The State of the Game

[yukishiro1]

Saying that most people who have less than entirely positive opinions about the state of the game "have just been stewing in negativity, or been listening to the complaining echo chamber for too long" is definitely playing the man rather than the ball. My post was a request to try to stay on the topic of the merits of the game, rather than shifting the topic to the merits of people who disagree with you. Unfortunately the request seems to have had the opposite effect, so I won't belabor the point to the further detriment of the thread. 

Edited March 7, 2022 by yukishiro1

[NauticalSoup]

Lots of good stuff here and I don't really have much to add that hasn't already been noted by more eloquent personas.

I would just like to specifically point out that of all the unfortunate turns in the game of late, the worst is new coherency. That needs to die, sooner rather than later. Nothing has done more to create negative experiences than the sheer hassle of saw-toothing 32s, or fighting with two soldiers in a block of 15, or drifting cavalry in the rear.

Just... it's an easy problem to fix. Fix it, GW.

Edited March 7, 2022 by NauticalSoup

[yukishiro1]

4 hours ago, Noserenda said:

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.

This is an interesting topic to me because I have never considered myself particularly interested in AOS lore - I've always felt it was a bit thin and underdeveloped compared to WHFB, and I kinda just stopped paying attention as a result. But now that it isn't going anywhere any more, I kinda miss it. 

GW seems to go in cycles on this. Like there was a big flurry of stuff happening at the end of 7th and the start of 8th, but not much else happened in 8th and nothing has happened in 9th yet either - they've released a few campaign packs, but they feel more like "here's an area to fight in" more than "here's a story." 

So I dunno if we had our story development with BR and now there's nothing coming until the end of 3rd, or whether it's just a case of not being able to get even battletomes out, much less story supplements. For whatever reason GW seems to have moved away from any sort of real story development in army books themselves a long time ago, and it doesn't seem like that is going to change. 

 

 

Edited March 7, 2022 by yukishiro1

[yukishiro1]

8 minutes ago, NauticalSoup said:

Lots of good stuff here and I don't really have much to add that hasn't already been noted by more eloquent personas.

I would just like to specifically point out that of all the unfortunate turns in the game of late, the worst is new coherency. That needs to die, sooner rather than later. Nothing has done more to create negative experiences than the sheer hassle of saw-toothing 32s, or fighting with two soldiers in a block of 15, or drifting cavalry in the rear.

Just... it's an easy problem to fix. Fix it, GW.

Yeah, the coherency change was just badly implemented. It felt like something they just ported over from 40k because it works there, while forgetting that it works in 40k because the base unit of coherency is 2", not 1", and the melee ranges work differently too. 

It's the worst kind of mechanic because there are workarounds to it in a lot of cases, but those workarounds all involve finnicky, precise positions and formations that don't actually add to the strategy, they're just done to try to get around the ineffectiveness of the base rule. They ditched rank and flank for AOS...and now instead of ranks we have bizarre cavalry formations that involve horses riding sideways or rotating their noses into one another to keep "in coherency." It's comically bad in some cases. 

The easy fix is just to say that models in base to base contact with each other are always in coherency. It's still a band-aid rather than an elegant fix, but it'd work until next edition when they can think about it more carefully. 

Edited March 7, 2022 by yukishiro1

[novakai]

TBF the state of the AoS in my area is booming and we had like over 20 people submitting new army new year in the AoS category this year so at least I find that the hobby in 3.0 has grown. I think really game has just been relegated to just playing casual with no one really playing many games super correctly I find. So I do find enthusiasm for AoS has sgrown because of the model not that they find the game rule ultra compelling like the 40K side of my community does.

[NauticalSoup]

Sigmar is limping along here, mostly on how people remember it from 2.0 before covid lockdowns. We're only just coming back online for full size in person events so hard to say what impact actually being able to play the game will have on the game.

[Noserenda]

It feels like a lot of more casual people are being driven away from 40k right now too, certainly our group was, which opened us up to AoS. I think you may be right about not playing the game entirely right either, like we haven't had many problems with coherency, (that i noticed) though also small games and a lot of older armies on 25mm bases probably helps too.

[Baron Klatz]

Yeah, with people coming back into it now it’s doing quite well despite misgivings(just look at how Dominion did despite people trying to doom and gloom over it before GW confirmed it sold amazingly and all the misery posts faded away).

Like the main sub-reddit alone keeps growing  by 200 people a day to where it’s now over 145,000 when it was 80,000 before 3rd edition launched and hasn’t slowed down so will have doubled in size very soon(I still remember the sub celebrations when it got to 40,000 subs back in 2019  )
 

like that Kruleboyz example from earlier, a few months in and they already hit 1000 subs when the Ironjawz sub had been at 500 subs for years and now Kruleboyz are over 2000 with their own discords(which I contribute to some slow movement here and other forums, there’s just too many places now to hobby hang out. Like my brother-in-law got into AoS through Instagram and I had to show him things like the Facebook places exist)

Reddit & Twitter are also just is a funner place to present lore ideas and big conversions like here’s a random Lumineth and Kragnos example that you’d never see here because people like fast-paced traffic:

 

AoS3 is really booming when you look around.  

5 hours ago, yukishiro1 said:

But now that it isn't going anywhere any more, I kinda miss it. 

Oh sure it is, it’s a bit slower paced now because they want to actually explore the big ramifications of the Broken Realms saga(alliances tested, cities taken, new gods risen, Chamon’s center realmgates busted, Death in upheaval with Nagash recovering, Cursed Skies empowering daemons, Ghyran growing cosmic roots and causing a life flood settlers are taking advantage of, big etc)

A lot happened so they’re slowly going through the changes like before:

2015-2016: Realmgate Wars & God-Beast campaign for huge changes.

2017: Age of Hope & Age of Intrigue to explore the changes of new civilizations rising with the Shadows over Hammerhal & Firestorm campaign showing the new events in Aqshy.

2018: Malign Portents & Time of Tribulations for huge changes that shake-up the Realms.

2019: relatively calm period of updates to access all the factions during this time followed by a small shake-up from Forbidden Powers.

2020: calm period with Lumineth and Sons having key connections between all the events that occurred. 

2021: Broken Realms and Era of the Beast shake up the setting again.

2022: calm period with factions collecting themselves in this Era as new events in Aqshy unfold that Broken Realms set-up.

But progress is happening, both the White Dwarfs* and battletomes note the advancing plot and the changes it’s making.
 

Edit:*(I noted a summary of changes the Ossiarchs are experiencing from their magazine update in the lore thread here:

“> -the Lumineth strategy worked; the Ossiarch Empire is rife with insurrection, many monuments are still rubble, and with much strength committed to the Arx Terminus they can't quickly deal with this
> -the Triptych still hasn't been fully rebuilt
> -it's suspected Archaon intends to strike at Gothizzar, though nobody knows how that'd be possible
> -with Nagash gone the OBR legions no longer enjoy his favor as they once did and other undead want to capitalize on that, but OBR are also more autonomous for the time being
> -Arkhan's secret HQ is rumored to be located in Anadiria, where the Null Myriad hold sway
> the power vacuum has seen adversaries like Sigvald's Decadent Host and the Tarkan warglutt run wild
> -Katakros is still paining from being struck down by Archaon, but he's also having strange episodes of visions and whispers that even being picked apart and transferring bodies can't seem to fix, and his thoughts will stray to his mortal home in Ghur
> -Kragnos had a run-in with the Ivory Host's claim in Bjarl that did a number on them
> -to replenish and up their game they're experimenting more with realmstone and monster bones with very few but gradually mounting breakthroughs” )

That’s why both the new Deepkin & Fyreslayer tomes can ally with anyone from the Cities of Sigmar now because of the Dawncrusades having the Order mortals work closer together and the upcoming Arena of Shades plays on how Anvilgard became Har Kuron where Morathi-Khaine is solidifying her rule there with bigger and bolder gladiator events that made the Khainites popular in the free cities while Nagash wants those souls she paid the Deepkin alliance in back that helped her conquer the city.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2022/03/07/find-out-why-nagash-is-absolutely-furious-yet-again-in-arena-of-shades/

Edited March 8, 2022 by Baron Klatz

[Kaizennus]

So this thread was brought up by a member in our gaming group and I think it's an interesting topic.

For context, I've been playing AoS for almost exactly one year (though I played Warhammer Fantasy "back in the day"). I've played roughly 60 games of AoS this year, most of them being 3.0 matched play games in a club setting (unfortunately the country I live in doesn't really have a tournament scene, especially since COVID). I'm probably in the upper levels of "engagement" of the game, playing more regularly than "average" players and also doing quite a lot of hobbying as well (I painted up three armies this year and am working on my first 40k one).

The reason I mention this is because I imagine that my interest and level of engagement is pretty average amongst players on this forum. I think it's important to remember that those of us who engage in the game beyond game time are probably in the vast minority of players. I would imagine that the largest group of players (leaving out hobby-only people) play once every 4-6 weeks, probably with mostly unpainted armies, sometimes using proxies, and likely not even playing fully "by the rules". This isn't an attack on those people, they probably have a ton of fun and enjoy the hobby, but at the end of the game session these people are likely just tossing everything into a box and sticking it into a closet until their next game day and not really giving much thought to the game until then.

The number of people actually participating on forums, listening to podcasts, watching batreps, following players on twitter, checking out tournament results, etc is pretty small. I wouldn't be surprised if we make up the 1% or so of actual players worldwide.

And from seeing the comments in this thread and thinking about my own feelings I think that is maybe the biggest issue. Right now the game isn't very engaging to interact with on the daily. I'm sure many of check out warhammer stuff almost every day: we check this forum or other discords, we check warhammer community, etc and right now without any big releases or teases and with the meta pretty stable, there isn't a whole lot to talk about it seems.

As for 3.0 itself, I think I do agree with most of what I've seen in this thread as well and I'll share my thoughts on that too.

As an aside, I disagree with some of the comments saying that it's only a few loud people on this forum complaining, from what I've seen in my local community, online discords, reddit threads, twitter feeds, etc the game does seem to be in a bit of a lull at the moment (not claiming it's dead or doomed however, just a quiet time).

So without further ado, here are my "complaints" or concerns about 3.0

- Army Lists and List Building seems pretty boring these days. The game has a lot of internal balance issues and it often becomes quite easy to pick out the "strongest" unit. The current books/rules encourage unit stacking or spamming and often discourage "wide" builds. I can't think of any rules off the top of my head that rewards a list for bringing a variety of units. Most bonuses rewards bringing one unit over and over, such as how almost every book has that one "monster" subfaction that just lets you bring a bunch of dragons or spam an elite unit by making it battleline.

- There aren't enough unit "roles" in the game IMO. I guess because of the simplified rules and warscrolls there's not a lot of "jobs" beyond hammer/anvil/screen. Even then the current meta strongly encourages powerful hard hitting units over pretty much anything else. I'm having a hard time describing this the way I want to but I think it fits into some of my other points later.

- They've taken out too many "wargame" rules. I think AoS has kind of gone too bare bones in terms of classic wargaming rules. I know we don't want to devolve back into the Warhammer Fantasy days where you needed to know so many different things, but classic stuff like.. flanking, or LoS shooting (how some units can shoot volleys over friendly units while others can't), formation rules of any kind (I actually really like the LRL's shining company rules as an outlier), and bonuses for different "types" of weapons or troop types. It all sort of feels too.... video gamey? and not the complex kind. Like a lot of people I've been playing TW:WHIII and it's so fun to have things like units with spears getting bonuses for being charged or being stronger vs monsters, while stuff that dual wields are good at cutting through infantry, etc. AoS shouldn't be as complex as Total War, but I think it's too far gone the other way.

- Terrain rules are boring and have little impact. I play at a club with hundreds of pieces of beautiful terrain. I like to arrive 20-30 mins early so I can set up thematic (but balanced) boards that fit the armies. If I'm Soulblight vs Stormcast I want to maybe set up a graveyard on my side of the board and a little fishing village on my opponent's with a river running through the center of the board and some forests scattered about. Then we pull out the terrain dice, roll them, see that there isn't any arcane or deadly and then basically shrug and say "well I guess we can just ignore the terrain now". I'm dipping my toes into 40k and their terrain rules look so much more fleshed out and exciting.

At the end of the day I enjoy being able to hang out with friends, roll dice, and push my little toy men across the table. I love those clutch rolls that get people jumping around or yelling out, or those tricky plays where you snag an objective with a very carefully calculated pilein, or whatever. Then going out afterwards for some drinks and food and talking about the games, the meta, the lore, and other non WH stuff. I don't think that will ever change, no matter how "bad" the rules get, but I would like to see some complexity or changes introduced to the game.

[Lavieth]

5 hours ago, Kaizennus said:

- Army Lists and List Building seems pretty boring these days. The game has a lot of internal balance issues and it often becomes quite easy to pick out the "strongest" unit. The current books/rules encourage unit stacking or spamming and often discourage "wide" builds. 

- There aren't enough unit "roles" in the game IMO. I guess because of the simplified rules and warscrolls there's not a lot of "jobs" beyond hammer/anvil/screen.

- They've taken out too many "wargame" rules. I think AoS has kind of gone too bare bones in terms of classic wargaming rules. I know we don't want to devolve back into the Warhammer Fantasy days where you needed to know so many different things, but classic stuff like.. flanking, or LoS shooting (how some units can shoot volleys over friendly units while others can't), formation rules of any kind (I actually really like the LRL's shining company rules as an outlier), and bonuses for different "types" of weapons or troop types. It all sort of feels too.... video gamey? and not the complex kind. 

- Terrain rules are boring and have little impact.

I 100% agree with you on those. 

I think one of the problems with unit spamming was the removal of restrictions in army composition and that facilited an environment to just spam the most powerful units in any given battletome. I know a lot of people don't want to be limited by the rules on what you have to include, but perhaps there could be some merit to re-introduce the 0-1 rules for specific kinds of units. I mean, it would certainly break up unit spamming and introduce more diversity into the army compositions. I also miss unit roles and how they helped people build more balanced lists.

The over simplification if the rules, feels like to me, was intended to remove ambiguity and limit rules debate. While in my group it has gone down, there are certain wargame elements I miss. One of them is cool abilities like killing blow, animosity or even stupidity. I know many people didn't, but I enjoyed having this random element added in that you have to react to for your army. I miss not being able to measure every little millimeter and having some guess work involved. When everyone is so precise with their measurements it feels to "gamey" to me. I want there to be more consequences from misjudged distances. Randomness is not a bad thing for the game. 

The terrain needs to play a bigger role for the games. I think they need to add a layer of complexity and interactivity. 

I'm building a campaign for my 40K group that has some added/modified rules and we are thinking about introducing them to our AoS games. These include rules for biomes, terrain feature special rules, deployment changes, assault/charge reactions, list restrictions etc. We wanted to encourage more unit diversity in our games as well as have elements that players cannot prepare for. 

Edited March 8, 2022 by Lavieth

[yukishiro1]

They could also have you pay a points premium for each identical unit beyond the second that you bring. It could be listed like this: Stormdrake Guard: 340 (60) - so the first two (whether taken individually or as a reinforced unit) cost 340 each, then each additional one costs 400 each. This value could be zero for the "true" battleline choices, i.e. ones that are always battleline no matter what, and it could be set higher or lower depending on how much you wanted to punish spam of that unit. So things that are particularly problematic when spammed could see large penalties, while other stuff could see much smaller penalties. I.e. SDG maybe get a hefty 60 point penalty, but stuff that's conditional battleline in Cities like Pistoliers could have only a 5 point penalty, because spamming that isn't such a concern.

That allows people who really, really want to run spam armies to still do so, but it ensures that such armies are (hopefully, unless GW gets stuff REALLY wrong) not optimal from a competitive point of view. 

You could tweak the threshold too - it could be you get 3 at the base price then a BIG penalty for the 4th onward, or you could even put it at only 1 at the base price and everything beyond that at the premium, but with a lower premium. I just picked 2 because that allows you to take a reinforced unit or two small ones of anything without triggering the penalty, which seems reasonable. 

Edited March 8, 2022 by yukishiro1

[Beliman]

Sorry for the offtopic:

3 hours ago, Doko said:

So if i say one unit is bad,is because is bad and isnt because im negative,is because math says it.

That's not true. Maths and numbers are not enough to know what a unit can do. There are a lot of uncategorized stats that can't be reflected in Mathammer. 

3 hours ago, Doko said:

Now months after the new edittion fyreslayers have gone from t1 in aos2 to t5 in aos3 as i said........

You need data to back up your arguments because I think that you are overeacting. Honest Wargamer (102 tournaments, 10276 games) has put the Fyreslayers on the middle of the table (since 3.0):

That's not Tier 5 unless Gloomspite is Tier 10... 

3 hours ago, Doko said:

Some people as this dude called me again negative and reported me many times and only said how fyreslayers were buffed with 3.0 and was going to be great and better than 2.0 (but as allways never show any data or numbers)when i only said that the data showed me.

That's what I'm talking about. You never showed any data, only damage output using AoS Stathammer (btw, awesome tool). And that's just false because damage output is not enough to know if a unit is good or bad. You need to know what they can do on the table, how easy can you buff your units and if there is any set-up needed to make the play, their movement and how easy is to teleport/move your other units, how many threats can you put on the table (and how many tech-pieces), the type of meta of your gaming group, allies and any interaction between your units and that allies, etc...

@Baron Klatz Thanks for the little piece of lore 😍!!! I hope to see this represented as a chronology in the next battletomes.

@Kaizennus 100% agree. There are a lot of new wargames outside of GW that have simple rules but still have the feeling to be a wargame. Pretty sure that sooner or later AoS will go in that direction.

Edited March 8, 2022 by Beliman
grammar

[RuneBrush]

+++ MOD HAT +++

Just tidied up a couple of posts where members were taking shots at each other.  Please don't do this, it's not acceptable on any level and won't be tolerated.  Thread is otherwise a really good discussion and a great example on not being excessively negative - thank you!

[Gesundheit]

My opinion is:;

Lore: atm there is just nothing wich talks to me. But thats ok. I Play since fantasy second Edition, and there where always times where i was not interested in the lore. That maybe changes in the Future again.

Game: i got the feeling GW tries to give every army everything. Wich Kind of sucks! Ofc you always got a Jack of all trades, like stormcast or skaven. But thats ok, because ist matches the lore very Good. But does  every army Needs to be at least ok in shooting? Or does every army need to be at least ok in magic/prayers? I think the answer is no!

but I !! FEEL LIKE !! (it is a feeling guys, That means it Must not be a fact) thats what GW does. And that feels really Bad. Every army gets More and More the Same playstyle.
1 or 2 years ago it felt much more like every army is special.

more rules does Not always mean a better game, but it would give the game much more deepness if every army feels like it’s unique.
 

[japaricio]

10 hours ago, Baron Klatz said:

Yeah, with people coming back into it now it’s doing quite well despite misgivings(just look at how Dominion did despite people trying to doom and gloom over it before GW confirmed it sold amazingly and all the misery posts faded away).

Like the main sub-reddit alone keeps growing  by 200 people a day to where it’s now over 145,000 when it was 80,000 before 3rd edition launched and hasn’t slowed down so will have doubled in size very soon(I still remember the sub celebrations when it got to 40,000 subs back in 2019  )
 

like that Kruleboyz example from earlier, a few months in and they already hit 1000 subs when the Ironjawz sub had been at 500 subs for years and now Kruleboyz are over 2000 with their own discords(which I contribute to some slow movement here and other forums, there’s just too many places now to hobby hang out. Like my brother-in-law got into AoS through Instagram and I had to show him things like the Facebook places exist)

Reddit & Twitter are also just is a funner place to present lore ideas and big conversions like here’s a random Lumineth and Kragnos example that you’d never see here because people like fast-paced traffic:

 

AoS3 is really booming when you look around.  

Oh sure it is, it’s a bit slower paced now because they want to actually explore the big ramifications of the Broken Realms saga(alliances tested, cities taken, new gods risen, Chamon’s center realmgates busted, Death in upheaval with Nagash recovering, Cursed Skies empowering daemons, Ghyran growing cosmic roots and causing a life flood settlers are taking advantage of, big etc)

A lot happened so they’re slowly going through the changes like before:

2015-2016: Realmgate Wars & God-Beast campaign for huge changes.

2017: Age of Hope & Age of Intrigue to explore the changes of new civilizations rising with the Shadows over Hammerhal & Firestorm campaign showing the new events in Aqshy.

2018: Malign Portents & Time of Tribulations for huge changes that shake-up the Realms.

2019: relatively calm period of updates to access all the factions during this time followed by a small shake-up from Forbidden Powers.

2020: calm period with Lumineth and Sons having key connections between all the events that occurred. 

2021: Broken Realms and Era of the Beast shake up the setting again.

2022: calm period with factions collecting themselves in this Era as new events in Aqshy unfold that Broken Realms set-up.

But progress is happening, both the White Dwarfs* and battletomes note the advancing plot and the changes it’s making.
 

Edit:*(I noted a summary of changes the Ossiarchs are experiencing from their magazine update in the lore thread here:

“> -the Lumineth strategy worked; the Ossiarch Empire is rife with insurrection, many monuments are still rubble, and with much strength committed to the Arx Terminus they can't quickly deal with this
> -the Triptych still hasn't been fully rebuilt
> -it's suspected Archaon intends to strike at Gothizzar, though nobody knows how that'd be possible
> -with Nagash gone the OBR legions no longer enjoy his favor as they once did and other undead want to capitalize on that, but OBR are also more autonomous for the time being
> -Arkhan's secret HQ is rumored to be located in Anadiria, where the Null Myriad hold sway
> the power vacuum has seen adversaries like Sigvald's Decadent Host and the Tarkan warglutt run wild
> -Katakros is still paining from being struck down by Archaon, but he's also having strange episodes of visions and whispers that even being picked apart and transferring bodies can't seem to fix, and his thoughts will stray to his mortal home in Ghur
> -Kragnos had a run-in with the Ivory Host's claim in Bjarl that did a number on them
> -to replenish and up their game they're experimenting more with realmstone and monster bones with very few but gradually mounting breakthroughs” )

That’s why both the new Deepkin & Fyreslayer tomes can ally with anyone from the Cities of Sigmar now because of the Dawncrusades having the Order mortals work closer together and the upcoming Arena of Shades plays on how Anvilgard became Har Kuron where Morathi-Khaine is solidifying her rule there with bigger and bolder gladiator events that made the Khainites popular in the free cities while Nagash wants those souls she paid the Deepkin alliance in back that helped her conquer the city.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2022/03/07/find-out-why-nagash-is-absolutely-furious-yet-again-in-arena-of-shades/

 

For me this has been the best post so far in this threat as I love the lore. I would hope anyone who has more knowloedge about the current lore and wherebaouts could do a new threat!!

[mojojojo101]

As far as unit roles go, I don't think the problem is that you can't build niches with the mechanics as they are, more that the game as it is at the moment is overly dominated by only one niche; hammers.

Like, what s the point in anvils right now, they are units that pay for defensiveness that most hammers will blow through anyway and they can't hit back so won't score battle tactics or take out your opponents hammers in return.

 

[Arzalyn]

I may be in the minority, but I like that they are being more generous with battleline options in the 3rd tomes. A good amount of the factions don't have much unit options, so it gives more flexibility in list building. I'm not a fan of putting too much limitations on roles (like elite, fast, heavy that 40k have) as most of those small factions also don't have the units to fill those battlefield roles ( like cavalry, artillery, for example). It also let us go a little wild with some particular project (like all cavalary army) or avoid models we don't like the look/lore.

6 hours ago, yukishiro1 said:

They could also have you pay a points premium for each identical unit beyond the second that you bring. It could be listed like this: Stormdrake Guard: 340 (60) - so the first two (whether taken individually or as a reinforced unit) cost 340 each, then each additional one costs 400 each. This value could be zero for the "true" battleline choices, i.e. ones that are always battleline no matter what, and it could be set higher or lower depending on how much you wanted to punish spam of that unit. So things that are particularly problematic when spammed could see large penalties, while other stuff could see much smaller penalties. I.e. SDG maybe get a hefty 60 point penalty, but stuff that's conditional battleline in Cities like Pistoliers could have only a 5 point penalty, because spamming that isn't such a concern.

That allows people who really, really want to run spam armies to still do so, but it ensures that such armies are (hopefully, unless GW gets stuff REALLY wrong) not optimal from a competitive point of view. 

You could tweak the threshold too - it could be you get 3 at the base price then a BIG penalty for the 4th onward, or you could even put it at only 1 at the base price and everything beyond that at the premium, but with a lower premium. I just picked 2 because that allows you to take a reinforced unit or two small ones of anything without triggering the penalty, which seems reasonable. 

Its a interesting system, but doing something like that would be necessary if we had a proper internal balance where each unit has a role? At least to me spam appears to be more a consequence of poor internal balance between units, which lead to some units fulfilling multiple roles and been much better than other units.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

I have not commented in this thread until now because, while I feel that the game is deficient in some ways right now, I also feel that there is more negativity than is appropriate in some places. And I can't really put my finger on why that would be.

One reason might be that we transitioned to a new edition, but it does not feel like there has been an all-around improvement of the state of the game, or even overall progress towards a better gameplay experience. The edition change broke as many rules as it fixed. Some army books started deteriorating, having to play in an environment for which they were not written. A lot of the new rules that were introduced were good and adressed existing problems (like not having anything to do on your opponent's turn), but there are one or two new rules that really do more harm than good (the amulet and unleash hell before the battlescroll, coherency still).

Another thing I am observing is that the community seems to have a hard time dealing with their new battletomes, at least at first. I think there is more doom and gloom around them than is warranted, especially in the lead up to the tome. I followed the Stormcast, Idoneth and Fyreslayer releases somewhat closely. In each case, there have been people who were absolutely sure that the new book would have no play and every unit and allegiance ability would be nerfed. From my perspective, all those books look fine from a mechanical perspective. Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary in terms of mechanical power compared with 2.0 battletomes. I suspect it is because Ago of Sigmar is only now entering a periode where a new battletome means that some of the rules you are familiar will change, leading to anchoring biases (not being able to appreciate new things because the loss of something you had before occupies your mind too much) coming out in full force. "This new book is worse because it no longer does what the old book did.", but nevermind that the new book can do other things that are good in their own right. During 2.0, a lot of the battletomes that came out were the first time that the faction in question actually got an AoS tome at all. I think that made them easier to get excited about.

However, overall, I find it hard to point to anything in the overall play environment and confidently say "This is worse than anything we had in 2.0". I still enjoy the game a lot. Most problems that I experience are on the level of "I don't prefer things being this way, but I'll live with it." Most criticisms I have are still from a place of wanting the game that I like to be even better. I have to say that the, in my opinion, sometimes overwhelming negativity towards the 3rd edition battletomes is really putting a damper on my enjoyment of participating in this community at times. I really dislike the feeling of going online to share my enthusiasm about something and being made to feel like I am stupid for enjoying that thing as a consequence. However, since the feeling of discontent with the game seems to be so pervasive right now, I don't want to invalidate other people's opinion. I really just hope that the new edition finds its stride sooner rather than later.

[Koala]

I feel like these debates always turn into a catfight. There are just so many different ways to (possibly not) enjoy the hobby. No chance we might agree on anything.

And with design there is usually no way to qualify "better", anyway.

As for myself i truly think 3.0 was a major downgrade from 2.0. Neither did i like the additional rules nor feel my issues with 2.0 were adressed ( OK, big units were. But considering the rules issues this change cost i would call that a sidegrade at best).

And i got unhappy with the last few rules in 2.0 as well...

So major lump as i do not enjoy the game anymore and am currently "just" painting and collecting.

 

But i am happy for everyone who likes this edition. And vote with my vallet, as things should be.

PS: I get the "something is missing" voices. Bought the Maggotkin Battletome just for the fun of it. And while the artworks are stunning, the fluff suitably over the top and the rules - even though i do not agree with the direction they take - rather well written and designed.... it all just feels soulles.

I have all those old GW Books and while they are objectively worse for so many reasons... They are fun. They make me smile. They make me want to collect/build/play something crazy and creative.

[Sonnenspeer]

I really enjoy AoS 3.0

But my gaming group lost a lot of momentum, as not everybody was willing to learn the new rules or feels comfortable with the new rules. Due to Corona only a few games are played. I think it was a mistake to introduce 3.0 in the middle of the pandemic. I fear that if we get a GHB22, a lot of GHB21 stay untouched. Also I haven't played all missions yet.

[CommissarRotke]

19 hours ago, Baron Klatz said:

But progress is happening, both the White Dwarfs* and battletomes note the advancing plot and the changes it’s making.

Is there a place to read the summary of these lore additions? I no longer have the space to collect White Dwarfs, and as a point of fiscal responsibility I don't buy battletomes for armies I don't play.

[Enoby]

6 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

One reason might be that we transitioned to a new edition, but it does not feel like there has been an all-around improvement of the state of the game, or even overall progress towards a better gameplay experience. The edition change broke as many rules as it fixed. Some army books started deteriorating, having to play in an environment for which they were not written. A lot of the new rules that were introduced were good and adressed existing problems (like not having anything to do on your opponent's turn), but there are one or two new rules that really do more harm than good (the amulet and unleash hell before the battlescroll, coherency still).

I do agree with this, especially when it's combined with a dry AoS release schedule at the moment. I think, in first to second edition, the vast majority of armies were promised something new in the GHBs (I think for two years running in the last year of first and the first year of second) - basically, everyone who didn't already have their own allegiance abilities, got one. In AoS 3, it was basically a case of the core rules changing, which impacted armies indirectly but not exactly in a way that was as exciting. In AoS 1 - 2, there was loads of discussion around armies because nearly everyone was getting something new (especially compared to the nothing they had before). Currently, armies that haven't got an update don't have much more to discuss. 

I don't know if it would have been too much work, but if all of the White Dwarf matched play updates were included in the first AoS 3 GHB, I think the reception would be better. 

6 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Another thing I am observing is that the community seems to have a hard time dealing with their new battletomes

I agree with this too, and I think it may be because this is one of the first times in AoS that battletomes are being updated on a wide scale; while Stormcast have had a few refreshes, the majority of armies have only had the one battletome and so have rarely had to deal with losing something (which is necessary to avoid rules bloat).

I have also noticed that there are some posts which are unhelpfully negative in relation to new battletomes; not that the comments themselves are wrong, but occasionally (and not just on this forum - it's especially common on Twitter) people have the opinion that not only is something bad, but no one else should be allowed to enjoy it either. I know Slaanesh groups (but thankfully not this forum) are really bad for this; I do think the book is sub par, but anytime anything is said about the book, its dogpiled by people insisting it's impossible to win with and that there's no point in even trying, to the point where people handicap themselves by refusing to learn. 

On the other hand, as mentioned before, I do think some battletomes feel subpar and sometimes soulless. As @Koala said, the ingredients are there but some battletomes (not necessarily the AoS 3 ones) just feel grey. As if the writer didn't have much time or passion to give to the project. I think these issues are made more apparent with passionate fans - if you look at the Slaanesh thread (or the survey a while ago) a lot of people were really passionate about the army and the possible new mechanics that could come with the new mortals - surely, we thought, they'll have to add something exciting for these new models. In the end, the book had some solid quality of life changes and very questionable points values, but more importantly, it had a lot of people saying "I could have wrote this better". 

When you have passionate fans, you have a lot of ideas and expectations (which are difficult to manage) about how the army should perform. The writers may not feel the same way, and they can't accurately translate these hopes into the battletome. So when an army gains a larger following of excited fans, the updated battletomes need to exceed the quality of the previous battletome, and in many cases I don't think they do. 

I think this leaves some tomes feeling like wasted potential. I can only really fully comment on Slaanesh, but the ideas for combat drugs, perfections, and customisable excesses were just not met in what was overall a retread of the first book with the same emphasis on summoning; this was combined with all of the troops having fluffy sounding abilities that translated into 'get a ward save/do mortal wounds/add to hit or wound/reroll hits' - just bland gamey rules. Look at Glutos's scroll for example; the theme is a multi course meal, which is awesome, but the effects of this meal don't really translate that well into gameplay - they're not weak, but they feel like the effects were made without regards for the fluff (e.g. why does 'main course' translate into battleshock immunity?). 

However, if you look at something like Lumineth's new scrolls, Sevireth (hurricane fox) has the 'into the gale' ability, which is basically a tornado surrounding them. This gives a ward save (because weapons struggle to find their mark through the wind) and a reduction on pile in because its hard to walk through the gale. This is a great ability because not only does it have a tangible effect, but it mimics the fluff.  

I think AoS 1 (and to an extent 2) did a better job at translating this fluff into rules, though it did come at the cost of balance. For example, the old Chaos Lord ability (think it was something like "Death or Glory") where you could swear to kill the opposing general that turn, and if you did you got to be a daemon prince, and if not, you got to be a spawn. Now the Chaos Lord has a weapon that does mortal wounds and a command ability that allows a unit to strike twice - you could copy that warscroll into any other army and it wouldn't feel out of place with a slight refluff. 

I don't think it's a universal problem with every book, but I do think this thread has helped put my finger on it a bit more - there are a lot of rules that sound fluffy, but are actually really basic. Warscrolls like The Chaos Lord, Glutos, Sigvald (who has cool rules, but nothing on vanity - no bonuses for being the centre of attention in his own army, or ways he can distract himself with his own beauty), and Knight-Heraldor are pretty bad for this.

On the other hand, there are plenty of new warscrolls that do feel really creative - Lumineth are a great example, a lot of Soulblight seems pretty cool, and new Nurgle's abilities seem much more fluffy than before. I appreciate it's very difficult to make creative rules that don't just boil down to mortal wounds, pluses to hit, ward saves, and battleshock immunity, though it does feel like some books suffer more than others in this regard (with mortal Slaanesh, imo, being the worst offender (and ironically daemon Slaanesh being pretty great with it's fluffiness)). 

[Schauer]

IMO while the book release schedules suck, I think its a hard task to bring every book up to speed immediately. I think White Dwarf in the future is a good vessel to patch things over so that when a book comes out for an army, its done in a way that can help advance their lore and provide a bit more for players than just warscrolls. I feel like personally outside of SCE,OBR, and only just recently LRL/Sylvaneth there is really no advancement happening in the books which makes the other armies seem like supporting cast as opposed to another piece of the world. 

Now on to game design, I think AOS would benefit from unit roles and min/max for those particular roles. I feel like right now list building comes down to "which point efficient model can I continuously spam into my list". This, combined with the overall less models on the table due to point increases makes the battle between two armies look like that battle between two spammed units. I dont think that is good for the visual appeal of the game. 

 

As to game rules = fluff I honestly thought Nurgle was probably the best designed book for that kind of thing. Infact, id argue that out of all the book releases, the only one to me that isnt hitting the mark lore wise is probably stormcast. The only thing Id pull back on is letting these fluff abilities equate to mortal wounds all the time. I think they have leaned way too heavily into that mechanic

[Kadeton]

15 hours ago, mojojojo101 said:

As far as unit roles go, I don't think the problem is that you can't build niches with the mechanics as they are, more that the game as it is at the moment is overly dominated by only one niche; hammers.

Like, what s the point in anvils right now, they are units that pay for defensiveness that most hammers will blow through anyway and they can't hit back so won't score battle tactics or take out your opponents hammers in return.

I agree with this, but the thing is that a lot of players are really attached to their hammers. We had a period there (before the current surge of high-rend attacks) where you could legitimately run certain units as anvils, and it just resulted in a bunch of complaints like "Save stacking is ruining the game!" because suddenly hammer units couldn't just blow through anything in a single combat phase. Much of the mathhammer analysis you'll see is based purely around raw damage output, and it becomes the dominant factor by which a given unit is judged to be either "competitive" or "unplayable". The overwhelming message, which GW seems to be receiving loud and clear, is that players just want bigger hammers and don't care about anything else.

7 hours ago, Enoby said:

I appreciate it's very difficult to make creative rules that don't just boil down to mortal wounds, pluses to hit, ward saves, and battleshock immunity, though it does feel like some books suffer more than others in this regard. 

This really does seem to be a struggle for the design team, even more so now that they've (rightly) stepped away from rerolling hits and/or wounds as their go-to. Compared to a game like Malifaux, where every Master has at least one "theme" mechanic which synergises across their keyword in multiple ways and creates a genuinely unique gameplay "feel", it feels like a bit of a creative wasteland.

"We've tried nothing, and we're all out of ideas."

[Skreech Verminking]

12 hours ago, Enoby said:

On the other hand, there are plenty of new warscrolls that do feel really creative - Lumineth

I think he means the skaven.