The State of the Game

[Flippy]

4 hours ago, Lavieth said:

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.

So true 😄. While this old book is shorter than the current Lumineth tome, it feels the other way round. The problem is with the stories and how you can represent them in a game; the old stories were more focused on human-level characters with flaws and actual emotions (teen fantasy level, but still) and the game provided much more space to customise your heroes (steeds, equipment, looong list of magic weapons, armours, amulets…). Seems to  me now that it was some influence of WH RPG that still lingered in WFB and provided this charm.

[Kempak]

I am a causal player. So far since covid UK restrictions lifted I've played 2 games. My armies we my main fyreslayers and secondary army ogors. At the time using 2.0 batteltomes faq'd as best of possible. We played in a few store and a few times reffered to the sm for clarifications.

I do prefer the new detachment style for things like vanguard or warlord etc having slots filled rather than points.okay may not be os op as battalions but I hardly ever used them due to their cost in points. 

This new update on the battlesmith is a kneecap job honestly. While you can use a cp too give +1 saves I'd rather save it for something else. 

My first game against savage orks was quite even, but the +1 bubble save of the battlesmith was crucial. 

Secons battle ogors against fec so that was interesting mage my tyrant have a 2+/4+ save each turn so was very hard to shift. Ogors did seem to benefit in 3.0 also it did show hoardes have taken a hit with the new reinforced rules as it makes it harder for them to spam large units. Something that as a more elite army player I appreciate.

Debating to order fyreslayer batteltome guess wait to hear a bit more. I'm hopeful as other gets update it will be more balanced.to.a degree. 

I am hopeful things will improve mixed feelings some things I preferred in 2.0 others I am liking in 3.0 maybe see the state by end of year. We can always hope 4.0 and the unbraneth will fix it

[Kaleb Daark]

45 minutes ago, Flippy said:

So true 😄. While this old book is shorter than the current Lumineth tome, it feels the other way round. The problem is with the stories and how you can represent them in a game; the old stories were more focused on human-level characters with flaws and actual emotions (teen fantasy level, but still) and the game provided much more space to customise your heroes (steeds, equipment, looong list of magic weapons, armours, amulets…). Seems to  me now that it was some influence of WH RPG that still lingered in WFB and provided this charm.

I'd go with that.

I was at warhammer world the other day on a day trip, and I walked away with nothing.  I'd programmed myself to spend on a Khorne dragon if they had one in stock but that's off the cards now anyway as once again it's no longer available.

I can honestly say that since 3rd landed there's been nothing to float my boat, even going as far as reading the new rules and thinking wow.. I've got to try this.

And all the while as Jack has said, the thing bugging me has been nebulous and indefinable and it's frutrating because as a result I can't really put my finger on it or why.

The best way i can describe it would be that I'm trying to see something to get enthusiastic about through a thick dense fog.  I can hear what people are saying, but I'm not getting it.

 

I totally agree that battletomes are not good value anymore.  They're lore thin, and the padding comes from warscrolls and lots of pages that seem to be there for no other reason than being there.   And like you I pick up an old fantasy army book, especially 5th and 6th and I still can't believe how packed with lore and list inducing enthusiasm it is.

It doesn't help that I reread my Tamurkhan book the other week, and that sent some pangs through me.  That's how I'd love to see a battletome or campaign edition book.

But yes, I think for me the overriding sentiment is that I know something about it just isn't doing it, and the frustrating part is that I just can't put my finger on what it is.

[Noserenda]

Aww yeah Tamurkhan and the Bestinary book fw did were amazing, its a damn shame noone bought them apparently

[Lavieth]

2 hours ago, Flippy said:

So true 😄. While this old book is shorter than the current Lumineth tome, it feels the other way round. The problem is with the stories and how you can represent them in a game; the old stories were more focused on human-level characters with flaws and actual emotions (teen fantasy level, but still) and the game provided much more space to customise your heroes (steeds, equipment, looong list of magic weapons, armours, amulets…). Seems to  me now that it was some influence of WH RPG that still lingered in WFB and provided this charm.

Ha ha! 😀 Thank you for sharing the image. This is exactly it. I see that and am instantly filled with regret I sold my swordmasters. I started to look on ebay to see about maybe getting 1 unit just to bring me back to the Tower of Hoeth. I know there is nostalgia there with the swordmasters, but I have 0 regrets for selling my IDK and NH because there is nothing like the above to create emotional attachment or help me build a narrative in my imagination.

As Kaleb was saying those older books really were packed with lore even though they were shorter. They also included a lot of recycled stories, but there was enough creativity in there for it to not matter. I'm thinking about the way you would build Lord's and Heroes in the WFB days now and wondering how great that could be applied to AoS. I mean, the basic structure is there anyways. Just imagine if a Runefather could select 100 points of runic items but a Runeson was limited to 50 points just as an example. Or, even a Treelord Ancient with 100 points of magic items and a Branchwraith with 50 points. Talk about the actual variety you'd see again. Gosh I miss that lol. 

The 40k lore and themes flooding each of the recent codeci has the embers starting to glow. I've already started to build a sort of "choose your own adventure" narrative campaign and I cannot wait to get some terrain painted for it ( follow the ToP march pledge for future updates). My hope is when the Sylvaneth book comes out I will be just as excited for them to be on the table as I am about my Custodes and my friends armies in 40k. This is the primary reason why I hope they bring out some Path to Glory support in the future and bring back the Anvil of Apotheosis in the GHB 2022. 

[acr0ssth3p0nd]

7 hours ago, Bosskelot said:

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.

It's funny you should mention Necrons - the discrepancy between the Aeldari codex and the Necrons codex is what pushed me over the edge to quit 40K again. I'm a long-time Necrons player, and currently Aeldari shuriken catapults are better at filling the gameplay fantasy of Necron gauss flayers (basic infantry weapon that can deal reliable and useful chip damage to tanks and monsters) than Necron gauss flayers. Indeed, the Necrons rules are very much not evocative of the lore, because every other army can do at least one Necron thing better than Necrons. The state of the Necrons in general is a prime indication (amid a sea of other similar indications) of a codex design process that has no restraint or consistent vision, and shows that a faster release cycle to address design problems also speeds up codex creep, effectively replacing one problem with an exacerbated version of another.

For all you can say about the 3.0 AoS Battletomes, they show some level of restraint, SC Dragons being an exception. For every rule that gets scaled up, something else usually gets scaled back just as much. And the core mechanics for each tome seem to actually work consistently, which is more than you can say for Necrons' Reanimation Protocols. I'm not saying the 3.0 tomes are universally good tomes, but at least it indicates that the AoS team has an eye on the health of the game in that area.

Between that and the AP creep, and I would very much warn that "the grass is greener" should be ringing around the heads of any AoS players looking enviously at 40K. Lack of Path to Glory support aside, I would absolutely take the state of AoS over the state of 40K right now.

Edited March 6, 2022 by acr0ssth3p0nd

[Nos]

The game right now I think is better for people who don't want to eat, drink and breathe it and buy every Battletome to understand every potential match up. That does mean Battletomes are devalued though.

But for me that's a good sign in the sense that rules to play the game against any potential opponent shouldn't be paywalled, and Battletomes are a pay wall so huge you can see them from space.

As someone who played Warhammer from 5th to 7th, I can tell you that Army Books were exactly the same, but worse. It seems rather unintuitive that a system designed to refresh all that is going back there.

The fundamental thing with Warhammer is that its asymmetry in factions, very much a strong point, is what makes it what it is. But that's also what makes it incredibly hard if not impossible to balance.

The only real balance is player expectation. Players playing Thematic tomes because they want it yo feel evocative- it won't feel that way if they get squished by an apex synergy that tables them on turn 2.

I only see it going one way: Competitive and Narrative gaming. These are also by far the most lucrative markets.

I think most people play competitive AOS because its popular, accessible, lots of options for list building, and models are good. For that format to maintain popularity, theme dosent matter as long as *illusion of difference* is there. Playing Idoneth should be different to playing Chaos should be different to playing Sons etc. From that angle, 3.0 is far better at creating Rock Paper Scissors forces.

For non-competitive gamers, there is always the caveat that they're your toys and you can do what you want with them. The best way to engineer a fun thematic game is to do that- engineer it. And I think for most of  GW's history that's what most of its staff, as game designers and people with lots of time to invest in this stuff, have done. But are finally coming round to the idea that not everyone else is in that boat do are more explicitly fiving the tools they use to do that eg PTG.

For gamers who are casual, who don't want to invest in either of the above, who want to net list but without the thought behind it, or who want to "feel" their army but without any investment in the context around that etc- I think the game will leave them behind because either one is liable to be dissapounted in an uncontrolled environment for those games.

In short I think they're actually far better at articulating what they want AOS to be now - A streamlined competitive game with models, or a narrative sandbox. Both of those require a level of investment a lot of people don't have.

But its entirely in keeping with the direction of GW. As I said about + last year, their intention is the creation of an eco system that requires constant investment, as with the MCU. You'll feel more and more like you're missing out if you're not part of it all. Because- well, you are. By design. To encourage  you to spend money to keep up with it.

Edited March 6, 2022 by Nos

[sandlemad]

5 hours ago, Noserenda said:

Aww yeah Tamurkhan and the Bestinary book fw did were amazing, its a damn shame noone bought them apparently

Tbh I think it was less sales - which admittedly probably weren't great, as with most WHFB stuff around then - and more that the ideas for that series of books ran headlong into GW proper's plans for the End Times and AoS. Even the version of Tamurkhan we got was apparently seriously dialed back from Rick Priestly's original concepts, another example of poor communication between FW and the rest of GW. Imagine how disheartening that would have been to discover.

[novakai]

9 hours ago, Beliman said:

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

Eh I think their been less traffic on the forum in general in the last few year and took a sharp dive every since the pandemic hit and really there a lot of stuff going on in the world still. 

I don’t know why those are consider specialist army either unless you mean Kharadron is because they are all shooting

[zilberfrid]

4 minutes ago, novakai said:

Eh I think their been less traffic on the forum in general in the last few year and took a sharp dive every since the pandemic hit and really there a lot of stuff going on in the world still. 

I don’t know why those are consider specialist army either unless you mean Kharadron is because they are all shooting

I think they meant threads or subfora for any specific faction.

[yukishiro1]

I do think de facto getting rid of sub-factions is a mistake, especially when it devolves to the point it does in the SCE book where the main reason to pick a subfaction is often what spam lists it unlocks. I think they went in precisely the wrong direction on that one - what they should have kept is the interesting, thematic rules, not the "you can take X overtuned unit as batteline" rules. It's good they don't force you to take a command trait and artefact any more, but by removing most of the interesting abilities, they end up feeling extremely thin and not the sort of thing that inspires you to make armies any more - except of the spam variety when they unlock spam potential, which is not the sort of inspiration you should be aiming for. 

 

[Kaleb Daark]

8 hours ago, Noserenda said:

Aww yeah Tamurkhan and the Bestinary book fw did were amazing, its a damn shame noone bought them apparently

 

2 hours ago, sandlemad said:

Tbh I think it was less sales - which admittedly probably weren't great, as with most WHFB stuff around then - and more that the ideas for that series of books ran headlong into GW proper's plans for the End Times and AoS. Even the version of Tamurkhan we got was apparently seriously dialed back from Rick Priestly's original concepts, another example of poor communication between FW and the rest of GW. Imagine how disheartening that would have been to discover.

It wasn’t even that sadly, although you are both right.

 

The biggest obstacle to those books selling was that GW in its event packs clearly stated gw armybooks only.

no tamurkhan and no monstrous arcanum.

who the hell was going to drop 350 quid on a war mammoth that you couldn’t play in a throne of skulls

They were very short sighted like that.

the last throne of skulls of 8th they said go for it.  My mate ran and won the chaos dwarf list and trophy for that event.  The first legion of azgorh list ever seen at throne.

That event was a sea of forgeworld gribblies from carmine dragons to dread saurians and every orc army was running an idol- it was brilliant.

I faced a dude and his ogre army loaded with rhinox cavalry, and an empire player with a landship. And I finally ran a khorne chaos lord  on war mammoth- It was glorious.

 

i agree about building the character- it made the character feel like he and the army belonged to you and was yours, the way you wanted it.   When AoS landed it took me a long time to get my head around the fact that it was all about the model and the model was the scroll.

Now although not true, i still just see the current system as using models as placeholders for warscrolls.

I prefer the old way, and the way that 40k has done it with building your character and equipment, but that’s just me, and not a criticism of the game per se.

but going back to the original point- come on, a picture of the dragon or the exalted proper looking thirster in the blades book wouldn’t have hurt would it?

gw always play the poor sales line, but lets face it, as far as fw and the main game was concerned, the only people who knew it existed  were those who knew.  That was the saddest part.

 

[yukishiro1]

Yeah there was a massive amount of FW stuff that I never even knew about back in the day as a kid playing fantasy. Like I literally had no clue that stuff even existed. 

[LuminethMage]

On 3/5/2022 at 10:36 PM, Enoby said:

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.

That made me laugh a bit, because when that Battletome came out there was so much malice thrown around about the rules of LRL (I don't mean you personally Enoby). Not only about the power level, but how complicated it is, and how LRL just ignore all the rules. The "Winseeker", "Winriders", all the NPE talk about Teclis, large war scrolls with a lot of abilities etc. It went up all to people on this site to call for a boycotting LRL. 

I think that a big part of the AoS community just prefers melee armies that run at each other and smash things. Everything else seems to get the NPE stamp of disapproval very fast (overstated of course, but I think there is that tendency in AoS). And GW to their credit seems to listen to that feedback, that people don't enjoy shooty armies, magic and abilities that brake the core rules. But probably there aren't so many ways to make interesting, differentiated and relatively balanced rules for what in the end are similar play styles. That's why a lot of the new Warscrolls might look a bit bland now. 

For me personally, making both the Hyshian Twinstones and Chronomatic Cogs pretty much useless made the playstyle I liked most (running around with small mages doing cool stuff) almost impossible, which made the game less enjoyable than AoS2, even though I think the AoS3 core rules are much better and engaging. From a power level I can still play LRL without any issues, but it's just much less fun. 

Because I had less fun I started looking into 40K, especially with the new Eldar Codex coming up. And that seems to be a different beast altogether. Balance seems to be worse than in AoS (with always one/two books being just super strong), and there are a lot more rules. The former is of course bad, but the latter could be more fun in the end. Depends on the person I guess. I like more "crunchy" rules, so I'll give it a try.

Some part of the lacking enthusiasm with AoS might just come from a combination of Covid, and really not much going on right now in terms. A Battletome with one new model isn't that exciting if there isn't also some lore progress etc. 

 

 

[Kadeton]

The current streamlining phase of AoS certainly isn't the most exciting time to be interested in the game. Where units do have special rules, they're almost always something that just enhances the raw numbers on the scroll - conditional +1 bonuses, ward saves, and mortal wounds on certain rolls - rather than giving the unit any sort of unique capability that speaks to its role on the battlefield. The good aspect is that those rules are all easy to understand and apply, with no room for misinterpretation; the bad aspect is that they're all just bland modifiers to the basic mathhammer of the game.

It would be great to see more of the designers' creativity on display, with warscroll abilities that don't fit neatly into a mathhammer-based optimisation process to discover an army's singular "best" warscroll and spam the heck out of it. And honestly, I'm sure we'll get there - these things always go in cycles. In half an edition or so, it'll come back around to battletomes adding a bunch of crazy, flavoursome, unbalanced nonsense again.

... Assuming we're still around after World War III kicks off, anyway. There's kind of a lot going on in the real world right now, it's pretty distracting from the hobby.

[Beliman]

Wall of thext incoming

3 hours ago, LuminethMage said:

That made me laugh a bit, because when that Battletome came out there was so much malice thrown around about the rules of LRL (I don't mean you personally Enoby). Not only about the power level, but how complicated it is, and how LRL just ignore all the rules. The "Winseeker", "Winriders", all the NPE talk about Teclis, large war scrolls with a lot of abilities etc. It went up all to people on this site to call for a boycotting LRL. 

I agree, but I don't think that @JackStreicher is talking about that. NPE or having better number/stats than other units is something that I expect, that's why erratas and FAQs can clean this mess (or not). But Lumineth had a LOT of rules that come directly from their Lore. Just look how many layers they have/can use:

• Battle Traits: Aetherquarz, Absorb Despair and Lightning Reactions (with three tables: traits, artefacts and Spell Lore)
  • Vanari Battle Traits: Shinning Company (with two tables: traits and artefacts).
  • Scinari Battle Traits: Deep Thinkers (with two tables: traits and artefacts).
  • Hurakan Battle Traits: Move Like a Wind (with three tables: traits, artefacts and Spell Lore).
  • Alarith Battle Traits: Enduring as Rock and Tectonic Force (with three tables: traits, artefacts and Spell Lore).
• Great Nations (crossover with Settler's Gain and specialist cities for each temple that has rules).

Not going to lie, it's crazy!! You can see how GW tried to build Lumineth and then look at Kharadron Overlords:

• Battle Traits: Aether-gold and The Code (but we lose The Code if we take any Skyport). 
• Skyports (crossover with Tempest's Eye)

[Note: I still think that Lumineth Sunweapons should do mortal wounds on To Wound rolls, that will not change their fluff and it will be a lot better for everyone. I don't think that any ranged unit should ignore LoS, ever... that will not make Lumineth really diferent from their Lore. But that's just some minor things that are not part of this thread]

My point is that Lumineth have a lot of lore-friendly rules going on, and their Lore seems to be more polished than others: They have some backstory like the Clone-Wars, a lot of small stories, and their characters are the ones that push the story onward. And talking about characters, they are the perfect tools to explain their history, to make the army feel more "alive" and to spice your lists (appart from that wombo-combo... my third complain about AoS btw). Let's see how many of them can be used on the table:

• Teclis
• Ellania and Ellathor
• Lyrior
• Myari (Underworlds)
• Sevireth
• Eltharion
• Avalenor

And then look at Kharadron Overlords:

• Bjorgen (Underworlds).
• Brokk
• Dagnai (Cursed City).

Let's be honest, even if we have a lot of names on our backstories like Brokrin (Iron Dragon and Profit's Ruin) or Borri Kraglan (just give me a Female Admiral model!), we can't play with them! And we don't have enough tools to customize our AoS heroes, so we usually end with a lot of clones (everybody knows that Barak-Urbaz is the most rich skyport because they were the first ones to sell the Spell in the Bottle with WLV to their Khemists 😅).

16 hours ago, acr0ssth3p0nd said:

It's funny you should mention Necrons - the discrepancy between the Aeldari codex and the Necrons codex is what pushed me over the edge to quit 40K again.

I understand the frustation, Necrons are at the same spot of 2.0 Nighthaunts and it sucks. In AoS, we have some discrepancies too, like lances that are 1" and sword/axes that are 2", Cannons doing the same dmg as an arrow, or Swords that have better To Wound rolls than aether-powered Drills (?).

[Charleston]

I agree that AoS 3.0 feels currently way less tempting to play or tinker with than before. I assume that there are several reasons for this, but the mentioned new write style of the books is certainly a factor. 

3.0 has several things going on:

• The release pace dropped hard since the Broken Realms Campaign. Were were used to have big news with some rule updates, kits that tempted to start new army projects and new lore, all coming every 1-3 months. Since dominion was announced, were had barely seen any releases. It took months until the  SCE and Orruk ranges were available. and the same time till Nurgle dropped. While we have the roadmap for upcoming books, it is still a way slower release time than we got used to from 2.0
• New design philosophy in rules. While I really like the fact that each 3.0 tome I've seen so far felt like it matched the rules of the faction really really well, I agree with @JackStreicher that the new approach of "just pick a boon" feels more bland than the subfactions in 2nd Edition. There is a simple reason for that: Limitations breed creativity. Now it is just "Pick whatever matches the most or what is the best" with little to no limitation.
• GW's approach of designing book after book instead of pre-writing most of them to match a certian powerlevel. Due to this we see some new (often important) rules to be slapped in each new tome after the first one that the designers came up with. We already see that the 3 first books simply lack the approach of faction unique Monstrous Rampages/Heroic Actions which GW meanwhile provided to many factions by WD. It's an easy hint that shows how the first 3.0 books were written in an early design step.
• As we are at the beginning of a new battletome cycle, many people simply do not want to get too invested in factions that have an uncertain time until a new battletome. Why bothering progress with your army when in 3-6 months a new book may invalidate the new units you got? Or what when you have to worry that your freshly painted minis will be useless? While I know that this shouldn't be an argument as painting/building the models we like is a major part of the hobby, yet I know of many players who simply do not want to risk this again, as it leaves a bad feeling behind. 

[Gaz Taylor]

1 hour ago, Charleston said:

The release pace dropped hard since the Broken Realms Campaign. Were were used to have big news with some rule updates, kits that tempted to start new army projects and new lore, all coming every 1-3 months. Since dominion was announced, were had barely seen any releases. It took months until the  SCE and Orruk ranges were available. and the same time till Nurgle dropped. While we have the roadmap for upcoming books, it is still a way slower release time than we got used to from 2.0

Totally agree with this and you’ve explained it better than I did when I mentioned it 😁

I also don’t think it helped with the previews after Dominion dropped, we’re all quite lack lister and came across as an afterthought. There was lots of cool preview videos in 2nd edition when announcing things and they seemed to have been dropped for very function videos (which are nice as well but not exciting).

Again with Adepticon coming up and the  previews that will be happening, I’m hoping AOS gets a lot more stuff shown off and that will help get people excited as they go out gaming more.

[RuneBrush]

As with Gaz, the usual disclaimer that I don't have special lines into GW, nor have any idea what's coming along 😉

From a personal perspective, I don't think AoS3 should have been released when it was.  I know that's a bit of a sweeping statement, but I'm of the feeling that a 3 year version cycle is too short (it's a tabletop game, not a computer game), plus pandemic lockdowns meant a drop in games in the UK and playtesting being next to impossible (and at times illegal).  A number of battletomes were also developed under the same circumstances and people learning how to do remote working in a team meant the battletomes created didn't have the same environment to be created in.

One of the joys of AoS when it launched was that the core rules were so simple they existed on a few pages and most units were pretty simple and straightforward to use in a game.  The generals handbook then dropped and we started off with the destructive "escalation" process, where each iteration of a battletome or rules tried to be more powerful than the previous one.  New miniature releases are expected to have rules that make them a "must have", but nobody wants to limit them - let's be honest having an entire army of behemoths (dragons, mega gargants, magmadroths etc) sounds great on paper, but just isn't something people really want to be seeing placed down against them - and I include friendly and competitive games in that.  The trouble is that if every new unit has special rules, you end up with the situation where everything has special rules - you've raised the bar of "normal".  The solution is to simplify units, however you risk making them a lot more bland - Stormcast being a great example because there are simply too many units for one army.

The AoS devs are between a rock and a hard place though.  Unlike 40k you don't have a toughness mechanic, so everything has to work within a "to hit" and "to wound" attribute.  Mortal wounds are now super common as are ward saves.  With limited mechanics there will be a certain amount of recycled ideas and when an army is filled with "specials", the repetition becomes even more pronounced.

[Gaz Taylor]

53 minutes ago, RuneBrush said:

With limited mechanics there will be a certain amount of recycled ideas and when an army is filled with "specials", the repetition becomes even more pronounced.

Yup. It’s striking that balance which is tough as you won’t please everybody but you have to try and cater for them.

I remember many years ago (25ish!!!), I think it was Jervis or Andy C who said why would you use Dark Angels or Blood Angels in 2nd edition 40K if you didn’t want to use Deathwing or Death Company. I think there is still some of that mindset now with some players but there’s a community who want to play those forces because they like the background. It’s getting the balance right. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more command abilities and strategies with forthcoming Generals Handbooks and source books. 

[yukishiro1]

I agree it's mostly a lack of forward momentum. Very little has happened since the launch of AOS 3 - no lore progression whatsoever, and very limited gameplay changes. And because the overall structure of the new tomes seems to be based around removing as many or more things than they add, they don't necessarily give you a feeling of forward momentum either. What's the main changes we've seen in AOS3 since launch? The Stormdrake debacle, overly pushed Longstrikes and Fulminators, Bonesplitterz getting gutted, Archaon and Nagash being nerfed? They released a whole new faction that looked interesting at first but that seems to basically add up to "spam a ranged MW casino unit for a 45% win rate." The Nurgle book is a solid thumbs up from me, but I'm struggling to find other clear success stories. 

The much-vaunted balance update that was explicitly supposed to buff weak factions ended up being a bit of a Friday-afternoon special in terms of effort and even less in terms of impact. The biggest change we've really seen for underpowered factions since AOS 3 is arguably the BoC buff, and that was in a white dwarf.

It all adds up to an underwhelming package. 

Edited March 7, 2022 by yukishiro1

[readercolin]

The state of the game is fine.  Heck, I would even rate it as great.  AoS 3 is a massive improvement over AoS 2, and so far every book that has been released has evoked the flavor of that faction in both the units and the army abilities, and honestly I think that most of the people complaining about it have just been stewing in negativity, or been listening to the complaining echo chamber for too long.

In case you are wondering, yes, I do actually play the game.  Heck, I would go so far to say that I am probably well above average in game time.  Last summer after the new edition dropped, I was averaging 1 game a week.  Starting last fall, as more things opened up, I was able to bring that up to 2 games a week on average.  I currently play Cities of Sigmar, Stormcast Eternals, Kharadron Overlords, and Slaves to Darkness, and I also have both Sylvaneth and Lumineth on my painting table getting them ready to see the field (hopefully this spring... unless I get distracted with other stuff again - and in case you are wondering, I've been debating about adding Ironjaws, Idoneth deepkin, and even an all-magmadroth fyreslayers to my table).

With every single army that I play, I am still interested in them, and still interested in trying new things out with them.  Most of them I don't, because I am controlling my spending and not just going out and getting that new unit because "that would be cool, I want to try that"... or in the case of Kharadron Overlords "I refuse to paint any more rivets... I'm NOT buying another boat".  But I play with my armies on the table, figure out what went well, what didn't, and what could be fun to field the next time I play.  I love that GW is making changes with the books to open up play styles and cool units without having to worry about buying and painting "taxes".  I love that they are making it easy to get your models out and experiment with them, and not lock you in with artefacts and other enhancements just for taking a specific subfaction.  I like that the books are carriers for rules, and they leave the flavor up to the player who is making their army theirs.

Overall, again, I find the state of the game as great.  I hope that GW continues to release future books that open up more flexibility to their players.  If GW releases a new Sylvaneth book this summer, I hope that there is an option to make Treelords and Kurnoth Hunters battleline.  I look forwards to not being locked into specific command traits, or being required to take specific artefacts.  I look forward to making my army MY army, and not feeling obligated to get certain things and build them certain ways because "thats the 'flavor' of the faction".  No.  It is MY army.  I make it.  I build it.  I give it the flavor that I want it to have, and I appreciate that GW is giving me more flexibility to be able to hobby MY way - not the way of someone else who thinks that it should look different than my vision for it.

[novakai]

TBF I though not AoS 2.0 tomes where good with it structure but it was just the writer not having an editor that create really bad balances amongst certain army, really if they had kept sub faction and spell lore/ artifacts where they where from last edition I think it would have been better then straight up downgrading option like they have. Really they just focus on too much of being cookie cutter. 
 

There does feel a lack of momentum right now and the stuff that Phil Kelly said during the 3.0 video really rings hollow now, like they wanted to balance the game with lower effort.

[yukishiro1]

37 minutes ago, readercolin said:

The state of the game is fine.  Heck, I would even rate it as great.  AoS 3 is a massive improvement over AoS 2, and so far every book that has been released has evoked the flavor of that faction in both the units and the army abilities, and honestly I think that most of the people complaining about it have just been stewing in negativity, or been listening to the complaining echo chamber for too long.

I'm glad you're enjoying yourself (genuinely - not being snarky at all), but there's no need to flame people who feel differently. The feelings of being underwhelmed (or at least whelmed) are clearly fairly widespread and not restricted to people with a generally negative orientation about the game, as this thread illustrates - nobody is going to accuse the TGA mod team of being negative towards the game, and yet even they have mostly expressed agreement or at least sympathy with the idea that the game feels a bit stalled out at the moment. And the thread also shows there's a wide spectrum of opinions on this, with a lot of nuance being displayed both positively and negatively. It's not like this thread is full of "LOL this game sux haha and u suck too if you like it!" 

This thread has done very well so far in avoiding getting into the tired and boring fanboi vs hater thing, and it'd be nice if we could keep it that way. 

Edited March 7, 2022 by yukishiro1

[Noserenda]

Yeah the complete and utter lack of forward momentum in the AoS story is weird, one of the things that pulled our groups eyes over last year was the much better standard of the campaign books compared to the lacklustre 40k efforts, exciting developments, characters we care about and actual change are something they should be pushing, not dropping. Hell, now we actually know what some of the places are!

I am hoping its just a release schedule thing and not a mandate from above or the relevant person(s) quitting.