Kadeton

Sure... but you don't need to look any of them up. You're not going to forget what army you're playing in the middle of a game and have to check on a table.

I guess so. I'm not normally one to be optimistic about GW's choices, and you're right that there's every chance this just quietly disappears without a trace in the future. But this is the kind of experimental solution that I'm always happy and surprised to see - GW so rarely breaks out of their established habits that it's exciting just to see them try. This reads very much like a first draft to me. They clearly haven't put a huge amount of planning or playtesting into it, which is pretty much par for the course, and it will need more development in order to succeed. But the thing about this approach is it has no permanent impact - existing independently of the points and warscrolls means they can tweak the values, change the rules, or scrap the whole thing entirely if needed, any time it's necessary. You don't invalidate the battletomes when assigning priority targets in the way that you do when updating the warscrolls, and you don't ****** up everyone's built armies in the way that you do when changing the points. Obviously a fully-balanced game with all the points and warscrolls on par with each other would be better. But that's the system we've always had, they've been trying to do it that way for decades, and they demonstrably can't get it to work. At least this is trying a different approach! And I don't think this is a "long term balancing strategy", at heart. It suggests to me that they're building three separate balance cycles which work in tandem, depending on how permanent and impactful the changes will be. The long-term balance pass is the version release of the battletome itself, where the warscrolls are updated. The mid-term balance pass is updating the points of those warscrolls. The short-term balance pass is seeing whether any units need to be added to or removed from the priority target list. New books that come out are totally exempt from being priority targets or prime hunters until the battlescroll is updated, so they've at least foreseen that specific concern and addressed it.

This is true to some extent, but I think what's more important to people is that the complexity is in the right places to suit their taste. Wargamers tend to have a very high tolerance for complexity overall, but some rules feel like they're just wasting your time, while others add genuine value. For instance, I enjoy the extra stuff - heroic actions, monstrous rampages, etc - that 3rd edition layered on top of the core. I'd like those systems to be more complex, even, because I find them fun but there's often only one obvious choice. But rules like a unit always being able to re-roll misses, or changing a weapon's Rend value based on the hit roll, or even just a unit having three or four weapon profiles - that's the complexity that I feel wastes my time, and it can get in the bin. Some people have the opposite preferences, obviously, and it's impossible to please everyone. But I think it's worth noting that whether people are saying "The game is too complex" or "The game is too simple", what they tend to actually mean when you get into the detail is "More of the complexity I like, and less of the complexity I don't like, please."

Where I think they've made it too complicated is in caring about whether a target unit was killed by another target unit or not. It would have had a very similar effect on game outcomes even without that stipulation, but it would mean you could just add in the bonus VPs for any dead target units at the end of the game, similar to Grand Strategies. Of course, if your army doesn't include any priority target units, you can do it this way now. What 3-4 tables are you consulting though? I don't think I've ever looked up a table to score at the end of a round, and I won't be looking up this one either - you know if your faction are prime hunters or not, and you can mark the priority targets with their reward value on your army list or warscrolls depending on what you use. After a couple of games, this will just be part of the routine.

I guess this is the de-facto topic for discussion of the battlescroll? It feels like the title sets things up for a very negative discussion, but oh well. I'll be a somewhat dissenting voice, I suppose. I broadly agree that this doesn't do much to address the weaknesses of the worst-performing armies in the game. (And it manages to miss Khorne, Kharadrons and Flesh-Eaters off the list of losers, which is a bit of a worry. Khorne in particular seems to be a huge blind spot for GW.) However, I don't think it was really intended to, the whole prime hunters aspect feels very much like an afterthought. I guess I had no expectations that bottom-tier armies would see any major shake-ups outside of updated battletomes anyway. Where I think this is an interesting change is in how it affects list choices at the top of the meta - addressing "problem" units not by adding cost, but by adding risk. That's a novel idea, and I'm curious to see how well it works. This approach also seems far more flexible and responsive than changing points. With any given points change, people have to shuffle around what units are in their army, and some builds will just become impossible to fit in the points limit. Even minor changes to points have knock-on effects which cause major disruption, so they have to be carefully considered. The risk of giving up some extra VPs is a far gentler pressure. Adding or removing a unit from this list can be done trivially without breaking anyone's existing army, so it becomes a simple trigger of "We're seeing this unit on the top tables too often, make it a priority target." And when the next "top meta" unit emerges to take advantage (e.g. I see a lot of speculation about Sentinels coming back)? Next battlescroll, they go on the list. Quick, clean, simple. In terms of helping the worst factions, we're clearly not there yet, but I think there's potential there too. For instance, everything currently has a reward value of 1 or more, but there's no reason they couldn't add units as priority targets with a reward of 0 - denying them the bonus points from killing other priority targets without giving up any of their own, but also giving up bonus VP to any of the prime hunter factions. I'm interested to see how this idea evolves over time.

I agree with your examples of "not fine". Personally, in terms of what I'd like to see from the game, I would also add: I have a unit, you have a unit, and both units are about the same points. If your unit attacks mine first, mine will be entirely removed. If mine attacks yours first, yours will be entirely removed. At that level of lethality, turns in the path of the game happen instantly and there's no opportunity to course-correct. I don't mind the unit which attacked first winning in the end (statistically) but I'd prefer that both units slugged it out for a couple of turns first, and the winner didn't walk away unscathed. For sure - there are really a lot of these cycles which both overlap and feed into one another, and it's extremely complex when you get into the detail. The arms race between ranged and melee units is another driver, for instance, but there are many more. If game design was simple then balance would be easy!

Yeah, this is a vicious cycle. You need to give armies extreme offence to overcome the extreme defence, which you need in order to resist the extreme offence, and so on. And different players want different levels of lethality in their games, so no matter what you can't please everyone. Personally I would like to see the lethality pitched a bit lower than it is currently - whole units shouldn't be getting removed all at once by a single unit's attacks, IMO. Conversely, making a round of attacks and achieving no damage whatsoever should be an extremely rare occurrence. Somewhere in between those extremes is the sweet spot for me. At the end of a game, I'd like to see both sides battered and beaten, but still out in force - perhaps one-half to one-third of their original number. Having one side tabled entirely (especially when it's all over by turn 3) feels like a car park brawl rather than an epic battle. To actually keep that cycle under control, though, GW would need to be: Much more careful about preventing and mitigating power creep; Willing to admit mistakes and make changes to existing warscrolls; and Way less trigger-happy with mortal wound output. And as others have noted, there is definitely a game length concern. GW seems to be pushing for shorter games by making everything deadlier; having only a handful of models left on the last few turns certainly makes the game quicker, but I wouldn't say it's better. But I also don't think the game can afford to go longer than it currently does, so reduced lethality would have to come with some radical streamlining of the basic mechanics to reduce the time spent rolling handfuls of dice over and over. At the end of the day though, I enjoy AoS despite its flaws.

Four 1000-point games today, at an 18-player local event. I played Nighthaunt, and went up against Tzeentch, Nurgle, Beast of Chaos, and Tzeentch again. So right off the bat, I can say that there was a way higher representation of Chaos lists at this event than what I'm used to seeing! (There were other factions as well, I just happened to match with Chaos all day.) Pretty similar feelings overall to what I posted earlier, especially in regards to summoning (since everything I played against was able to summon). Obviously I was playing a super old and non-competitive army, but they felt quite well-matched against my opponents at 1000 points... until the late game, when they just weren't able to cope with the reinforcements. The games all ended up fairly close losses (<5 VP) except the last one where all the Nighthaunt jank actually worked for a change and my opponent was tabled by turn 3. I think that says more about how ridiculously swingy Nighthaunt can be with multiple Waves of Terror than it does about 1000-point games. I guess my big conclusion for the day was that I enjoy 1000- and 2000-point games in different ways and they provide excellent alternatives to each other. 1000 points is fun, dramatic, but ultimately not too serious; stuff happens very quickly and there's no coming back from a run of even fairly minor bad luck. After six games of that recently, I'm actually keen to play a few 2000-point games to see how my army behaves when there's some real meat on its bones. I suspect I'll just be switching back and forth in future - as soon as one format starts to feel a bit stale, the other one will be a welcome change of pace.

Actually, it would be super easy - in fact, they've already written a set of army rules that are more or less perfect for representing the expected playstyle of Khorne! But then they gave them to the Ironjawz instead.

Update on the Spring-themed Nighthaunt idea: 1000 points complete, ready for the tournament on Sunday!

I think the big difference there is the ears. The Gorgers (despite having somewhat bestial faces) still have human-like ears, whereas that critter has ears like a (baby) goat or cow.

I agree with this, but the thing is that a lot of players are really attached to their hammers. We had a period there (before the current surge of high-rend attacks) where you could legitimately run certain units as anvils, and it just resulted in a bunch of complaints like "Save stacking is ruining the game!" because suddenly hammer units couldn't just blow through anything in a single combat phase. Much of the mathhammer analysis you'll see is based purely around raw damage output, and it becomes the dominant factor by which a given unit is judged to be either "competitive" or "unplayable". The overwhelming message, which GW seems to be receiving loud and clear, is that players just want bigger hammers and don't care about anything else. This really does seem to be a struggle for the design team, even more so now that they've (rightly) stepped away from rerolling hits and/or wounds as their go-to. Compared to a game like Malifaux, where every Master has at least one "theme" mechanic which synergises across their keyword in multiple ways and creates a genuinely unique gameplay "feel", it feels like a bit of a creative wasteland. "We've tried nothing, and we're all out of ideas."

Yeah, I knew what I was signing up for. It makes me want to go for a Krulghast to buff up the ward saves (plus it would be nice to have something else to do in the shooting phase) - are they worthwhile?

I had another 1000-point practice game for the casual tournament (this weekend!) last night. Against Beasts of Chaos, with their freshly-updated rules... they're much stronger now. I thought I'd done quite well on a divide-and-conquer approach initially, using my Nighthaunt's speed advantage to split the opposing forces and wipe half of them out with minimal losses. But between the remaining half catching up to me, and basically being able to summon a new monster every round, my ghosts were wiped out by the top of the fourth turn. So far I'm finding that Nighthaunt are pretty good at getting into a good position and dishing out some damage. But they're truly atrocious at taking damage (at this point scale, with enforced MSU) and they almost immediately fold. I guess I just need to get better at rolling ethereal saves and Deathless Spirits? My dice were certainly not playing for my team, I didn't manage a single Wave of Terror all game and couldn't roll a 4+ to save my life. I did enjoy getting to dispel with my Banshees and then get extra-stabby in the subsequent combat phases. Even though they then managed to miss 7 out of 8 attacks, it was nice seeing the combo work, and the look on my opponent's face when that one attack was at -2 rend for 3 damage and he realised how badly that could have gone for him. I also managed to keep Olynder properly bodyguarded this time, so at least all her Hexwraiths died before she did! (In one round, against a Beastlord.)

The last two games I've played have been 1000 points on 4x4 tables. I honestly didn't notice that much difference compared to 2000-point games, except that the games were quicker, lists felt far more constrained (you can't just bring everything you need, but have to make tough choices), and summoning felt more powerful. However, that was with the players consciously and deliberately building armies to avoid skew and unbalancing units and synergies - honestly, at both 1k and 2k points, the game is much more fun when people aren't just trying to win in the list-building phase.

It's a real shame that GW have never managed to incorporate psychological warfare as an effective and engaging element in their games. Any attempt to interact with the morale system ends up either ineffectual to the point of largely being ignored, or hits a tipping point and becomes so powerful as to be completely overwhelming. I'd love to see a mechanic that narrowed the gap between the brave and the cowardly, rather than widening it - a unit with Bravery 10 generally doesn't care about a -1 modifier to Battleshock rolls, while a unit with Bravery 5 cares quite a lot. If instead there was an ability that capped Bravery at 6, I think that would get the "supernatural terror" aspect across more thematically. The cowardly units were already afraid, but now the normally steadfast ones are also quailing in fear! Heck, even an ability that just turned off Inspiring Presence would go a long way towards making terror a more present force on the battlefield. Definitely would like to see Frightful Touch made into an army-wide rule, as a player new to Nighthaunt it's a real pain to keep track of which units have it and which don't (since it seems to be somewhat random).

FTFY

The current streamlining phase of AoS certainly isn't the most exciting time to be interested in the game. Where units do have special rules, they're almost always something that just enhances the raw numbers on the scroll - conditional +1 bonuses, ward saves, and mortal wounds on certain rolls - rather than giving the unit any sort of unique capability that speaks to its role on the battlefield. The good aspect is that those rules are all easy to understand and apply, with no room for misinterpretation; the bad aspect is that they're all just bland modifiers to the basic mathhammer of the game. It would be great to see more of the designers' creativity on display, with warscroll abilities that don't fit neatly into a mathhammer-based optimisation process to discover an army's singular "best" warscroll and spam the heck out of it. And honestly, I'm sure we'll get there - these things always go in cycles. In half an edition or so, it'll come back around to battletomes adding a bunch of crazy, flavoursome, unbalanced nonsense again. ... Assuming we're still around after World War III kicks off, anyway. There's kind of a lot going on in the real world right now, it's pretty distracting from the hobby.

One of the things GW has proven they're remarkably good at over their long history - the basic reason why they have a long history - is sustaining an endless power creep cycle. It's like the Shepard Illusion, where sounds appear to be constantly rising in pitch but never fundamentally change. I do try to avoid looking at 40K these days. But players have been saying variations on "This power creep is ridiculous, they can't keep going like this!" for multiple decades now.

That just sounds like a general downward adjustment in power level to me? If you're saying that every 3rd edition book is weaker than what came before aside from one specific build that can still compete at the top level, that seems like a decent way to keep power creep in check. GW can keep doing that until the problem ("S-tier") armies get renewed and similarly reduced in power, and then go back and adjust a few units in each book - pigs, Longstrikes, Fulminators, HGBs, etc - and then the overall rebalance is finished with a lower baseline. I'm not really crediting GW with that much foresight, but if the general trend is that power is down, that seems like a deliberate pattern... and a good thing, IMO. Nobody's going to stop you being upset, but getting worked up about it sure sounds like a lot of effort for no gain.

Lack of variety in battlepacks does feel like a bit of a symptom of weak balance overall. When you use GW's pack, the game's flaws are GW's fault; when you try to address them using your own pack and "fail", they're now your fault. To bring it back to the original topic, that's the same pressure that makes 2000 points the standard - how many times in this thread have we seen "The game isn't balanced at 1000 points"? Sure, that's true, but it isn't balanced at 2000 points either, that's just the size at which it remains GW's fault. At any other size, it's your fault for suggesting something different.

More tech that counters the power of alpha-shooting lists in the meta is a good thing for everyone, IMO. Though the actual impact of that ritual effect will depend on the wording - whether it's literal immunity to shooting, or just prevents drawing line of sight for example.

I played my first Nighthaunt game last night! 1000 points, practice for the upcoming casual event, against Sylvaneth. I was using pretty much the list I posted before: Olynder, a Guardian of Souls with the Pendant of the Fell Wind, a Knight of Shrouds on Steed, two units of five Hexwraiths, ten Reapers, four Banshees. He had Drycha, a Branchwraith, a Branchwych, three Kurnoth Hunters with bows, two units of five Tree-Revenants, three Aetherwings and the Chronomantic Cogs. We played Tectonic Interference. Things started out well - he deployed very conservatively, I made him take the first turn, he moved up the Revenants onto the objectives and summoned some Dryads to screen, and then in my turn we charged everything that came forward and wiped them out. Unfortunately this is where I hit my first major ******-up - I got a good charge roll with Olynder and the opportunity to push her forward into the enemy position for future screamy goodness, and the next charge was going to be with her Hexwraith bodyguards so I thought "It's fine, she'll be safe." Then Drycha used Unleash Hell and machine-gunned her off the board in one volley. First major lesson: don't allow Olynder to be out of range of her bodyguards even for an instant. She's such a soft target. From there, everything fell apart, mainly because my opponent was rolling hot and Drycha's machine-gun was utterly lethal - with Unleash Hell alone, during my turns, she killed Olynder and the Knight of Shrouds. On her own turns, she wiped out a unit of Hexwraiths and all the Reapers. The most I could do to her was bring her down to 5 wounds remaining, which she promptly healed back up to full. Eesh! That said, I had a really fun game and learned a lot. The Guardian of Souls is awesome, especially with the Pendant. It's a real gambler's army - the extreme spikes of Wave of Terror and the 4+ invulnerable saves make it impossible to predict what's going to happen on any given turn. I wasn't prepared for how easily my forces could just evaporate with a few unlucky rolls. They can be quite aggressive though, given you've got very little to spend your Command Points on other than All-Out Attack and most stuff is wounding on 2+ when the Guardian is nearby... but if you run into something properly tough, your units will break against it like waves against a cliff. I'm looking forward to my next game.

Yep, you choose which ritual you're going to do at the start of the first turn - so basically which of your turns you'll get the Ritual ability. On the other turns, you just get the standard effect. If you've got a Tidecaster, you get to pick two Ritual turns.

One silver lining is that the kind of players who are willing to step outside of the "tournament standard" and play games at 1000 or 1500 points are also (often) the kind of players who are willing to adjust their lists and avoid janky combos that break the balance of the game. You already need to negotiate a social contract to play at alternative game sizes; just take that one step further and negotiate how your lists are going to match up against each other. Obviously you can do this at 2000 points as well (and you should!) but the smaller sizes are a kind of automatic filter for players who want no-holds-barred tournament-level combos and aren't open to discussion.