Incarnates Rules Discussion

[NinthMusketeer]

5 hours ago, Kadeton said:

Also, once it goes Wild, it can eat your Endless Spells (since your Wizards are now treated as enemies) so you can chuck out low-casting-value stuff like Malevolent Maelstrom to keep it well-fed and to lead it away from your forces if necessary. It feels like there will be tactical approaches where it's an advantage to kamikaze the bonded hero into the enemy in order to deliberately drive the Incarnate wild.

Or use endless spells to kill the hero, which the incarnate then eats!

[Marcvs]

1 hour ago, NinthMusketeer said:

Or use endless spells to kill the hero, which the incarnate then eats!

Or have a sorceress self-sacrifice

[Riff_Raff_Rascal]

That just looks to be like an endless spell with extra steps

 

[Marcvs]

43 minutes ago, Riff_Raff_Rascal said:

That just looks to be like an endless spell with extra steps

 

Yes, apart from the fact that you don't cast it and can't dispel it, that it doesn't move in both hero phases or in the hero phase in general, that it counts for controlling objectives and score battle tactics, and that it behaves like a unit in every sense... for the rest it's like a endless spell just without range to be controlled and without needing a WIZARD in your army to include it.

[NinthMusketeer]

It's more like a unit with extra steps, including extra steps for your opponent to kill it. It isn't going to be difficult for certain armies & characters to make it quite practically unkillable.

Edited April 9, 2022 by NinthMusketeer

[yukishiro1]

Yeah, I have learned not to judge things before I actually see them on the table, but from a book rules point of view this thing looks problematic, and like yet another new set of rules that punishes melee and rewards shooting. 

Edited April 8, 2022 by yukishiro1

[NinthMusketeer]

I think it is anti-shooting; it doesn't care how much damage it takes in one turn, the most it can lose is one level. Shooting armies can only reliably knock it down a peg in one turn per round, meaning it only needs to eat one endless spell per round to stay up indefinitely. Melee could drop it down twice per round; once from each combat phase.

[yukishiro1]

It isn't going to be eating any endless spells unless it goes wild, you'd have to be really incompetent with your endless spell placement to give your opponent that opportunity. 

It doesn't really threaten a T1 charge on most maps so if you have the ability to degrade it to level 1 before it gets into melee that's a massive thing re: your ability to realistically kill it. If you have no ways to damage it besides melee you are stuck eating a minimum of two full rounds of its output to remove it, compared to potentially zero from a shooting list if you can get the T1/T2 double. Or even just shoot + then unleash hell + potentially melee to finish it off, for again just 1 round of its output instead of 2. 

What it counters best is strong melee hammers. It's weakest (though still not exactly weak) against armies that have teleports, cheap screens and good ranged damage. 

 

[NinthMusketeer]

It doesn't have to go wild to eat spells; it's just a monstrous rampage.

 

Edit: Oh you mean ones summoned by the controlling player, derp! At any rate the play is going to be having a hero bound to it then intentionally kill the hero (there are a variety of ways to do this) because it fights better that way and the chances of it actually harming friendly models are minimal.

Edited April 9, 2022 by NinthMusketeer

[Grimrock]

Yeah honestly the endless spell bit is more of a gimmick than anything else. The risk of hurting it means you're never going to attempt it on spells with a high cast that you actually want to get rid of (like a warp lightning vortex), and your opponent should be savvy enough to keep low cast spells away from it. I'd be much more worried about it taking out monsters. Even if it gets charged it's guaranteed to get one round of attacks out at full strength since it doesn't take damage until the batttleshock phase. At Primal tier with all out attack (because why wouldn't you) it averages about 16 damage against a 4+ save. That's more than enough to pick off the vast majority of monsters in one shot and heal it up one tier right away. If your opponent has a couple monsters running around this thing is going to be an absolute nightmare with very little opportunity to counter it. 

If this thing had dropped with a little better model and as a solo kit I think you'd be seeing one every single game. Of the 5 factions I play every one of them would love to have this thing running around, even Maggotkin with their brand new book. The fact that it's bundled in a big massively overpriced terrain box might be the only thing saving us.

Edited April 9, 2022 by Grimrock

[yukishiro1]

Yeah, SoB were already being nerfed out of the competitive scene but this is just the nail in the coffin IMO, I don't see how they can possibly win giving up 4 extra VP and having to deal with something like this. 

I have been wrong before about stuff being busted but this looks pretty busted to me, at least in certain combos. And since anybody in the game can take it, it's hard to see how it ends up any place other than "auto-take broken" or "never-take except in the gimmick lists." 

It's a bold choice, I'll give the designers that. An unkillable unit that can heal is basically as problematic a thing as you can possibly make. I hope their confidence isn't misplaced. 

Edited April 9, 2022 by yukishiro1

[NinthMusketeer]

It is good if an army cannot win large tournaments. Only overpowered armies win GTs. Every single GT winning army has elements that should be nerfed, because being a good player is not enough to top those; they need an overpowered list to compete against other overpowered lists. Take it from someone who takes part in running such events.

People raising the sentiment that an army needs buffs because it can't place in GTs is what leads to things being like 40k. Does anyone here want AoS balance to be like 40k?

 

Anyways, yeah I agree this will cause problems. It isn't an unsalvageable concept but it needs work.

Edited April 9, 2022 by NinthMusketeer

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

I just saw the rules for one of the battalions in the Ghur book (Incarnate Masters of Ghur). The battalion must take the Incarnate, one Commander and a troop, and can take two additional troops. The Incarnate must be bound to the hero. In exchange, you get one-drop deployment and the Incarnate doesn't go wild unless all units from the battalion are destroyed.

I personally don't think it's clear whether having the Incarnate go wild is actually a downside, but it seems really easy to prevent if you care about it.

[Marcvs]

3 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

I just saw the rules for one of the battalions in the Ghur book (Incarnate Masters of Ghur). The battalion must take the Incarnate, one Commander and a troop, and can take two additional troops. The Incarnate must be bound to the hero. In exchange, you get one-drop deployment and the Incarnate doesn't go wild unless all units from the battalion are destroyed.

I personally don't think it's clear whether having the Incarnate go wild is actually a downside, but it seems really easy to prevent if you care about it.

the battalion should be linked to the Thondia battlepack though, so you won't be able to use it in games/events which use the GHB one (which, at least from my persepctive, are likely to be all of them)

[NauticalSoup]

On 4/9/2022 at 5:46 PM, NinthMusketeer said:

People raising the sentiment that an army needs buffs because it can't place in GTs is what leads to things being like 40k. 

Hmm this suggests you lack even a superficial knowledge of what the 40k metagame looks like. 40k's balance problems don't stem from buffs to released books (which are rarely buffed and often nerfed), they stem from books and rules releasing in an overpowered state that requires reigning in, which is exactly the same problem AoS has been struggling with since the first busted book dropped in 2.0. People complain about buffs in 40k because they are rare and totally insufficient to keep old books in the game. Citation: every podium is currently going to armies that have exclusively come out in 2022, a pattern that looks set to continue. It's not even like every book comes out busted , GSC dropped and haven't even made a splash- it's just that all the best performing armies are always badly tuned new rules that just happen to be better than everything else out there which has already been nerfed into oblivion. 

And again, if the point here is book creep and not buffs (like kruleboyz desperately need for example) that's very much a problem with Sigmar since fairly early days in the 2.0 rebirth, and stuff like SDG show it hasn't really gone away.

Obviously people posting on here like AoS more than 40k but can we at least not make up nonsense as to why this game is better? There are actual reasons, no need to go inventing them.

[NinthMusketeer]

3 hours ago, NauticalSoup said:

Hmm this suggests you lack even a superficial knowledge of what the 40k metagame looks like. 40k's balance problems don't stem from buffs to released books (which are rarely buffed and often nerfed), they stem from books and rules releasing in an overpowered state that requires reigning in, which is exactly the same problem AoS has been struggling with since the first busted book dropped in 2.0. People complain about buffs in 40k because they are rare and totally insufficient to keep old books in the game. Citation: every podium is currently going to armies that have exclusively come out in 2022, a pattern that looks set to continue. It's not even like every book comes out busted , GSC dropped and haven't even made a splash- it's just that all the best performing armies are always badly tuned new rules that just happen to be better than everything else out there which has already been nerfed into oblivion. 

And again, if the point here is book creep and not buffs (like kruleboyz desperately need for example) that's very much a problem with Sigmar since fairly early days in the 2.0 rebirth, and stuff like SDG show it hasn't really gone away.

Obviously people posting on here like AoS more than 40k but can we at least not make up nonsense as to why this game is better? There are actual reasons, no need to go inventing them.

Uhm, if an army gets a new book that is way stronger, that's a buff. We are on the same page in regards to 40k. AoS does not suffer from that problem; despite a strong showing of players Nurgle is not sweeping the meta, while Fyreslayers and Idoneth are hardly taking over the scene. Even Stormcast and OWC are limited to very specific problem options and not overpowered as a whole.

AoS balance is in a way better place than 40k.

[NauticalSoup]

23 minutes ago, NinthMusketeer said:

Uhm, if an army gets a new book that is way stronger, that's a buff. We are on the same page in regards to 40k. AoS does not suffer from that problem; despite a strong showing of players Nurgle is not sweeping the meta, while Fyreslayers and Idoneth are hardly taking over the scene. Even Stormcast and OWC are limited to very specific problem options and not overpowered as a whole.

AoS balance is in a way better place than 40k.

I mean the best army in 40k right now literally has its win rate propped up on the back of a single unit. That's pretty comparable to the mess that is the SDG. And not every 40k book is a sweeper either- GSC cults are weak and even regular Eldar are mediocre.

We have a very small awkward sample for 3.0 but some of the new books like IJ and SCE have indeed seen massive buffs, it's just that more armies in sigmar have gotten arbitrarily dumped on than in 40k which I guess is a win in your calculus.

It's also worth noting 2.0 Sigmar's balance was ruined about half way through the cycle more or less exactly like 40k 9th has been. Sigmar is fine(ish) today but so was 2.0 at this stage, so was 9th, etc. In a year or two will it still be? It would be a first not just for Sigmar but for GW to keep their foot off the pedal for an entire cycle, and the power level of the 3.0 books is so scattershot you should expect 40k level meta sweeps to be a part of the mix.

Edit: it's also worth noting the Sigmar competitive scene is a lot smaller than 40ks. Metas are solved much much slower so it's harder to tell how the meta state is shortly after any release.

Edited April 13, 2022 by NauticalSoup

[yukishiro1]

Yeah GW's problem tends to be ruining things in the second half of an edition, not the first half. The real test will be the books we start getting around December of this year. 

[NinthMusketeer]

1 hour ago, NauticalSoup said:

I mean the best army in 40k right now literally has its win rate propped up on the back of a single unit. That's pretty comparable to the mess that is the SDG. And not every 40k book is a sweeper either- GSC cults are weak and even regular Eldar are mediocre.

We have a very small awkward sample for 3.0 but some of the new books like IJ and SCE have indeed seen massive buffs, it's just that more armies in sigmar have gotten arbitrarily dumped on than in 40k which I guess is a win in your calculus.

It's also worth noting 2.0 Sigmar's balance was ruined about half way through the cycle more or less exactly like 40k 9th has been. Sigmar is fine(ish) today but so was 2.0 at this stage, so was 9th, etc. In a year or two will it still be? It would be a first not just for Sigmar but for GW to keep their foot off the pedal for an entire cycle, and the power level of the 3.0 books is so scattershot you should expect 40k level meta sweeps to be a part of the mix.

Edit: it's also worth noting the Sigmar competitive scene is a lot smaller than 40ks. Metas are solved much much slower so it's harder to tell how the meta state is shortly after any release.

This seems to be getting increasingly abrasive and off topic, so I'm going to drop it.

[NauticalSoup]

18 hours ago, NinthMusketeer said:

This seems to be getting increasingly abrasive and off topic, so I'm going to drop it.

Yeah that's fair I was in a bad mood sorry if I made you uncomfortable 

[Unit1126PLL]

What bothers me most about this thing is it's rules are SO different than Daemons, yet...

it's made of magic

it inspires its "core emotion" in others (in this case, anger!)

it is summoned by bound to a person

 

This thing is just an anger daemon. Like straight up Khorne. It should just be a bloodthirster that everyone can take. Why are the rules SO DIFFERENT despite the fluff being SO THE SAME.

[Beliman]

7 hours ago, Unit1126PLL said:

This thing is just an anger daemon. Like straight up Khorne. It should just be a bloodthirster that everyone can take. Why are the rules SO DIFFERENT despite the fluff being SO THE SAME.

Their rules feel like an "DLC" mechanic than something that was designed for the game. Pretty sure that they are going to be phased out for something like "Endless Incarnates" in 4.0.

[Iamanbo]

Hello,
Last week I bought the complete set of Krondspine Incarnates + scenery but my surprise is that there is no warscroll in the assembly rules, anywhere! after buying the miniature (+ the rates in the scenery version haha) I also have to buy the book if I want to have the rules (yes, they are in the app to consult)

[NinthMusketeer]

On 4/20/2022 at 9:02 PM, Unit1126PLL said:

What bothers me most about this thing is it's rules are SO different than Daemons, yet...

it's made of magic

it inspires its "core emotion" in others (in this case, anger!)

it is summoned by bound to a person

 

This thing is just an anger daemon. Like straight up Khorne. It should just be a bloodthirster that everyone can take. Why are the rules SO DIFFERENT despite the fluff being SO THE SAME.

Daemons are fundamentally different in that they are invaders to the mortal plane; they are native to the Realm of Chaos. An Incarnate, on the other hand, is very much from the Realms themselves.

As a sidenote, the Krondspine Incarnate doesn't quite radiate anger; it radiates savagery and predation. From a conceptual level that nuance is largely subtle but the way it actually manifests in the fluff is very different from Khornate influence.

Edited April 25, 2022 by NinthMusketeer

[Iamanbo]

Finally I made a warscroll to use in my games, I upload it to this thread in case it can help you. It's in Spanish

 

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