Thoughts on 4.0's New Rules

[Ferban]

At Adepticon, we got some high level insight into some of the new rules changes.  Of course, we got little snippets in a vacuum.  So, without more context it's hard to definitively say whether the changes are good or bad.  But that doesn't stop us from having initial impressions and speculating!  

My thought is that basically everything that got revealed has an 80% chance to be a massive improvement for the game, and a 20% chance to be a disaster. 

Overhaul and Indices: On paper, I think this is a great idea.  3.0 - which I absolutely love - is a little bloated.  There are a lot of systems, some of which are very similar but have slightly different rules on various units (like bodyguards).  And, as it has built on prior editions, there's been an arms race with save, rend, mortals, and wards.  It has gotten a little out of hand with the number of wards out there.  A fresh start using what has been learned over the past 9 years could result in something amazing.  And indices mean that every faction starts on an even playing field so you don't have to wait a year and a half using old rules before your battletome shows up.  Of course, there's the risk that the factions could be terribly imbalanced or that new rules create a poor experience.  

USRs: I love the idea of limited USRs.  We already have "Fly."  Adding "Champion", "Standard bearer", and a few others isn't a dealbreaker.  As anyone who plays M:tG knows, USRs are ubiquitous and fairly easy to learn.  But I think the key is to keep them limited.  No more than about a dozen for the most common abilities and it'll be a net improvement.  But have far more, scattered throughout the core rules, with a dozen on individual warscrolls and you have a problem.  

Shorter Games without Loss in Tactics: If true, this is the best of both worlds.  I'd love to see AoS cut down by about a third.  But only if there isn't significant strategic or tactical loss.  The marketing on this one sounds good.  We'll see if they deliver. 

No Melee Weapon Ranges: While I'm in favor of removing weapon ranges, I think this may not have been the best way to go about it.  I really like 40k's system of either be in base-to-base or be in -base-to-base with something that is in base-to-base.  That feels a little more constrained and is still easy to check.  Still, measuring melee distances is one of the more cumbersome and boring aspects of the game and I think removing it is probably a net positive.  

Priority Roll: I know this one is divisive, but I think the Priority Roll is good for the game.  It adds some drama every round and makes for really memorable experiences.  One of Combat Patrol's failings, I think, is that turn order never changes.  So you always know the opponent will go before you.  Bland.  And I think they've done a better job with the recent general's handbooks of giving a bonus to the player going second in a Battle Round.  I'm glad its staying, and also glad they are recognizing it has to be balanced.  

Other: They mentioned a few other things here and there without enough detail to really evaluate.  They mentioned card mechanics in relation to objectives.  I hope they don't have a similar card draw as OPR's Age of Fantasy.  In that game, you set up your army and then draw a card.  If you have to contest the objective next to you, you win!  If you have to contest the objective farthest from you, you lose!  It really removes a lot of strategy.  But if the cards were less controlling or changed rules (similar to Warcry's "Twists"), I could see this as a major benefit.  They also mentioned the Spearhead play system, which is basically AoS's Combat Patrol.  If that helps players jump in and get started, then I'm all for it. 

More to come, I'm sure!

[RocketPropelledGrenade]

I hope the cards are like current 40k secondary objectives, which I like a lot. Great system above and beyond clearing the low bar to improve on Battle Tactics (I don't hate them as much as some, but they're not great).

[Sarouan]

We don't know enough for me to have definitive thoughts on 4th, but the Spearhead mode will surely be welcomed to introduce the game to new players. A lot of games from other companies tend to forget that player entry is a crucial point for it to live on long term (well...when that said game is really designed to last - and I don't include all the "vaporware" Kickstarter / crowdfunding projects in that field, personnally speaking). I don't care about balance at release, it's not really meant for that (and balance doesn't matter that much anyway, it's just an illusion for tournament players to let them feel like they have control on their skills ).

Removing range from melee weapons will at last mitigate the disparity of bases amongst units of multiple miniatures....and stop that stupid conflict of using 25mm round bases over 28/32 ones. Especially when you use Warcry units that tend to have different base sizes in the same unit.

Edited March 21 by Sarouan

[Bosskelot]

Regarding USR's I can only hope they actually commit to them rather than the half-baked implementation in 40k currently.

The potential removal of battle tactics for a 40k tempest style system would be interesting. Battle tactics, like faction secondaries in 9th, are an attempt to make a faction play like it should in-lore but they can often miss the mark and become wildly too difficult to balance or become very boring. Not that the Tactical Deck in 40k doesn't have it's fair share of "go to this corner and do an action and score 4 points" but it does at least have plenty of "Kill ___" and "take this objective off of your opponent."

[Souleater]

I don’t know why they thought the game needed to be vastly overhauled…other than this silly three year rotation.

 

My only gripe about the current rules set is that my aging brain struggles with the battle tactics (but that’s a similar problem to 40K missions)

 

USRs…I don’t recall 40K ever managing to stick to this.

[Big Kim Woof-Woof]

Broadly speaking, I'm in favour of the little that they've revealed thus far. I'm ambivalent about the Priority Roll... I don't hate it like many players do. Wouldn't be fussed either way. 

The only thing I'm hesitant to be too enthusiastic about is the mention of cards. I don't like cards. I object to having to pay for them when I could be spending my money on more miniatures. And I always end up losing them somehow. Bah. 

I'm allergic to Magic the Gathering. 

 

[Beliman]

It seems that there will be a lot more changes:

I'm excited to see this new iteration of AoS, to be honest,  I'm not a fan of all the stuff introduced in 3.0 . Let's hope for the best with 4th edition.

So, about rules, Matt, Phil and Ben talked about the USR and is seems that there will be only a few (some examples where common weapon abilities, champion, music and stanrard bearer), let's see what happens with all the crazy AOS abilities. Another point is that the rule's team worked on all the warscroll with their miniatures in mind, trying to adjust the rules with what you see on the table.

My main issue is the discrepancies that AoS has, everything needs to be designed within the same structure. And I hope that we don't lose any flavour in the process.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

USRs: I think some standardisation and keywording of special rules is a step in the right direction. We already have some of it in the game right now: Wards and flying, for example. People always reference Magic: The Gathering for how to do this, and for good reason. Even though that game has accumulated a lot of complexity over the years, if you look up "evergreen abilities", you can see that the list of special rules players are expected to memorise for basic play is actually quite short. I hope we get something along those lines for 4th ed, as opposed to the ToW model. Some of the implementations of USRs in that game are quite bad, such as Flaming Weapons shutting down Regeneration for Flammable units (you have to look up 3 rules for one minor effect), or Nehekaran Undead actually being like 6 USRs in a trench coat.

Weapon ranges: I think it's good if AoS finally emancipates itself from this piece of design, since it is becoming increasingly clear to me that it's a legacy rule for rank-and-file games that doesn’t really add a lot to the game. If they can make combat positioning easier and faster by cutting it, I am all for it.

Shorter games: This is my number 1 hope for 4th. Recently, I have had to end a lot of games at the start of battleround 3, 3 hours into the game. To be fair, the first 2 rounds usually take a lot longer than the last 3, but still. It makes it hard to for me to get games in if I have to take half a day off to do it.

Indexes: It is what it is. I am not excited for the fact that there will be indexes in itself, but it does give the designers the ability to change some basic design decisions and rebalance every army at once (which might be the only way out of the mortal wound/ward spiral). So, I want to see how well they do with the reset before passing judgment. 

Edited March 22 by Neil Arthur Hotep

[Big Kim Woof-Woof]

29 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Shorter games: This is my number 1 hope for 4th. Recently, I have had to end a lot of games at the start of battleround 3, 3 hours into the game. To be fair, the first 2 rounds usually take a lot longer than the last 3, but still. It makes it hard to for me to get games in if I have to take half a day off to do it.

Yes! This! I'm hoping the sort of streamlining they've got in mind will result in this. I spend far too long flipping back and forth to different points of reference, it's somewhat embarrassing (I'm 40... a lot of my opponents are considerably younger than me, and as much have far better memories for the details!) 

[Flippy]

57 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

USRs: I think some standardisation and keywording of special rules is a step in the right direction. We already have some of it in the game right now: Wards and flying, for example. People always reference Magic: The Gathering for how to do this, and for good reason. Even though that game has accumulated a lot of complexity over the years, if you look up "evergreen abilities", you can see that the list of special rules players are expected to memorise for basic play is actually quite short. I hope we get something along those lines for 4th ed, as opposed to the ToW model. Some of the implementations of USRs in that game are quite bad, such as Flaming Weapons shutting down Regeneration for Flammable units (you have to look up 3 rules for one minor effect), or Nehekaran Undead actually being like 6 USRs in a trench code.

Weapon ranges: I think it's good if AoS finally emancipates itself from this piece of design, since it is becoming increasingly clear to me that it's a legacy rule for rank-and-file games that doesn’t really add a lot to the game. If they can make combat positioning easier and faster by cutting it, I am all for it.

Shorter games: This is my number 1 hope for 4th. Recently, I have had to end a lot of games at the start of battleround 3, 3 hours into the game. To be fair, the first 2 rounds usually take a lot longer than the last 3, but still. It makes it hard to for me to get games in if I have to take half a day off to do it.

Indexes: It is what it is. I am not excited for the fact that there will be indexes in itself, but it does give the designers the ability to change some basic design decisions and rebalance every army at once (which might be the only way out of the mortal wound/ward spiral). So, I want to see how well they do with the reset before passing judgment. 

Very good points. Regarding indexes (indices?) - we will see about the quality, but the idea itself is good.

Shorter games: this is directly tied to another important change that they hopefully introduce - different game modes with actual support from GW. They have already made a first step with the battlepacks approach and it's time to really commit this time - AoS does not have to be 2000 points GHB game by default. Encourage smaller games with official materials and tournaments.

Weapon ranges: good change; pre-combat and combat already has a lot of model-by-model measuring. This change may also discourage or kill some "tactical" elements that make me die a little inside every time I see them (e.g. with clever positioning, you can have your big dude swinging over the heads of friendly unit and no one can strike back).

Army building: With the whole idea of simplification I don't think GW has the intention to introduce some elaborate composition rules or introduce caps for specific units - but maybe they will settle for something like the rule of 3 to kill the spam lists. It's not perfect, but man can hope.  

[Gaz Taylor]

13 hours ago, Souleater said:

My only gripe about the current rules set is that my aging brain struggles with the battle tactics (but that’s a similar problem to 40K missions)

I think this is a complaint a lot of people have and sometimes it feels very out of focus because you could win the game if you just move a unit in a certain direction rather than claiming an objective or defeating a unit in combat. My hope is they have reviewed these as well!

4 hours ago, Big Kim Woof-Woof said:

The only thing I'm hesitant to be too enthusiastic about is the mention of cards. I don't like cards. I object to having to pay for them when I could be spending my money on more miniatures. And I always end up losing them somehow. Bah. 

I suspect it will be like the Leviathan Mission Deck for 40K. You don't need it but it's just a different way of playing. Also there may be cards in one of the sets that are being released.

[Nezzhil]

4 hours ago, Beliman said:

It seems that there will be a lot more changes:

I'm excited to see this new iteration of AoS, to be honest,  I'm not a fan of all the stuff introduced in 3.0 . Let's hope for the best with 4th edition.

So, about rules, Matt, Phil and Ben talked about the USR and is seems that there will be only a few (some examples where common weapon abilities, champion, music and stanrard bearer), let's see what happens with all the crazy AOS abilities. Another point is that the rule's team worked on all the warscroll with their miniatures in mind, trying to adjust the rules with what you see on the table.

My main issue is the discrepancies that AoS has, everything needs to be designed within the same structure. And I hope that we don't lose any flavour in the process.

If you require a reset as a designer is because there are not gonna be changes, it is a new system and you can expect new things coming. AoS 4.0 doesn't exist it is NEW AoS

[Beliman]

15 minutes ago, Nezzhil said:

If you require a reset as a designer is because there are not gonna be changes, it is a new system and you can expect new things coming. AoS 4.0 doesn't exist it is NEW AoS

Not exactly true. You can have the same system but with enough tweaks and updates that it becomes incompatible with the old Battletomes/Warscrolls. USR can be enough to make a reset even if 90% of the game is still the same.

[Ragest]

5 hours ago, Beliman said:

My main issue is the discrepancies that AoS has, everything needs to be designed within the same structure. And I hope that we don't lose any flavour in the process.

That is actually the only thing about the new edition that worries me. 

[Sarouan]

There is no real "need" to change the rules or "improve" the game. It's always about selling new stuff (and new books ). It's always up to the veterans to see if they adopt the new rules or not...there are always people jumping off the train with each new edition, and always people still playing with older editions within their group of same mindset. New players, it's another matter : no matter what edition they begin with, they'll accept the rules as they are at the time - because that's the first they know.

At least, GW will offer everything needed to play as free download, so there's that. There's no real cost to try them, and you can always use your existing book collection in case it really doesn't please you. A win-win situation, IMHO.

[Grimrock]

9 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Shorter games: This is my number 1 hope for 4th. Recently, I have had to end a lot of games at the start of battleround 3, 3 hours into the game. To be fair, the first 2 rounds usually take a lot longer than the last 3, but still. It makes it hard to for me to get games in if I have to take half a day off to do it.

The nice thing is this shouldn't even be all that hard to do. Just the combat range change alone should save a huge amount of time measuring models and messing with positioning, and if they do actually drop battle tactics in favor of cards that'll be another 5-10 minutes per round saved on deliberating which tactic to take. The thing I'm really hoping for is an overall point reset that shrinks the size of the game a bit. Something like adding 15-25% to points across the board. Nothing too drastic so people don't feel the need to start playing 2500 points as the standard size, but enough to take some of the sting out of trying to build a full army for new players. Either that or have GW come out and officially say that the new standard game size is 1750 and then push it hard through the rules and official events. 

[Skreech Verminking]

I have currently no thoughts towards the new system.

😅

[Gitzdee]

Any info on gw supporting 1k point games this time around?

[Lucentia]

Possibly I'm misunderstanding what they're actually doing with the new combat range, but doesn't it kinda just make all weapon ranges 3"?  You'd still need to measure to see which models are within the 3" range to swing, no?  I assume the whole unit doesn't get to fight if one model toes into 3".  Like, it is less measuring, and mostly cuts out the problem of base sizes effecting melee output, but it doesn't mean you suddenly don't have to measure per model or anything, unless my read is wrong. (And, obviously, without seeing the actual rules.)

[Gitzdee]

20 minutes ago, Lucentia said:

Possibly I'm misunderstanding what they're actually doing with the new combat range, but doesn't it kinda just make all weapon ranges 3"?  You'd still need to measure to see which models are within the 3" range to swing, no?  I assume the whole unit doesn't get to fight if one model toes into 3".  Like, it is less measuring, and mostly cuts out the problem of base sizes effecting melee output, but it doesn't mean you suddenly don't have to measure per model or anything, unless my read is wrong. (And, obviously, without seeing the actual rules.)

Does that logic allow for smaller bases to fight in ranks? 

[Grimrock]

58 minutes ago, Lucentia said:

Possibly I'm misunderstanding what they're actually doing with the new combat range, but doesn't it kinda just make all weapon ranges 3"?  You'd still need to measure to see which models are within the 3" range to swing, no?  I assume the whole unit doesn't get to fight if one model toes into 3".  Like, it is less measuring, and mostly cuts out the problem of base sizes effecting melee output, but it doesn't mean you suddenly don't have to measure per model or anything, unless my read is wrong. (And, obviously, without seeing the actual rules.)

Yes I believe you're right, you will still have to measure per model but measuring itself doesn't really take much time. Just run a 3" template over your models and you're good to go. The thing that seems to take the most time now is trying to position to maximize who gets to fight. For example the weird staggering and super tight wrapping you need to do to get models with a 32mm base and a 1" reach to fight. A 3" bubble should be more than enough space to fit entire units even if they're 20 strong so all that fiddling for position should mostly be a thing of the past.

[EthanolMuffins]

Read the stuff posted in the article and rewatched the portion of the stream where they talked about the rules. The bit about the Yndrasta spearhead having special rules and being flavorful gives me hope that they are gonna keep the flavor of the game and I just trust AOS's balance team more than 40k's. 40k seemed to focus their rewrite  on making things easier to balance (which removing flavor makes much easier) while AOS is pushing it as quicker and easier to understand.

[Big Kim Woof-Woof]

45 minutes ago, EthanolMuffins said:

 40k seemed to focus their rewrite  on making things easier to balance (which removing flavor makes much easier) while AOS is pushing it as quicker and easier to understand.

I'd much prefer a quick and easy-to-learn game to a perfectly balanced one. People are always going to view things as imbalanced anyway. 

[Lucentia]

The easiest test to see how much thought they've put into the Spearhead stuff will be if it has a different variant on the priority roll, imo.  Personally I very much like the prio roll/double turn threat structure in AoS, and think it adds a challenging but dynamic aspect to the game.  However, that only holds true at 2k+ points levels, in sub-2k games you don't get enough stuff on the board to properly play around the prio roll, and it does kinda become the coin flip for victory bogeyman that people sometimes talk about.  So if the Spearhead stuff as tinkered with various warscrolls and battle traits but left the core rules unchanged to accommodate the lower model count, it could be tricky to get off the ground 

[pnkdth]

Looking forward to the shake-up. 3rd edition has become a bit of chore to play with the bloat that's been added over the years. Hopefully the USRs and reset will address things such as every unit needing some kind of 6s cause MWs or similar, or causing a gazillion mortals wounds on a charge.

However, the deal breaker for me is how wounds (or appropriate toughness) and points cost reflect the actual units themselves. Because if they point armies to the, well, point where it becomes even more expensive to enter the hobby I'm out. Love the settings GW have created and I know that every designer are really passionate about what they do but recent times the business side of GW have really put a dampener on my excitement, e.g. I am very glad I didn't jump on the FEC bandwagon just yet because they will got WE:ed. Rob's (THW) advice to never buy any books until they figure out a better way of supplying rules is legit. Especially since, apparently, the newer books (especially in 40k post index) are even lighter on lore/art/hobbying than before while remaining expensive has heck.

But to end on a positive note, for awhile the rules will be free, there will be new ways of playing the game. I'll hold them to their promises that the indexes won't be watered down and sub-factions and so on will still be there as 4th go live. Here's to brighter hobbying days going forwards. Cheers!