Sneak Peek at The Generals Handbook II....

[rokapoke]

5 minutes ago, WoollyMammoth said:

The REAL issues need to be addressed;
- KURNOTH
- Bloodsecrator
- Mourngul
- Sayl

It's rather absurd to assume, based on the 22 unit point adjustments that have been released, that the adjustments end right there. Let's keep perspective and see what happens with the rest. For whatever reason GW saw fit to release these particular point adjustments, but that doesn't mean there aren't any others!

[PJetski]

People have problems with the Bloodsecrator? Khorne is by far one of the weakest factions in the game

[TheMightyMoogar]

Does anyone know if this new handbook is specific to only point adjustments?  I'm interested to see if they are switching some of the core rules around along with all the other updates.  Some new scenarios besides the basic 6 we have now would be really welcome, as well. 

Maybe new grand alliance artifact/command traits?

[daedalus81]

44 minutes ago, PJetski said:

People have problems with the Bloodsecrator? Khorne is by far one of the weakest factions in the game

Ehh.  Not really.  He works well in conjunction with lots of units.  When you get hit by a unit with multiple stacks it is quite daunting.

[Thomas Lyons]

13 hours ago, daedalus81 said:

When you get hit by a unit with multiple stacks it is quite daunting.

This, I believe this is one of the current problems in the meta summed up in a single sentence.  Individually, most units are fairly well pointed.  The biggest issues are coming when stacking of similar bonuses or penalties is happening.  Mourngul's -1 to hit is a pain, but a -2 or -3 can completely shut down a combat and make units unattackable.  This is the definition of no fun because it is actually stopping a player from playing the game with one or more of their units.  The fact that Necropolis Knights did mortal wounds on a 6+ isn't an issue, even 5+ isn't too crazy.  It's when stacking moves these abilities down to a 4+ or even 3+ that things get crazy.  One Bloodsecrator is awesome and well worth his points.  But 3 just become ridiculous.  

I believe this can be solved by a simple rule addition to matched play: an additional rule of one.  Just make it so any die roll can only receive the highest bonus or penalty modifying it.  So, you can gain +1 to hit, but multiple sources of +1 don't stack. The same with bonuses to wound, or save, or penalties to hit, etc.  This immediately reels in the shenanigans that we are seeing many lists in the meta relying on.  The other big standout are mortal wounds generation, but I think that is a solution to be dealt with by adjusting points values, rather than making umbrella rules about.  

As an aside, @Vincent Venturella, Kenny Lull of Combat Phase podcast, and Dan of the Tales of Sigmar podcast got together for the 2nd anniversary show (104 shows in the bag!) of Warhammer Weekly last night and talked about these changes.  I would encourage you to check it out.

[Sleboda]

27 minutes ago, Thomas Lyons said:

I believe this can be solved by a simple rule addition to matched play: an additional rule of one.  Just make it so any die roll can only receive the highest bonus or penalty modifying it.  So, you can gain +1 to hit, but multiple sources of +1 don't stack. The same with bonuses to wound, or save, or penalties to hit, etc.  This immediately reels in the shenanigans that we are seeing many lists in the meta relying on.  

To me, this is the sort of thinking that needs to be left behind.  It reminds me so much of so many comps from the Bad Old Days where rather than improving our play, we wanted to remove obstacles from the game entirely.

Yes, lots of stacked bonuses or penalties can be a pain, and if you only present your idea from the isolated end state*, it can be very convincing, get people on board, and implement a change that shuts off sections of the game that folks will never have to deal with and thus will never learn to overcome, making the skills of players weaker and the game experience less dynamic.

*By "isolated end state" I mean that these suggestions almost always fail to that it takes a lot to get to the point being lamented and ignores the counters that can prevent the situation from happening in the first place. After experiencing 3+ mortal wounds from Necropolis Knights a few times (for example), a player should be able to see where the bonuses are coming from and develop counters.  Kill the characters granting the bonuses! In AoS, characters are fairly fragile. It's not like the old days where you would bury a dude or two in a block and hide them behind another block.  In AoS, movement is sweeping, characters are exposed, and line of sight is easy to get.

"It's not that easy!" you might say.

True, but it's fun to develop strategies for taking out buffers.  The challenge of getting to the battery so that the robot stops murdering the scientists is fun and, when completed, rewarding.  If we just comp out the need to learn from our mistakes then we remove the chance to make them and also the chance to correct them and improve.

 

EDIT: On mortal wounds generation - To me, the ease of handing out mortal wounds is a defining characteristic of AoS. If everything dies really easily, then it frees up the game to have superawesomecool things in it, things that would otherwise dominate. Knowing that at any moment your Lord of Winning might take 6 wounds he can't avoid easily make for a better game with cooler stuff and more grand, spectacular, deadly action. Comp out buffs, comp out lots of mortal wounds, and you have the UberDudes ruling the table ... which, in grand Warhammer Tradition, you can then comp out of the game. You eventually end up with events that are playing AoS "the right way" with large forces of basic troops, like the gods intended - looking like "real armies" and so on.

How dull.

How 8th edition tournament scene.

Just play AoS. Embrace the madness, roll a pile of dice, see your heroes explode, your monsters romp only to die in heap of gore, and your named characters get taken down by determined forces that have miraculously been supported by lesser heroes and wizards.

Don't comp out the grandeur. 

[CoffeeGrunt]

Yeah, that +1 to Hit normally comes from a character, but not all factions have the ability to shoot, nevermind reliably hurt a character screened by an infantry unit.

[Sleboda]

So you can't pump out lots of shots. So your opponent has devoted a portion of his forces to protecting a character. So what? Good!

Practice.  Take it on the chin a few times while you learn to get past the screen or find ranged options to add. Develop and grow as a player! I used to play against Chaos Dwarfs with my Tomb Kings pretty regularly.  I knew I had only about a 10% chance to win, but did I ask my opponent to change the game so that I could do better? Heck no! I tried everything I could and counted improved results as personal wins (of a sort). Without those experiences, I never would have developed my Wall of Bone approach that eventually became the core of my army and play style.  My force changed, and my skills grew, as a direct result of facing overwhelming odds and tremendous adversity. This never would have happened if I had changed the game instead.

You could do that, though. Just change the rules of the game so you never have to evolve your list or your skills.  Don't change yourself, change the game.  Has the whole world turned into an American grade school where we don't want to have our precious little minds ever face the pain of failure?  At this point, I'm surprised we even keep score at tournaments.

 

By the way, for an upcoming Team event, my partner and I are playing with two forces that have practically no shooting or magic. Oh noez! What will we do?  We'll have fun facing the challenges presented, that's what.

[Scottyjock]

On 2/8/2017 at 2:41 AM, Warboss Gorbolg said:

This was my initial thought as well.  I've been eyeing Fyreslayers for a while now but the lack of a cost-efficient entry point has thankfully stopped me from starting that new project.  Now it's even more painful on the wallet to collect Fyreslayers.

Hopefully.......a Start Collecting comes out. I'd buy a few if they are well put together. Not sure we'd see a Magmadroth+Character+Troops for £50 but you never know!

[CoffeeGrunt]

3 minutes ago, Sleboda said:

So you can't pump out lots of shots. So your opponent has devoted a portion of his forces to protecting a character. So what? Good!

Practice.  Take it on the chin a few times while you learn to get past the screen or find ranged options to add. Develop and grow as a player!

Or, you know, just change the rules of the game so you never have to evolve your list or your skills.  Don't change yourself, change the game.  Has the whole world turned into an American grade school where we don't want to have our precious little minds ever face the pain of failure?  At this point, I'm surprised we even keep score at tournaments.

Stop with the strawman argument, I never once advocated changing the core game rules in my post, read it again. Please take your trite and pretentious denigrations of US education elsewhere. If I wanted to hear woeful messages about the US education system, I'd be watching whatever Trump's up to next.

Also it's hard to shoot when you have zero shooting. How can you find ranged options if you don't have any? How do you get past the screen without engaging it, which is playing into the other player's plan precisely and thus opening up to a counter-attack? If you simply do not have the option, what do you do?

It's something I've come across before, and sometimes you simply cannot touch the character, just gotta grind through the buffed forces and pray for good rules. C'est la vie. Never once advocated rewriting the game because of it.

[Sleboda]

6 minutes ago, CoffeeGrunt said:

Stop with the strawman argument, I never once advocated changing the core game rules in my post, read it again. Please take your trite and pretentious denigrations of US education elsewhere. If I wanted to hear woeful messages about the US education system, I'd be watching whatever Trump's up to next.

Also it's hard to shoot when you have zero shooting. How can you find ranged options if you don't have any? How do you get past the screen without engaging it, which is playing into the other player's plan precisely and thus opening up to a counter-attack? If you simply do not have the option, what do you do?

It's something I've come across before, and sometimes you simply cannot touch the character, just gotta grind through the buffed forces and pray for good rules. C'est la vie. Never once advocated rewriting the game because of it.

I'm in the US, by the way. Our education system is miserable.  Anyhoo...

If you have zero shooting, it's your choice. If you engage with things your opponent expects, that's also your choice.  "What do you do," you ask? I don't know sitting right here, right now. One thing is sure, though, if you (the general "you") never have to try to counter your opponent's plan because the rules have been changed to negate it instead, you'll never have have to learn.

For clarity, my opposition was expressed in response to Thomas Lyons' post initially.  It's just grown from there.  I'm not saying you advocated changing the rules.  He did.

[Bimli]

The issue with the multi stacking is if you get rid of it then sure some armies might get easier to play against while other armies just get a straight nerf (dispossessed rune lord)

The game itself is fine with the stacking and some synergy. But I think points just need to be adjusted much like what I believe GW is doing with the GHB2. 

I think GW is setting up a balancing act but they are doign it with point cost which I agree with. A few slight rules changes to units might be the way to go instead of rule changes. Maybe some + or - bonus may need to be toned down but that should be added in the warscroll imo.

That being said I do agree with sleboda's point where if something seems tough it's best to try and adapt that way you can make yourself more competitive and teach you on how to build better armies based on the current meta of course  

[Arkiham]

from what i'm observing, it really feel like it's just the american scene massively against compendium stuff being altered/comp'd/banned 

[Bimli]

6 minutes ago, Arkiham said:

from what i'm observing, it really feel like it's just the american scene massively against compendium stuff being altered/comp'd/banned 

If compendium stuff is not balanced then they should fix their point cost. That being said GW should make it fair... Not saying they are not as the points are just a trail run but I do hope the points are fair

[Rhellion]

7 minutes ago, Arkiham said:

from what i'm observing, it really feel like it's just the american scene massively against compendium stuff being altered/comp'd/banned 

I wouldn't say a few internet posts are indicative of the entire US scene against something. Or that they are the only ones against. Especially since it was SCGT (in the UK) banning compendium a month or two ago that started ALL of this debate... and people going nuts about them being banned. The ban was lifted because people going to that event were so outspoken.

[CoffeeGrunt]

10 minutes ago, Bimli said:

That being said I do agree with sleboda's point where if something seems tough it's best to try and adapt that way you can make yourself more competitive and teach you on how to build better armies based on the current meta of course

This is why I have 5K of Death, so I can run constantly-changing army lists. Preaching to the converted here.

It still doesn't negate the fundamentals of your chosen faction, though. Bloodbound, for example, have minimal to no ranged ability. It's a limitation you can't overcome unless you go outside the faction, because it's a deliberate limitation. That's my point.

So you can adapt tactics to a degree, but there are limitations in place. For example, my ranged abilities are worthless against high Bravery Heroes, which most tend to be, so I can't even use the ol' Banshee Summoning Slingshot trick. That also relies on rolls far more than any strategy.

I also tend to be slow, and my Flying units can be buffered against, consider that they have to clear 6" + base length + size of unit to get on the other side of an enemy. Can do it with some janky tricks, but not always. As ever, if your opponent knows about a trick, they can make it very difficult to pull off.

10 minutes ago, Arkiham said:

from what i'm observing, it really feel like it's just the american scene massively against compendium stuff being altered/comp'd/banned 

Well here in the UK our group are against it.

[Sleboda]

8 minutes ago, CoffeeGrunt said:

It still doesn't negate the fundamentals of your chosen faction, though. Bloodbound, for example, have minimal to no ranged ability. It's a limitation you can't overcome unless you go outside the faction, because it's a deliberate limitation. That's my point.

A few things:

- It is your *chosen* faction.  You know going into it that you have limits.

- As you state, you can go outside of your faction. Limits you place on yourself are fine, but you put them there.

- You imply an important point with "deliberate limitation." If a given faction has limits, it probably has strengths in other areas.  If comp systems minimize the negative effects of a faction's designed limitations, it would likely make their boosts too good. In other words, if your negatives are no longer negatives, and your pluses still remain, all you have are pluses. It's the unintended consequences issue that made so many Warhammer Tournaments in the past so frustrating. The TO thinks they are fixing something, but they have no idea the repercussions in other areas.

[Bimli]

15 minutes ago, CoffeeGrunt said:

This is why I have 5K of Death, so I can run constantly-changing army lists. Preaching to the converted here.

It still doesn't negate the fundamentals of your chosen faction, though. Bloodbound, for example, have minimal to no ranged ability. It's a limitation you can't overcome unless you go outside the faction, because it's a deliberate limitation. That's my point.

So you can adapt tactics to a degree, but there are limitations in place. For example, my ranged abilities are worthless against high Bravery Heroes, which most tend to be, so I can't even use the ol' Banshee Summoning Slingshot trick. That also relies on rolls far more than any strategy.

I also tend to be slow, and my Flying units can be buffered against, consider that they have to clear 6" + base length + size of unit to get on the other side of an enemy. Can do it with some janky tricks, but not always. As ever, if your opponent knows about a trick, they can make it very difficult to pull off.

Well here in the UK our group are against it.

I do see your point some unit do just become useless against other armies which does bite the big one. That is why I am hoping for a point balancing act. At least if those units that make other units almost indestructible are priced correctly (not saying they are or not) and making those units that are lets say "weaker" for lack of a better word cheaper then the balancing act would be good.

Now we really can't just look at one army so the fixes need to be all army wide and maybe a few unit rule tweaks here and there to make a close to fair outcome.

I'm not to sure so Ill have to verify this but a 1 always fails and a 6 always passes for hit/wounds/saves? The one rule I would not agree with is an auto fail/succeed (mortal wounds aside) should be removed. I would personally house rule this and I think tourney organizer would do the same (not 100% just my opinion)

[Thomas Lyons]

43 minutes ago, Bimli said:

I'm not to sure so Ill have to verify this but a 1 always fails and a 6 always passes for hit/wounds/saves? The one rule I would not agree with is an auto fail/succeed (mortal wounds aside) should be removed. I would personally house rule this and I think tourney organizer would do the same (not 100% just my opinion)

Yes, 1's always fail but 6's do not always succeed.

1 hour ago, Sleboda said:

You could do that, though. Just change the rules of the game so you never have to evolve your list or your skills.  Don't change yourself, change the game.  Has the whole world turned into an American grade school where we don't want to have our precious little minds ever face the pain of failure?  At this point, I'm surprised we even keep score at tournaments.

There is no reason for personal attacks so please don't bait me.  I would prefer to engage arguments, not ad hominem attacks.  I've already been slapped on the wrist by @Ben for my prior tirades.  Please don't get me started again.

If you don't implement some sort of stacking rule (which is fundamentally what we have in two of the three rules of 1 [no multiple spells, no additional bonus attacks generated from bonus attacks]), then the alternative is to adjust points on scrolls based on their maximum possible potential effectiveness from synergies.  That is, what ends up happening is units are not pointed for what they are but what they are combined with.  While this may not seem like an issue, it is precisely this sort of game design that generates a 100 point hero with a 1" move, 3 wounds, mediocre attack, and an unbind (Kraggi).  In no universe is Kraggi worth 100 points (as I noted prior, compare him to the Rune Lord with a 4" move, 5 wounds, decent attack, an unbind at +2, and the ability to strike runes for 20 points cheaper).  In no universe would someone choose Kraggi, over a Runelord in list building unless they are also running Thorek.  Thus, Kraggi evaporates from lists unless Thorek is present.

This is a microcosm of what happens with this type of design.  Warscrolls (units and battalions) are only appropriately priced when ran in specific combination with other particular units and battalions; in every other circumstance other than that precise one they are priced for, those warscrolls are fundamentally overcosted and not worth running.  Alone these war scrolls don't make sense at their point values but its because of their synergy that the point adjustment is needed.  

The ultimate consequence of this type of design, in the long run, is that it inevitably narrows the number of viable lists in competitive play because, in order for Unit A to be worth its points, it must be used with Unit B and Unit C.  This also has a side benefit to one of the most un-fun aspects of play, which is supreme defenses such as stacking penalties to hit.  Some units affected by a -2 or -3 (both Chaos and Death can achieve this) makes it so those units can actually hit NOTHING.  The stacking of these debuffs actually makes it so you don't get to play the very game that you set out to play since one player doesn't get to use their units.  These types of synergies are bad for the game and it is what makes people quit.  

Without this new proposed Rule of One, the nerf merry-go-round will occur every 12 months (assuming that is their rebalance GHB schedule) and armies may swing HUNDREDS of points (like we've seen with TK) because a new release combines weirdly with an old model or army and generates a disproportionate influence on the meta.  This runs the risk of literally invalidating some peoples armies every 12 months because old units have to be repointed because of new synergies.  This proposed rule won't stop these crazy synergies completely, but it will lessen their impact such that you may only see 20-40 point swings each year instead of 80+ point swings.    

This is ultimately a game design issue, which is something most people don't have experience in and thus don't see larger systemic consequences.  The war scroll isn't the problem, the synergy is. 

[Ollie Grimwood]

@Bimli

I think natural 6s always hitting is part of the current SCGT pack and maybe some others rather than an official rule so to speak 

[Bimli]

5 minutes ago, Ollie Grimwood said:

@Bimli

I think natural 6s always hitting are part of the current SCGT pack and maybe some others rather than an official rule so to speak 

ah.. Id probably house rule that 6's always hit... unless I'm playing towards a tourney that does not allow it. I'm just not a fan of auto miss if there ever was a rule update it should be rule of 1 and 6... 1 always fails while 6 always hits/wounds a simple fix imo.

[daedalus81]

Regarding multiple stacking --

I have less of a problem with it than I would if we still lived in the 'heroes can hide in units' era of Warhammer.

These kinds of stacking are telegraphed and I feel like it is more psychological than an unrecoverable event - for most anyway.  If your army lacks the tools to pick it apart it will be difficult.  With meta changes I think it will be harder to achieve these effect (Skyfire sniping).

These sorts of things tend to get people to mix up their lists.

That said I won't be upset that a new rule of 1 appears.

[Sleboda]

@Thomas Lyons

"There is no reason for personal attacks so please don't bait me.  I would prefer to engage arguments, not ad hominem attacks"

my apologies if it felt like such.  It was not. 

[Thomas Lyons]

7 minutes ago, Sleboda said:

@Thomas Lyons

"There is no reason for personal attacks so please don't bait me.  I would prefer to engage arguments, not ad hominem attacks"

my apologies if it felt like such.  It was not. 

No worries.  I let my frustrations get the better of me previously.  I just want to stay on topic.

[daedalus81]

The Cabal behind the sinister changes in GHB2 is revealed.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/02/09/generals-handbook-ii-behind-the-scenes/