Thoughts on 4.0's New Rules

[Beliman]

7 hours ago, brocktoon said:

On and on it goes. So when the word is that "everything is an ability" I don't hear "simplicity". I hear "the mental load and staring at reminders on your phone instead of talking to your opponent in this ostensibly social activity is going to increase". I'd like to be wrong but the every weapon loadout is the same stuff with SCE is not giving me good signals. Not because it's a problem on its own, but it's one fewer means of differentiation which will have to be pushed away to simple decisions or comparisons and onto a bespoke special rule.

I partly agree with that.

WFB only has WS and the allowed equipment for each unit. Everything else, Save, Wound, AP and Damage (multiple wounds) comes from equipment.

AoS has a diferent design, all stats are linkes to each unit and weapons are "free". So, Health, Save, To Hit/Wound, Rend, Damage and a bunch of USR should be enough to have as many diferent units as you want.

[Sarouan]

Having a single profile for a unit no matter what weapons they have is definitely simplification, but not just on the game level - also on how you build your models.

When you have different profiles for different equipments and you want to optimize this or "not have a useless weapon set", you'd rather be sure you didn't mess it up when you glue your models / have to magnetize everything.

With one profile to bind them all , you can relax and build them with the weapons you think are cooler / you like the most visually instead.

It's the Mordheim vs Warcry dilemma : the Mordheim fans claim Warcry have less options because they can't optimize the way they equip their fighters, while the Warcry fans claim Mordheim give only the illusion of choice when only a few options are effectively chosen because they're cheaper / way more effective than others (that's why so many henchmen are only fighting with a dagger and a mace and why you barely buy armors in Mordheim). In one case, you can have more fun with the visual than the other, because rules are more detailed in the other and thus WYSIWYG is more demanding : in Warcry, you can have your Chaos Warrior with shield and weapon having a hammer, a sword or an axe (or, let's say, a tentacle whip) - it doesn't change its profile, it's the same. In Mordheim, having a warrior with a sword has different effects in game than if he has a mace or a dagger...so you can't just play a sword "as a count as mace" because it's much more likely to be misleading in game for both players.

For a game where the center is on the miniatures, I'd rather have one inviting me to be more free on how I build them, IMHO. And it's easier to balance too. I thus welcome this.

Edited April 9 by Sarouan

[Ferban]

Command points are up today.  It looks like you get 4 per battle round with the one behind in points getting an extra.  But that's it.  no ability to get more.  And no need to have a unit champion or hero nearby.  Its sad to lose that fluff, but it rarely mattered in game anyway.  So I think it's cleaner to just do away with that rule. 

The command abilities are very reminiscent of 3.0.  Although I really like the ability to charge in your opponent's charge phase.  Not only will some armies absolutely love that, but I think it's powerful for nearly anyway.  If someone makes a long bomb charge and barely toes in, they are often not yet grouped up on the target.  Maybe one or two guys are there, and they plan to pile in the rest during combat.  But if I can counter charge and hit those guys in the back with another unit, that will likely split their force and render the unit less effective.  Like it!

Also, the ability to cast or pray in the opponent's turn is pretty neat.  And I'm in favor of the change to Rally.  It looks like it'll be a good way to heal a unit or rez a few chaff.  But you won't have large models returning or 10 wounds of fighters.  Probably for the best.  

One hesitation is that Forward to Victory now apparently requires you to spend the command before rolling the charge.  That's lame.  I could see that command easily being the weakest of the bunch and rarely used. 

Overall, though, a lot of good stuff here.  If command points stay constrained (e.g. battletomes don't start introducing abilities to get more or have tons of army specific commands), I could see this being a really good system.  

[Sception]

I have mixed feeling on the whole 'different weapons have the same profiles' thing.  On the one hand, as an OBR player who likes the look of spears, it's nice to be able to build my units to my aesthetic preference without worrying about making them worse for no reason.

On the other hand, a unit with two big hammers vs. a big hammer and a big shield kind of feel like they should play differently on the table.  Like the former /should/ be a hammer unit (if you'll pardon the pun), while the latter should be an anvil.  Plus it then gets confusing when dual hammers are the same as hammer and shield, but hammer and shield is a completely different unit with completely different rules from exactly the same models except armed with a spear and shield.  If anything the hammer & shield and spear & shield units should be the same, while the dual hammers unit should be something else, no?  Why are Liberators and Vindicators different units at all, when unnecessary warscroll bloat has already forced the devs into one embarrassing and premature cull of stormcast units?  Why not take the opportunity of 4e's total warscroll refresh to consolidate units like this?

It's just weird when GW devs are saying "different weapons alone aren't enough to warrant separate profiles on the same warscroll" out one side of their mouth, while out the other side of their mouth they're saying "different weapons alone are enough to warrant separate warscrolls entirely".

Edited April 10 by Sception

[Tonhel]

When looking at the stormstrike chariot weapon profiles, which retain its options. It feels unnecessary for liberators to merge the shield/hammer and two hammer options in one profile.

[MitGas]

I definitely like what I‘ve seen from 4th ed so far, I found 3rd ed pretty bad as our group wants simple rules. We were quite happy with 2nd ed but I understand that it was a bit too simple perhaps. This looks they‘ve found the sweet middleground. 

[Big Kim Woof-Woof]

6 hours ago, MitGas said:

I definitely like what I‘ve seen from 4th ed so far, I found 3rd ed pretty bad as our group wants simple rules. We were quite happy with 2nd ed but I understand that it was a bit too simple perhaps. This looks they‘ve found the sweet middleground. 

Same here. It feels like they've really done their homework on this new edition... trimming the fat where it was needed, but keeping the fun stuff intact. 

I'm just hoping that they're not just previewing all the good stuff, and when the edition is actually released there's going to be some difficult-to-swallow bits afoot! 

[MitGas]

25 minutes ago, Big Kim Woof-Woof said:

Same here. It feels like they've really done their homework on this new edition... trimming the fat where it was needed, but keeping the fun stuff intact. 

I'm just hoping that they're not just previewing all the good stuff, and when the edition is actually released there's going to be some difficult-to-swallow bits afoot! 

Can‘t be worse than Beasts, SCE and BS getting slowly faded out at least! 🤭

I hope we don‘t get too many extra objectives like doing X for extra points as special army rules. I feel like it just distracts from the main game/battle. Wasn‘t exactly difficult with Disciples (not sure how other armies fared) but I‘d rather focus on the real game so to speak. 

[Chikout]

The forward to victory ability will probably happen after rolls. Look at the spell on Nagash's scroll. The declare step includes the roll. I'm sure it will be the same with charging.

Covering fire and counter charge have obvious counter plays.

For counter charge, charge them first. Especially with Nagash, you don't want him charging your big monster so charge him first with chaff. He can't use hand of dust and he can't power through since he didn't charge. 

For covering fire, fast moving low cost screens will be very valuable. Is that Ironclad going to give up a command point to shoot at that unit of aether wings at 5+ to hit when it could use all out attack to shoot at anything at 3+ in its own turn? 

The magic ability is potentially the most worrying one. I hope wizards are only able to cast their total number of spells each battle round so if you choose to react you're giving up a spell in your own turn. 

I like the rally change. Certainly still useful but nowhere near as strong as before. They also said it incorporates heroic recovery, so that means less total healing than before. 

All in all some good powerful abilities but aside from maybe  the unleash spell ability,  they don't seem to be game breaking. 

[Beliman]

A summary from Commands Article:

• Everything is an ability. From  Fight, Shoot, Move, etc... to Commands
• Reactions are "added effects" (aka, buffs) for other Abilities that have specific KEYWORDS.
• Reactions trigger after the main ability is "Declared" and before it's "Effect" is done. Some people say that re-roll charge is done before rolling dice, but I need to read first the ability that allows a basic RUN move before to understand how this works (Nagash Invocation has the roll dice on the "Declare" sub-phase).
• 10 Commands in total. 6 are resolved at the end of their phase (after the current player ends all Abilities) and the other 4 are Reactions:
  • Reactions: All-out Attack (buff ATTACKS), All-out Defense (buff the target of an ATTACK), At the Doubles (buffs a RUN), Forward to Victory (buffs a CHARGE)
  • Others: Rally, Redeploy, Covering Fire, Counter-charge, Magical Intervention, Power through.
• A lot of conditionals to who can use this ability are gone (Covering Fire, Redeploy, etc...).
• Commands, as any other Ability, can have their own KEYWORDS. I suppose that this will "block" other Abilities during the same turn (e.g:, if you Redeploy during enemies Move Phase, the same unit will not be able to Shoot "later in the turn", so no Covering Fire).
• New USR: Anti-INFANTRY and Companion. New USR effects: (+1 Rend), (2 Hits) and (+1 Damage).
• Passive Warscroll Abilities can buff Command Abilities: Celestial Blaze buffs Power Through.
• Chariots are WAR MACHINES

I must say that I like it.  It seems that everything is well explained and there isn't a room for interpretation. That's really good and it fixes one of my main problems with 3.0: the game didn't feel that had a good core structure (read my problem with Kharadron role-keywords).

[Sarouan]

One thing I learned from my decades of wargaming is that there's always room for interpretation, no matter how tightly / detailed you think the rules are written. But it is indeed obvious AoS design team learned from 3rd's life cycle...and definitely from 40k too.

If I have a simpler AoS game, it will be complementary with the complex The Old World that I intend to keep playing. Otherwise, I will still have Warcry as simple yet strategic game system.

[pnkdth]

As more of the pieces all into place I think they listened to much of the feedback, notably, adding in more agency and counter-play during the opponent's turn (spell casting and counter-charges in particular). Counter-charging has obvious uses and we shouldn't sleep on being able to move up and position a spell-caster to threaten. Casters/priests who has to get up close might just get a bit more mileage out of them too.

On first impressions it looks better than 3rd, that's for sure.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

3 hours ago, Beliman said:

• 10 Commands in total. 6 are resolved at the end of their phase (after the current player ends all Abilities) and the other 4 are Reactions:
  • Reactions: All-out Attack (buff ATTACKS), All-out Defense (buff the target of an ATTACK), At the Doubles (buffs a RUN), Forward to Victory (buffs a CHARGE)
  • Others: Rally, Redeploy, Covering Fire, Counter-charge, Magical Intervention, Power through.

 

I really like this bit, where all the generic commands are either in reaction to something very pertinent or just end of phase. I missed the windows of opportunity for Rally and Redeploy so frequently last edition, because they were so awkward.

Now the player who has control can just go "I do all my stuff. I'm done now. Move to end of phase." and you know immediately that it's time to Redeploy or Magical Intervention or whatever. Seems like a huge reduction of mental load.

[Sception]

I kind of wish 'all out defense' had been -1 to be hit instead of +1 to save.  It would have had pleasing symmetry with all out attack, & more importantly imo save stacking is a bit excessive in 3e and I would have preferred to see some of the save buffs removed.  Oh, well.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

35 minutes ago, Sception said:

I kind of wish 'all out defense' had been -1 to be hit instead of +1 to save.  It would have had pleasing symmetry with all out attack, & more importantly imo save stacking is a bit excessive in 3e and I would have preferred to see some of the save buffs removed.  Oh, well.

Some might have been removed. There were three easy save buffs available in 3rd: All-Out Defense, Mystic Shield and Finest Hour.

Did we get confirmation that Heroic Actions are still part of the game? With new Rally replacing Heroic Recovery, it seems possible that they might have been cut, which would remove Finest Hour.

But more importantly, save stacking might have been removed. The overhaul so far certainly looks like they might have closed the "stacked saves negate rend" loophole. If that is gone, I don't even mind if save buffs proliferate again. Especially now that they have unlocked unit roles and anti-unit role tech (e.g. ANTI-INFANTRY(+1 rend) from the Stormstrike Chariot warscroll).

[Beliman]

29 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Did we get confirmation that Heroic Actions are still part of the game? With new Rally replacing Heroic Recovery, it seems possible that they might have been cut, which would remove Finest Hour.

That would be awesome. Even Monstrous Rampages seems to be just Abilities with the Rampage Keyword.

[Big Kim Woof-Woof]

Since priests and prayers are sticking around, it'd be nice to see a few more factions get their iterations of them. I feel like they're fairly thin on the ground at the moment, I barely see any in play. 

I've already for a few models that'd make great Slaaneshi priests... 

[Gaz Taylor]

3 hours ago, Big Kim Woof-Woof said:

Since priests and prayers are sticking around, it'd be nice to see a few more factions get their iterations of them. I feel like they're fairly thin on the ground at the moment, I barely see any in play. 

I've already for a few models that'd make great Slaaneshi priests... 

I'm kind of hoping we will also see a unit of priests (or the champion is) as it would create a bit of variety. Just keep it simple like they buff themselves. 

[OkayestDM]

I'm backtracking a little with this, but I'm a little disappointed with the color choices that GW went with for the rules phases, specifically the Hero/charge and Shooting/end phase colors.

I'm a bit color blind, and those color pairings are close enough that I'll almost certainly have some difficulty telling them apart (I know because I thought it was weird that Nagash had so many abilities in the Charge phase until I read the text.)

Fortunately, the qualifying text in the color bar is very helpful when present, and the ability text is also seems sufficiently informative that I should be able to figure it out. 

It's also entirely possible that the actual colors printed on the cards will be more distinct from one another than the reference chevrons, but my aforementioned confusion over Nagash's warscroll leaves me uncertain how often I'll have to ask my fellow player for confirmation as to whether I - or they - are using an ability at the appropriate time.

 

[Sception]

color choices could have been better, yeah, but the abilities also say what phases they're used in (if they're limited to particular phases) and have symbols representing those phases, so they're more clear than they were in the past even for those who can't see color at all.

[PraetorDragoon]

11 minutes ago, Sception said:

color choices could have been better, yeah, but the abilities also say what phases they're used in (if they're limited to particular phases) and have symbols representing those phases, so they're more clear than they were in the past even for those who can't see color at all.

The symbols are not for the phases, but to determine some kind of effect. (You can see this on Nagash as he has abilites that are in the hero phase but have different symbols)

[Ferban]

Today's topic covers battle traits and battle formations.  Battle traits are more or less as we would expect them to be.  Rules that give a particular faction special abilities.  And they show off one that requires a command point.  I'm not sure I'm super in love with additional command point abilities for each army, but if they are limited to one per army, maybe it will be easy enough to share the one with your opponent before each game. 

The battle formations (new subfactions) seem like a miss for me.  I was excited that they would no longer be tied to lore or color schemes and would instead be based on how you want to play.  But the ones they showed off aren't like that at all.  They are tied to Stormcast chambers.  They show off one for Warriors and one for Extremis.  Both seem fairly bland.  For me, that's really the first rules reveal that hasn't seemed like a dramatic improvement.  If anything, it's a slight downgrade as it seems to have the same problem of focusing the player down one path (all Bladegheists get mortals!) while losing the fluff that at least gave you a narrative hook to play that style.  

Oh well, they can't all be bangers. 

[Tonhel]

I am also a bit worried with the removal of subfactions and replacing it with formations. The positive is that you have much more freedom in how you want your subfaction to behave on the battlefield. The negative could be that i.e for CoS, the options will be more limited as currently CoS has 11 subfactions to chose from.

[RyantheFett]

54 minutes ago, Tonhel said:

I am also a bit worried with the removal of subfactions and replacing it with formations. The positive is that you have much more freedom in how you want your subfaction to behave on the battlefield. The negative could be that i.e for CoS, the options will be more limited as currently CoS has 11 subfactions to chose from.

In all honestly 4 will be a good number for them. GW has had trouble in the past making more then a handful into good sub factions that see any kind of play.

[TechnoVampire]

7 hours ago, Ferban said:

Today's topic covers battle traits and battle formations.  Battle traits are more or less as we would expect them to be.  Rules that give a particular faction special abilities.  And they show off one that requires a command point.  I'm not sure I'm super in love with additional command point abilities for each army, but if they are limited to one per army, maybe it will be easy enough to share the one with your opponent before each game. 

The battle formations (new subfactions) seem like a miss for me.  I was excited that they would no longer be tied to lore or color schemes and would instead be based on how you want to play.  But the ones they showed off aren't like that at all.  They are tied to Stormcast chambers.  They show off one for Warriors and one for Extremis.  Both seem fairly bland.  For me, that's really the first rules reveal that hasn't seemed like a dramatic improvement.  If anything, it's a slight downgrade as it seems to have the same problem of focusing the player down one path (all Bladegheists get mortals!) while losing the fluff that at least gave you a narrative hook to play that style.  

Oh well, they can't all be bangers. 

I had the same reaction. It felt like a rebranding of the current system, minus the narrative intrigue. The new subfactions (“battle formations”) appear to have all the same kind of restrictions as before (relating only to specific unit types), however now there’s is no lore… which apparently allows us to paint them however we like for the first time.

I’m also concerned that there might only be a single trait for each battle formation, which to me would feel like dumbing down faction rules, while keeping numerous core rules I’d happily have seen stripped away. That’s the oposite of the kind of “streamlining” I’d like to see, but hopefully it’s not the case 🤞