Thoughts on mortal wounds from "to hit" rolls

[rokapoke]

I was recently thinking about a number of synergies that have polarized the community (e.g., Bloodletter bombs, buffed Tzaangor Skyfires). One easy-to-implement fix would be to require that their abilities (dealing mortal wounds on 6+ to hit) simply activate on a natural 6, as opposed to a 6+.

I'm just curious what the community thinks about such a house rule / rule change. Again, it looks like a simple fix -- buffing or debuffing the "to-hit" rolls still would affect the accuracy of the attacks -- suddenly those buffed up Bloodletters are still hitting on 2s or whatever, but they're not doling out mortal wounds on 4+ (which is, I expect, the perceived issue).

Yes, I know the points weren't "balanced" based on what I'm suggesting here. I just wonder what you fine folks think.

[Russ]

No

[BunkhouseBuster]

Eh, it wouldn't bug me.  Up to the local players or tournament organizers to make the call, but I'd be okay with it.

[rokapoke]

1 hour ago, Russ said:

No

Thanks for your discussion. 

[Killax]

34 minutes ago, rokapoke said:

Thanks for your discussion. 

Im inclined to agree though. The thing is, and this example shows, that melee in Age of Sigmar works out well from all sides and factions who actually recieved a propper full Battletome.

I understand the point you made and do not want to disqualify it's subject but having bread and butter models die relatively easy is what makes Age of Sigmar not too difficult to balance. Medium saves are common, Mortal wounds are common, Death on the battlefield is rather common. People really like synergies.

Now since this example also covers Bloodletters, they are certainly a poweful unit when 30 of them are applied. They are also 300 points and in 9/10 times they do become an instant issue is because of Sayl handing out Magic Carpets as if the carpetstore was on fire.

So maby, just maby, we need to adress the true cause of precieved issues not the unit (which can simply be any unit) that's scooting down. 

[rokapoke]

@Killax, I'm not bothered that someone disagrees with my idea. It's somebody stopping by just to dump on my idea - with no useful discussion or anything - that bugs me. 

Am I saying that synergy is bad? I'm not trying to. I do wonder to what extent the in-house playtesting anticipated some of the things we see as dominant right now - Magic: The Gathering was notorious for those oversights for years. I don't see huge issues with stuff like this in my local area, but it looks fairly common in a lot of the successful lists. That's why I proposed what I thought could be an interesting fix. 

Your point about it not being the true issue is fine, but I don't know what the deeper-down cause would be. 

[Killax]

Well, what we see is that there is a consistant appearance of X ammount of models that are arguably too cheap. Quite some of them are found in Chaos. There are more out there but due to how most factions arn't that much fleshed out, it will thake a while before they will ever show up on a winning list, if they even ever will...

The thing with Age of Sigmar is that unlike Magic the Gathering I don't belive GW spends a ton of time finetuning a balanced design. There are certainly some working on the GH who did but overall speaking it's common to see a gradual cost design, that is common for several types of units. It certainly is the case for Blades of Khorne for example. 

I think that your suggestion could be applied but doesn't drastically impact anything in a required way. Now if you want to further ease the rules (for example) I think you'd have a fair point but there is allready quite some confusion going on about phases acting as other phases, Allegiances and Battalion use. Which are all parts of the game that can confuse you even before you start the game  

So in context I think your suggestion could be applied but Bloodletters hitting on 2+'s is very difficult to do. Buffs in general are better on larger units and yes Bloodletters are one of them aswell. Maby even Tzaangors if you really want to go deep into that.
More importantly as big units are the costs attached, 300 points is quite a lot but the oddity of Bloodletters (and many more units) is that they suddenly become significantly better after the first 20 while retaining the same cost for 10, from a balance design perspective this doesn't add up because 30 Bloodletters are better as 20 and 10 or even 10, 10 and 10. 

[Bradifer]

I think its fine to reward synergy rather than remove it from the game.

I would agree it seems odd that units never increase in points cost as their effectivenes increases drastically.

At least we're talking about battleline which GW wants to encourage us buying and using.

On topic - I think the real issue is the prevalence of mortal wounds.

Certain armies have more access to MW than others,, and low and behold they are generally better because of it.

[Kurrilino]

So the posterboys are now crying because someone else is strong too ?

Well i enjoy my bath in their tears.

They can leave everything like it is

[Galas]

I agree with Badifer. The problem is not synergies, the problem is the proliferance of Mortal Wounds. A very powerfull tool that should be give with care to units and armies now totally dominates the meta because of his abundance. The lack of mortal wounds on Kharadron Overlords gives me hope for the future. Yeah, they will be weaker because of that. But thats just how you avoid power creep.

[WoollyMammoth]

I like it. not because of the nerf to synergy, but because of the actual buff these units would receive. Suddenly an army of nighthaunt spirit hosts is not complete crapola against a lot of -1. A band of Retributors can't get stomped into a nothingburger. I've faced 30 bloodletters, and they didn't do didly to me while Neferata was watching. It would prevent the cheese, but it would also prevent these units from getting neutered at the same time.

[Tokyo Nift]

You present this post like it's a balanced discussion of a rule, but really it's just calling out for nerfs on some competitive lists. I'm not saying the skyfire/bloodletter list isnt' toxic, but the meta will catch up; there's no need for these sort of crazy broad brush changes.

[stato]

The thing with mortal wounds is they are only powerful against anything with a decent save.  Counter them with a low save unit and your sucking a lot of the points benefit out of them. 

[Gilby]

10 hours ago, Killax said:

Sayl handing out Magic Carpets as if the carpetstore was on fire.

 Love it.

 

The "problem" (if we're calling it that) with mortal wounds is the lack of interaction. This is a 2 player game with lots of dice rolling. Someone wants to charge you, you should be able to try and put something in the way, or get lucky on dice rolls and they don't make it, or they'll fly over what you tried to block with, etc. Lots of back and forward actions and reactions with a bit of luck thrown in. Mortal wounds (especially ranged) remove this. It just becomes a case of point and click, especially with some units needing a single roll of the dice to tell you how many mortal wounds you've taken. You just stand there whilst they tell you how many models to put away. Doesn't matter that the unit he's pointing at is a bunch of naked dudes with paper armor or the most elite warriors with 6" thick steel armour they take the same amount of wounds, so even your choice of army is irrelevant (to some extent).

 

But mortal wounds have their place and that's why a lot of armies will have a way of dishing them out. Things just get out of hand when the elements of different armies that have different ways of dealing mortal wounds are mixed together to make a well rounded army that also specialises in mortal wounds.

 

A lot of armies have linchpins, models or units the army is built around. With ranged mortal wounds it is very easy to pull them apart with you opponent able to do nothing to stop it. Maybe there should be a way to hide single, non-behemoth models from shooting a bit more? I mean, one way you could do it now is to specially design scenery to let you deploy and more models around completely out of sight of ranged attacks (just take enough pieces to get one on either side of the table if you're against a shooting heavy army) but that feels a bit too gamey and not really the right direction for the game to go.

 

Just now, AmurayiWestgate said:

What's a bloodletter bomb?

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30 bloodletters using Sayl to give them an 18" flying move, whip them with bloodstoker to give them +3" to charge and then send them in turn one doing 2 hits each (because of bloodsecrator).

[AmurayiWestgate]

What's a bloodletter bomb?

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[sal4m4nd3r]

30 bloodletters. Typically buffed with a bloodsecrator for +1 attack and get +1 to hit for being over twenty models. Deal mortal wounds on 6+ to hit. So bloodletters with 2 attacks a piece, dealing mortal wounds on 5+ to hit without any other buffs to hit rolls. Deals massive damage if you can get it in combat. Before the new battletome, I had 30, buffed by a secrator and lord of war (+1 to hit), and rolled a 6 for unpredictable destruction. So +3 to hit total. I had like 32 attacks and dealt 26 mortal wounds to a unit of hexwraiths. wiped out a unit of ten instantly. 

 

 I hate Sayl's spell. Its lazy and boring game mechanic. movement and maneuvering and timing are supposed to be a big part of the strategy behind this game, and he completely removes that. 

[KnightFire]

I don't think there is an issue with 30 bloodletters only costing 3x as much as 10, despite being more than 3x better. That is because while the bloodletters get better, your army becomes more brittle. By specialising that way your putting a lot of eggs into the "letterbomb basket", rather than diversifying your threats. This makes the individual threats more potent, but means your weaknesses to things that counter those threats are much bigger. 

Essentially - the more you take unit x, the more susceptible to unit Y you are, and the more people that stack unit X, the more other people will take unit Y.

 

[wayniac]

I agree to a point, but I think the issue is a ton of things that cause mortal wounds.  The problem with the "meta" is the proliferation of lists that focus on spamming mortal wounds, not necessarily any of the lists themselves.  It's literally just that they can pump out an obscene amount of mortal wounds and just delete units with little that the opponent can do, making for a very "negative play experience" as the term goes.

[Gilby]

3 minutes ago, Auticus said:

I would not be interested in this because one of the things I enjoy is the synergy and having your pieces work together to accomplish something, as opposed to letting your pieces work as lone-wolves and not need support.

I think that for me the real culprit is simply that things are not costed as good as they can be, and there are some abilities that are just flat out broken when they are as undercost as they are.  

That every competitive chaos army I have seen for the most part always takes Sayl in it is testimony to something that needs fixed and I am hoping the GHB2 does that.

 

I just hope the answer isn't simply to point them so high that they are not worth taking ever, especially in their own armies that weren't using them in the way they're now pointed for.

Unless each faction and allegiance got a different number of points to build an army with in a matched game? So if you're taking sayl and x/y/z you'll get less points, but if you went purely with x and it's faction you'd have more points.

[KnightFire]

I agree to a point, but I think the issue is a ton of things that cause mortal wounds.  The problem with the "meta" is the proliferation of lists that focus on spamming mortal wounds, not necessarily any of the lists themselves.  It's literally just that they can pump out an obscene amount of mortal wounds and just delete units with little that the opponent can do, making for a very "negative play experience" as the term goes.

That is only because 3 months ago the metagame was full of sylvaneth, and their big weakness is mortal wounds. I can see skeleton or goblin hoards becoming very popular in a few months, precisely because doing 30 mortal wounds to a unit of 30 skeletons is not as effective as doing 30 mortal wounds to a stonehorn or treelord ancient.

Mortal wounds are popular now because they are the answer to yesterday's problem of how do we beet a 2++ treelord ancient or a stonehorn.

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[Bradifer]

2 hours ago, Gilby said:

The problem with mortal wounds is the lack of interaction. [...] Mortal wounds (especially ranged) remove this. It just becomes a case of point and click, especially with some units needing a single roll of the dice to tell you how many mortal wounds you've taken. You just stand there whilst they tell you how many models to put away. 

This is the main issue IMO. MW are good to have in the game to speed things up, but ranged Mortal Wounds in the shooting rather than magic phase is very dangerous.

You can't unbind a shooting attack.

You get to move before you shoot.

Looking at the Thundertusk's Snowball Attack as the prime offender here too.

Roll to hit? Not really it's just a 2+ non-hit roll, so unaffected by Mirror Shield, Briarsheath, or Neferata's -1 to hit bubble.

Roll to wound? Nope we skip that part of the game.

Armor save? Nope it's MW so we skip that part of the game?

Roll to damage? Nope we are healthy so you just take 6.

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I am fine with the +to hit stacking, so long as every alliance gets access to +to hit. It's easy for Chaos via Blood Banners or Skyfire + Shaman innate design, order has a number of +to hit bonuses + access to Hurricanum, besides Battle Brew, Destruction & Death are a little lacking in +to hit, and lacking MW in general (other than Beastclaw).

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MW are only a real counter if every army has access to them. How does FEC or Ironjawz beat Sylvaneth? They don't. Lack of MW output vs an army that is pretty non interactive (Sylvaneth) as it shuts down the traditional method of taking damage part of the game. Sylvaneth unkillable treelords and Rerolling save Kurnoth Hunters were honestly just designed to be a bit goofy. This isn't MTG so you really shouldn't need such hard counters. That army feels more like 40K Imperial Knights because they're statistically immune to a high number of units.

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Sayl the Faithless and Settra/Vampire Lord on Abyssal Terror both heavily impact the game and make movement a joke. Sayl will likely get a massive points increase as he defines how armies work. He should probably just not exist, or be replaced with a less powerful version of the same spell (+6" movement and flying) or something like that.

[Captain Marius]

Yeah as a rule I think MWs on hits are fine, there are just a few units which need tweaking to calm it down a bit. Id suggest making Sayls spell a 3d6" fly move so theres at least an element of randomness to it. Make the Tusk's attack a 3+ proper to hit roll so it can be defended against a bit. Not sure on Skyfires as I havent experienced them, but it sounds like its the Shaman's buff thats the problem there? Bloodletters and Retributors are generally fine as they are susceptible to -1 to hit debuffs which cripple them!

[Oppenheimer]

Death needs to be released with more debuffs to hit to counter that. If they could do what the screaming skull catapults do to bravery to a unit's to hit it'd really kill its ability to do a 6+ anything.

[Sleboda]

5 hours ago, stato said:

The thing with mortal wounds is they are only powerful against anything with a decent save.  Counter them with a low save unit and your sucking a lot of the points benefit out of them. 

Careful now.  That sounds like thought, strategy, and adjustment while working within the system.   Can't have that.  Much better to change the game than change ourselves.

/s

[Furious]

A point regarding the gain in power for larger units - unless I'm mistaken, this pretty much only applies to battleline, a type of unit people are forced to (and generally don't want to) spend points on. So, it creates the quandry - invest in battleline enough to have them be a good unit, or simply pay the tax? 30 Bloodletters in one is a great unit, but you've got to fill two more battleline units. 10x3 Bloodletters gives more board control and versatility and fills battleline. 1x30 can only hold one objective; 3x10 could potentially hold three. These kinds of units don't need a point increase because both options have benefits.

Bloodletters are also a huge exception because of how buffed they can be.