Kadeton

This is often the way with abilities that are fundamentally un-Mathhammer-able. A lot of players will look at that and think "Well that doesn't let me kill more, why would I use it?" And it's a fair question, in many ways - you're spending a lot of points on Mannfred, so you want him to be "making his points back" by killing stuff. But that ability will absolutely win games... just not in an easily quantifiable way. The internet tends to gloss over abilities like that.

Oh, I didn't realise Fyreslayers were literally unbeatable before the ranged meta started to dominate, my bad. No, this discussion is literally about what we'd like to see in 3rd Edition. You can design any rule concept-first, and then find a way to balance it. What do support heroes do? is a question of balance, and if the answer is "Die with negligible impact" then support heroes are extremely poorly balanced. If the answer is "Win the game unless your opponent can snipe them" then they're also poorly balanced. The answer we should aim for, in my opinion, is "Make a contribution commensurate with their points cost before they die."

This discussion isn't about balance, but okay. My main beef with the current state of shooting isn't that it's too strong, it's that it's nothing like the role that shooting plays in medieval warfare, and its produces outcomes that are inconsistent with the heroic-fantasy tone of AoS. Not inherently. That sounds pretty unbalanced, but that doesn't have to be mitigated by making support heroes easy to kill. It could also be balanced by, for instance, breaking or removing all the interactions which allow for "untouchable" melee units to become overwhelmingly strong. Support heroes shouldn't be "kill this model or lose" power level, but they should also be allowed the chance to play the role they're supposed to play in your army. Personally, if I were designing it, I would make support characters attach themselves to a unit when you build the army list, and become a permanent model in that unit. Only the unit they were attached to would benefit from their leadership effects. Then, bring back the Challenge mechanics from the old WHFB. You can shoot their unit but you won't hit the character (indiscriminate), and if you want to kill them before you wipe out their whole unit then you'd better get one of your own characters in there to deal with them (heroic). But that's just me - I'm sure there are plenty of alternatives that would work well.

We don't have to "imagine" - for many armies, that's just reality. We don't have the shooting to snipe out a Cathallar or a Loreseeker, or Fyreslayer heroes, or any other lynchpin heroes. We just have to live with the fact that those heroes can do the job they are supposed to do against us, and play accordingly. There's no good reason why they shouldn't be able to do their job against your army as well.

Yeah, I'd like to see this come back. Archery is pretty indiscriminate on a battlefield - if you want to take out a hero, you need to go and deal with them personally, in hand-to-hand combat.

You could consider a Living City army perhaps? Use Stormcast and Kurnoth Hunters with bows as your elite archers, protect them with City troops and buff them with a Hurricanum.

What makes you think they can't charge again? As far as I can tell, this ability all but guarantees that they'll be charging on every one of your turns even if your opponent tries to tie them up with chaff. No, way more of this please. We don't need meaningless weapon choices where one is clearly superior, which only results in people being able to assemble their models "wrong". Just make every unit's weapons generic like this so the unit does what it's supposed to and we can build them in whatever way looks cool.

True, the spirits did get very firmly separated. The Black Coach in particular struck me as a strange inclusion in Nighthaunt given its previous fluff, and I do love the old Banshee and Wraith sculpts. Sorry that you lost out on the things you were hoping for.

Yeah, interesting that they show six icons and only name and describe five vampire bloodlines. I'd guess the Big Hat icon could end up being a faction more oriented towards Necromancers? Overall, pretty thrilled with what we've seen so far. My old Vampire Counts army (still on square bases!) had a bunch of units that ended up in the Flesh-Eater Courts, and I was worried that I wouldn't be able to use them in Soulblight except as allies. Instead, my Terrorgheists and Zombie Dragon can even be battleline if I choose, which is way more than I expected. It looks like Vargheists are sticking around as well. The only slight disappointment is that the Cursed City units all have to be purchased as a single choice and will probably be terrible. I guess they can be used as proxies instead. I can't yet decide whether I want to go with the Legion of Blood and make an army out of all those Black Knights I've been painting, or go Avengorii and put my monsters to good use (and pick up Lauka Vai since I love how she looks). It's the good kind of dilemma to have!

What would you have played instead? I can't think of any tabletop game I've played that doesn't have that problem. As soon as internet pundits get involved, everyone's perception of the state of the game gets polarised to categorising everything as "trash tier" or "god tier" and nothing else matters. I guess a lot of this conversation is coming from differences in those expectations. To you (perhaps, don't want to put words in your mouth) the fact that some units and some armies are terribly under- or over-tuned is untenable and needs to be corrected. To me, that just feels like the inherent nature of wargames, because I've never found one that works any other way. Some are more evenly balanced than AoS, some are less, but they all have their garbage never-picks, their trap choices, their OP BS.

I think folks on all sides of this debate can probably agree that BoK are in a bad place right now and will need a new book before they're in the same league as most of the armies in the game. That's a specific balance outlier.

It's worth considering that the "definitive numbers" we have come from tournament results, not from casual gaming. Tournaments are (to my mind at least?) the complete opposite of "randomized and fun outcomes on a Sunday afternoon". Tournaments skew the balance data (everyone is trying to bring their nastiest list), but it's extremely hard to see because tournaments are the only data. I'm not saying that you're wrong about the impact of army selection on the outcomes of casual games, just wanted to point out that we don't have any definitive numbers on that whatsoever - the numbers we do have are from a completely different context, and we should keep that in mind.

Definitely agree that this should be how it works by default - if your general is a unique character, you get a Command Trait for one of your other non-unique characters. Just as a straight-up core rule, no special rules required. Also make it mandatory that Supreme Leader-type characters have to be the general. No more of this nonsense where Nagash is personally attending the battle but just chillin' along for the ride rather than taking command.

This seems like an opportunity to build a more fun-oriented community. Your BoK and your friend's Nighthaunt are getting smashed by overly-competitive "casual" players? Don't play against them - play against each other instead. Your armies should be better matched, and you'll have a more enjoyable time. You'll probably find other people in your community who aren't into the highly competitive meta, and they'll be happy to join you. Make it clear to the competitive players that you won't play against hardcore lists. They'll either adjust to suit, or they'll continue just playing each other - either is fine, you don't need those people who refuse to adjust for the sake of the community. You'll be building a new local scene based on clear expectations where being too competitive is frowned upon rather than rewarded. I think this is an important point that's been largely missed in all the balance discussions. If you're the kind of player who just wants to have casual games, but your pool of opponents are largely players who just want to win, then you'll probably have a bad time regardless of whether your army is "meta strong" or not. Finding like-minded opponents is just as (if not more) important as having balanced armies.

I don't understand how that follows. The Mortarchs wield enormous power, but they don't need to be physically large to do so. This seems similar to asking: If Jeff Bezos is so rich, why isn't he built like Hafthor Bjornsson? Anyway, Nagadron was destroyed and Arkhan is dead so I'm not sure that the Mortarch kit can really be considered "current". I would presume the vampire Mortarchs will get a model update at some point.

That's a really interesting idea - you're not competing against the other player, but against "historical precedent". Regardless of whether your forces win or lose the battle, the measure of how well you've done is compared to how well Napoleon did in the same battle, or Katakros for that matter. Both players can win or lose independently of each other. This would be a good format for Narrative play, with uneven forces in unique scenarios, and would separate that mode of the game more cleanly from Matched play. Still, I think you'd really struggle to get that to become the "normal" mode of AoS. People are pretty attached to the idea of beating their opponent.

Your example is a pure strawman, whereas my example is based on the things people have actually said in this thread. And you say mine is manipulative phrasing? It might feel that way to you, but all the people who are being accused of "vehemently defending" the game (including myself, at various points) have done nothing of the sort. That's the overreaction of people who see any form of questioning of their position as taking the extreme opposite position. As far as I've seen, nobody here holds the position of "balance is totally fine" at all. Degree and speed of change is important to consider. Personally, I think there is an inherent tradeoff between balance and the unique and varied units and abilities that add colour and flavour to the game. Beyond a certain point, the closer you get to "true" balance, the more bland the game must inherently become in order to achieve that. I've seen this happen with other games, and I don't want to see it happen here. So for me, balance is something that should be pursued in small increments, to avoid over-correcting and sacrificing the things that make the game interesting. (Caveat: This may not be the only way to achieve better balance, but it's by far the most straightforward way and the way that requires the least effort, so it's the go-to path for most designers.) Changing too much, too fast, will hurt the community even if it improves the game overall. The transition between Warhammer Fantasy and Age of Sigmar is a perfect example, if you were around for that. It shattered the playerbase, generated a ton of resentment, and took years to rebuild. So be careful when you claim that anyone will be unaffected by whatever changes might be introduced. Finally, you clearly have a low opinion of the GW design studio's ability to balance their game. So why do you expect that shouting "Balance more! Balance faster!" at them is going to produce a better result? A bit more balance would be good. A lot more balance would (in my experience) be bad. Pardon? What do you have to "show for it"? Has there been some drastic improvement in game balance for which we owe credit to you? Have you achieved something by shouting down anyone who disagrees, even mildly, with your position? This is a discussion forum, and you do not get to decide who is allowed to have a voice. Well, for one thing, everyone experiences this problem, so nobody should be excluded. For another, yes, you absolutely should get a say in how it should be fixed if that fix is going to have an impact on you - and balance changes affect everyone, always. Oh, my god. No. This is incredibly black-and-white thinking. The lack of agreement, in this and essentially all cases, is due to complexity. Game balance is an incredibly complicated problem, and any change will have a range of impacts on different players. Some of those impacts will be obvious, but most will be subtle, and they will have different levels of importance and different interactions with various other impacts for everyone involved. Given a large group of people, you will never find a consensus on the "best way" to reach a common goal, especially one as poorly-defined and subjective as "balance".

In a lot of cases, "mortal wounds" are used as a convenient shorthand for "automatically wounds and has -5 rend", but I don't think that's necessarily (in itself) lazy design. If all of those were changed to variations on -5 rend and/or auto wounds, people perhaps wouldn't be pointing to "mortal wounds" as the specific culprit, but they would still be feeling that there were a lot of armour-ignoring and perhaps auto-wounding attacks in the game. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, et cetera. (It might make Nighthaunt actual contenders again though, which would be nice!) Having fifteen variations on dealing D3 or D6 mortal wounds, on the other hand, is lazy design. Using mortal wounds as a mechanism for making "extra good" attacks (yes, Lumineth archers are everyone's first example) is lazy design. Endless spells should be doing far more interesting things than handing out random spurts of plain old damage. Super-good archers could have other advantages (I dunno - a 30" range or something maybe?) but should still interact with the armour system to vary their effectiveness against different types of targets.

This is true, but has little relevance to this discussion, as these are not the type of opinions being expressed here. Person A says, "I feel this problem, therefore it is a MASSIVE problem." Person B says, "I agree it's a problem, but I feel it has less impact than you claim." We're not arguing about whether balance is a problem. We're arguing about how much of a problem it actually is. Some people think it's such a huge problem that the game isn't even worth playing, and others would be happy to see it improved but still enjoy playing. There is no "correct" position.

While the Lumineth units certainly cop a lot of stick for this, I don't think it's necessarily a case of specific units causing problems. The big complaint seems to be that there are simply too many units capable of dealing mortal wounds in general - none of them are individually an issue, but collectively they make mortal wounds too prevalent. Looking at that in a different way, the answer would be "All the units that can inflict mortal wounds". And not necessarily that they need that ability taken away in all cases, just that there needs to be a broad rationalisation of what mortal wounds are thematically supposed to represent, and each unit measured against that standard.

The Doomwheel discussion might be getting a bit off-topic. Listbot is an interesting tool but (as the Doomwheel conversation demonstrates) it isn't a substitute for actual game experience with an army. It gives my Beastclaw list a "below average" rating for overall damage, for instance, which I think the numerous armies I've tabled by turn 2-3 might dispute. I assume that, like with the Doomwheels, it's just not aware of or not able to calculate the impact of a lot of circumstantial modifiers that would dramatically affect its scores.

Fair enough, and sorry that it came across that way. From my perspective, what we get from people is pages and pages of "The game is completely broken and unplayable, the armies I hate are unbeatable in any circumstances, GW puts no effort into balancing whatsoever," and on and on. When you ask people to provide examples of what they're talking about, you can cut through to what's actually bothering them on a personal level - balance is ultimately all about feelings, not numbers. When you do that, and press those people who are complaining on what's bothering them specifically, it can cut through their emotionally-charged hyperbole about the entire game being fundamentally broken, and you find out that what they actually meant by all the stuff they were saying is "I'm really struggling to win games with my Stormcast Eternals." That's where the actual discourse happens, in my opinion. "My army is having a hard time for X reasons" is useful, addressable feedback. "The whole game is broken and needs to be fixed" is an absolutely useless thing to express. It's really easy to get sucked into online discussions which feed back and amplify that negative energy until everyone agrees that everything is awful (and anyone who doesn't agree gets aggressively shouted down). Asking people to provide examples from their own experience is just a way of trying to bring things back into perspective. So it's not about assembling a litany of examples - no question, we already have tons of those. It's about grounding the discussion, and getting people to talk about their personal experiences rather than wildly extrapolating into sweeping statements about the entire playerbase. Because that's what is actually hurting the discussion, as far as I can see.

I mean, I don't particularly want to call you out or anything, but when the person I was responding to literally and specifically said the exact thing you claim "no one in their right mind" is saying, I can't tell whether you're accusing Cronotekk of being genuinely insane or if you're just practising selective reading. Anyway, speaking of posts that add nothing to the discussion, have a nice day.

I'm dead tired of people saying "Imagine playing Sylvaneth into Beastclaws, or Beastclaws into Teclis, you literally cannot win." It's tiresome, defeatist whinging which also happens to be demonstrably untrue, and I happened to have personal experience of those exact situations, so I thought I'd share. Balance could be better. Some armies rely more heavily on luck to win certain matchups than they should ideally have to. But acting like that's the same situation as some armies being unbeatable really grinds my gears. Regardless of the matchup, good play and good luck can always carry you to victory against the odds. For what it's worth, here's the post I made about it at the time.

If you'll continue to humour me, I think there's still a lot to unpack there. For instance: Which armies would you currently see as not having a "limited competitive build"? The nature of competitive play rapidly distils complex army books down to one or two largely inflexible builds, and this affects the top armies just as much as the bottom ones (see Kroaknado, Teclis Castle etc, as examples already mentioned in the thread). How many bad matchups is "a lot"? How "bad" does the matchup have to be before it's a "bad matchup"? How much harder do you have to fight than your opponent before it becomes a problem? How do you even quantify the comparative difficulty of each player's fight? Yes, to be clear: I'm in no way arguing that AoS is tightly balanced. I'm saying that the imbalance which clearly exists isn't sufficiently unbalanced to produce the "unwinnable" matchups that people commonly decry online. Skill and luck have so much sway over the outcome of games that the overall winrates of the "worst" and the "best" armies only vary from (roughly) 40% to 60% across the same field of opponents. Yes, maybe the players of the worst armies are working super extra hard to barely scrape out wins with their passion army, and maybe the players of the best armies are all netlisting tryhards or whatever, but nevertheless those are the outcomes which are actually being achieved in the real world. Obviously balance could be better, and that would be great. But the level of imbalance we currently have does not make the game unplayable.