3rd Edition Rules Retrospective

[Big Kim Woof-Woof]

13 minutes ago, Pizzaprez said:

Those Anvil of Apotheosis rules were extremely fun and did a lot to let you make your own complex characters

Then they dropped the concept completely, lol. I'd love to see a book that was *just* those rules

Wholehearted agreement. Not sure why that whole thing didn't survive very long. Pandering to the 'competitive' players, I suspect. 

[Marcvs]

50 minutes ago, Big Kim Woof-Woof said:

Wholehearted agreement. Not sure why that whole thing didn't survive very long. Pandering to the 'competitive' players, I suspect. 

those damn competitive players!

or rather, it was a half-hearted test, quickly stapled to fill in some pages and abandoned as the direction they wanted for the game was one of "bad" simplification and streamlining. Remember the battles in the sky? wonder if competitive players killed those too

[Kitsumy]

- whole tactics sistem is a massive failure. make games too long and proved too hard to balance.

- small heros keep being totally useless, they are there only to do 1 trick( if they have it). would love to have a universal rule like some actual heros has, like soulblight ones, where a cloose unit fight after them. so we can actually use our heros instead being on table only watching the game and doing nothing.

- the melee range still being bad done. 1 or 2 range on weapons is cunbersome since u need to measure every unit on every fight, and we have the bases imbalance, where we have goblins with dagger figthing in 2 rows and other big models like saurus with maces bigger than those whole goblins figthing in 1 row only,because one have smaller bases.

should be changed to first row always figth and the models next to them, with spears getting extra rows or other bonuses like lumineth spear dudes.

- new coherence.... dont make any sense, sure conga sucked but it should change to 10 models minimun, right now they have punished every 5 man units and totally deleted some 10 man units with only 1" on his weapons.

- magic should be improved, doing waaay more and better things, but changin his dmg to normal wounds with different ammounts of rend,instead every spell doing mortals, making armor useless.

[brocktoon]

This is something my regulars have been talking about quite a bit recently, so this is good timing. We're home players, though I play games infrequently at stores, as well. We're also strictly narrative players. Since day one with AoS (back in first edition), we've gone through intensive play weekends once a month where we'd do Path to Glory, build up an army to wherever we ended up with it, then stop and repeat the next month's weekend with a different army. Some stray thoughts from this standpoint.

• AoS2 was our main game. We've barely played AoS3. We never articulated it as a disaster, it's just that it didn't take. The cognitive load is simply higher when compared to the prior editions. Two of our four regulars aren't the sort to read rules and army books extensively and they've always been in a cycle of sort of relearning the game every month. 1st and 2nd that wasn't a problem, 3rd is. That's not to say that 3rd is complex but it is the case that whatever invisible line there is where it tips over from able to pick up quickly to I can barely manage to comprehend this after one game was crossed in the transition to 3rd.
• The cognitive load is just slightly too high. This is a problem with 40k, too, especially 9th. But I don't think 10th is a massive improvement. I like CPs just fine but that's where the load is. I have to remember this thing on this other sheet, then remember 5 or 10 or 15 others. I can help this by buying doodads, but if I'm a casual player I'm not going to do this. I might not even know they exist.
  
  Part of this is what we've called the stats problem. Basically, GW since the mid-00s has refused to lean on differences in stats to differentiate units and instead increased the number of additional unit rules. Casting your mind back, a 1-10 scale on stats allows for immense variety in how units behave. But instead of, say, having WFB elves use an initiative 6, they decided to do elves strike first. But then there was maybe an edge case where that shouldn't happen, or it should happen more. So they add more specific, bespoke rules to things. I daresay that this now nearly 20 year old design ethos, much as I loved earlier editions of AoS, is why AoS was created in the first place. Design for rules, not stats, and you end up in a weird cognitive load space which we're in now, where it's started to feel like a card game (I even need cards or digital facsimiles to remind me everything my unit can do). This won't be fixed.
• There are things I like. Monstrous rampages. I like the current use em or lose em CP system, even if there are maybe three too many generic CP dumps. 
• PtG in 3rd suuuuccccckkkssss. You have to track so much that it's just overwhelming, and the gesture toward taking your PtG army and playing matched play with them was both useless (nobody did this) and made you feel like it sort of didn't matter because matched is what matters anyway. It's annoying for me but I know the rules; our casual players, no chance they can handle this. It's everything bad from Crusade without the regular-ish cool campaigns that at least make Crusade worth looking at. Thankfully, you've got a good attempt at fixing it in the narrative forums here at TGA, even tho our default when we do play is to just go with how 1st and 2nd did it, albeit with slightly tweaked tables.
• The added cognitive load doesn't really give gains across the board. By this I mean that stuff like monster rampages feel pretty good and limited, while heroic actions have expanded too much and don't feel like they gain you much (everyone is just rolling for the extra CP anyway, which you only do because of the system which increases cognitive load, which increases cognitive load further.
• It's not just me. AoS during 2nd was the game at local stores. AoS nights were hopping and 40k nights lagged behind. Everyone was getting on board. Now, at what should be the best time for 3rd with full suites of army books and rules supposedly finely tuned? Dead. The local AoS FB groups are down to a couple posts a week. The product is piling up at the local stores. I don't want to extrapolate from local conditions to global too much, but I think the weird pace of AoS releases compared to past years shows some sort of slowdown GW is aware of (remember the 3e rules boxes at release which didn't move, we figured was due to the pandemic, only for them to still be on shelves three years later?).
  
  All in all, the game feels sort of unwell. We mostly houserule or strip out things we don't care for and it's fine, but the magic of 2nd isn't really there (and it was magical). When we're spending time figuring out how to port new 3rd edition units to 2nd or how to make a 2.5 sort of hybrid, that's not swell.

[Doko]

3 hours ago, brocktoon said:

This is something my regulars have been talking about quite a bit recently, so this is good timing. We're home players, though I play games infrequently at stores, as well. We're also strictly narrative players. Since day one with AoS (back in first edition), we've gone through intensive play weekends once a month where we'd do Path to Glory, build up an army to wherever we ended up with it, then stop and repeat the next month's weekend with a different army. Some stray thoughts from this standpoint.

• AoS2 was our main game. We've barely played AoS3. We never articulated it as a disaster, it's just that it didn't take. The cognitive load is simply higher when compared to the prior editions. Two of our four regulars aren't the sort to read rules and army books extensively and they've always been in a cycle of sort of relearning the game every month. 1st and 2nd that wasn't a problem, 3rd is. That's not to say that 3rd is complex but it is the case that whatever invisible line there is where it tips over from able to pick up quickly to I can barely manage to comprehend this after one game was crossed in the transition to 3rd.
• The cognitive load is just slightly too high. This is a problem with 40k, too, especially 9th. But I don't think 10th is a massive improvement. I like CPs just fine but that's where the load is. I have to remember this thing on this other sheet, then remember 5 or 10 or 15 others. I can help this by buying doodads, but if I'm a casual player I'm not going to do this. I might not even know they exist.
  
  Part of this is what we've called the stats problem. Basically, GW since the mid-00s has refused to lean on differences in stats to differentiate units and instead increased the number of additional unit rules. Casting your mind back, a 1-10 scale on stats allows for immense variety in how units behave. But instead of, say, having WFB elves use an initiative 6, they decided to do elves strike first. But then there was maybe an edge case where that shouldn't happen, or it should happen more. So they add more specific, bespoke rules to things. I daresay that this now nearly 20 year old design ethos, much as I loved earlier editions of AoS, is why AoS was created in the first place. Design for rules, not stats, and you end up in a weird cognitive load space which we're in now, where it's started to feel like a card game (I even need cards or digital facsimiles to remind me everything my unit can do). This won't be fixed.
• There are things I like. Monstrous rampages. I like the current use em or lose em CP system, even if there are maybe three too many generic CP dumps. 
• PtG in 3rd suuuuccccckkkssss. You have to track so much that it's just overwhelming, and the gesture toward taking your PtG army and playing matched play with them was both useless (nobody did this) and made you feel like it sort of didn't matter because matched is what matters anyway. It's annoying for me but I know the rules; our casual players, no chance they can handle this. It's everything bad from Crusade without the regular-ish cool campaigns that at least make Crusade worth looking at. Thankfully, you've got a good attempt at fixing it in the narrative forums here at TGA, even tho our default when we do play is to just go with how 1st and 2nd did it, albeit with slightly tweaked tables.
• The added cognitive load doesn't really give gains across the board. By this I mean that stuff like monster rampages feel pretty good and limited, while heroic actions have expanded too much and don't feel like they gain you much (everyone is just rolling for the extra CP anyway, which you only do because of the system which increases cognitive load, which increases cognitive load further.
• It's not just me. AoS during 2nd was the game at local stores. AoS nights were hopping and 40k nights lagged behind. Everyone was getting on board. Now, at what should be the best time for 3rd with full suites of army books and rules supposedly finely tuned? Dead. The local AoS FB groups are down to a couple posts a week. The product is piling up at the local stores. I don't want to extrapolate from local conditions to global too much, but I think the weird pace of AoS releases compared to past years shows some sort of slowdown GW is aware of (remember the 3e rules boxes at release which didn't move, we figured was due to the pandemic, only for them to still be on shelves three years later?).
  
  All in all, the game feels sort of unwell. We mostly houserule or strip out things we don't care for and it's fine, but the magic of 2nd isn't really there (and it was magical). When we're spending time figuring out how to port new 3rd edition units to 2nd or how to make a 2.5 sort of hybrid, that's not swell.

thanks i couldnt writte it better.

our store had a similar situation,in 2.0 we had around 3 or 4 games  each week,in 3.0 with luck we have one game in a full month(i have been this last month looking for a adversary with no luck).

2.0 was great,only build a random list and lets play! 

3.0 we need think first in our list and what units we gonna need to do the tactics,then in the game we need keep in our head the tactics that we must do each turn and with wich unit.

its hard? no , its fun? NO

aos 2.0 was fun because the lists didnt matter and the game was won by who got double turn.......jokes asike. aos 3.0 is lost in many situations since the army list creation if you dont bring any mage,or fast units,or especific units(as khinerai in dok).

i wont say that aos 2.0 was better or worse than 3.0(that to me was better)  but for sure was more friendly to casual gamers and more fun

[Lord Krungharr]

I wholeheartedly agree much of the sentiments by @Beliman.   NOBODY cares about Andtor, or even any of this journey through Ghur stuff.  It's supposed to add flavor, but it's mandatory flavor that not everyone enjoys, and these constantly new and compulsory GHBs are just a money grab by GW.  I think a periodic new set of missions is great, but perhaps the missions should include alternate secondary tactics that we could do instead of the seasonal Battle Tactics?  I also think that perhaps adding this 'complexity' should be optional.  And frankly when people play, they COULD just say, 'let's relax today and play with just the Core Rules'.  

Also, for the beginning of the game Priority, it should still be a plain roll off, with whoever finished their drops maybe getting a +1 to their roll.  That's it.  The battalion push to get Battle Regiments for low drops is annoying.  I get that there's supposed to be this strategic trade off with battalions, so you get more drops if you take another artefact from Command Entourage, etc, but I'd much rather say additional artefacts cost 50 points like the days of y'or.  They often provide similar-level benefits to an Endless Spell, and those cost points.

Also this constant noting of extra cognitive load....not really sure I agree with that.  It's not hard to type a reminder sheet for oneself, and if you're playing your army over and over, one ought to be able to remember all the stuff one's army can do and should do in different situations.  Games don't have to feel like doing taxes, and one can choose how hard to think about things.  I dare say it's just a post-Covid brainfog reaction which is indeed a wide-spread phenomena.  Maybe take more vitamins and work on getting better sleep.

Edited January 21 by Lord Krungharr

[brocktoon]

4 hours ago, Lord Krungharr said:

I dare say it's just a post-Covid brainfog reaction which is indeed a wide-spread phenomena.  Maybe take more vitamins and work on getting better sleep.

Appreciate the concern but we semi-bounced off of it before any of us caught it.

Let me frame it this way. Let's say that there's some arbitrary cognitive load level which we quantify (X). At least in the case of everyone I've ever played with, which is a pretty wide group, there's always some range where we're comfortable (X-1 to X to X+1). In my experience, if the load gets outside that range it doesn't functionally matter if it's X+2 or X+50, the load for whatever reason is higher than is fun. And bear in mind here that the people I play with play campaigns, short scenarios, and casual one offs, though I've run with tournament players to a degree. If that first broad group hits that X+2 level, they don't go "let me figure this out". They play a game in the range they want. For the person going no, that's too much to track, it doesn't matter if it's a 1960s Avalon Hill clunker or the far simpler AoS 3rd, it only matters that that range has been breached. And believe it or not, despite my bit of griping here, I'm the evangelist for 3rd in my circles, inasmuch as there is one!

Which is a subjective thing and that is sincerely cool. Not every game is for every person. But I'm unhappy that AoS, which I repeat was magical for the better part of 6 years, may not be that game for my crew anymore. Where it becomes GW's problem is that I don't think it's just my crew, judging from comments here and, more importantly, the sudden drop-off in interest in the major metropolitan area with about 6 thriving store scenes with a big range of people from narrative to hardened meta chasers to everyone in between. Heck, my core crew (I and one other have been long time and avid lurkers) has talked idly over the past year how TGA has changed. I don't think it's a diss on the site to say that during 1st/2nd it was one of the liveliest minis pages of any sort online, filled with long threads about personal projects, weird minis stuff, and made up lore. Now it's mostly rumors and meta discussion.

 

Which is fine, again and absolutely sincerely, but that represents some sort of shift downward or, at the least, a constraining of what players get turned on by, which you can chart over 3rd.

[Gitzdee]

1 hour ago, brocktoon said:

Appreciate the concern but we semi-bounced off of it before any of us caught it.

Let me frame it this way. Let's say that there's some arbitrary cognitive load level which we quantify (X). At least in the case of everyone I've ever played with, which is a pretty wide group, there's always some range where we're comfortable (X-1 to X to X+1). In my experience, if the load gets outside that range it doesn't functionally matter if it's X+2 or X+50, the load for whatever reason is higher than is fun. And bear in mind here that the people I play with play campaigns, short scenarios, and casual one offs, though I've run with tournament players to a degree. If that first broad group hits that X+2 level, they don't go "let me figure this out". They play a game in the range they want. For the person going no, that's too much to track, it doesn't matter if it's a 1960s Avalon Hill clunker or the far simpler AoS 3rd, it only matters that that range has been breached. And believe it or not, despite my bit of griping here, I'm the evangelist for 3rd in my circles, inasmuch as there is one!

Which is a subjective thing and that is sincerely cool. Not every game is for every person. But I'm unhappy that AoS, which I repeat was magical for the better part of 6 years, may not be that game for my crew anymore. Where it becomes GW's problem is that I don't think it's just my crew, judging from comments here and, more importantly, the sudden drop-off in interest in the major metropolitan area with about 6 thriving store scenes with a big range of people from narrative to hardened meta chasers to everyone in between. Heck, my core crew (I and one other have been long time and avid lurkers) has talked idly over the past year how TGA has changed. I don't think it's a diss on the site to say that during 1st/2nd it was one of the liveliest minis pages of any sort online, filled with long threads about personal projects, weird minis stuff, and made up lore. Now it's mostly rumors and meta discussion.

 

Which is fine, again and absolutely sincerely, but that represents some sort of shift downward or, at the least, a constraining of what players get turned on by, which you can chart over 3rd.

I get what u are saying and i agree.

I like playing 3rd. But it is because i dont mind putting in the extra effort. And thats the problem. It isnt easy to learn/remember and takes a lot of time. My wife and friends think its too much for them and in turn i dont get around to playing as much as i would like. They rather pick up a regular boardgame when we get around to playing games at all. Getting into Warcry fixed this problem for me. The game is easy to learn and quick to play compared to AoS. So i am glad i get to use my minis again but it isnt really the game i would have liked to play first.

I think 3rd has been focussing on matched play too much and last few years has shown that there are a lot of casual players that feel left out with the current rules.

[Big Kim Woof-Woof]

"Personally, I leave all the rules and the gameplay stuff to the guys who understand that kind of thing - I just get them to point me in the right direction and tell me what to roll on the dice. I may not know all the rules, but I immerse myself so deeply in the story and I love seeing everyone's characters interacting on the table. It inspires me to paint more models!"

That's a quote from His Holiness John Blanche. I dug it up because it's pretty much how I play Age of Sigmar lately. I wouldn't mind being more knowledgeable at the rules, and would like it if The Powers That Be made the rules less cluttered. But I'll keep playing regardless, because I love the world and the models. 

Edited January 21 by Big Kim Woof-Woof

[Marcvs]

7 hours ago, Lord Krungharr said:

if you're playing your army over and over, one ought to be able to remember all the stuff one's army can do and should do in different situations.

Leaving aside the suggestion that people with a different opinion about the game have "brain fog", I just want to point out that people who play "over and over" are a tiny minority and the moment you use them as the yardstick to measure acceptable complexity you can generally justify anything.

I would also question the usefulness of a reminder sheet for the problem we're mainly discussing (battle tactics): the problem is not to remember them,  as you generally have them in front of you, but a) having to consider them before you hit the table (i.e. at list building) to just have a chance to play the game and b) dynamically choose one depending on the given situation.

 

[Bosskelot]

The level of complexity in 3rd is very strange because, as I mentioned earlier, I am a person who plays lots of games and am currently ramping up to play lots of TOW which is an objectively more complicated ruleset than AOS. And yet despite playing AOS off and on for the past 6 or so years it still finds ways to trip me up and make it difficult to grasp and retain basic game concepts.

I really don't know what exactly about the way the rules, 3rd's especially, have been written makes it this way but someone mentioned earlier that because of the simplifying of stats there then created this explosion in warscroll specific unique rules to try and differentiate units. I think this might get at the crux of the issue but I think there's also a general issue of simulation vs abstraction and I don't think AOS manages to do its abstraction very well.

For as many rules as a game like TOW has, there is an inherent intuitiveness to it if you've ever watched, I dunno, Lord of the Rings, or read military history books of the pre-1914 era. Units, for the most part, act like you'd expect them to and even the weirder ones like Fanatics still retain a level of verisimilitude. This goes for the rules in all the individual armies and also the core rules themselves. Even if we were to take a very abstracted wargame like 40k 9th and 10th edition you can still see this at play. If a unit gets charged it can't shoot out of combat, unless it's a big vehicle because yeah of course a leman russ wouldn't care about being swarmed with grots of course it could still shoot things. That makes sense. And while infantry weapons can wound big targets they're not exactly ideal at it, so you need anti-tank, and those anti-tank weapons are conversely not ideal for shooting infantry etc etc. Now, 40k is still crazily abstracted and does not operate or simulate squad level combat at all in the slightest but there's enough there that it makes grasping basic concepts and mechanics relatively easy, up until you get to missions of course.

Where AOS starts to break down is how too many things don't really operate how you'd really expect them to and then certain scrolls are being overloaded with bespoke rules that only serve to make them arbitrarily more complicated. You can just shoot out of combat in AOS, which is completely counterintuitive to how a person might expect to deal with ranged units. Flat to-wound rolls mess with your perception of how good certain units should be at dealing with others. Damage overspill creates the same problem. None of these are "balance" issues and they work within the confines of the game, but they're examples of mechanics that can feel jarring to experience.

As for weird complexity on units, a regiment of Swordmasters in TOW may have a lot of rules, but they're actually all pretty straightforward and importantly the unit has 1A each with their Swords of Hoeth. Nice. Then we get to Vanari Bladelords who have 3 different weapon profiles, 2 of which are different styles of attack for their swords. Which would be fine but the actual rules for that strike vs sweep profile are absolutely insane. One doesn't follow the normal rules for attacking and wounding at all and the other is calculated off of how many models are in the target unit but does follow the rest of the rules for attacking and wounding and making saves. Why was this a decision made? Sweep vs strike attacks have existed in AOS and 40k for a while now; they're fundamentally a fine mechanic and work well; why was this unit chosen to have this psychotic weapon profile. What does it add?

But you can start to extrapolate that general view off to many armies and units across the game. And when you combine that with weird unintuitive core rules, very abstract missions with "controlling" circles on the ground and Grand Strategies and Battle Tactics* that are removed from anything actually happening in the game and it starts to form this cognitive load that even an experienced toy soldier pusher-arounder like me starts to check out of.

_{*This is not to say I dislike controlling objectives, or Grand Strats or Battle Tactics. But it's telling that I was able to play 8th, 9th and 10th 40K with their system of Primary and Secondaries with no issues and yet I struggle with Sigmar, because as abstracted and gameified as those mechanics are I didn't feel like I was fighting with the core rules.}

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

1 hour ago, Bosskelot said:

This is not to say I dislike controlling objectives, or Grand Strats or Battle Tactics. But it's telling that I was able to play 8th, 9th and 10th 40K with their system of Primary and Secondaries with no issues and yet I struggle with Sigmar, because as abstracted and gameified as those mechanics are I didn't feel like I was fighting with the core rules.

It's interesting to think that we have actually never played "normal" 3rd edition, because every GHB has been modifying things so much. I wonder if the game would feel less cognitively demanding if we didn't always have seasonal rules layered on top of it. Personally, I don't think heroic actions, monstrous rampages and reactive commands are too hard to keep straight (although they could be simplified in some ways). But when playing with the current GHB rules, I do get tripped up by the added magic stuff and frequently feel like I would rather just not deal with it. During list building, too.

Of course, "basic" 3rd ed would still have battle tactics, though, so that would not fix the main complaint of a lot of people. To mention another negative about battle tactics that has not yet been brought up: Even though battle tactics help with competitve balance, they do it in a way that doesn't feel satisfying. Imagine your army is sitting at a 30% win rate, doesn't feel good to play, can't kill anything and is bad at objective play. But then it gets 2 free battle tactics. Maybe it now has a 50% win rate, but it won't feel any more fun to play. 

[JackStreicher]

11 hours ago, Lord Krungharr said:

Also this constant noting of extra cognitive load....not really sure I agree with that.  It's not hard to type a reminder sheet for oneself, and if you're playing your army over and over, one ought to be able to remember all the stuff one's army can do and should do in different situations.

Spoiler alert: I don’t want to spent time and resources on notes and reminders when I just want to have a quick game.

I for one am a person who alternates between different armies a lot since I get bored easily - so no, I can’t remember all of the little nuances and the battle tactics for each and every faction all the time. 
Since I’ve been sticking to CoS for a weirdly long time (15ish games) the holiday gaming break almost acted like a hard reset for me and I misplayed in my last game a lot.

Then there’s the frequency of getting in games. For me it was 1 game a week if everything went right. Once I managed 2 games but more often than not I was too exhausted after work so it was 0 games.

Sure one does not need a reminder sheet if one plays several times a week with one faction. But that’s not the reality for the majority of us.

Edited January 21 by JackStreicher

[Big Kim Woof-Woof]

24 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

To mention another negative about battle tactics that has not yet been brought up: Even though battle tactics help with competitve balance, they do it in a way that doesn't feel satisfying. Imagine your army is sitting at a 30% win rate, doesn't feel good to play, can't kill anything and is bad at objective play. But then it gets 2 free battle tactics. Maybe it now has a 50% win rate, but it won't feel any more fun to play. 

Yeah... it's a 'Techicality Win', in a way. 

[Ragest]

Herioc Actions.

Uneccessary. We have a huge bloat in hero phase, this mechanic just contributed to it. If you want to make a mechanic about heroes generating commands, add it to warscrolls. If you want to add buffs to heroes, make a general command.

Pass

Monstruous Rampages.

Cool addition. I will keep it.

Strategies and Tactis.

Terrible implementation. Faction specific ones destroyed the balance of the game, choosing a tactic stops completely the flow of the games and contribued to the bloat in hero phase. 

Tactics are necessary for the game, but they should be the same pack for everybody and an implementation of a random deck like 40k would be awesome.

Command Abilities.

They are well balanced now, I'll keep them. Just return to specific command abilities in warscrolls to give every hero a purpose.

GHB

A complete disaster. The first one was ok, the second was the worst error since 1st edition launching rules, tons of people just left the game because that. The third was ok and the last one is boring as hell, with even more bloat in hero phase.

Just change the tactic packs each ghb and the missions and would be fine. Maybe one artefact ot command trait, maybe one spell, but just that.

Overall

AoS needs a change in hero phase, there are so many uninteractive mechanics there, Change the magic, move it to its own phase before movement. 

The tactics should be the same, and have to be in list or, at least, a random deck like 40k. Players waste too much time picking one. Strategies should be a big tactic that can be scored very turn instead of just checking the game in turn 5. Most of the time I'm not in turn 5 and have to imagine what could be the state of the game at that point. 

Return of hero specific command abilities. If we go the 40k route with heroes being part of units better, but I don't really need an index btw. 3rd edition core rules are pretty solid.

Improve terrain. Take off the random rules nobody cares about, improve covering and obscuring. Fix garrisons.

Just take off battalions, first one to deploy must start, to penalize spammy lists, or first one decide but the first and second round have alternating turns, with double turns starting in round 3. Use points to pay for enchancements instead of battalions. 

[Aeryenn]

I changed my mind. Battle Tactics can harm the overall experience. In my last game we just tried to score some silly positioning tactics that had unpleasant impact. In other circumstances none of us would make such a silly moves on the board.

[NinthMusketeer]

I like almost all of the concepts introduced with 3rd, like many most of my issues are with specific instances where they were executed poorly. Amulet of Destiny, Unleash Hell, and Heroic Recovery were all causing issues at launch and have been modified since, I'm pretty happy with where they've ended up. Unleash Hell may be a bit strong but I am OK with that since the utility of shooting was nerfed with the change to Look Put Sir (and I really like that change). Arcane Tome and Rally became burdens to gameplay but have also been moved to a pretty good place IMO.

The initial year of GHB content was a bit of a crapshow in my eyes, especially the era when Bounty Hunters made the units that were supposed to be the focus of the season a liability (that most had to take anyways). 6 month seasons were a bad idea and fortunately GW picked up on that pretty quickly. I feel the general idea of making a subset of the game a focus via thematic bonuses while also providing extra counter-play is a great concept when executed competantly, with the experience of the team increasingly showing over time.

I enjoy battle tactics, but I can also see why others don't. Personally I feel there is a bit of an over-focus on the part of players (the scenario itself pretty much always provides greater VP sums after all) but that may just be my local community. The biggest place where I see battle tactics falling apart is when an army gets to essentially skip that part of the game via extremely easy ones from allegiance (LOOKING AT YOU TZEENTCH). Grand Strategies I don't see as having been realized to their full potential, I'd like to see more weight towards them over BTs with an incremental element added.

Core Battalions I liked better at launch, before the FAQ that the free command ones didn't allow one to double-up. I've barely seen those used at all since then, with the entire Core Battalion system mostly reduced to a measure of how much a player favors extra enhancements over low deployment drops.

Enhancements though, fantastic development there. Going from the freeform style of 2nd to having a defined structure was a big improvement to me and has remained such through the edition.

A concept I have not liked at all is the reinforcement limits. The standardized unit sizes are great and were absolutely needed in my eyes, but the reinforcement limits I see as being there to counteract the max unit discount which 3rd (wisely) got rid of. It leaves certain armies out to dry while barely affecting others and I think the game would be better for dropping them entirely.

But the biggest disappointment for me was the revamped Path to Glory. I've gone into detail elsewhere but suffice it to say I find it incredibly unfun and uninteresting compared to 40k's Crusade. The more recent narrative-but-matched-compatible content from Regiments & Armies of Renown is a vastly superior way to execute that idea IMO.

 

I could go on and on, so to keep this concise I'll cut myself off here XD. Final verdict from me is that I was among those rolling their eyes when 3rd launched to claims of 'best edition ever!' And dev claims of 'we are going to do better' but looking back now? It is, and they did.

[Big Kim Woof-Woof]

9 hours ago, NinthMusketeer said:

 

A concept I have not liked at all is the reinforcement limits. The standardized unit sizes are great and were absolutely needed in my eyes, but the reinforcement limits I see as being there to counteract the max unit discount which 3rd (wisely) got rid of. It leaves certain armies out to dry while barely affecting others and I think the game would be better for dropping them entirely.

.

Why were the standardised unit sizes needed? I just asking out of curiosity. 

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

13 hours ago, NinthMusketeer said:

I like almost all of the concepts introduced with 3rd, like many most of my issues are with specific instances where they were executed poorly. Amulet of Destiny, Unleash Hell, and Heroic Recovery were all causing issues at launch and have been modified since, I'm pretty happy with where they've ended up. Unleash Hell may be a bit strong but I am OK with that since the utility of shooting was nerfed with the change to Look Put Sir (and I really like that change). Arcane Tome and Rally became burdens to gameplay but have also been moved to a pretty good place IMO.

This is a really good point to mention. There were a bunch of unbalanced options in early AoS 3, especially in the general enhancement section. But all of them have been reined in over time. That in itself is a thing worth appreciating, as it has certainly not been the standard for GW games in the past.

13 hours ago, NinthMusketeer said:

I enjoy battle tactics, but I can also see why others don't. Personally I feel there is a bit of an over-focus on the part of players (the scenario itself pretty much always provides greater VP sums after all) but that may just be my local community. The biggest place where I see battle tactics falling apart is when an army gets to essentially skip that part of the game via extremely easy ones from allegiance (LOOKING AT YOU TZEENTCH). Grand Strategies I don't see as having been realized to their full potential, I'd like to see more weight towards them over BTs with an incremental element added.

To be honest, I get why a lot of people want to ditch battle tactics at this point. Especially army-specific ones.

But I think there is some potential for Grand Strategies to play a valuabel role, army-specific grand strats in particular. I think they have the potential to signal to players what kinds of things their army should want to do. They should reward players for engaging with their faction's core mechancis. Admittedly, that is not at all what they currently do, however. They actually quite frequently discourage you from playing your faction like it is supposed to (hoard summoning points instead of spending them, for example), or just tell you to do random things unrelated to the normal flow of the game (get in each quarter of the battlefield).

[Boar]

On 1/24/2024 at 10:38 AM, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

But I think there is some potential for Grand Strategies to play a valuabel role, army-specific grand strats in particular. I think they have the potential to signal to players what kinds of things their army should want to do. They should reward players for engaging with their faction's core mechancis. Admittedly, that is not at all what they currently do, however. They actually quite frequently discourage you from playing your faction like it is supposed to (hoard summoning points instead of spending them, for example), or just tell you to do random things unrelated to the normal flow of the game (get in each quarter of the battlefield).

That sounds like "just do more of you were already trying to achieve". And so seems redundant. Whereas at least doing somewhat different stuff wether in tactics/strategies actually served some purpose.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

2 minutes ago, Boar said:

That sounds like "just do more of you were already trying to achieve". And so seems redundant. Whereas at least doing somewhat different stuff wether in tactics/strategies actually served some purpose.

In this case, they would not primarily have a competitive/gameplay function, but instead a communicative function. Their purpose would not necessarily be to change how the game plays, but to help (new) players understand what they should be trying to do at the list building stage. That's not necessarily redundant, even though it will look like it to players that already know how to figure out what armies want to do.

I could pull some extra arguments out of thin air that giving everyone three victory points base line is actually super smart game design or that there would still be interesting tactical elements added through trying to deny your opponent their grand strat, but I don't strongly believe that. I think the other function of grand strats is valuable, though. Do you remember that youtube video Miniac put out a few months back? Where he talks about how difficult he finds it to understand list building? Even though he was widely meme'd on at the time, I think there is a bit of an impenetrability problem with list building, especially for beginners.

[Boar]

4 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

I think there is a bit of an impenetrability problem with list building, especially for beginners.

Yeah, but I highly doubt how would different Strategies could help with that. Better enhancement system could help, with better explanations and f.ex. changes/ditching battalions. Other layer is ditching/changing battle tactics (already problematic system).

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

1 minute ago, Boar said:

Yeah, but I highly doubt how would different Strategies could help with that. Better enhancement system could help, with better explanations and f.ex. changes/ditching battalions. Other layer is ditching/changing battle tactics (already problematic system).

They are two separate issues: Better structured rules can help people understand how to build a legal list. Grand strats could be a form of signposting content that helps people build lists that actually feel good and perform well. They do this in Magic with every set, for what it's worth: There are always uncommons in every colour that signal what kind of play styles the designers intend for those decks.

[Boar]

12 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Grand strats could be a form of signposting content that helps people build lists that actually feel good and perform well. They do this in Magic with every set, for what it's worth: There are always uncommons in every colour that signal what kind of play styles the designers intend for those decks.

Uh but how would you do that in AoS? We already have lore, certain feel for armies which seems quite obvious most of the time.

EDIT: like I dunno how implementation could even look

Edited January 25 by Boar

[Flippy]

You could just provide some thematic lists in the army book, with nice pictures, some lore and explanation of how it's supposed to perform in game. If I remember correctly, my WHFB 5ed. HE army book included such example list.