Thoughts on 4.0's New Rules

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

11 minutes ago, Baron Klatz said:

Well small shift. How we think Seraphon are gonna be handled between Starborne & Coalesced? Looking at Blades of Khorne it feels like they’re gonna keep that flavor.

So my guess is Battle traits split between the 2.

starborne: “Beamed down, Deploy units into the Celestial Realm to be summoned by Slann  or Star priest keyword units.”(wee bit more restrictive than Stormcasts who can pop units down anywhere instead as they combo’d their traits for it)

”Ethereal, all infantry & cavalry units gain the Ethereal trait.(all Hits against them become 4+ & gain a 6+ Ward)

Coalesced: Bites & Scaly skin are back for extra attacks & saves to the big bois.

 

(also saw the green highlight conversation in rumors. I say it’s just color coding. It’s on too many different Warscrolls to have any significance)

Do you mean in the eventual battletome or in the index? Because I am not 100% sure they will get their two subfactions in the index.

I don't see a huge barrier for them to have one battle trait that basically goes like this, though:

"A Seraphon army can be COALESCED or STARBORN. If COALESCED, then melee buffs. If STARBORN, then magic or whatever."

Did they tell us yet if they are cutting back on summoning? If so, maybe Starborn will get a new focus, because as I understand it summoning is currently their "thing".

[Tonhel]

37 minutes ago, Marcvs said:

Light of Eltharion

Sigvald

 

to some extent: Bastian carthalos, the Celestant Prime, the Akhelian King (with the right setup)

on the cheap end: Grimwrath Berzerker

 

30 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

 

You can find a lot of solid unique melee heroes in AoS. Off the top of my head, I like Sigvald, the Light of Eltharion, Kurdoss and Radukar the Beast.

For generics, there are fewer of them. The Ogor Tyrant is pretty good. A Megaboss on foot is certainly pretty fighty. The FEC Royal Decapitator is pretty scary, too. But in general, you will find few generic normal-sized dudes on 32mm bases who are worthy anything in combat. I think there are a few more in Fyreslayers.

EDIT: I would appreciate if we opened a separate "griping about how chaos lords are too weak" thread, by the way.

There you have it. It's all about named characters.

I use Chaos Lord as example as that is the most obvious one, but the Soulblight Vampire lord is also a good example and it's not only about being to weak. Its about the usefullness of foot heroes in game, besides being a buff token and how it will be changed in 4th.

In AoS 3 all of them are more or less clones in combat prowness. The only difference are the buffs they provide. But basically broadly taken all non named foot heroes have more or less the same damage output and survivability.

 

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

3 minutes ago, Tonhel said:

 

There you have it. It's all about named characters.

I use Chaos Lord as example as that is the most obvious one, but the Soulblight Vampire lord is also a good example and it's not only about being to weak. Its about the usefullness of foot heroes in game, besides being a buff token and how it will be changed in 4th.

In AoS 3 all of them are more or less clones in combat prowness. The only difference are the buffs they provide. But basically broadly taken all non named foot heroes have more or less the same damage output and survivability.

 

As I said, I think the discussion would benefit from a separate thread, since nothing about the strength of melee brawler heroes in 4th ed is currently known.

[Beliman]

Let's wait and see. The system already supports specializations, USR are so open that each heroe or special/magical weapon could be really unique and interesting without being crazy. As an example:

• #DuelistHeroe:
  • USR: Anti-Heroes (mortal).
  • Parry (ability). Passive/ Fighting Phase: Can't be hit with a better roll of 4+.

Even artifacts and weapons can be really unique with that.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

2 minutes ago, Beliman said:

Let's wait and see. The system already supports specializations, USR are so open that each heroe or special/magical weapon could be really unique and interesting without being crazy. As an example:

• #DuelistHeroe:
  • USR: Anti-Heroes (mortal).
  • Parry (ability). Passive/ Fighting Phase: Can't be hit with a better roll of 4+.

Even artifacts and weapons can be really unique with that.

I like running the ven Densts in Cities for that reason. You gotta respect damage 4 attacks against wizards, no matter who you are. Using Anti-X for similar abilities on melee heroes should help make them a threat without just invalidating melee infantry. Actually, 3" combat range should remove a lot of that concern, since concentrating that much hitting power into a single guy is no longer a big advantage vs. infantry blocks.

A Chaos Lord with Anti-Infantry (Double Damage) should definitely feel suitably epic.

[Tonhel]

5 minutes ago, Beliman said:

Let's wait and see. The system already supports specializations, USR are so open that each heroe or special/magical weapon could be really unique and interesting without being crazy. As an example:

• #DuelistHeroe:
  • USR: Anti-Heroes (mortal).
  • Parry (ability). Passive/ Fighting Phase: Can't be hit with a better roll of 4+.

Even artifacts and weapons can be really unique with that.

That woudn't be bad at all and it fits the AoS design principle. It's not as cool as in TOW, but it would add a lot to the use of foot heroes in AoS. I already like it 😄

 

[Tonhel]

Just now, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

I like running the ven Densts in Cities for that reason. You gotta respect damage 4 attacks against wizards, no matter who you are. Using Anti-X for similar abilities on melee heroes should help make them a threat without just invalidating melee infantry. Actually, 3" combat range should remove a lot of that concern, since concentrating that much hitting power into a single guy is no longer a big advantage vs. infantry blocks.

A Chaos Lord with Anti-Infantry (Double Damage) should definitely feel suitably epic.

Again a named character :-D, would love to see them as a more generic Witch hunter option that can specialize verus wizards, daemons, undeath and etc.. .

I more or less agree, but if the "single guy" provides a good buff it probably will be more interesting to kill it instead of the bigger units. You probably wouldn't kill the foot hero for the damage output, but for the buff the foot hero provides.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

2 minutes ago, Tonhel said:

Again a named character :-D, would love to see them as a more generic Witch hunter option that can specialize verus wizards, daemons, undeath and etc.. .

I more or less agree, but if the "single guy" provides a good buff it probably will be more interesting to kill it instead of the bigger units. You probably wouldn't kill the foot hero for the damage output, but for the buff the foot hero provides.

Yeah, no idea why they decided to give us three different witch hunter units and then made them all unique characters.

I don't actually know if heroes getting sniped in melee will be a big concern in 4th. It's hard to predict how the interactions will play out. I can definitely see myself making the decision of trying to wipe out an infantry block on a 4+ save rather than trying to deal with a 3+ save on a hero model. Even more so if "anti-hero" is less common than "anti-infantry" or "anti-cavalry" melee troops, because that also changes target priority pretty significantly. And, of course, regular units are better at capturing objectives, and that's what wins games in the end.

[Tonhel]

11 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Yeah, no idea why they decided to give us three different witch hunter units and then made them all unique characters.

I don't actually know if heroes getting sniped in melee will be a big concern in 4th. It's hard to predict how the interactions will play out. I can definitely see myself making the decision of trying to wipe out an infantry block on a 4+ save rather than trying to deal with a 3+ save on a hero model. Even more so if "anti-hero" is less common than "anti-infantry" or "anti-cavalry" melee troops, because that also changes target priority pretty significantly. And, of course, regular units are better at capturing objectives, and that's what wins games in the end.

Lol, yeah you are correct, but isn't it a bit sad that the threat of a foot hero is so low, that you can just ignore it. It's even more humilating for a Chaos Lord 🤣

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

1 minute ago, Tonhel said:

Lol, yeah you are correct, but isn't it a bit sad that the threat of a foot hero is so low, that you can just ignore it. It's even more humilating for a Chaos Lord 🤣

Seems to me that either it gets focus fired or it gets ignored. Not really sure how you get out of that dilemma.

More to the point, I also think that if heroes were so good that you would never prioritize normal troops over them, people would be complaining about how hero hammer is too strong instead. Really, overall I think it's quite nice that normal troops are often the deciding factor, rather than heroes.

[PraetorDragoon]

5 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Seems to me that either it gets focus fired or it gets ignored. Not really sure how you get out of that dilemma.

More to the point, I also think that if heroes were so good that you would never prioritize normal troops over them, people would be complaining about how hero hammer is too strong instead. Really, overall I think it's quite nice that normal troops are often the deciding factor, rather than heroes.

Which is why I was in favour of having basic heroes join units. Its much more in line with what both designers and players want out of it. Having the heroes seperate in AOS isn't the best setup when we don't want basic heroes to be able to take units on their own. 

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

21 minutes ago, PraetorDragoon said:

Which is why I was in favour of having basic heroes join units. Its much more in line with what both designers and players want out of it. Having the heroes seperate in AOS isn't the best setup when we don't want basic heroes to be able to take units on their own. 

Having infantry units give 4+ bodyguard to infantry heroes in their own regiment seems like a soft incentive they could implement without messing up a bunch of edge cases. But I suspect they will just leave it at Look Out, Sir! for now.

Edited April 22 by Neil Arthur Hotep

[PraetorDragoon]

25 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Having infantry units give 4+ bodyguard to infantry heroes in their own regiment seems like a soft incentive they could implement without messing up a bunch of edge cases. But I suspect they will just leave it at Look Out, Sir! for now.

It saddens me if they keep trying to write rules around the situation they want to make, like the "unit attacks after hero attacks" special rule some heroes have, rather than doing something more simple that would make the situation they want.

[Sception]

Yeah, 3e had so many rules that were trying and failing to be 'character just joins a unit'.  Short range wholly within auras & buffs, strike-after, bodyguard, look out sir, gallatian champions, and more I'm not thinking of.  And we STILL have situations where the hero will charge into battle alone while their loyal bodyguard sits back and watches them die unsupported because one makes a charge roll that the other fails.

Especially now that 4e is getting explicit keywords for unit types (infantry, cavalry, etc), I'm sorely disappointed that we're keeping all that garglemess instead of just having a more intuitive small-heroes-can-join-units-of-the-same-unit-type situation that replace all of those awkward rules at once.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

Some new info from the latest model reveal:

Some things that stand out to me:

• Look Out, Sir! is still in the game under a new name. Seems otherwise identical to its last incarnation.
• Crit(Auto-Wound) is an ability that exists.
• A sniper rifle has a range of 24".
• SKRYRE keyword exists.

[Flippy]

51 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Some new info from the latest model reveal:

Some things that stand out to me:

• Look Out, Sir! is still in the game under a new name. Seems otherwise identical to its last incarnation.
• Crit(Auto-Wound) is an ability that exists.
• A sniper rifle has a range of 24".
• SKRYRE keyword exists.

Heroes will not join units 😕

[Tonhel]

If I read The sniper-master ability correctlty it doesn't ignore the -1 to hit that is given by "Guarded hero". It only means that the hero can be "picked" as the target of the shooting attack.

What do you think is this the correct interpretation?

Edited April 22 by Tonhel

[Sception]

not sure on rules interpretation.

Otherwise, as a sniper/jezzail leader this hero seems pretty cool, though character sniping is an archetype prone to cause feel-bads at the table.  Mainly though, I feel like if this is what 'warlock engineers' are now then they've lost a lot of what made them cool.  No connection to other weird skaven warmachines other than jezzails, not a wizard, no weird lightning tech, etc.

I like it for what it is, decent rules that fit a cool model, but it's not super satisfying as a 'warlock engineer'.

Edited April 22 by Sception

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

15 minutes ago, Tonhel said:

If I read The sniper-master ability correctlty it doesn't ignore the -1 to hit that is given by "Guarded hero". It only means that the hero can be "picked" as the target of the shooting attack.

What do you think is this the correct interpretation?

Seems to only affect picking targets, not the -1 to hit.

[Tonhel]

4 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Seems to only affect picking targets, not the -1 to hit.

Yeah, The Sniper-master ability allows you and friendly Jezzails units wholly within 13" to remove the second part of the Guarded hero ability, but they still suffer the -1 to hit.

[Poryague]

 It say to ignore gaurded hero. Which if ignored means no benifit at all from it. Your hero just dies.

 

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

15 minutes ago, Poryague said:

 It say to ignore gaurded hero. Which if ignored means no benifit at all from it. Your hero just dies.

 

"...when picking targets."

Not when you resolved your shooting attack.

[Poryague]

47 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

"...when picking targets."

Not when you resolved your shooting attack.

It says " can ignore the effects of guarding hero" if guarding hero is ignored all the effects of the ability are ignored . It's as though that ability doesn't exist. 

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

1 minute ago, Poryague said:

It says " can ignore the effects of guarding hero" if guarding hero is ignored all the effects of the ability are ignored . It's as though that ability doesn't exist. 

It does not say that, dude. Maybe they want it to be like that, but they would have to errata it.

[Poryague]

2 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

It does not say that, dude. Maybe they want it to be like that, but they would have to errata it.

It literally does. "Ignore the effects of "guarding hero"  ability  when picking the target for thier shooting attacks". It literally says ignore that rule when picking targets. If you ignore the rule you get zero benifit from it. When you pick a target for their shooting attack you ignore the effects (plural) of guarding hero .  There is clear case guarding hero is entirely ignored as written not just the targeting aspect.