Dead Scribe

Not when you are playing people who are doing the same thing. It makes it so everyone is on the same footing then. Its only easy mode when you're playing against people NOT doing this. And if I'm playing to win and be competitive there isn't a reason why I should handicap myself while my opponent is not. The good thing in my opinion is that at least the command abilities are pretty easy to judge in terms of power so there is very little trial and error; we all know what powers are the best after flipping through the book for a few minutes.

The warlord/general is to me the one with the most efficient command ability. I don't care what his fantasy title or rank in the stories are. I am sure I could write stories about why that warlord is the warlord instead of the king to satisfy most narrative people.

I don't know that they'd need 3 years or whatever they said it would be to make a game that you can just use the same models in both the same ways.

A roll off takes player agency away. If I want to guarantee double turn, because in my games so far last year I have won 84% of my games that I got to control the double turn and it is hugely important in AOS, that means I need a mechanism that lets me control and guarantee that I can control it. List drops are that mechanism that let me know that I will always get that, and if someone comes up with a build that beats mine in drop count to get guaranteed turn order, I will go back and amend my list. Rolling for it in the beginning would suck because it takes away my control over my list.

How does attending a tournament that uses sealed dice correlate to getting a rule wrong and being tarred and feathered as a cheater? I do agree that some people take mistakes way too far and accuse people of cheating when it was an honest mistake. However tournaments are serious for a lot of people and thats to be expected. Competition is a serious mindset to many.

I dunno I think thats adding a bit too much complexity. This isn't the game for complexity.

Thats what ebay and buy/sell groups are for

Apologies. Let me clarify by stating people that are buying models specifically to play the game.

That is my thoughts as well. I did not sign up to play narrative-guy's version of AOS or his version of balance. No house rules. No "narrative mode" where someone tries to tell me what rules that GW endorses are bad. No one goes to the store to pick up models that fit in with what narrative-guy thinks you should take, they buy models based off of what the rules allow.

The gentleman's agreement to balance is extraordinarily flawed. The rules state what you can bring. I think its important that people clarify what mode they want to play on. If they don't want to get their non optimal list destroyed, they probably shouldn't go to tournaments. I see a lot of people go to tournaments and then get sour when their list gets man handled by a tuned list. This is a game about list building and numbers. They matter. A lot. I think even new players should be aware of this and make a choice on what environment ultimately entices them and they should go full bore into whatever choice that is. If thats competitive, then they should be ok with getting destroyed while a new player because that is where you learn the best.

First - because then you make them situationally useful in that I may be wasting points and I don't want to have to waste points on something I may not get full optimal use out of. Second - because the points being charged for these abilities wouldn't be balanced anyway. GW would make some underpointed, some overpointed, and you'd be left in the exact same place you are now with the balance situation - effectively achieving nothing but adding more complexity and another layer of points that is not needed. Third - because adding costs to the game and abilities is seen as a negative trait and will likely off put a lot of people who enjoy getting things for no cost. Some of you may balk at that but I believe there is a reason why the game is designed how its designed and also making a ton of money.

Double-turn will never go away, its too entrenched and held dear by the aos community.

This is something I agree with a lot because we have caught a few people with loaded dice in our tournaments and there are people that know how to do dice tricks where they can roll dice and get the values they want reliably. You can't do much with the people that know dice tricks, but you can weed the people bringing in weighted dice or dice that have a tendency to roll high by making them use the same sealed dice pack everyone else uses.

Yeah. Again - no. Very much no. All armies should get equal treatment.

I'd say that if that was the MOST competitive army that the only thing that would influence me to buy that army would be if the meta had people doing that. Historically the very powerful but very expensive in terms of money builds aren't seen very often at all. Plus the painting time etc. Thankfully.

I think all armies should be equal in terms of attention. Though from a competitive angle I'm glad that GW does the work for me by showing me which armies I should play easily without me having to spend a ton of time experimenting. I'm glad that they make it easy to figure out which armies are top tier. Based on how expensive the game is I would probably be irritated if I had to figure out what was OP instead of the rules being obviously OP or not because I'd surely spend some money somewhere that I wouldn't have wanted to spend later.

The thing that gets kicked back a lot is that some groups only run optimal lists, so casual players have to hope for other casual players lol.

Here is a question I'd like to pose, because it seems there are a lot of people here, on facebook, on dakka, everywhere, that constantly say the bad balance kills their scene, but say that for years so to me their scene is still going (I know I'm not arguing the balance is bad, because it *is* bad but my scene is still huge *despite* the bad balance) If its that bad and you feel it kills it for you or you casual scene, why do you keep coming back for more? Why doesn't your casual scene find a different game to play?

Its really about numbers. I agree warmachine and infinity as game systems are more suited for tournament play. But 40k and AOS has a much deeper player base so you have the ability to have much larger tournaments, much larger prizes, and much larger community where you can make content and earn money from doing that content than you do with smaller games.

I disagree. Saying house rules are great for skilled people and bad for people that are "bad generals" isn't going to drive that point home either. Its just plain hostile. If 40k was barely playable it wouldn't have literally tens of thousands of people playing it without ITC on a daily basis. My store is always packed with 40k players playing the "barely playable" 40k in a non-ITC context. We have over 200 people in the 40k group in my city alone that are very active, and they don't use ITC to my knowledge. I'd say that "barely playable" in that case is not only extremely hyperbolic (which I thought we are supposed to hate?) and just demonstrably not true. A "barely playable" game wouldn't be the dominant juggernaut of tabletop gaming that 40k has been since pretty much forever.

I mean - the thing is that read this forum or any other forum and you'll find that no one can agree on what should or shouldn't be changed to make "balance". "Balance" is different to everyone. GW balance is not the greatest, we all know that. But GW balance is still official balance, and when I go to the store to buy models I do so knowing that the rules I am building against are official, not some random committee of dudes that got to be on the committee because they are friends with the right people, choosing how to "balance" the game I play in their own opinion and then forcing that opinion on me ITC-style so that I have no choice but to play by those rules in tournaments. No thanks. I hear enough horror stories online every day about how this and this needs changed to make "balance" but you can't balance a game like this, so when they change one thing for "balance" they are breaking something else.

I'm highly opposed to some random internet fans dictating to me how I get to play my game. If they want to write their own game and churn a tourney scene up around it and put the work in instead of riding GW's coattails and premade fan base, let them do that. If its any good it should stand on its own merit.

I hope we never get an ITC in AOS the way it is in 40k. I don't like houserules. People argue over ITC being valid or official all the time and I would dread having to have those conversations in AOS. Otherwise why not just houserule the things you hate out of the game? Why do we need a team of people who have no qualifications and no official weight to tell us what house rules they approve of us to play with globally? If everyone is as upset at the rules as people claim on forums, why don't they all write GW and let them know, and when the poll comes every year, poll that the rules bother you?

Thats why I don't really put much stock in the background. The reality on the table and the background stories are nothing alike.

I've been seeing this a lot lately. I would say that there is logic in this. The stuff sells very well as it is.