Dead Scribe

Sounds to me like they are going the "soup" route that plagues 40k, only calling it "mercenaries". Which I have to be honest worries me.

Precisely. They are just too cheap right now (I get it, they are one of my primary armies specifically because they are too cheap and highly optimal). Bumping some point costs up they would still be highly effective. I think that the binary thought of "its either highly optimal, or its worthless" is a little too extreme.

Ok. I would be highly surprised if any paid expansion box is not matched play legal. In fact I'd go so far as to say if they released a paid expansion box that was not matched play legal, I'll eat my shoe.

I would be highly surprised if anything they put out is not matched play legal.

Yep the ally system is being revamped with the new total power expansion. We're thinking (where I am) that its going to start looking a lot like 40k now.

My description of nerfed into the ground is synonymous with useless. I don't think taking a -1 modifier to hit when trying to snipe characters as suddenly becoming useless.

Shooting nerfed to the ground is a pretty extreme statement. Its certainly not as potent, but its also certainly not entirely useless. Its just hard to optimize around as efficiently compared to what it used to be because there is a type of terrain that blocks line of sight now and hero sniping is not as easy due to look out sir. I don't think those two things nerfed it into the ground however.

But overall you don't want the army to be nerfed. You want the army to be elevated in power and you want internal balance to be stabalized.

I don't think that the old WHF armies were that much more expensive than AOS armies to be honest. I've seen people field their old armies and the model count seems fairly close if not identical to the AOS equivalents in many cases.

From what I was told, tomb kings were not very good rules-wise in warhammer even though they had nice new kits, so nobody bought them because of that. Bretonnians also from what I was told had pretty bad rules or old rules and no one wanted them because of that. I can definitely see how that would make people not buy them, especially since it seems competitive players do the most buying.

I would prefer that they update all of the factions first and even out their bad external balance and work on their equally bad internal balance before they bring back dead factions. Once they have addressed the gameplay and balance issues, feel free to bring in new races or bring back dead races turned into AOS factions better.

I guess... we have three DOK players and all three are adamant that their book is perfectly fine and that the problem is that people just don't know how to play against them properly.

No one that plays an army will willingly want it to be nerfed lol.

Point costs really. They are very cheap for what they can do which makes them VERY optimal.

I guess that goes both ways then. I'm not willing to buy extra models just to have a weaker list, someone else may not want to buy extra models to have a stronger list, then at that point examine where the issue lies. It will typically lie with the person not willing to buy the extra models to have a stronger list, so they should be more selective with who they play against, and trying to shame someone or push some abstract social contract onto people by having them spend more money to buy and paint weaker models should not be encouraged.

The biggest thing that I see is that people want their idea of how a faction should look (meaning they like a set of models and want them to also be competitive) be as competitively viable as a tournament level list. But thats not how the game operates or is designed. Some call that internal balance. While I don't think that the game is externally or internally very balanced, at least there are a wide number of books that can place top-10, which indicates that there is some degree of external balance. After that its up to the player to weed out the garbage units and make lists with the good units internally. Some external balance is good enough for me. Internal balance, I say those people just need to accept that that is not how the game is designed and again either be ok with losing if they have to take models that perform below optimal, or collect the models in the book that are optimal.

The question is what does toning down entail? It will differ from person to person. I think its as much on the onus for the other person to tone UP and build a more proper list as it is for someone to have to tone down. I know for me I don't own any more than I have to to field my force, so toning down is not an option for me, I don't have replacement models to tone down and I'm not going to go out and buy models just so that I have a weaker list.

Seems like they are in many ways, not just with AOS but most of their games, following the Magic the Gathering carousel.

I don't know how well it will do in my area due to it only being chaos. However if it is narrative campaign focused over matched tournament play I can guarantee you it won't sell here at all.

There is a lot of truth in that yes.

If you say so. If you wish to turn this into personal attacks and insults, I suggest hitting up reddit instead.

I don't disagree. But what does and does not constitute heavy tactics or light tactics is going to be in the eye of the beholder. Someone great at the game saying that the game has heavy tactics does not make the game have heavy tactics (or vice versa). Objectively speaking, a tactic is a decision. The number of tactical decisions in the game is limited to a few factors. Just because those few factors have to be taken into account does not make the game heavily tactical. It means that there are a few tactical decisions that you need to be aware of. Objectively there seems to be a lot less tactical decisions overall to make. Not none. But a lot less than other games that exist, which gives the impression and feel to a lot of people of it being and having less tactics, especially against its predecessor.

By that logic, the only peoples' opinions that mean anything in the realm of AOS are those that place in the top 2 or 3 at majors, which means a handful of people and the rest of our opinions are useless. I would suppose then that forums are not needed any longer.

When I first got into the game I was warned there was no tactics in AOS as well. And to be honest, there aren't that many. But I don't mind that. AOS is more of a strategy combo game than a tactical wargame, so I can see where the "it has no tactics" argument comes from. (its not true it has no tactics, they are just not very deep tactics or very many actual choices that I find I have to make, which is what a tactic is) It has a lot of similarities and feel to my magic tournaments, which is probably why I like it so much.

My problem with this is that it starts introducing house rules or concessions to the official rules. If having to change lists around to accommodate people is the norm, then nothing stops people from just not wanting to have to face any type of competitive list and just demanding you change things up. But that is (what is and is not a competitive list) very and highly subjective to each person...