NPE (Negative Play Experience) in Age of Sigmar

[Tomplex]

Goading Arrogance

[novakai]

5 hours ago, JackOfBlades said:

I agree with this and it would be interesting to know how many of us who feel this way are also moba players. In dota 2 again, Techies and Tinker before their reworks were broadly seen as NPEs and when i saw someone (last-)pick Tinker in particular, i typically just groaned and regretted that id qued for a match, wishing for it to end as soon as possible. It felt like the game became a tedious "job" rather than an engaging process of creativity, for different reasons between Techies and Tinker. Everyone knew what those heroes were going to do. Everyone knew what their counters were in principle, and their winrates were not even positive on a meta scale. And yet, just about everyone experienced matches involving these heroes as something to endure rather than enjoy, except the odd time when you could laugh at what they were doing - Techies for blowing someone up, Tinker for his sheer absurdity.

I find it difficult however to abstractly distill exactly what such NPE consists of. But as in a moba, NPE can be part of both list building before the game and the gameplay itself.

Not to rant too much on the subject but from my experience the biggest source of NPE in DOTA probably comes from your own teammate. At any level, getting five random people to work and communicate together to win a game is already impossible and it only takes one person to ruined the experience for the other four. In DOTA, with how the game is designed, there are way more ways of people griefing or sabotaging your game experience either maliciously or selfishly.

at least in Warhammer your face to face in the real world and not behind a screen. So at least there a higher degree of social interaction and contract.

[JackOfBlades]

28 minutes ago, novakai said:

Not to rant too much on the subject but from my experience the biggest source of NPE in DOTA probably comes from your own teammate. At any level, getting five random people to work and communicate together to win a game is already impossible and it only takes one person to ruined the experience for the other four. In DOTA, with how the game is designed, there are way more ways of people griefing or sabotaging your game experience either maliciously or selfishly.

at least in Warhammer your face to face in the real world and not behind a screen. So at least there a higher degree of social interaction and contract.

Yes, and my long experience with people in MOBAs is precisely why i am skeptical of too liberal definitions of what is an NPE.

In MOBAs the biggest problem for players is typically their lack of willingness to acknowledge their own faults and flaws in both attitude and gameplay, preferring instead to project their own faults on to others. So when i see talks of "NPE" in a single player per team game like Age of Sigmar, where it isnt possible to project blame on to teammates but it is possible to do it on to NPEs, my first instinct is to wonder things like: To which degree are people refusing to acknowledge that theyre making mistakes? Are they refusing to adapt at all - either their decisions in list building and gameplay, or their attitude about suffering setbacks? Can they see situations from perspectives other than their own ego's gratification when things dont immediately work out or they suffer reverses?

Edited June 25, 2022 by JackOfBlades

[Gokken]

For me NPE is when your not left with any options in any way to do something and loose.

I played dok without morathi and the bow snakes, because that was boring as hell. 

But before nerf to unleash hell, the damage say irondrakes, lumineth archers and most other things did would kill my unit if i charge it, if I stod still they would just shoot me to smitherines. 

This would force you to pick Morathi as she is the only thing that could survive 20-50 damage unleash hell and I would  estimate other armies would have this issue aswell.

 

save stacking: because it jacks up the value for mortal wounds so insanely much rend 0 and 1 attacks need 6 attacks to score one damage where as mortals on 4+ or 5+ need 2 or 3 attacks. You would need 110 attacks to hurt a maw crusher on a 2+ save........ 

 

this would ruin most glass canon armies like gitz, dok and slaneesh. I mean not even witches can do that.

 

Fightlast/fight first: this is like the melee version of unleash hell, if tough things are given this like dragon in flesh eaters back in the day, they will kill any unit in the game as long as they are within range.

 

Total eclipse: this is  the most anoying ****** in the game ever!

 

Old cities with deepstrike 3 away from people: what optionos do you honestly have against fulminators starting 3 away from you?

 

[Malakree]

On the MW 6s to hit. Personally I think all 5/6 MW triggers should be on the wound roll not the hit roll.

There are way less rerolls available on the wound roll and, more importantly, it requires that your attacks actually have to hit before you can even attempt to trigger mortals. It also means that -1 to hit becomes so much more impactful.

On the wurrgog. If they have the glowy tattoos (4++) they should become a priority target.

[novakai]

4 hours ago, JackOfBlades said:

Yes, and my long experience with people in MOBAs is precisely why i am skeptical of too liberal definitions of what is an NPE.

In MOBAs the biggest problem for players is typically their lack of willingness to acknowledge their own faults and flaws in both attitude and gameplay, preferring instead to project their own faults on to others. So when i see talks of "NPE" in a single player per team game like Age of Sigmar, where it isnt possible to project blame on to teammates but it is possible to do it on to NPEs, my first instinct is to wonder things like: To which degree are people refusing to acknowledge that theyre making mistakes? Are they refusing to adapt at all - either their decisions in list building and gameplay, or their attitude about suffering setbacks? Can they see situations from perspectives other than their own ego's gratification when things dont immediately work out or they suffer reverses?

Well NPE is varied from player to player and everyone enjoys the game in different way and also react negatively to different thing. We are assuming in this discussion, the theoretical player is in good faith and not projecting blame or lack the ability to learn, rather the person want to enjoy the game and keep playing  game. 

Really though often many NPE moment can alleviate with communicating with your opponent in what kind of game you want to play. Casual, friendly competitve or hyper competitive.

like for a war game based on dice roll and also asymmetrical balance, there got to be a certain degree of acceptance that for army to be unique and still win the game of sigmar their going to have to be a degree of cutthroat mechanic. Ironjawz are melee only army, they got to hit you hard and fast and probably want to play for that double turn. Tzeentch is a magic army, they are going to be way stronger in casting and denying magic then the average army. KO/ Tau has a lot of Guns but have little to no melee, so they got to shoot their way to victory.

[Fert]

13 hours ago, Gokken said:

 

Old cities with deepstrike 3 away from people: what optionos do you honestly have against fulminators starting 3 away from you?

 

Totally agree here.  Glad its gone.  However, there is always some kind of play and/or counter (some armies not so much sadly, Sob for example).  In casual play where people drop a lot of Gotcha! moments then it sucks and is a very negative experience and those people tend to weed themselves out of a casual community quickly.  But in a competitive scene, the bulls%*$, especially if you game at top tables, should be known what gnarly comp/rule could come your way.  For the living cities bs, army design, deployment, and movement decisions are your biggest counters.  Setting up cheap screens or anvil units (preferably cheap screens against fulms)  Buffing units in prior turn with mystic shield, applying negative modifiers to wound/hit, parking in area terrain and saving CP for AoD and battleshock.  I've seen fulminator smash into things and whiff baddddd.  Best counter is cheap screens and always go second (if you can).  Don't take the steal the top of turn until initial hit happens and the enemy hammer is exposed.  Of course there are a million combinations of events, battle plans, and rules all built in to just ruin your damn day.  

RIP Living cities.  Won't miss  you.

Casual games - understand gotcha moments and poor army design can happen - paint the scene, roll play, make funny noises and laugh.

Competitive - well, thats the nature of competitive, but you just have know that gnarly comps exists and they will eat your soul.

[MotherGoose]

23 hours ago, Gokken said:

save stacking: because it jacks up the value for mortal wounds so insanely much rend 0 and 1 attacks need 6 attacks to score one damage where as mortals on 4+ or 5+ need 2 or 3 attacks. You would need 110 attacks to hurt a maw crusher on a 2+ save........ 

Oh yea I agree with a lot of what you've said but this one hits home.

LRL heroes are unkillable for a round and near enough the whole battle, especially when garrisoned. A little 5 wound hero once tanked my prince vhordrai and some other stuff as he was sat in the waterfall scenery.

I charged him, and he popped +1 to save command, used the gem thing LRL have for +1, was in scenery for +1 and -1 to hit, so a 100 point 5 wound hero suddenly was -1 to hit and immune to rend 3 and had a 5+ ward.

I really hope they remove save stacking. The +1 command is fine if there is very minimal access to other buffs, with an army like LRL its way too good. It may be better if cover provided something different, such as reroll 1s or something.

[KrispyXIV]

5 hours ago, MotherGoose said:

Oh yea I agree with a lot of what you've said but this one hits home.

LRL heroes are unkillable for a round and near enough the whole battle, especially when garrisoned. A little 5 wound hero once tanked my prince vhordrai and some other stuff as he was sat in the waterfall scenery.

I charged him, and he popped +1 to save command, used the gem thing LRL have for +1, was in scenery for +1 and -1 to hit, so a 100 point 5 wound hero suddenly was -1 to hit and immune to rend 3 and had a 5+ ward.

I really hope they remove save stacking. The +1 command is fine if there is very minimal access to other buffs, with an army like LRL its way too good. It may be better if cover provided something different, such as reroll 1s or something.

And this is where subjectivity comes into it. 

While the situation you described above is annoying, what sounds much much worse to me is the world where absolutely nothing survives at all, because you can't expend effort to increase survivability.

Even in a world with save stacking, offense feels like it wins over survivability in general - by the bottom of turn 3, it's merely the fragmented remnants of a couple/few units running around the table.  

Absolutely everything dieing to hammers approximately equally as easily to rend because you can't negate/oppose it sounds like Hell. 

Save stacking - the ability to interact, expend effort, opportunity and resources to increase a models survivability - is one if my favorite things about 3E.

Because it is interactive, and makes me feel like I do have agency to stand up to hammer units. 

[MotherGoose]

17 minutes ago, KrispyXIV said:

And this is where subjectivity comes into it. 

While the situation you described above is annoying, what sounds much much worse to me is the world where absolutely nothing survives at all, because you can't expend effort to increase survivability.

Even in a world with save stacking, offense feels like it wins over survivability in general - by the bottom of turn 3, it's merely the fragmented remnants of a couple/few units running around the table.  

Absolutely everything dieing to hammers approximately equally as easily to rend because you can't negate/oppose it sounds like Hell. 

Save stacking - the ability to interact, expend effort, opportunity and resources to increase a models survivability - is one if my favorite things about 3E.

Because it is interactive, and makes me feel like I do have agency to stand up to hammer units. 

But then it leads to more and more mortal wound abilities like we have now to have a way around save stacking, +1 save command is good enough imo without adding in heroic action +1, LRL gems +1, cover +1, mystic shield +1 and garrison etc. on top of it. Wouldn't be so bad if it was 40k where the 'rend' is off the chain and incredibly common. Units being able to easily ignore rend 3 makes people lean more into the mortal spam as well, because what's the point in anything else?

One thing I agree with is heroes need to stick around more - but they went about it the wrong way, they just need a better los rule to make it harder to auto kill smaller heroes at distance.

I'm not sure I agree with all hammers killing everything by turn 3, this is where msu and screens come in, but when your screen can suddenly be +3 save it gets a little silly. Even if it was a lot dead by turn 3, there's only 2 turns left in the battle, things have to kill and get killed otherwise it'd lead to boring stalemates if the majority of your army was still alive and kicking turn 3 and into 4.

Granted I like the bonus to save command and the choice between that or +1 to hit, and mystic shield is way more beneficial now than ever, and generally am loving 3rd, however they clearly introduced these mechanics without a thought to the broken NPE combos it would introduce.

Edited June 26, 2022 by MotherGoose

[UltimateManiac]

6 hours ago, MotherGoose said:

Oh yea I agree with a lot of what you've said but this one hits home.

LRL heroes are unkillable for a round and near enough the whole battle, especially when garrisoned. A little 5 wound hero once tanked my prince vhordrai and some other stuff as he was sat in the waterfall scenery.

I charged him, and he popped +1 to save command, used the gem thing LRL have for +1, was in scenery for +1 and -1 to hit, so a 100 point 5 wound hero suddenly was -1 to hit and immune to rend 3 and had a 5+ ward.

I really hope they remove save stacking. The +1 command is fine if there is very minimal access to other buffs, with an army like LRL its way too good. It may be better if cover provided something different, such as reroll 1s or something.

Would be interesting to hear what else he got in his Army. +1 Save Command = -1CP, Gem can be used just by one unit per phase and its gone, also -1 bravery. Scenery can happen, thats not Lumineth exclusive. Lumineth has no Heroes >130 Point (before new GHB) so i would realy like to know what else he got in his Army. 

I just started playing AoS like 6 Months before and im really struggling with my Lumineth. Sentinels do a decent Job, i dont get the hate they receive. I got a pack of 30, thats 29 shots with MW on 6+. 5+ if you get the spell through. Even if they all shoot on one target thats around 5-7 MW. Sure maybe it will kill small Heroes >7 Wounds, but thats not guaranteed and its 500 Points shooting at 150 Points. 

The 5+ Ward comes with Teclis (remember 740 points) and all he does is the same thing every turn, Protection of Teclis, (5+ Save Bubble), Total Eclipse and maybe a Spellportal and his Damage Spell or something like Teleportinig Vortex. That's 1200 Points - the rest of the army cant compete against anything else in the game. Warden can't screen anything on the board, Alarith are a joke with the current book. What else do we have, where comes that the hate from?

[MotherGoose]

30 minutes ago, UltimateManiac said:

Would be interesting to hear what else he got in his Army. +1 Save Command = -1CP, Gem can be used just by one unit per phase and its gone, also -1 bravery. Scenery can happen, thats not Lumineth exclusive. Lumineth has no Heroes >130 Point (before new GHB) so i would realy like to know what else he got in his Army. 

I just started playing AoS like 6 Months before and im really struggling with my Lumineth. Sentinels do a decent Job, i dont get the hate they receive. I got a pack of 30, thats 29 shots with MW on 6+. 5+ if you get the spell through. Even if they all shoot on one target thats around 5-7 MW. Sure maybe it will kill small Heroes >7 Wounds, but thats not guaranteed and its 500 Points shooting at 150 Points. 

The 5+ Ward comes with Teclis (remember 740 points) and all he does is the same thing every turn, Protection of Teclis, (5+ Save Bubble), Total Eclipse and maybe a Spellportal and his Damage Spell or something like Teleportinig Vortex. That's 1200 Points - the rest of the army cant compete against anything else in the game. Warden can't screen anything on the board, Alarith are a joke with the current book. What else do we have, where comes that the hate from?

Standard teclis, wardens, sentinels and a few other support - I'm not hating or saying the army is op or anything, just an example of how save stacking can be silly. Pretty sure the garrisoned hero was the dude that can plant the banner, so it was +1 save command, +1 gem, +1 cover and +1 heroic action, which, imo, just shouldn't be able to happen. I'd like to see a cap at save stacking of +2 maybe?

29 shots with 5s doing mortals, ignoring line of sight at 30 inch range definitely is NPE, that's the main thing in LRL that's just silly imo. Yeah you can say 'on average' its like 7-9 mortals for 500 points, but thats 7-9 mortals to pretty much whatever you want, without your opponent being able to stop you in a lot of cases, *per turn*. There's not many units in the game that could take out a 150-200 point unit turn 1, and continue to take out 150-200 points every single turn. Melee mortals are nothing in comparison as you can easily play around them with screens and movement, they also have the pre requisite of needing a successful charge first. Every army has something to help against melee, even if it just a chaff screen. Not every army has something to stop extremely good mortal wound ranged.

The huge swings are what ruin it. I've played nagash vs teclis and 30 sentinels before and nagash died turn 1. It was a mixture of horrendous luck on my part (misscast on first spell) and disgustingly good luck on my opponents part (teclis hit everything through portal and got so many 6s, archers hit a crazy amount of 5+s).

As others have said, these type of abilities would probably be wayyyy less 'NPE' if they were on the wound roll instead.

Luckily my opponent knows it and only brings 20 or less most battles. Tbh anything dishing out mortals at range is a bit of a weird one in my opinion, you can't really avoid it with the non existing terrain rules in AoS. Take boltboyz as another example - kruleboyz are in no way op, but the boltboyz can just downright make the game not fun with wild swings and lots of 5s and 6s alongside the sludgeraker.

I also don't agree with wardens not being able to screen anything in the game. They're an extremely good unit and also have access to the once per game gem, -1 to hit formation, d3 mortals when they get charged, +1 to save command, 5++ from teclis, maybe a +1 from mystic shield and suddenly they're -1 to hit, immune to rend 3 and, if they have their spell on, dish out crazy damage - again the swings of loads of 5s. I've had a unit of 5 wardens kill a full health vengorian lord before even rolling wound rolls.

This isn't just wardens - again just an example. Picking a different army (one that I play) - blood knights, built in 6++ pretty much, 3+ base save, lots of access in the army to debuffs like -1 to hit, wound or attacks, can receive cover, mystic shield etc. It all adds up extremely quickly. However, the main difference is that I have to cast those spells, and potentially get dispelled. Which brings me back to my original post - automatic abilities like auto casting on 10+ is just NPE. I don't care how much you spend on a unit, with abilities like that it'll always feel bad for the opponent. If your opponent can't get to teclis to kill him, your army will most likely always have all the best spells up every turn, with no risk of failure. And that leads to NPE for the opponent, and is something (along with 30 inch ignoring los archers) I hope they tweak in the new book. I don't want them to become bad, my brother plays LRL and I like them, but armies/units can be good and fun to use/play against without being frustrating for the opponent.

Something else I've thought about, being an avid 40k player too, is the 'cap' they have in 40k - take necrons for example, can spend a stratagem (cp) to do mortal wounds on 6s to hit (or wound can't remember), but it caps at 3 and any other 6s are just successful hits.

Edited June 26, 2022 by MotherGoose

[KrispyXIV]

1 hour ago, MotherGoose said:

But then it leads to more and more mortal wound abilities like we have now to have a way around save stacking, +1 save command is good enough imo without adding in heroic action +1, LRL gems +1, cover +1, mystic shield +1 and garrison etc. on top of it. Wouldn't be so bad if it was 40k where the 'rend' is off the chain and incredibly common. Units being able to easily ignore rend 3 makes people lean more into the mortal spam as well, because what's the point in anything else?

One thing I agree with is heroes need to stick around more - but they went about it the wrong way, they just need a better los rule to make it harder to auto kill smaller heroes at distance.

I'm not sure I agree with all hammers killing everything by turn 3, this is where msu and screens come in, but when your screen can suddenly be +3 save it gets a little silly. Even if it was a lot dead by turn 3, there's only 2 turns left in the battle, things have to kill and get killed otherwise it'd lead to boring stalemates if the majority of your army was still alive and kicking turn 3 and into 4.

Granted I like the bonus to save command and the choice between that or +1 to hit, and mystic shield is way more beneficial now than ever, and generally am loving 3rd, however they clearly introduced these mechanics without a thought to the broken NPE combos it would introduce.

It not just heroes.  Non-hero units - especially those intended to be tanky - need tools to stick around longer as well.  

Stuff like, for example, Mymidesh Painbringers get a marginal advantage by having a +1 to their saves on their warscroll, but a single +1 does very very little to keep them alive against hammers that can easily bring 2-3 rend.  Having the ability to stack mystic shield and AoD on there gives them the potential to actually do their job and not be summarily removed from play.  And its not like those things are free - CP are valuable, meaning AoD is an expense.  Mystic Shield requires a Wizard (points cost), and can only be in one place at a time.  The same is true of essentially all save bonuses.

Removing save stacking just turns the game back over to rendy hammers, because investing in survivability becomes meaningless - you aren't able to boost units to where they can survive anyway, so doing so is wasted points.  It just turns the game into 'Trading Hammers', and thats a horrible feeling IMO.

[JackOfBlades]

21 minutes ago, MotherGoose said:

Standard teclis, wardens, sentinels and a few other support - I'm not hating or saying the army is op or anything, just an example of how save stacking can be silly. Pretty sure the garrisoned hero was the dude that can plant the banner, so it was +1 save command, +1 gem, +1 cover and +1 heroic action, which, imo, just shouldn't be able to happen. I'd like to see a cap at save stacking of +2 maybe?

29 shots with 5s doing mortals, ignoring line of sight at 30 inch range definitely is NPE, that's the main thing in LRL that's just silly imo. Yeah you can say 'on average' its like 7-9 mortals for 500 points, but thats 7-9 mortals to pretty much whatever you want, without your opponent being able to stop you in a lot of cases, *per turn*. There's not many units in the game that could take out a 150-200 point unit turn 1, and continue to take out 150-200 points every single turn. Melee mortals are nothing in comparison as you can easily play around them with screens and movement, they also have the pre requisite of needing a successful charge first. Every army has something to help against melee, even if it just a chaff screen. Not every army has something to stop extremely good mortal wound ranged.

The huge swings are what ruin it. I've played nagash vs teclis and 30 sentinels before and nagash died turn 1. It was a mixture of horrendous luck on my part (misscast on first spell) and disgustingly good luck on my opponents part (teclis hit everything through portal and got so many 6s, archers hit a crazy amount of 5+s).

As others have said, these type of abilities would probably be wayyyy less 'NPE' if they were on the wound roll instead.

Luckily my opponent knows it and only brings 20 or less most battles. Tbh anything dishing out mortals at range is a bit of a weird one in my opinion, you can't really avoid it with the non existing terrain rules in AoS. Take boltboyz as another example - kruleboyz are in no way op, but the boltboyz can just downright make the game not fun with wild swings and lots of 5s and 6s alongside the sludgeraker.

I also don't agree with wardens not being able to screen anything in the game. They're an extremely good unit and also have access to the once per game gem, -1 to hit formation, d3 mortals when they get charged, +1 to save command, 5++ from teclis, maybe a +1 from mystic shield and suddenly they're -1 to hit, immune to rend 3 and, if they have their spell on, dish out crazy damage - again the swings of loads of 5s. I've had a unit of 5 wardens kill a full health vengorian lord before even rolling wound rolls.

This isn't just wardens - again just an example. Picking a different army (one that I play) - blood knights, built in 6++ pretty much, 3+ base save, lots of access in the army to debuffs like -1 to hit, wound or attacks, can receive cover, mystic shield etc. It all adds up extremely quickly. However, the main difference is that I have to cast those spells, and potentially get dispelled. Which brings me back to my original post - automatic abilities like auto casting on 10+ is just NPE. I don't care how much you spend on a unit, with abilities like that it'll always feel bad for the opponent. If your opponent can't get to teclis to kill him, your army will most likely always have all the best spells up every turn, with no risk of failure. And that leads to NPE for the opponent, and is something (along with 30 inch ignoring los archers) I hope they tweak in the new book. I don't want them to become bad, my brother plays LRL and I like them, but armies/units can be good and fun to use/play against.

You mention using fairly expensive units with a low wound count per point - vlozd, vengorian, nagash. Out of curiosity, do you also get this NPE vs lumineth when you do something like plop down 140 zombies in legion of night?

Edited June 26, 2022 by JackOfBlades

[MotherGoose]

9 minutes ago, KrispyXIV said:

It not just heroes.  Non-hero units - especially those intended to be tanky - need tools to stick around longer as well.  

Stuff like, for example, Mymidesh Painbringers get a marginal advantage by having a +1 to their saves on their warscroll, but a single +1 does very very little to keep them alive against hammers that can easily bring 2-3 rend.  Having the ability to stack mystic shield and AoD on there gives them the potential to actually do their job and not be summarily removed from play.  And its not like those things are free - CP are valuable, meaning AoD is an expense.  Mystic Shield requires a Wizard (points cost), and can only be in one place at a time.  The same is true of essentially all save bonuses.

Removing save stacking just turns the game back over to rendy hammers, because investing in survivability becomes meaningless - you aren't able to boost units to where they can survive anyway, so doing so is wasted points.  It just turns the game into 'Trading Hammers', and thats a horrible feeling IMO.

Yea I get that - I'm really hoping it doesn't go the 40k way with huge amounts of rend. The armies I play and play against in my group have little access to rend, and 2 to 3 is rare (other than beasts of chaos now lol) so when we come across stacking it's just not fun. Maybe the issue lies with the amount of rend in the game? There's definitely too many mortals imo.

[MotherGoose]

12 minutes ago, JackOfBlades said:

You mention using fairly expensive units with a low wound count per point - vlozd, vengorian, nagash. Out of curiosity, do you also get this NPE vs lumineth when you do something like plop down 140 zombies in legion of night?

I don't like to bring npe or play against it, so have never brought 140 zombies so can't comment really.

Plus the thought of building and painting that many makes me want to puke....might try it on tts one day.

Edited June 26, 2022 by MotherGoose

[JackOfBlades]

12 minutes ago, MotherGoose said:

I don't like to bring npe or play against it, so have never brought 140 zombies so can't comment really.

Plus the thought of building and painting that many makes me want to puke....might try it on tts though.

It just seems to me that picking off elite models with low wound counts and few bodies in the rest of their army is exactly what the lumineth, or at least that lumineth build, would be meant to do. Sort of like how youd expect that if a khorne list brings a bloodsecrator, skull altar, hexgorger skulls, mage eater and skullshard mantle on a wrath of khorne bloodthirster, spellbane hex, and skaarac the bloodborne, it wouldnt necessarily be an "NPE" that your magic-based list then wouldnt work so well.

Edited June 26, 2022 by JackOfBlades

[UltimateManiac]

Its crazy how our playing experiences differ  in all this games i played my Warden were far off from making huge damage. Yeah they have that -1hit effect, but to keep that effect they cant charge and only have a 1" Pile in, also the bases have to touch 2 other bases each others, so you cant place them in long lines. 

Also where comes hat d3 Mortal Wounds from, Moonfire Flask? They only get a +1 Wound and +1 Rend on Charge and most of the time there is nothing left from the warden after they got charged. Most of the times i play against Fyreslyer, Seraphon, Soulblight and Orruks. Sentinels do nothing against 60 Zombies and some Units can also pass the Mortal Wounds on a 3+ to other units. Fyreslayer just run over everything and they benefit quite well with the new GHB. 

Please dont get me wrong, surely Lumineth got some good stuff, but i feel like every army got some other good stuff too

[MotherGoose]

1 minute ago, JackOfBlades said:

It just seems to me that picking off elite models with low wound counts is exactly what the lumineth, or at least that lumineth build, would be meant to do. Sort of like how youd expect that if a khorne list brings a bloodsecrator, skull altar, hexgorger skulls, mage eater, skullshard mantle, spellbane hex, a wrath of khorne bloodthirster, and skaarac the bloodborne, it wouldnt necessarily be an "NPE" that your magic-based list wouldnt work so well.

My point is that you can't really interact with it, which leads to NPE. The khorne list you mentioned revolves around a slaughterpriest. He has to chant (yea with rerolls) but can easily die, chants can be unchanted (cant remember the technical term), attempts can happen x2 per round, the bloodthirster can barely do anything at range, so you have time and screens, it doesn't do mortals so you can save and fight back, or use shenanigans like fight last, opponent might make mistakes and have to pick a different unit to fight first, meaning you get to fight the target before getting hit, they may fail charges, you may get the drop on them etc.

Not rolling for spells could be less NPE if it was their casting value, like 6, 7 or 8 but 10+ as the worst case is just a bit lame.

[MotherGoose]

10 minutes ago, UltimateManiac said:

Its crazy how our playing experiences differ  in all this games i played my Warden were far off from making huge damage. Yeah they have that -1hit effect, but to keep that effect they cant charge and only have a 1" Pile in, also the bases have to touch 2 other bases each others, so you cant place them in long lines. 

Also where comes hat d3 Mortal Wounds from, Moonfire Flask? They only get a +1 Wound and +1 Rend on Charge and most of the time there is nothing left from the warden after they got charged. Most of the times i play against Fyreslyer, Seraphon, Soulblight and Orruks. Sentinels do nothing against 60 Zombies and some Units can also pass the Mortal Wounds on a 3+ to other units. Fyreslayer just run over everything and they benefit quite well with the new GHB. 

Please dont get me wrong, surely Lumineth got some good stuff, but i feel like every army got some other good stuff too

Yea it's all personal experience I guess! And depends on lists, sometimes feels like you could reveal lists and be like ok you win let's do another lol.

Again, I'm not saying LRL are too good or anything and theyre not stomping tournaments. They just have a fair few examples of what I personally feel results in NPE - mass Mortal shooting, impossible to catch movement, super tanky capability, auto casting at high value etc etc. It may not be OP a lot of the time, but it has resulted in NPE.

Another example of mass mortals - I've used skarbrand before and in a single turn killed a keeper and shalaxi. I've also used him and killed the glottkin + a blob of rats (2v2) and it didn't feel good on my end either, felt like it took the fun from the game.

My insenate rage bloodthirster sometimes does 0 damage, sometimes does like 20 and 10+ mortals to everything around him. It's again what I mentioned about units being 'swingy' it can lead to NPE on both teams.

It just seems that there's such a huge amount of mortal output at the moment and I can't see it toning down, as in some cases it's needed with the sheer amount of save stacking capability.

Edited June 26, 2022 by MotherGoose

[JackOfBlades]

22 minutes ago, MotherGoose said:

My point is that you can't really interact with it, which leads to NPE. The khorne list you mentioned revolves around a slaughterpriest. He has to chant (yea with rerolls) but can easily die, chants can be unchanted (cant remember the technical term), attempts can happen x2 per round, the bloodthirster can barely do anything at range, so you have time and screens, it doesn't do mortals so you can save and fight back, or use shenanigans like fight last, opponent might make mistakes and have to pick a different unit to fight first, meaning you get to fight the target before getting hit, they may fail charges, you may get the drop on them etc.

Not rolling for spells could be less NPE if it was their casting value, like 6, 7 or 8 but 10+ as the worst case is just a bit lame.

Yeah i see your point, i think both perspectives are necessary for a "healthy" experience.

[Jarminiatures]

1 hour ago, MotherGoose said:

The huge swings are what ruin it. I've played nagash vs teclis and 30 sentinels before and nagash died turn 1. It was a mixture of horrendous luck on my part (misscast on first spell) and disgustingly good luck on my opponents part (teclis hit everything through portal and got so many 6s, archers hit a crazy amount of 5+s).

Setting aside how unlucky you were in this scenario, and that LRL with Teclis are kind of a hard counter to him for this, but surely the most NPE thing in the game is Hand of Dust? For the 95%+ of models in the game that don't have an ignore or reduce/negate damage from this - it's a straight up 50/50 if you die. At least with Sentinels you have to commit one of the max five chances you get per game with 340/510 points worth of models into one target to maybe kill them.

On Teclis' autocasting too, whilst the risk of the miscast is removed with Teclis, I'd rather have 8 casts with a 3+ than 4 autocasts. 

[JackOfBlades]

19 minutes ago, Jarminiatures said:

Setting aside how unlucky you were in this scenario, and that LRL with Teclis are kind of a hard counter to him for this, but surely the most NPE thing in the game is Hand of Dust? For the 95%+ of models in the game that don't have an ignore or reduce/negate damage from this - it's a straight up 50/50 if you die. At least with Sentinels you have to commit one of the max five chances you get per game with 340/510 points worth of models into one target to maybe kill them.

On Teclis' autocasting too, whilst the risk of the miscast is removed with Teclis, I'd rather have 8 casts with a 3+ than 4 autocasts. 

Are you sure it isnt the perceived power (or binary outcomes) of the spells that make you dislike the autocasting, rather than the autocasting itself? For example there are plenty of effects that apply automatic maluses to hit or wound, Tomb Kings in WHFB were even based on autocasting and it was a mechanic that people had IIRC strongly mixed reactions to being removed. Maybe the answer is not to scrap the mechanic itself, but to integrate it better into the faction? I dont know - im just trying to consider the perspective.

Edited June 26, 2022 by JackOfBlades

[MotherGoose]

33 minutes ago, Jarminiatures said:

Setting aside how unlucky you were in this scenario, and that LRL with Teclis are kind of a hard counter to him for this, but surely the most NPE thing in the game is Hand of Dust? For the 95%+ of models in the game that don't have an ignore or reduce/negate damage from this - it's a straight up 50/50 if you die. At least with Sentinels you have to commit one of the max five chances you get per game with 340/510 points worth of models into one target to maybe kill them.

On Teclis' autocasting too, whilst the risk of the miscast is removed with Teclis, I'd rather have 8 casts with a 3+ than 4 autocasts. 

Yeah I was so hopeful for them to reduce his cost and remove/change hand of dust. Currently he's really just a gimmick for 1k points, it was just going to be a fun friendly battle nagash vs teclis.

At least he still has to be within 3 (or pay extra for portal) and cast it, get through unbinds (a lot of auto unbind now), and then it's a 50% chance of a kill, so you can play around it a little. Especially if he doesn't bring portal.

Edited June 26, 2022 by MotherGoose

[pnkdth]

NPE is how you reach an outcome. Winning or losing is not an NPE unless there are rules and mechanics which creates a sour experience.

In an asymmetrically balanced game you constantly need to be aware and wary of mechanics. Especially in a 1v1 game where each unit will affect both players. Designing rules which allows a player to act out a power fantasy works in a single-player game but won't land well in a 1v1 PvP game. Throwing up our hands and going, "well, it is subjective, what can we do?", only serves to muddy the discussion.

Though as rightly pointed out you must always listen to both sides to understand if it is an NPE or not to dilute actually good rules. It is a player versus player game, after all, so it isn't like I am saying each ability must make both players happy as sunshine. Generally speaking though, I do not think I've ever played an asymmetrical PvP game where the crowd control/infiltrator/rogue type wasn't despised for their so-called cheap mechanics. Ideally, you'd want rules which make Player 1 go, "oh, if I had only done X I could have Y, Z, K.", while also making Player 2 feel smart for having pulled something off.

If we take Teclis, to represent his mastery of magic just have him always succeed no matter the roll. 2d6 (but always count as cast on a minimum of 5) + X amount of casts which always go off and never miscasts. Plus some more stuff to amp up the flavour/power (I do not want to have a rules discussion on Teclis), the point I want to make is that you easily create rules which doesn't put your opponent out of the game feeling like there's nothing they can do.