3rd Edition Rules Retrospective

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

Since 3rd edition is almost over, I think it might be a good time to look back at the rules and gameplay changes of 3rd edition and think about what we liked, what didn't work and what could be changed in 4th. I'll start by listing some stuff that comes to mind and giving my opinions.

 

Heroic Actions

When we first got them, I thought they were unnecessary bloat. Heroes were already useful in the game and didn't really need a boost or extra reason to include them in a list. Adding the generic heroic actions seemed like just another thing to keep track of, plus in the beginning Heroic Healing was kind of a problem (remember stuff like big monster-heroes with Amulet of Destiny being basically unkillable?). Over time, with the introduction of army-specific heroic actions, I think these got much better. I really appreciate them now as a way to add a limitation to certain abilities that might otherwise be too strong or too spamable.

Monstrous Rampages

For those, I was pretty much on board with them from day 1. Being a monster was generally a downside in 2nd edition, and I think monstrous rampages are a nice boost to them. Just getting access to Roar is a good reason to seriously consider taking a monster in your list. However, internal balance of the generic rampages is kind of bad: Roar is clearly the best one, followed by Stomp, with the others being really situational. Some of the army-specific rampages are great, though.

Grand Strategies and Battle Tactics

At the start of 3rd, I was excited about getting a secondary objective system. I think the fact that AoS is an objective based game is one of its big strengths. But sadly, battle tactics don't quite feel right yet. They create bumps in the flow of the game, where at the start of the turn players need to take a few minutes to consider their options. And sadly, they frequently feel like you are just doing stuff unrelated to the fiction of the scenario. Grand Strategies work a bit better, in my opinion, although I think, during list building, you mostly just take the one that requires the least effort to accomplish.

New command abilities

All of these seem to have created some problems at some point during the edition:

• Rally: Fine in its base form, but pretty bonkers once you get 4+ rally or rally into combat.
• Unleash Hell: Got several nerfs over the course of the edition and might still be too good. Maybe "stand and shoot" should be a warscroll ability instead.
• Redeploy: Probably the least obviously problematic of the three, but I have seen a fair share of people raging about it at times.
• All-Out Defense: Save stacking got pretty out of hand in the first year of the game, but now feels more managable.

Overall, though, I still think these abilities are a positive for the game, because they break up the long periods where one players doesn't have anything to do and doesn't need to pay attention. I would not want to see them removed again.

Core Battalions

Remember how we had warscroll battalions instead during 2nd? At the time, I thought those were great to help you structure your lists. Now I vastly prefer not having to deal with them. For my preference, though, they could cut basically all the battalions except Battle Regiment, Warlord and Command Entourage. These three have a nice balance of influencing the deployment and priority game, because extra enhancements and command points are worth going high drops for. All the other ones kind of feel like bloat. The purpose-bound command points don't seem impactful enough.

GHB seasons

I like that we got some interesting rules experimentation as part of these. Fighting in two ranks and new Look Out, Sir! would make good permanent additions, IMO. But overall I think the GHBs were a bit overstuffed with weird, wacky twists. Like the current Primal Magic system, which is somewhat fun but feels excessive to have to deal with every game. For me, the pace of change in these GHBs was too rapid, and for a few of them I didn't get a single game in under their rules. But even then, they made it harder for me to plan and build lists, which had an impact on my enjoyment of my painting and hobbying time.

Battletomes

It's great that every faction has a current battletome this edition. That will probably make 3rd edition a rule set people will return to play under in the future. I think overall the quality of the 3rd edition battletomes was also quite high, at least from a purely rules-based standpoint. Of course, there were some outliers: Gitz, Soulblight and OBR were pretty overtuned, and Ogors and Skaven kind of felt a bit undercooked.

Small stuff

• Command Points

Getting and spending command points more frequently definitely seems more fun than the 2nd ed system of buying them all at the start of the game and hoarding them.

• Massive Regiment Discounts/Reinforcement Points

Although I play a lot of horde armies, I think removing point discounts for big units and limiting the amount of huge blobs on the table was a good move. Big units were already very good in 2nd, they really didn't need an extra boost. Some armies can still play hordes (those with 20 model troop choices) and it makes them feel more special. Not sure if Reinforcement Points are actually needed, tough. It feels like you very rarely run up against the limit even without them.

• Armies and Regiments of Renown

A pretty new addition to the game from Dawnbringers. Regiments of Renown are interesting to me, because I wonder if they are what we will get instead of allies in the next edition. Armies of Renown seem like a fun idea (kind of like TOWs Armies of Infamy, which kind of seem like the same concept but executed better), but they need a little more time in the oven, I think.

 

 

[Garrac]

Coming from 40k, I just have to ask GW one thing as my big complain: please, stop changing how narrative rules work. Narrative campaigns can take a while, and if you change them every 3 years that can totally kill a campaign. 3 years can be little time to do a narrative thing, and many times is way less than that since many people wait for their armies to be updated to get the latest new race crusade rules.

I dont totally know if that's the case with Path to Glory, but if not so, keep them not changed by a lot with 4th.

Edited January 25 by Garrac

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

1 hour ago, Garrac said:

Coming from 40k, I just have to ask GW one thing as my big complain: please, stop changing how narrative rules work. Narrative campaigns can't take a while, and if you change them every 3 years that can totally kill a campaign. 3 years can be little time to do a narrative thing, and many times is way less than that since many people wait for their armies to be updated to get the latest new race crusade rules.

I dont totally know if that's the case with Path to Glory, but if not so, keep them not changed by a lot with 4th.

Path to Glory is one of these things I still mostly ignore. Even though on paper I have a lot of interest in playing narrative campaigns. But path to glory misses the mark for me by being too restrictive in many ways. I feel like I would rather just have rules for making a campaign map, bulding up settlements and controlling territory, but just play regular 2000 point matched play games to decide who get to own what.

[Big Kim Woof-Woof]

1 hour ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

At the start of 3rd, I was excited about getting a secondary objective system. I think the fact that AoS is an objective based game is one of its big strengths. But sadly, battle tactics don't quite feel right yet. They create bumps in the flow of the game, where at the start of the turn players need to take a few minutes to consider their options. And sadly, they frequently feel like you are just doing stuff unrelated to the fiction of the scenario. Grand Strategies work a bit better, in my opinion, although I think, during list building, you mostly just take the one that requires the least effort to accomplish.

If I was religious, I'd give this a hearty "amen". Battle Tactics have been a major fly in my ointment ever since they reared their ugly head. I'd love to see them shoved off entirely. Or, if we must endure them, at least drop the Once Per Battle stipulation. I find that by the third turn onwards I'm just trying to pick the ones that aren't going to hold up the game any further. 

Grand Strategies I don't mind so much, probably because they're not changing all the time. 

[Sabush]

My 5 cents:

Heroic Actions and Monstrous Rampage
I feel that these just add unnecessary mental load without adding enough to the game.
Essentially they're an additional hidden system for activated special abilites, and we already have command abilities for that.

Grand Strategies and Battle Tactics
I think Battle Tactics in particular gets way too much attention during a game of AoS. IMO, the game should be about holding objectives and preventing your opponent from holding objectives. Either make BT be worth less points or change so you can only complete 2 per game. Way too much time is spent on deciding on what BT to choose, and it makes the games suffer a lot, especially for new players.
Grand Strategies are generally fine imo.

Command abilities
This system is generally fine to me. But I would remove Rally and change All Out Defence to -1 to hit for attacking unit.

Core Battallions
I think Battallions should be more about listbuilding and have less affect in game. I would like to see Battle Regiment removed, It's a boring default option and deploying an army should be an important tactical element of a game and a valuable skill test. I would prefer battallions to, for example, unlock battleline options or allow more monsters/heroes/artillery/reinforcements/enhancements.

GHB Seasons
Keep it as 1 year, but add/switch battleplans after ~6 months.
I would also like to include some narrative section and have the GHB tell more of a story and push the storyline.
I also think they generally add too many special rules in the GHB.

Battletomes
I think that the Battletome Battletactics shouldn't be allowed in Matched Play, keep them to narrative or something.

For 4th ed I would like to see a few things
* Actual good terrain rules
* Less mortal wounds
* Less save stacking

Just these three things I think would improve the game a lot.

And personally I would remove priority roll, but I can live with it remaining hehe.

Edit: One more thing I think need revisiting is battleshock. It generally just produces feel bad-moments.

Sorry if I come off as too negative here.
I actually enjoy AoS and think it's a good game.
But it has room for improvement!

Edited January 17 by Sabush

[Doko]

in general to me aos 3 have been a downgrade of aos2 and have done less popular aos in my store.

its slower,more tedious,less fun and have created a bigger wall to new players because they must learn many extra things as heroic skill,monsters skills,battle tactics etc

 

-battle tactics are horrible and everyone hate them, is a huge waste of time doing longer the games,they are VERY UNBALANCED betwen armys and nobody in my zone likes the style of play that promote(wait turns doing nothing,run in circles and dont engage in combat etc)

 

-new coherency is horrible and have done useless and unplayables every unit with 1" range weapons and bases of 30" as vulkites berzerkers and also again make the games longer.

 

-new rule that mages doing a double 1 dont do more spells is again stupid and punishes mages with multiples spells(nagash 1k points doing a double 1 in first spell and then dont do nothing for entire turn)

 

in general i wish they just deleted every aos 3.0 rule and back to 2.0 that was faster,funnier and best in everything.

 

only the monster habilitys are a good thing because monsters have been weak for a long time but even this do games longer

Edited January 17 by Doko

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

17 minutes ago, Sabush said:

Heroic Actions and Monstrous Rampage
I feel that these just add unnecessary mental load without adding enough to the game.
Essentially they're an additional hidden system for activated special abilites, and we already have command abilities for that.

Reducing mental load overall should definitely be a goal for 4th edition. I think AoS is at its best when it focusses on good game flow. I definitely think monstrous and heroic actions could be tweaked in that regard.

 

19 minutes ago, Sabush said:

Core Battallions
I think Battallions should be more about listbuilding and have less affect in game. I would like to see Battle Regiment removed, It's a boring default option and deploying an army should be an important tactical element of a game and a valuable skill test. I would prefer battallions to, for example, unlock battleline options or allow more monsters/heroes/artillery/reinforcements/enhancements.

I like the suggestion of having battalions do other things than they do at the moment, but I want to somewhat disagree that Battle Regiment is a boring default option. I think the decision between high and low drops is significant and allows for skill expression. I have recently been playing a high drop list (11 drops) in a meta where most people go for Battle Regiment or Command Entrourage+Battle Regiment, and I feel like I get a significant information advantage in deployment just about every time from it. At the same time, having to be able to play either first or second depending on my opponent's decision is a downside I have to deal with. IMO, controllable drops make the whole priority/double turn aspect of the game interesting, so I personally want to keep them.

 

25 minutes ago, Sabush said:

For 4th ed I would like to see a few things
* Actual good terrain rules
* Less mortal wounds
* Less save stacking

Agreed on terrain rules. I was thinking about that too, but forgot to mention it. The current terrain rules both do too much (mysterious terrain) and too little (nothing forces you to have defensible/impassable/LOS-blocking terrain at all).

 

27 minutes ago, Sabush said:

Sorry if I come off as too negative here.
I actually enjoy AoS and think it's a good game.
But it has room for improvement!

I want to echo that. I think AoS is a very fun and tactically interesting game right now and 3rd edition was, overall, an improvement over 2nd.

[Arzalyn]

My 2 cents as well

The good

Heroic Actions

I like those, specially on factions that get some different ones. If you don't get one they become a little less interesting as you default to generating a CP or buffing a hero most of the time. The least time consuming rule of all the news by far in my experience.

Monstrous Rampage

I like how they helped giving monsters a upside, even if they ended favoring more the heroes with monsters than the generic monsters. One thing I would like changed for them is the dice roll. I would much prefer if just roll for a give value (maybe a 3+) and if we pass we choose which one we gonna do. It would help reduce time wasted choosing which one you want to use just for you to fail the roll.

New Commands

I really like the reactive commands abilities as a way to keep you interested in the game while your opponent is playing. Some of them got problematic through the edition, but right now I think they are mostly fine.

The Bad

Core Battalions

Lets be honest we have just 2 core battalions, Battle regiment and Warlord. The internal balance between the all is terrible. I like the general concept, but the execution is lacking. If they are keeping this concept, I hope they add more composition options, as the ones we have nowadays end gatekeeping artefacts/drop control from some factions. Also, make the bonuses all of them give more comparable, 1 cp once per game is nothing.

GHB Seasons

The idea of changing rules is not bad, but their executions was. Making them resolve around specific unit types warped the game a little to much for my taste. I would prefer smaller bonuses/new rules that we could choose to use or not during a season if they want to keep those. The focus should be more in changing the battleplans we are playing in and less in changing how you build your army list every 6~12 months.

The Ugly

Battle Tactics and Grand Strategies

As many others have said here, I liked the concept of those we the edition started. I hate how they were implemented. They warped the game so much around them that giving easy tactics to a faction became enough to increase it wins rate. They made the game becomes more a matter of "how many easy tactics can I get/deny with this faction" than anything else, which is terrible. A secondary scoring system is a good idea, but it shouldn't be the main element of the game.

Battletomes

I like that we got new tomes for new factions, but I hate how the delay between tomes create such a gap between factions simple based on the year they tome got released. I really wish we could change the battletome system and I would love if we went for something like the old world got. Release all factions rules at the start of the year and them release supplements like regiments of renown and armies of renown during the season. It would reduce the disparity of design between factions as their core rules would all be made together and we could just opt to not use the supplemental rules if they release something super broken.

2+ Once per game abilities

Why those exist? It just another roll to see if you will fell frustated or not. It adds nothing to the game other than frustration.

Extra wishes

Proper terrain rules.

 

 

Edited January 17 by Arzalyn

[Aeryenn]

I really enjoy all the changes implemented in 3rd edition. Heroic actions and monster rampages put even bigger emphasis on these units. I prefer large models instead of cohorts of small infantry.

The only thing that could have been done better are battle tactics and grand strategies. The system is good and doesn't need fixing on my opinion but individual tactics do. Some armies have much easier goals to obtain while others seem impossible to do from the start.

To be honest I'm really satisfied with the state of the game.

Only thing that needs a desperate change is the double turn system. I've had a lot of games that ended just because one player had a double turn and it allowed him to finish of crucial opponents units that would otherwise withdraw, heal or just do something else that would change the current battle. It really needs to be fixed one way or the other. If it really must to be part of AoS give the second player (suffering from DT) to have much more on his disposal. 1 cp more is just a joke.

[Michelle]

I came in on the very tail end of 2nd edition, so my memory of it is already gone lol.  So as a newish player, I have a fresh slate to work with.

3rd edition seems in whole a good one to me.  The Battletactics I really enjoy, however if we are to have global tactics AND book tactics, GW needs to ensure the book tactics don't have any 'auto-achieve' factors in them.  We could even trim the book tactics down a bit at that.  I personally enjoy the Nighthaunt, "all ghosts, no brakes" (better known as one stop, no return) with the Black Coach being the only model to complete it.

Terrain, specifically mystic terrain features-  I've encountered several players who just roll a dice per terrain.  I mean, they point at a terrain, roll a die.  Point at the next terrain, roll another die, rinse and repeat.  I really don't believe this is what was intended, so if my opponent and I agree to play with the terrain rules, whomever is defender rolls all the dice, and divvies it out to each terrain as they like, then we pick sides.   From what I've seen and experienced, it's been "where's the arcane terrain" or if you are certain armies "where's mystical?" 
They're boring and not fun, imo.  It's honestly easier to remember wyldwood, cover, and impassable versus a pool of 6 rules that either hurt me, or do absolutely nothing for me.

List-building - The battalions are rough.  Maybe its because I'm still green, but playing Nighthaunt with my little pool of wizards, it really puts me in a hard spot.  Do I want more drops to get knowledge of my opponents' deployment, or do I want less drops so I can dictate who goes first?  It also ties in with deploying, because I want to keep my wizards safe and away from the enemy wizards, but within the nighthaunt 'bubble' to get my spells off.

Keep double-turn.  I sometimes enjoy having a short game just to get to lunch early or buy a beer with my new friend who was my opponent.  XD

[JackStreicher]

5 hours ago, Big Kim Woof-Woof said:

If I was religious, I'd give this a hearty "amen". Battle Tactics have been a major fly in my ointment ever since they reared their ugly head. I'd love to see them shoved off entirely. Or, if we must endure them, at least drop the Once Per Battle stipulation. I find that by the third turn onwards I'm just trying to pick the ones that aren't going to hold up the game any further. 

Grand Strategies I don't mind so much, probably because they're not changing all the time. 

Counter point: Keep battle tactics in the shape of the scenario providing a small list of them, while being the only way to score.

Objectives might get a new role outside of scoring which could enable them to become terrain or physical markers: Replenishing troops, rallying (please, change battleshock), more defense etc. They could become a cool hybrid of terrain and effect.

To me it’s either standing in magic circles and winning OR doing nonsense because reasons and then magically winning - both warps the game too much out of shape to a point where the immersion is gone and I could simply play chess instead.

 

oh, almost forgot: Make the Double Turn tied to specific Scenarios as well. I thoroughly hate it as a ever-present rule.

Edited January 17 by JackStreicher

[Mutton]

As someone who runs a lot of introductory games for new players, AoS' current #1 issue is overcomplexity. Too many things to pick from lists, too many sub-phases.

And launch Battle Tactics into the sun--I never want to see them again in their current iteration.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

1 hour ago, Mutton said:

As someone who runs a lot of introductory games for new players, AoS' current #1 issue is overcomplexity. Too many things to pick from lists, too many sub-phases.

And launch Battle Tactics into the sun--I never want to see them again in their current iteration.

List building was always pretty complex, but game play has definitely become less smooth this edition. Battle tactics are the main thing here, in my opinion, with the seasonal rules stuff from the current GHB being a close second. I don't know if that matches your experience with what new players struggle with.

Heroic actions and monstrous rampages are stumbling blocks, but IMO that gets better quickly once you realize you can just default to extra command points and roar and be correct, like, 80% of the time.

[Gitzdee]

Third edition made me fall in love with Warcry. That about sums it up.

It had too much rules layers an book keeping for players like me who dont get around to playing many games. Its also too much to teach my wife or friends for a single game. I rather have an easy to learn and hard to master ruleset.

Oh and please learn from MTG about how to use keywords. If i ask what a unit does i would love to hear that it has frenzy and poison instead of having to listen to my opponent read the full warscroll every time.

Edit: It wasnt that bad an edition, but it just wasnt for me. 

I would also love more support for 750/1000 point games. And a better open play mode.

Edit 2: I do think GW did a better job balancing the tomes. Some early tomes got the curse of being the early tomes but i dont think any of them are actually that bad. They also provided more support and updates to the tomes compared to earlier editions.

Edited January 17 by Gitzdee

[JackStreicher]

24 minutes ago, Gitzdee said:

Some early tomes got the curse of being the early tomes but i dont think any of them are actually that bad

The Stormcast Tome just knocked. It told me it needs cheese to survive.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

33 minutes ago, JackStreicher said:

The Stormcast Tome just knocked. It told me it needs cheese to survive.

That was the one big upside of Battle Tactics, I guess. They really helped with competitive balancing of older books.

[Dogmantra]

It's interesting to see how different people's experience with AoS is from mine. I only played a little bit at the end of 2nd, so perhaps it's the thing where your first edition is always your favourite.

A bunch of stuff about scoring, heroic actions, and monstrous rampages

I really like Heroic Actions and Monstrous Rampages. At the start of the edition I thought they were a bit conservative, and as newer tomes have come out we've seen some armies that use them well with their own bespoke actions. Unfortunately given the way armies are updated that does tend to make it into a bit of a haves and have nots situation. Heroic Actions would be a great way to add some more variety to the twenty odd foot heroes Stormcast have, but they don't have any because of the point they were released in the edition, it's a shame. Hopefully they stick around for the future and we see some more robust use of the systems.

Battle Tactics seem like such a polarising topic, and I really like them, conceptually at least. Again, it feels like the first GHB was very conservative but they've got a bit more interesting as the game goes on. I think they're at their best design-wise when they ask an interesting question about how confident you are about this turn - offering you the option to score points if you make things a little harder for yourself. Sadly I'm not sure there are too many of these, Bait & Trap is probably my favourite example from the latest set of tactics, it's not too tricky to do if you're set up for it, but the interesting part is do you really want to do it? Will the loss of two units' worth of fighting output and the engagement of two units who are probably not your primary hammers be worth the 2 points in the long run? You can see evidence of this sort of thinking in other tactic designs - Magical Dominance almost manages it, suggesting a neat risk/reward calculation where you have to weigh up how many spells you want to cast with the idea that the more you cast the better your turn will be, but eventually one will get unbound. It doesn't quite come off that way though due to how powerful +s to cast are and the unbinding range, so in actual play it seems to be more like can you manage to not miscast mystic shield turn 1. I think ditching them would be a shame, they're close to something really special and interesting!

Heroic Actions, Monstrous Rampages, and Battle Tactics are also all the targets of the critique that they're too hard to remember, but I rarely see Battleplans mentioned, which I find a bit strange because HAs, MRs, and BTs work the same in every game you play in any given season, but for battleplans you're playing one of twelve, most of which swap out each season. Some of them are very gimmicky and tricky to keep track of (limited resources), some are fairly straightforward, but most of them have at least one extra rule to remember that only applies for that battleplan. In my experience at least, with repetition over several games the things that happen every turn of every game become fairly rote, while you need many more games to get the same kind of repetition for batleplans. Kill Team's approach to Matched Play was to separate out the board and objective setup from the way you interact with them to score points, giving more variations but less to remember because it's a combination of two things. I think that's doable for AoS, and it's sort of what those open play decks already do, you know the ones with a twist for each battle.

Grand Strategies are currently very bad but could be much more interesting and have most of their problems solved with a single rules tweak: choose your grand strategy at the start of the game, not during army construction. Having to pick the same grand strat to apply to every single battle pushes everyone into the most conservative choice which is usually one that disincentivises interaction. Looking at the latest GHB, something like Overshadow is what you want from a way to score - it gives both players an incentive to chase after fights and make things happen because if they are good enough they either score or deny 3vps for doing so. Except when you build your army you have no idea if you'll be against someone taking three lots of five liberators just for the battleline requirement, or someone running 120 zombies and you will just not have enough damage output to compete in the game and get your grand strat. That's sort of okay in itself, but when that grand strat exists in the same universe as Spellcasting Savant, where you have a lot more control and your results are going to be a lot more even across matchups, why would you ever choose Overshadow? (It also lets you rewrite Slaughter of Sorcery to remove the very silly fact you can just get 3 vps for free if there are no wizards in the game without replacing it with the equally bad you just can't possibly get your grand strat if there are no wizards in the game). With this tweak I think there are still a few strats that would need changing (fyreslayer invocation lol) but it makes the decision a bit more interesting without adding too much extra.

Core battalions

On battalions - they're too much of a halfway measure for me. The list building straddles this annoying line where it's loose enough that it feels like you should be able to just put whatever you think will work well on the table together, but then the battalions add so much extra reward for sticking to certain patterns that if you don't take advantage of them you're playing with a hand tied behind your back - especially at the start of the edition fitting into one drop was so important for some armies. I'd like them to either ditch core battalions entirely or to double down and make them mandatory more like force organisation charts. With warscroll battalions and now core battalions it feels like there's some faction within the AoS design team that really likes the idea of force organisation charts, like the old 40k detachments, or warhammer fantasy, or any number of historicals but they're told no, that's not in the scope of what AoS is supposed to be, so they keep trying new battalion ideas to get a semblence of the idea but it just never works quite right.]

The GHB

The actual physical spiral bound book that you get when you buy the ghb is absolutely fantastic and was a brilliant innovation for this edition. It makes a ton of sense to separate out the core and matched play rules for the more competitive crowd, and spiral binding is just nice for it to lay flat on the table. I want to see this happen for more games! The only criticism I have is that they go out of date so quickly, the expectation from digital games being patched on a regular schedule carrying over to tabletop games is... eh. It's nice that companies are willing and able to do more tweaking to make a balanced experience, but I think there's a lot to be said for letting rules just stick around for a while and seeing if people figure out new ways to play. Six months is just not a really long time for a tabletop wargame to develop a stable metagame. I was once part of a card game community with 20 selectable characters. Broad consensus was that there was a clear top three best characters although most were considered playable, but there was a period of a couple of months where a couple of dedicated players really dived into a character thought to be mid-tier and ended up essentially adding a fourth top tier character in the minds of basically everyone. All of this happened with no changes made to the game, just to the perspective of players figuring out how to use things. AoS is on a completely different scale but I think letting the fields lie for a bit is a good thing. Six months is way too short, but I think GW realise that now.

Battlepacks
Side note before I talk about the Pitched Battles stuff, I like that 3rd edition properly formalised the idea of battlepacks and it did feel at the time like GW expected more events to make up their own battlepacks in addition to events using Pitched Battles. I started writing one of my own a while back and it was a fun design challenge, it's something I'd like to see more of because I think there are interesting things you can do that GW are not likely to do, and it also lets you address your own criticisms of the game (e.g. if you dislike battle tactics, just leave them out of your battlepack, or write new ones. I do think it's a bit of a cop out to say oh yeah just houserule it but the section on battlepacks in the core rules really does suggest it to be an expected mode of play that your local store might make up their own battlepack for example)

The official Pitched Battles battlepacks have been mixed. I think the best way to characterise them is that they have mostly achieved exactly the opposite of what they wanted. Speaking here mostly about Galletian Veterans and the Primal Magic ones. Bounty Hunters ended up making it so the play for many people was to just avoid taking any veterans at all as they died far more easily, and primal magic dice seem to end up with more spells being unbound and endless spells being weaker due to the order you have to choose to use dice in and there being no risk to adding unbinding/dispelling dice. I also mentioned above that I think the battleplans can be a bit too gimmicky.

 

Random final thoughts
That was a lot of words, I hope someone reads all that. Not much else but I did think - I don't miss rerolls in the sense that eliminating a lot of them does help speed up the game but I do think something is lost with the switch from things like Mystic Shield being reroll 1s to being a flat +1. It is strictly more powerful, but that's not really my issue, I think it slightly lessens the importance of the original characteristic. A +1 is, on average, 1/6 more attacks being blocked. In absolute terms, if you're getting hit with 12 attacks, a +1 will on average block two more than you would have without the +1 regardless of what your save was beforehand, whereas gaining the ability to reroll 1s will block more attacks for a 3+ save than a 5+ and with rend so prevalent that just sort of feels more right to me. Minor quibble.

[Satyrical Sophist]

I’ve not played as much as I’d like this year but have thoroughly enjoyed what I did play. I really like third edition. I think moving into fourth I’d like things to be more honed rather than a radical change. Thaaaat said, if we were looking for changes I do have some things I’d be interested in seeing. I’m going to include some changes I think would be interesting first, then do a Good/Bad/More specific what I’d change.

General Changes.

More Tags

I know some people want universal rules for a lot of things, and I can see it working, but I would really like units to get more keywords. We currently have stuff like Andtoran Locus, or Galletian Veteran, or Galletian hero. I would love to see these roles and more added onto units. Rather than having to define the terms for each time a GHB wants to care about them have them already in place. If they don’t do anything, fine, but it means if you ever want to do something to interact with all priests under 10 wounds who aren’t mounted it’s a lot easier. I imagine they would use fancy words for them, but RABBLE, LIGHT INFANTRY, HEAVY INFANTRY, LIGHT CAVALRY etc would let them refer to whole groups much easier. Does it run the risk of bloat? Maybe, but I think information can be included at the bottom in the tags much easier, and it’s only relevant if something wants to refer to it. 
 

Priority roll.

I don’t have a problem with the priority roll myself but I know a lot of people do. One thing I do think is a big part of that is how much comes down to one single dice roll. Now, this idea might not work but I love the way warcry does priority. A short explanation is this. Each player rolls 6 dice and sorts them into singles, doubles, triples and quadruples.

(so if you rolled 1 2 2 3 4 4 then you would have 2 singles (1 and 3) and 2 doubles.)

The player with the most singles gets to choose who goes first, but doubles, triples and quadruples can all be spent on abilities. In warcry you also get a wild die each turn that you can either save for later turns, or add to your rolled dice. So you could choose to add another Single to try to take priority, or turn a double into a triple etc. I really like the system as a way for determining priority because the player who doesn’t get to choose priority tends to have access to more powerful abilities. What those abilities do would need to be determined but it has a lot of scope for being tuned. Something like a double might be worth a command point, but something like a quad probably wants to be quite a big thing. Allowing triples and quads to have out of sequence activations would be interesting, something like allowing a movement in your opponents turn, or a shooting action for example.

Heroic Actions. The good.

I know heroic actions are somewhat rules bloat, but I do enjoy the way they prevent spam. I particularly like when they tie rules to them. Thematically the Free Guild Cavalier Marshal having a bonus effect when doing Finest Hour is a lovely piece of rules design to me. I like it. 
 

Heroic Actions. The bad.

Some factions just don’t have much to do with them, and that can feel pretty bad.

 

Heroic Actions. What I’d like changing.

If you added in the tags then heroic actions are a really easy thing to have interact with them. Let a small foot hero who has the HEIROPHANT keyword (meaning a small priest say) do a heroic action that gives them +1 to prayer rolls. Give the ADJUTANT keyword a 2+ to generate a command point, something like that.  

If you used a warcry style priority this is also a good point to interact with that system. Let heroic actions be some way of generating new wild dice, let another one count your ability nice as one higher than it is.

I have a lot more, but I should probably think them through more and type it up when I have more time.

 

[flying_dutchman]

Drop battle tactics and "bring back" elites.  So players can't spam certain units.  Other than that I like 3rd.

[Craze]

First of all, I have to say this: I LOVED playing 3rd and see it as a major upgrade to 2nd edition, so I just have somewhat smaller points of criticism or things I would like to change:

 

Battle Tactics:

I really like the system of battle tactics, the only problem I see is the balance between armies - not only of army specific tactics but also the chances of individual armies scoring the generic ones consistently. As mainly a Soulblight player I was in a very comfortable place for most of the edition when it comes to secondary scoring, as it was very easy for various SBGL builds to score at least 4 battle tactics very very consistently. If I would need to guess I would say I scored around 4,5 battle tactics on average per game, which - combined with the good primary scoring of SBGL - made for a very scary scoring output of the army. Here better balance is required to even the playing field in 4th edition.

 

GHB:

Never go back to 6 month cycles, keep it at once per year then it is fine. As mentioned above the physical, spiral bound GHB is one of the best, if not the best, rulebook in TT history from my point of view, just from the perspective of using the book during play. 

 

Foot heroes:

I really hate it that nominally powerful heroes like a Chaos/Vampire Lords or Ghoul Kings are at best really good buff pieces, but almost always next to useless/insta-killed in combat. I would like it if you somehow could gear your small heroes to be powerful combattants in their own right, perhaps somehow choosing between "leadership style" like leading from the front vs enabling your troops to perform better. Perhaps the system of 40k of Lone Operative vs leading a unit could be a way to explore this.

 

Apart from these points, I hope that we only see small tweaks in 4th and keep the overall game as it was in 3rd.

 

Edit: Overall I think the balance was quite ok, especially compared to 40k, where with almost every Codex release you have instant emergency changes, as we saw it right now with Necrons again. We almost never saw something like that in AoS and for me thats a big big upside that AoS has above 40k.

Edited January 18 by Craze

[Big Kim Woof-Woof]

1 hour ago, Craze said:

Foot heroes:

I really hate it that nominally powerful heroes like a Chaos/Vampire Lords or Ghoul Kings are at best really good buff pieces, but almost always next to useless/insta-killed in combat. I would like it if you somehow could gear your small heroes to be powerful combattants in their own right, perhaps somehow choosing between "leadership style" like leading from the front vs enabling your troops to perform better. Perhaps the system of 40k of Lone Operative vs leading a unit could be a way to explore this.

Agreed with aplomb. I mean, I dont want them to go mad with it, lone chappies on foot casually hacking their way through everything in their path should be the sole province of unique heroes whose background entitles them to do so (like Sigvald, to use an example from my own team). But, come on, give Chaos Lords and their ilk a bit more chutzpah! They need to find the balance. 

[Sabush]

I think it would be cool if Foot Heroes would have a built in bodyguard rule if within 3 inches of a battleline unit and can shrug off wounds to that unit.
Would give them more survivability and I think it would fit thematically to have them close to the troops.

Another thing I dislike is that most Foot Heroes have about the same statline regardless of the race etc.
Compare, for instance, a loonboss to a killaboss.
5w vs 6w
4+/6+ vs 3+
5atk/3+/3+/-1/d3 vs 4atk/3+/3+/-1/2
Same point cost, 90.

In my mind, the killaboss should be twice as strong as a loonboss, but now they're the same.
And similar examples can be found everywhere.

[Marcvs]

1 hour ago, Sabush said:

In my mind, the killaboss should be twice as strong as a loonboss, but now they're the same.

literally all SCE foot heroes quietly sobbing in a corner 😂

[Skreech Verminking]

On 1/17/2024 at 12:20 PM, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Since 3rd edition is almost over, I think it might be a good time to look back at the rules and gameplay changes of 3rd edition and think about what we liked, what didn't work and what could be changed in 4th. I'll start by listing some stuff that comes to mind and giving my opinions.

 

Heroic Actions

When we first got them, I thought they were unnecessary bloat. Heroes were already useful in the game and didn't really need a boost or extra reason to include them in a list. Adding the generic heroic actions seemed like just another thing to keep track of, plus in the beginning Heroic Healing was kind of a problem (remember stuff like big monster-heroes with Amulet of Destiny being basically unkillable?). Over time, with the introduction of army-specific heroic actions, I think these got much better. I really appreciate them now as a way to add a limitation to certain abilities that might otherwise be too strong or too spamable.

Monstrous Rampages

For those, I was pretty much on board with them from day 1. Being a monster was generally a downside in 2nd edition, and I think monstrous rampages are a nice boost to them. Just getting access to Roar is a good reason to seriously consider taking a monster in your list. However, internal balance of the generic rampages is kind of bad: Roar is clearly the best one, followed by Stomp, with the others being really situational. Some of the army-specific rampages are great, though.

Grand Strategies and Battle Tactics

At the start of 3rd, I was excited about getting a secondary objective system. I think the fact that AoS is an objective based game is one of its big strengths. But sadly, battle tactics don't quite feel right yet. They create bumps in the flow of the game, where at the start of the turn players need to take a few minutes to consider their options. And sadly, they frequently feel like you are just doing stuff unrelated to the fiction of the scenario. Grand Strategies work a bit better, in my opinion, although I think, during list building, you mostly just take the one that requires the least effort to accomplish.

New command abilities

All of these seem to have created some problems at some point during the edition:

• Rally: Fine in its base form, but pretty bonkers once you get 4+ rally or rally into combat.
• Unleash Hell: Got several nerfs over the course of the edition and might still be too good. Maybe "stand and shoot" should be a warscroll ability instead.
• Redeploy: Probably the least obviously problematic of the three, but I have seen a fair share of people raging about it at times.
• All-Out Defense: Save stacking got pretty out of hand in the first year of the game, but now feels more managable.

Overall, though, I still think these abilities are a positive for the game, because they break up the long periods where one players doesn't have anything to do and doesn't need to pay attention. I would not want to see them removed again.

Core Battalions

Remember how we had warscroll battalions instead during 2nd? At the time, I thought those were great to help you structure your lists. Now I vastly prefer not having to deal with them. For my preference, though, they could cut basically all the battalions except Battle Regiment, Warlord and Command Entourage. These three have a nice balance of influencing the deployment and priority game, because extra enhancements and command points are worth going high drops for. All the other ones kind of feel like bloat. The purpose-bound command points don't seem impactful enough.

GHB seasons

I like that we got some interesting rules experimentation as part of these. Fighting in two ranks and new Look Out, Sir! would make good permanent additions, IMO. But overall I think the GHBs were a bit overstuffed with weird, wacky twists. Like the current Primal Magic system, which is somewhat fun but feels excessive to have to deal with every game. For me, the pace of change in these GHBs was too rapid, and for a few of them I didn't get a single game in under their rules. But even then, they made it harder for me to plan and build lists, which had an impact on my enjoyment of my painting and hobbying time.

Battletomes

It's great that every faction has a current battletome this edition. That will probably make 3rd edition a rule set people will return to play under in the future. I think overall the quality of the 3rd edition battletomes was also quite high, at least from a purely rules-based standpoint. Of course, there were some outliers: Gitz, Soulblight and OBR were pretty overtuned, and Ogors and Skaven kind of felt a bit undercooked.

Small stuff

• Command Points

Getting and spending command points more frequently definitely seems more fun than the 2nd ed system of buying them all at the start of the game and hoarding them.

• Massive Regiment Discounts/Reinforcement Points

Although I play a lot of horde armies, I think removing point discounts for big units and limiting the amount of huge blobs on the table was a good move. Big units were already very good in 2nd, they really didn't need an extra boost. Some armies can still play hordes (those with 20 model troop choices) and it makes them feel more special. Not sure if Reinforcement Points are actually needed, tough. It feels like you very rarely run up against the limit even without them.

• Armies and Regiments of Renown

A pretty new addition to the game from Dawnbringers. Regiments of Renown are interesting to me, because I wonder if they are what we will get instead of allies in the next edition. Armies of Renown seem like a fun idea (kind of like TOWs Armies of Infamy, which kind of seem like the same concept but executed better), but they need a little more time in the oven, I think.

 

 

Personally I mostly agree with you there.

although I don’t quit agree on the battletome front, but my reason for that is mostly skaven so….. take it with a grain of salt.

i’m not a fan of that book, and while aos 3.0 has been a fund system to play in skaven just weren’t a fun faction at all.

the book didn’t support the lore of the book, ignored the entire concept of what a skaven is and how a grand allegiances should be build upon (apparently holding hands and dancing around a campfire is the new norm for skaven),

 and half of our books pages from last edition where ripped out.

Personally this is mostly the thing I didn’t like about this edition and I’m really hoping should skaven get their update in 4.0 that gw really should think about what the skaven are before writing something a Skaven lore lover would puke over 

 

[JackStreicher]

4 hours ago, Craze said:

I really hate it that nominally powerful heroes like a Chaos/Vampire Lords or Ghoul Kings are at best really good buff pieces

Agreed, they don't feel like heroes, but like champions with a buff aura/rule. A Goblin basically being as good and sometimes even better than a Vampire Lord breaks the illusion completely for me. They've steered into a corner in which all foot heroes are the same except for their model which imo is an issue.

The same goes for ridden Monsters: A Monster that does not deal solid damage feels utterly bad. Don't make monsters primarily buff pieces (looking at you Thalia).

 

Imo this video kontributes to this discussion

 

Edited January 18 by JackStreicher