Maybe this is caused by the unwillingness to actually spice armies up a little and to mix things up. Like completely rewriting a warscroll to be closer to what it does in lore, or adding more interesting interactions (more abilities). Stormcast at least have had quite a lot of fundamental Warscroll changes for better or for worse which kept them fresh for a long time.

On the inside
Another factor might be the rather bad internal balance. Keep in mind I am not talking about competetive gaming here. With this I mean that every unit should feel interesting and not like a burden. Sadly, as of now, books tend to have a really bad internal balance with crystal clear winners and a lot of obvious losers. This also limits what one can do with an army while not creating a feel bad situation for oneself.

Conclusion
This conclusion might be quite a leap. To me it seems that the books have become more or less a reprint with almost no new ideas and mostly minor tweaks to favour one playstyle over the other. There seems to be a shift away from making rules (and games?) flavourful and thematic - which is the number one reason I play this game. It seems like the books are mostly catered towards a competetive environment that doesn't need or want flavour, they want powerful Warscrolls and abilities. And the comp. players will be fine and even like this. However, most of us are not competetive players.

Reactions
After watching the Review of the new IDK book (and the Fyreslayers book) the friends I watched them with (some of whom have started these two armies about a month ago) said: Well, that sounds boring. And I had to agree.

Path to Glory, our saviour?
I hoped for PtG to give us more customisation, more options, more flavour! However it became stale really fast (with my SCE). It also seems to be neglected by GW. So will PtG fix the game for me? It depends on the future of the system.

Your opinion, your reasoning
I am interesting if I am the only one who feels this way. Maybe some of you feel the same way and they can articulate their impressions better then me (if so, please reply!) or have other ideas about what exactly is changing about the game that might be pushing us away from it.

 

 

Cheers 
Jack
 

[Enoby]

2 hours ago, JackStreicher said:

This conclusion might be quite a leap. To me it seems that the books have become more or less a reprint with almost no new ideas and mostly minor tweaks to favour one playstyle over the other. There seems to be a shift away from making rules (and games?) flavourful and thematic - which is the number one reason I play this game. It seems like the books are mostly catered towards a competetive environment that doesn't need or want flavour, they want powerful Warscrolls and abilities. And the comp. players will be fine and even like this. However, most of us are not competetive players

I think, overall, I do agree with your conclusion but it's hard to put my finger on why.

Certainly, I can say I was more excited for AoS 1 and 2 battletomes, and I do remember being a lot more wow'd by their warscrolls and allegiance abilities back then.

On the other hand, that could just be nostalgia talking - or at least the excitement that comes with the game being new. 

Regardless, as the game has matured it's seemed like there's been a push for more standardised battletomes and simpler Warscrolls. That doesn't necessarily mean weaker, but rather less 'creative' (or open to manipulation, depending on how you see it).

 It's very easy to point to AoS 0 where the Warscrolls were absolutely insane and had you act differently depending on the time of day, but it's been a long time since AoS 0 and we would probably be best looking at the beginning of AoS 2.

Slaves to Darkness came out early into AoS 2 and while the battletome and warscrolls themselves are controversial, I do think the abilities themselves are narratively inclined (Eye of the Gods especially, the different Tribes and their different playstyles, the Marks of the Gods etc.), but even then they got rid of some of the sillier rules like the Chaos Lords big stick of 2d6 death (the biggest tragedy of the book). Lumineth, while a lot more recent, is a very narratively inclined book with loads of exciting Warcrolls, and the reason that makes me think it's not just a nostalgia thing - their books and warscrolls feel fresh and creative, giving me a similar feeling to AoS 1. 

I don't have any empirical evidence, but from looking through the Warclans books, there's a lot to do tactically, but it feels a bit like fluff covering for bland (or perhaps too standardised) rules. 

I do think there are still fun warscrolls in the game and interesting allegiance abilities, but it feels like there are some that were designed with functionality over form.

Partially (if not mostly), I'd reckon the reason is that you can only have so many ways for rules to interact with one another, so we've often seen a lot of the new rules before. 

Path to Glory, if it had more work on it, would be a great way to add your own fluff - I really hope that they release a large book for PTG to help make it feel like a fully fleshed out game mode. 

[Noserenda]

Our group is enjoying the game still, but we are playing fairly small Ptg games. 

Main things id want: 

1. Up the Battletome releases as there is some major disparity at times in power and games design ethos between books and it sucks.

2. More Path to Glory support, ideally a campaign book or something giving more to do, have they ever come back to outposts even? Plus a revamped Anvil of Apotheosis!  

[madmac]

Have to agree with Jack here. The more battletomes we get for 3rd edition, the less interested I am in 3rd edition. Most of these books (and so far every one of them except Nurgle is for an army I have) just feel like boring downgrades that also cost and arm and leg. The new Fyreslayer battletome for example has no notable new art, the "new" lore looks like it could just fill a thimble, and as far as I can tell it actively makes my army not just less effective but less interesting with fewer options and far less flavor, which seems to be the overall trendline for 3E.

I haven't been excited about getting a new battletome for months now, all I get out of it is a vague sense of dread and a reminder that these guys go for apparently $55 a pop now.

I don't think it's all nostalgia either. 2nd Edition really shook things up for most armies, lots of them never had a proper battletome before then, or it was mechanically barebones so seeing them getting actual flavorful and interesting mechanics and working subfactions ect was quite exciting. The KO book for example was huge, it totally redid how the army played and made it fun and effective for the first time ever. These 3rd edition updates feel more like, well, 2nd Edition Sylvaneth. A book that didn't want to rock the boat, so it was basically 90% the same as the last tome with a few warscroll tweaks and didn't change anything particularly, a book that excited no one and caused a huge drop of interest in the army.

 

 

[Clan's Cynic]

It is kind of funny how the Fyreslayer 'tome is less than 100 pages, the Eldar book is around 200, but both cost £32.50.

[pnkdth]

1 minute ago, Clan's Cynic said:

It is kind of funny how the Fyreslayer 'tome is less than 100 pages, the Eldar book is around 200, but both cost £32.50.

Fyreslayers are shorter though, so take up less space.

[Dingding123]

And when everyone's Monstrous and Heroic...

No one will be.

[Arzalyn]

6 hours ago, JackStreicher said:

This conclusion might be quite a leap. To me it seems that the books have become more or less a reprint with almost no new ideas and mostly minor tweaks to favour one playstyle over the other. There seems to be a shift away from making rules (and games?) flavourful and thematic - which is the number one reason I play this game. It seems like the books are mostly catered towards a competetive environment that doesn't need or want flavour, they want powerful Warscrolls and abilities. And the comp. players will be fine and even like this. However, most of us are not competetive players.

I completely agree with you. I really like the 3rd core rules, they made the games more interesting with a lot more choices with the commands, heroic actions, monster rampages and choosing battle tactics. The tomes so far have been rather lackluster in comparison.

Before I start rambling about the 3rd tomes problem, I would like make clear I absolutely despise the rules release being tied to battle tomes that are released once per month/couple of months. I make some factions agonize with their tomes being outdated for most of the season while others suffer for having received earlier tomes that are left behind because they changed their design philosophy in the middle of the release process, as it takes around 2 years or more to release all of the tomes. I really wished they fixed all the factions together at the start of the edition, like they did with the FAQs for each tome when the 3rd dropped but with more deep changes when needed, and focused more in changing the game thought changes in battle packs/realm rules and punctual rules fixes when necessary.

Specifically about the 3rd tomes, I think the problem is that they reduced the rules in warscrolls and allegiances, but didn't compensate with other things. The flavor of a particular faction/sub/unit come from their rules, if you reduce the rules you have less places to express this flavor. I like that so far they keep the same format for subfactions, but I really wish they had done that while keeping the ability/command/trait/artifact of the old ones as they are much better at expressing what that sub faction was about. This make the new tomes feel like  just old tome with less things rather than something completely new.

1 hour ago, madmac said:

I don't think it's all nostalgia either. 2nd Edition really shook things up for most armies, lots of them never had a proper battletome before then, or it was mechanically barebones so seeing them getting actual flavorful and interesting mechanics and working subfactions ect was quite exciting. The KO book for example was huge, it totally redid how the army played and made it fun and effective for the first time ever. These 3rd edition updates feel more like, well, 2nd Edition Sylvaneth. A book that didn't want to rock the boat, so it was basically 90% the same as the last tome with a few warscroll tweaks and didn't change anything particularly, a book that excited no one and caused a huge drop of interest in the army.

As a Sylvaneth player I couldn't have given a better description. Other than rules changes, most of the new books have no new lore/images other than a paragraph or two about the new released model and a couple of rules for the new path to glory. It honestly begs the question why we need a new one if its 80% the same thing we had before except for a couple of rules that could easily been released on a PDF...

1 hour ago, Noserenda said:

2. More Path to Glory support, ideally a campaign book or something giving more to do, have they ever come back to outposts even? Plus a revamped Anvil of Apotheosis!  

Honestly I never understood why they don't release more supplements for narrative games. Most of they AoS community is made of casual players that generally love those kinds of options. Anvil of apotheosis was extremely praised, why don't give each tome its own version with customizable options for each of your heroes? They could even create a "sub allegiance anvil" like some 40k tomes have to let you build a sub faction that better capture your army fell! There is a lot that could be explored if they wanted to.

[mojojojo101]

I wonder how much the increased complexity in the core rules has pushed GW into making warscrolls and tomes less complicated in order to keep games down to a reasonable time.

As for battletomes as a product; they aren't worth the money, not even close, not even with a 20% third party discount. The only reason to buy a new one is for like the 3 or 4 pages of new lore and because you are obliged to have one when playing games at tournaments / with people you dont know that well. They desperately need more stuff in them, especially art and painting guides.

[Grimrock]

Interestingly enough, I think the Maggotkin book is one of the most fluffy books I've ever seen. It has a similar issue where sub factions have basically boiled down to giving you a single battalion benefit from previous books, but the army absolutely feels like Nurgle should feel. The internal balance is pretty good as well and there are almost no units where I feel like there's no way I'd ever use them in a game. Sure blight kings kill more than plaguebearers, but plaguebearers are better at objective control. Plague drones are fast, beasts of Nurgle flexible, nurglings help with summoning, etc etc. It certainly feels like Nurgle is less competitive than the strong builds in stormcast or warclans, but even then it isn't terrible and can stand up against all those meta mortal wound lists really well. 

All that being said, I'm feeling a bit of a lag in the community as well. Personally I think it's coming from a total lack of hype over upcoming releases. Even if we have a new book, people need that excitement about what's coming next. It motivates you to adapt and switch up your lists, to theory craft and debate, to get on the table and see how your army fairs against the new hotness. As we move into this season of slower releases and nothing particularly exciting on the horizon things are just feeling a little more flat than they should. At least for me anyway.

Edited March 6, 2022 by Grimrock

[Arzalyn]

32 minutes ago, Grimrock said:

Interestingly enough, I think the Maggotkin book is one of the most fluffy books I've ever seen. It has a similar issue where sub factions have basically boiled down to giving you a single battalion benefit from previous books, but the army absolutely feels like Nurgle should feel. The internal balance is pretty good as well and there are no units where I feel like there's no way I'd ever use them in a game. Sure blight kings kill more than plaguebearers, but plaguebearers are better at objective control. Plague drones are fast, beasts of Nurgle flexible, nurglings help with summoning, etc etc. It certainly feels like Nurgle is less competitive than the strong builds in stormcast or warclans, but even then it isn't terrible and can stand up against all those meta mortal wound lists really well.

I also like the Nurgle tome flavor, but I think its more a matter of the 1st tome rules not representing the army flavor well. They made the flavor better by expanding the disgusting resilient to the whole army and added disease, which is much more flavorful.  When we look at factions that had a tome with good flavor on the 2nd edition (Orruks, Idoneth, Fyreslayers, SCE) they didn't change much or generally lost some of their abilities. I expect that something similar will happen to Khorne when they get their new tome, which will probably make they fell more like Ironjawz (charging head on for combat) and less has 3D buff bubbles chess.

[Skreech Verminking]

I personally don’t own a faction that has a 3rd edition battletome, yet for the skaven I only fear-fear an update.

from a fluff stand point skaven are just barely fine with a points drop and a small faq chance to pf the skaven core rules.

Should the skaven get an battletome update, I would hate to see every random factor being changed to something less random, and the risk and reward system being removed, something I don’t want at all cost.

the randomness and risk/reward system must stay.

as for our currently more elite focus of third edition, I really would hate the idea of having clanrats and stormvermins becoming some-kind of felt like elite unit. It just wouldn’t be the skaven, if that would happen

 

[Beliman]

Sorry for the wall of text:

I think that it's all a matter of taste, but I have some complains with the philosophy of AoS. I get that the game wants to be more "arcade" (I will use a bit too much that word), more about playing and less about reading our battletome, try to look for the wombo-combo, hit hard and next game. 

The Core Rules are good (a lot better than before) but I think that they are not perfectly coherent. I really like the opportunities that the "passive" player have to interact with the "active" player, but this rules doesn't go with the flow of the game, instead, they are a  "STOP because I need to do that!". I like the direction but not sure what can be done to make all of this actions a bit more integrated. That's my first complain.

Warscrolls seems to be a lot less dense than before, but there are still good and fluffy rules inside some 3.0 warscrolls that remember a bit of old "joke" rules from early AoS:
 

Spoiler

Early AoS with the "grumble" joke:

New Skumdrekk warscroll from 3.0:

My second complain is that all this stuff is more like a "side-ability" that only a few units have (Guttrippaz Scaretaktikz is a good of example as a niche ability instead of a defining one). Imho, the miniatures should look how they play, this abilities are the soul of our units. If something has a lot of armor, it should take physical hits better than others, I don't mind to see a lot of 2+saves for SCE (chunky boyz) because they look like they can stop a train! At the same time, I expect canonballs to do more dmg than 10 archers.

And if this abilities are the flavour of our units, the  Allegiance Abilities are the  "soul" of our armies. Battle traits should explain the behaviour of our army on the table. As a KO player, we had The Code since first edition, and one of the first battletomes with subfactions:

Spoiler

The Code 1.0

 

The Code 2.0:

Appart from losing some redundant options from 1.0 to 2.0 we won a LOT of new Artifacts & Traits, and that's what makes our heroes more unique. And that's exactly my third complain: All of them are really restricted, they are not customizable option for our heroes, instead, they are just a tech-part of our wombo-combo. The first 3.0 battletomes have a lot of "Once Per Battle" artefacts, and the writters removed a lot of old options (less spells, prayers, etc...) in the new books.. The game becomes more Arcade (again), but without being easy to learn and fast to play (heroic actions, monstruous rampage, etc...). I just want to remember that Dwarfs in Fantasy (I know, it's another game, but just try to understand my point) we had full Runic System to build Artefacts for our Heroes:

Spoiler

Some runes that could be forged in to your weapons, shields, etc... for your heroes:

Conclusion:

Don't get me wrong, I like AoS. But I think there are some wasted oportunities here and there. And the community seems to be completely affected by this choises: look at the specialist army forums from TGA,  half of them are close to death (see Kruleboyz)!

What do I have to talk about? Lore seems to be missing (there isn't a lot to talk about and I'm buying all Soulbound books...), the rules are good but we already talked about them hundred of times (we are still waiting for FAQs btw), customization is non-existance and has become just a part of a wombo-combo (and it gets old really fast) and I'm afraid that the next book will amplify this feeling. That's a good picture of the state of the game.

Edited March 7, 2022 by Beliman
Grammar 2.0

[Doko]

I am a competitive player and 3.0 have been ugly and unfun.

First must have to keep thinking every turn about the strategic and grand strategic is cool because balance more the game but is time consuming and makes games longer.

New double 1 in spells is horrible,heroes with 2+ spells only for getting a double 1 are useless and cant cast more(nagash now is unfun to play with this)

New coherency.................is the WORST rule that i have seen in a war game in 20+ years,how heck units of 10 models with 25" base can attack and screen with no problem but if you have bigger base you are useless and umplayable.

 

Now tomes.

 

Sce tome,every cp deleted,enhacements useless worse than generics,alegiances and stormhost almost useless,70 of 80 scrolls have got deleted almost every hability that had and nerfed,then 5 units dont changed and 5 units broken to keep one viable build. So a boring tome where dont matter you choice of enhacement or stormhost because all are almost non effects and where you cant build competitive lists with 70 of their 80 scrolls.

Orcs book,again a boring book that could have been a FUN and great soup army as was cities of sigmar but no. We got a book with 3 diferents armys. Bonespliters only nerfed and simplified,kruelboyz have many tricks and is ok and then ironjaw that is boring but have some broken units as maw krushas or gore gruntas to makes them competitive.

Nurgle,i dont know anything about them,only that are top competitive now

New idomeths book,got nerfed every single scrolls and habilities,but one unit is broken and got every buff posible as was thralls doing them a top army and unfun to play against spaming thralls but out of thralls got a big nerf.

Fyreslayers:a aos0 army with 2 units got nothing new(only a foot hero), was middle\botton tier and got nerfs to every single unit of the tome and gonna be botton army in tournaments now,but as is the less played faction nobody care and are happy to have one rival less for tournaments.

 

I think all can be sumarice in a faill of edittion when i am excited that my vampires soulbligths with luck be the last in getting a tome because in this edittion get a tome is the same to get nerfed and simplified every unit and hability of your book

[TheMuphinMan]

I feel like a lot of the decisions made early to fix problems in multiple ways, created new problems.

 

for example

Before 2.0 there was a problem of keeping a wizard back then having a daisychain of models so the wizard could cast a buff spell that just reached the tail of the blob of models to buff the whole unit. So in 2.0 they raised the unbind range from 18" to 30" which now covers most of the field to add more "interaction". While this helped deal with the buff spells, it didn't fix the daisy chain problem with non-spell buffs so they added the "wholly within" term to most buffs. 

A side effect of the first change (which I feel is no longer really needed with the "wholly within" change) is that magic is now basically only remotely reliable if you had a caster with a large casting bonus since Nagash, LoC, Kroak, Teclis, etc could just unbind almost everything if they stood near the center of the field with their massive unbind bonuses. 

I feel like there is a lot of leftovers bandaids like this where they treated symptoms gradually and it resulted in some loss of flavor, like the reinforcement rules kneecapping skaven's horde identity or some StD coalition units being strong in god armies so they changed the keywords so the coalition units are now more or less the same as allies or that cavalry needs to have a horizontal unit in the back for the new coherency rules that was added to limit units from forming stretched out walls

Edit:
I feel like units should have coherency ranges on their warscrolls in the unit description

Description:
"A unit of (whatever) is armed with (weapon options). 1 out of X can take (upgrade) instead
While the unit has X or more models, the unit is coherent if all models are within X" of at least X other models in the unit
If the unit has less than X models remaining, the unit is coherent if all models are within X" of another model
A unit consisting of a single model is always coherent"

Edited March 5, 2022 by TheMuphinMan

[Gaz Taylor]

I’ll just add my thoughts and just to remind anybody, even though I’m a mod, I have no insider knowledge or anything like that.

Firstly, I think the core rules are great and yes there’s a couple of things I would tweak (coherency is top of the list) but I really like them. Combined with the Generals Handbook and the quarterly updates, I think the game is in a great place. Also with the generals handbook, it’s a great way to keep the game updated as you can tweak things.

Okay, now the point most people seem to be dwelling on - Excitement. To me this seems to be around what people thing of the new and forthcoming books as well as generally about the game. Personally, I suspect a global pandemic and worldwide shortages have had a hand in things. I don’t think anybody would disagree that things felt rushed when 3rd edition was revealed and I think the lack of gaming for a lot of people didn’t help. I remember when 2nd edition was shown off as I was at the UK Games Expo and there was quite a bit of fanfare about the game as well as a build up about how the story was moved forwards (plus I met Ian Livingstone and got a Fighting Fantasy book signed!) but this time there was none of that. The Broken Realms books were released machine gun like, so there was no build up between each book. 

With the new books I get why some people feel a bit ‘meh’ but I look at them like this. The AOS design team seem to be following a design principle of keeping things streamlined and I like that. Comparing that against 40K which has good core rules but feels bloated, I personally like why they are keeping it streamlined. I also think all the books that have come out or about to come out are just updates, so people are expecting good stuff to be bad and good stuff to be good. Plus apart from Stormcast and Orruks there are next to no new models, so nothing to be excited about. I’m hoping we get some cool reveals in a few weeks and everybody gets back to playing and enjoying games. Hopefully that gets some of you who are feeling like this a bit happier. Remember this is a hobby and an escape from the real world. Things have been horrible the last few years, which is why the hobby and games are great. 

[Ferban]

10 hours ago, JackStreicher said:

First off, this shall not be a discussion about competetive gaming.

Settling into the new Edition
With the start of AoS 3.0 I was enthusiastic about the game. The Core Rules seemed mostly great, a real improvement. As of late I've had a feeling that the game isn't really grabing me anymore. It's not due to the Core Rules though. I gave it a deep thought for a while and I came down to a somewhat foggy idea of a conclusion that is hard to formulate.

The actual issues began with thew first Battletomes:
Stormcast Eternals: Due to the sheer amount of Warscrolls this book seemed fine for a long time. However it suddenly stopped interesting me. I didn't know exactly why then. I thought it might be the lack of actual Warscrolls that would be fun to play (which is certainly one part of it).

One Reason, Maybe?
However, with the release of the new Idoneth Book it struck me: To me there's nothing in those books anymore that makes me go wow. (I am not talking about competetive gaming):
When I look at the subfactions, there's nothing there that actually makes them feel different. It's a minor bonus rule to unlock a battleline here or grant a buff there. There's nothing left that makes me go: Wow, Nautilar seems to be really cool with their defensive playstyle, I want to paint and play my army that way. All of the subfactions aren't that different to one another anymore. They've become a carrier for more rules, nothing more.

Carrier for rules?
Overall it feels to me like the books have lost most of their flavour so far. Every units feels boring to me, nothing sparks imagination. It's the same old same old with minor tweaks. This might be caused by the (over-) streamlining of rules or a change in the 3.0 design philosophy.
Maybe this is caused by the unwillingness to actually spice armies up a little and to mix things up. Like completely rewriting a warscroll to be closer to what it does in lore, or adding more interesting interactions (more abilities). Stormcast at least have had quite a lot of fundamental Warscroll changes for better or for worse which kept them fresh for a long time.

On the inside
Another factor might be the rather bad internal balance. Keep in mind I am not talking about competetive gaming here. With this I mean that every unit should feel interesting and not like a burden. Sadly, as of now, books tend to have a really bad internal balance with crystal clear winners and a lot of obvious losers. This also limits what one can do with an army while not creating a feel bad situation for oneself.

Conclusion
This conclusion might be quite a leap. To me it seems that the books have become more or less a reprint with almost no new ideas and mostly minor tweaks to favour one playstyle over the other. There seems to be a shift away from making rules (and games?) flavourful and thematic - which is the number one reason I play this game. It seems like the books are mostly catered towards a competetive environment that doesn't need or want flavour, they want powerful Warscrolls and abilities. And the comp. players will be fine and even like this. However, most of us are not competetive players.

Reactions
After watching the Review of the new IDK book (and the Fyreslayers book) the friends I watched them with (some of whom have started these two armies about a month ago) said: Well, that sounds boring. And I had to agree.

Path to Glory, our saviour?
I hoped for PtG to give us more customisation, more options, more flavour! However it became stale really fast (with my SCE). It also seems to be neglected by GW. So will PtG fix the game for me? It depends on the future of the system.

Your opinion, your reasoning
I am interesting if I am the only one who feels this way. Maybe some of you feel the same way and they can articulate their impressions better then me (if so, please reply!) or have other ideas about what exactly is changing about the game that might be pushing us away from it.

 

 

Cheers 
Jack
 

Thanks for your perspective!  Although I don't feel the same, it's always good to read different views.  

Although I play Narrative and Matched play, I do so very casually and locally.  I don't follow the "meta" trends and I don't net list.  So maybe that colors my perspective.  And, I've only been in the Warhammer hobby for a couple of years (picked it up during lockdown), though I've been an avid boardgamer for many, many years.  

But I actually really like the direction the Battletomes have gone so far.  SCE and Nurgle both feel flavorful to me - especially Nurgle.  With SCE, and it's bazillion warscrolls, you are going to have some stand-outs and some duds.  But even with the relatively modest number of Kruleboyz, Ironjaws, and Nurgle, almost all of the scrolls seem to have a use.  None are just utter duds (although, I understand competitive players might disagree).  

I also like that the sub-factions tend to layer up an additional rule.  Almost like your army has an extra adjustable battle trait.  To me, it makes the armies feel more cohesive rather than loosely aligned hodge-podges.  Which makes sense for SCE and Nurgle.  But maybe wouldn't be as good for Cities or some other factions.  

I don't play Fyreslayers or IDK.  So maybe those tomes are terrible (I don't have the knowledge or experience to opine).  But with the first three, I've been very pleased at how they have turned out and how the warscrolls and battle traits tend to reflect the lore.  Are there some mismatches or misses here and there?  Sure.  It's not perfect.  But I really prefer all three (SCE, Orruks, Nurgle) over their earlier tomes in terms of flavor and internal balance. 

I feel like the Core Rules are a significant improvement over 2.0 and that the new battletomes have been a very positive direction.  If there is any negative, it's that only a few factions have received new tomes and some are using rules from an older design philosophy that I don't prefer.  

And Path to Glory has been amazing!  If you want a way to tell a story and get involved, that is it.  You can create a whole backstory about your warband and tell their rise to prominence - along with their victories and setbacks.  My matched play games are fun, but they are one and done.  My PtG experiences have all gotten me super invested in the game and I've very much enjoyed that experience - even when the battleplan or matchup puts me at a competitive disadvantage.  

[Noserenda]

I certainly much prefer the streamlined BAttletome style to the bloated steaming mess that is 40k right now

[pnkdth]

3.0 feels like the bookkeeping edition. I enjoy objective centric games but many of them amount to "you're going to do this anyway so here's a gold star for remembering you're playing your army" and the new tomes + tome celestial have been quite silly in this regard. Heroic actions and monstrous actions has ended up less of an epic combat or monsters being awesome and more going through the motions and making sure you're checking boxes.

Knowing GW they're going to change their minds on streamlining the game halfway through the edition too. 🙃

The eternal tug of war between crunchy and streamlined will go on forever. Personally though, I think I just needed to step out of AoS for awhile since I'm in a "crunchy"-phase (Infinity and Malifaux). I can always come back when it feels fresh again. I believe this is something which would make a lot of us enjoy any game more really, step outside of your bubble. Play an awesome board game or do something completely different. Games should never end up feeling like a routine and that pile of potential will be right there waiting for you... Or you do like me and use for other games. Moreover, it is not a pile of shame, it is a pile of a project you WILL finish. If you can't, find a game which makes you 'want it' again.

TL;DR: Playing another game won't cause your minis to spontaneously combust and every memory you have will still be yours. I am sure the community will welcome you back with open arms when you're itching for a game again. Sometimes, we get burned out, our priorities change, and what we want is something else.

TL;DR 2: When your wargaming give you lemons, play another game and enjoy that lemonade.

[yukishiro1]

The Nurgle tome is great and is what battletomes should be. The other 3.0 tomes are all disappointing in different ways - Orruks because Bonesplitterz got done so dirty and because they somehow managed to create a whole new faction that just isn't very well thought out, SCE because the internal balance is atrocious and it's spawned the three most problematic units in the new edition (fulminators, dragons and longstrikes), and IDK and Fyreslayers for being clealry low effort reprints of their prior tomes, just with some of what was good and bad swapped in seemingly random ways. IDK may also end up being deeply problematic from a balance point of view as well due to what looks to be incredibly overpushed namarti. 

1 out of 5 being good is not a great start. But I recognize I'm more negative on stuff like this than most people. Maybe some people love the new non-Nurgle tomes. 

 

 

[novakai]

i think the problem with me and the Nurgle books it has the same problem as the other book but it in artefacts and sub abilities (example is the GUO plaguewind, the spell lore, and sub allegiances) and a lot of stuff felt rush like Disease points or written quite badly. Yes, it is a thematic book, but it definitely felt it lack the quality of writing a premium rulebook product especially at the new price. that why i still kind of put it in the dud pile right now.

i don't think lack of excitement is due to slow release because of pandemic since we are just slightly behind pace with one less book than the last edition rollout but really it just that GW is more focus on 40K at the moment and we just in a content drought right now.

i think my problem with the edition is that it not really streamlines either way with the rules but it also gave up flavor and because more cookie cutter making it the worst of all worlds losing its soul.

 

10 hours ago, Beliman said:

 

Conclusion:

Don't get me wrong, I like AoS. But I think there are some wasted oportunities here and there. And the community seems to be completely affected by this choises: look at the specialist army forums from TGA,  half of them are close to death!

What do I have to talk about? Lore seems to be missing (there isn't a lot to talk about and I'm buying everything of Soulbound...), the rules are good but we already talked about them hundred of items (we are still waiting for FAQs btw), customization is non-existance and has become just a part of a wombo-combo (and it gets old really fast) and I'm afraid that the next book will reduce all of this. That's a good picture of the state of the game.

TBF the specialist game forum has always been dead even before the new edition, but i always attribute to the fact that there not much to discuss about (Warcry list building is actually even more bland and WHU is well very complicated or niche)

[Lavieth]

I agree whole heartedly with you JS. I am also OK with the core rules as well. It has added a bit more interaction, cleaned things up but still needs a few small tweaks. The Path to Glory system has fostered my creativity when I look at the possibilities on how I'd want to collect new armies. I think there is a lot of elements to be really excited for at a base level. I think, much like yourself, the creativity and originality has felt minimized in the individual Battletomes so far. For myself, this is where 3rd Edition is really falling flat. 

Please keep in mind I am not a competitive or tournament player and there is an obvious bias about to follow. I get the sense that the louder and more vocal group of tournament/competitive player base has had an unfortunate impact on how GW has been designing rules. It is almost as if they have become a little gun shy because of the risk of social media or "influencer" lashback. The company still has a responsibility to their shareholders and negative media/news will play some kind of role. I rather enjoyed the smaller fun rules that made war scrolls unique, even if they were sometimes forgotten. It would be nice for the competitive players to remember that GW never forced them to spend their money on an army and it was the individuals choice to spend their money. Is it frustrating? It sure is, I've had an Eldritch Council and Order Draconis army removed from the game. It was annoying, but those were the models I chose to collect. I've been a Sylvaneth player for a few years now. The strength, or lack thereof, of the units has never left me with a feel I'm putting myself at a disadvantage when playing. It is mode about trying to solve a problem using different tools and just having fun while doing it. Perhaps by keeping that in mind there would be less complaining about everything being "nerfed". Instead of just wanting to play with the strongest stuff, maybe just be a little more creative with what is presented. I would love to see units have rules that match their narrative, but that ship feels like it was sunk. Mini rant over. 

As for the actual Battletomes, GW does need to do a better job filling them out. What do moat of us do when we get them? We flip through the pages and look at the art. Add in an extra 4 to 8 pieces of full page art to excite the fans and show the armies different sub factions in art form. How cool would it have been in the Fyreslayers book for a new art piece of the Lofnir lodge? How about a full page depicting a soulscryer with a few units of namarti reavers behind enemy lines from the briomdar enclave? The art is an interesting and evocative way to get people excited or even pick a new army and theme it. I remember back in the 5th edition high elf book a sweet picture of a swordmaster of hoeth. That piece inspired me to build an army from Hoeth and had the swordmasters as my favorite unit for years. 

The other area of the current Battletomes that is really in need of an infusion is the actual narrative. Where are the short stories that guide you to understand the armies or even characters in them? Write 3 or 4 proper stories to fill in the gaps in the gaps to showing their way of war. Once again calling back to my trusty 5th edition high elf book, we have the Battle of Finuval Plains. How amazing was that story? Did it illustrate how incredible Tyrion and Teclis were? Heck yeah it did. Where is my story about Elethaiel  the Arch-Revenant leading a sylvaneth Heartwood Glade into a Nurgle infested area to kill a Harbinger of Decay and begin purifying the forest? How about one of Glumglogg and his Big Yellerz ambushing a Slaanesh host? These elements are what I really miss in Age of Sigmar that WHFB Army Books had. It is just a really big missed opportunity to give really define the setting, motives and characters for each faction. Plus as an added bonus it give a lot more value for the cost that comes along with the books. 

[zilberfrid]

On one hand I vastly prefer smooth rules for a game to clunky ones, and (except for coherency rules) 3rd brings this.

On the other hand, if the rulebooks are empty, their price gets even less fair. And then they increased the price and removed free warscrolls.

Removing stuff from warscrolls and removing free warscrolls also nerfs coalition based (sub) factions while increasing their real world cost.

So while I do think smoothing the game down improves it, coherency and vastly increased page costs (as well as needing more books if you want to bring allies) makes it a net negative.

[Beliman]

3 hours ago, novakai said:

the specialist game forum has always been dead even before the new edition

I was talking about the specialist army. Kharadron, sylvaneth, hedonites, etc...

[Bosskelot]

The flavour and theme of the armies that have had their 3.0 tomes really just doesn't feel like it's there for the most part. I think the streamlining and less complexity is fine for an army like Stormcast because they're bursting with Warscrolls and are meant to be a beginner army, but that also means I struggle to get excited about painting or playing the nice new models they got.

It really is night and day between AOS and 40k in their new editions so far. While you can absolutely criticise 40k for its bloat with campaign supplements and the wild time we have at top level competitive events, the sheer flavour and effort that has gone into the Codexes is really impressive. Never has there been such a concerted effort to make every army flavourful, evocative of its lore and to really properly flesh out each armies subfactions. I picked up my Aeldari codex yesterday and comparing it to every 3.0 tome so far it's like it was made by a different company. I have not been this excited to play my Eldar in ages and specifically not been this excited to run 95% of the Codex in practically ever. It's bursting at the seams with possibilities and fun thematic army ideas. Even lower tier armies like Necrons are still interesting and mostly reflect their lore.

What's funny is I swear the situation used to be switched. AOS was the game that tried to be as evocative and as crazy as possible, whereas 40k was much more homogenous in 8th at least.