whispersofblood

if you upgrade a chaos chariot of a gorebeast chariot to a idolators lord, All idolators cultists gain the mark of chaos of that was picked for that idolators lord.

That is called sample size. DoT have to contend with their own meta problems like the emergence of more Bastilidons, in an already dominant Faction. If you want to separate good LRL players since launch and good DoT players and post it here we can have a look.

LRL are consistently represented 4-1/3-0 but also at the 2-3, 1-2 level. LRL are a toolbox faction, you generally want to be a toolbox rather than not. But it's almost always better to just be strong. I expect LRL to have quite mediocre winrates over the long term. It's actually a quite difficult army to play well as there are probably something like 3-4 decision more per decision an average faction is making. I don't think LRL are better than DoK or IDK so that already precludes them from the top 3 competitively. They aren't better than DoT, or Seraphon clearly. LRL actually struggle quite a bit against specific mid-tier factions like S2D, I'd say that depending on the player they are probably the toughest faction to beat outside the top 5. But, they are probably also the toughest faction to win with in the top 8.

1. The best armies actually do include small heroes. DoT, Seraphon, in particular. I would argue that the problem is that most small heroes don't provide very much value. Before they were being killed their low value wasn't a problem because they would at least survive. However now that they are vulnerable AND low value they are not very return. DoT are -2 to hit on the small stuff, and Seraphon are cheap with powerful abilities. 2. Short of a few specific examples ranged damage remains quite low. Without Lambent light 80 Sentinels do about 25 unsaved dmg. Now it's all mortal wounds but that is still only 25 dmg for 1200 points, and 4 casts. (Sentinels could maybe go up 10 points to discourage max spam.) The question I have is this. There are very few examples where it isn't a better strategy to target units rather then kill these heroes. We are talking Warchanters, Skink heroes, fatemaster level heroes. Anything beneath that you are better killing units because shooting units don't take objectives. It's also ironic that we've spent 2+ years with "sHoOot ThE HeRoes" as a meme and as soon as we have factions that can actually do it. It's a problem. I core rule that should change is the ability for shooting units to split attacks. Generally actually I don't think models should be able to split up individual attack profiles. 3. I'm not seeing it. Medium heroes have been terrible since launch, mainly because they all seem to hangout in the no utility, no dmg camp. The good stuff gets taken without complaint. I believe that the "anti-shooting" camp actually is an extension of the "most heroes have no use" camp and they are misidentifying the issue. KO and Seraphon shooting are a red herring. They actually are both skew mobility factions, in a game with severe mobility issues. I believe making the board smaller will go some way to resolving this problem. But I can't be certain. Further there is counter play to the vast majority of shooting, its strategic and tactical. Just because there isn't a die roll you get to do doesn't mean there isn't counter play. 40k is at a strategic level a much different game. Predominantly because a) short and midrange shooting do more dmg on average than long range shooting. And b) chargers fight first, and can only target units they have charged. Meaning that shooting units want to advance or more accurately take good positions early and fighting units are unlikely to take much dmg before they dmg their target but can be destroyed via clever movement and placement. Also many effects that are command abilities in AoS are just free persistent effects. But still in that paradigm there remains a large segment of data slates which don't fit in.

Let's deal with an underlying assumption here. How is the ability for armies to kill heroes at range making the game worse? Why is the solution to that problem making shooting non-viable? Why are the problems an absence of viable range damage cause, less problematic than small heroes being killed?

The cyclic nature of the outrage machine is quite funny over a long period of time, I'm finally starting to understand why old people find everything so funny. It's becoming more and more apparent that most people just don't want very much to occur during the course of a match for risk that they might feel badly about themselves.

I'd like to see almost like a reverse DoK chart for the mortals. Where there combat drugs where the drugs peak early and then have a 3 turn come down. I'd also like to see the fane reworked some.

I've never said AoS has the sole purpose of winning, feel free to quote me if you can find it though. What I said is that when two people play it is primarily going to be skill which determines who wins. That is different from why it is enjoyable. I've also been very clear that it is about expectations (a strong belief that something will happen or be the case), if you have the expectation that the skill you apply to playing a game of AoS isn't the primary consideration to the outcome, then no amount of rules changes will satisfy you. You can play and enjoy the AoS in any fashion you want, but you can't expect any choice you make to be compatible with reality. Again I've never once actually mentioned competitive or tournament play as foundational to my position. It is interesting that you brought up the Italian definition, because there are keywords that you've chosen to ignore, like devote, or developing and exercising intellectual abilities. You'll notice I used the word effort, and skill quite frequently. As soon as there is more than one person taking part their will be an effort and skill gap, effectively what you are saying is that we should change the rules of painting competitions so a person who gives less effort and has less skill should be able to win. You are entitled to enjoy all the aspects of the hobby, but you aren't entitled to outcomes. IF you want to lose less devastatingly, then yes you will need to take some types of models you wouldn't have otherwise, if you want to have an aesthetically pleasing model you are bound by colour theory regardless of your knowledge of colour theory. As an Italian I would expect that you have a general knowledge that there exist rules to beauty just as there are rules to the pursuit of an engaging, and fulfilling intellectual exercise. I don't understand where the idea that the responsibility to uphold the social contract applies only to the person who would all things considered win the match. Thank you for bringing up 40k. 8th edition had a limited ability to kill Characters/Heroes at range by your own definition. It became precisely the game I mentioned, a variety of SmashBat type heroes (Jump Captain w/thunder hammer) and hyper buffed death stars. GW intruded the CORE keyword to combat this problem. Thankfully most small heroes in AoS don't have that much model killing impact on the game and are glorified unit leaders, leaving them as buff pieces. So, yes your feeling that character sniping is bad mechanically is objectively incorrect as demonstrated by your own example 40k. Now if you want to have a conversation about if that is a better state of the game than AoS, I would bow out because that would be subjective. But, you're assertion that reduced character sniping does not lead to what I said deathstars and smashbats then yes you are objectively incorrect as demonstrated by your example. Also Narratively, fantasy characters get snipped at range all the time. In the Witcher, Ciri's male guardian gets singled out with an arrow in the middle of a melee and its dramatic and impactful. LotR, Boromir again shot through the chest in combat. Game of Thrones has several main characters who are shot entering combat. Richard the Lionheart shot from a castle rampart. Also in AoS the heroes that you would think should be quire difficult to remove via shooting actually are generally by virtue of DPRs or high wounds. Should it be easy? No and that isn't what I said, but 300 points of Sentinels shooting, buffed by a spell, is simple, but it isn't a lack of investment. It also isn't a guarantee against the majority of heroes. Bringing it back to the thread, how do you either of you suggest that we can have a variety of playstyles with no structured pairing and have a generalized rate of model attrition that doesn't exclude playstyles that inherently shift that model?

Any mental exercise is a combination of specific skill and intelligence/talent. So it stands to reason that a game as a mental exercise is in fact a contest of skill. Meaning it's to see who is the most skilled. Increasing balance maximizes difference in skill, whatever that skill might be. There isn't anything that prima facie connects enjoying painting models and enjoying the contest of skill. You can enjoy the models and accept that not participating fully in the game, but you should expect results comesurate with the effort given to that task. I've already said KO are an outlier, but I don't even find them that bad personally. Again I'm trying to win the game not have my models on the board for the sake of it. There is a minimum standard of competency needed to play the game. And there is definitely a minimum standard of knowledge needed before anyone starts mucking about in the mechanics of a complicated system. For example if 300 points of Sentinels can't do 6 unsaved wounds at range the game effectively has no shooting and we are back to deathstars getting juiced by a bunch of special rules. Applying damage at range is critical to a balanced game, and anyone "feeling" like their characters shouldn't be killed are objectively incorrect and need to adjust their expectations. Vince goes on rants about alpha strikes pretty regularly they are actually poor play. Frequently it's a good way to lose a game. HoS basically buried the last outliers and those factions got new books to give them better play options. I'd like to ask. What alpha strikes are you talking about? Last I agree it's the feeling of your models not being in the game, but we need to have a better understanding of what participating in the game means.

I actually am being positive. Maybe the message is being lost, most of the problems people have with fall under two categories. 1) A skill gap and 2) expectations. Vince and Tom at Warhammer Weekly did their NPE poll and analysis yesterday. And, it all seems to boil down to players feeling a sense of powerlessness, in the face of what is happening on the board. Your Daughter and her friends have the right of it. Its not about how long a model is on the board, its what it does while its on the board, and what it cost your opponent to take it off. If you approach the game with the right attitude, most of these problems fade a way and we can deal with the real outliers like Beast of Chaos, and we can figure out a way to integrate KO, and police the effectiveness of Seraphon. But if we want a game with legitimate variety in play style exists (Which has always been one of the strengths of WHFB and AoS) then trying to standardized a model attrition curve isn't really possible. The irony here is that the slow walk into the middle of board, 2-3 turns of ineffectual fighting and then the objective grab was the original criticism of AoS.

Well then it's time for some brutal honesty. Contests of skill aren't for you.

That happened in Warmachine because of fixed movement values, interactive game boards, and massive legacy collections of models that had extremely low effectiveness.You could do the same in WHFB for mostly the same reason. When I say army list it's seems to me that you hear "competitive builds". When I say army list I mean having an army, a plan for that army, and tools in your army for when that plan doesn't work. Further, OP factions tend to be able to include too much of those things for the relative power of the units in the book. If you choose to limit yourself inside your faction to specific scrolls you need to adjust the expectation for your ability to win games. It's really simple. The deployment phase is your first movement phase. The most important phase of the game, if you mess up deployment you will spend multiple turns either at a direct disadvantage or a indirect disadvantage as you try to fix your poor positioning. Are you suggesting that in your opinion that the rules of the game should mean that if you play the first 20% of the match pooring you should be in the game? How is that possible? If you equalize the the strength of factions player skill maximizes. Meaning low skill players will lose more and those loses will be more definitive and more punishing. Just because you are pushing models around doesn't mean then the game is in contention. 5 turns is a time limit for a single match, not a time target for a game of AoS. You have 5 turns to get a victory, that doesn'tean you are garunteed to have 5 turns. In fact we have scenerios that specifically end in the 3rd turn, we also have scenerios where mathematically matches can be done bottom of 3. Who said or lead you to believe that the game should last 5 turns? Finally. If you are getting alphastriked and losing games, you need to go to your faction's thread and make a post asking for help. Then you need to play more games.

There are 7 turns in the game. Turn 1: Army list Turn 2: Deployment If you don't play two turns of the game you will lose.

Morathi and Archaon are the minority in a vast ocean of impressive models that can be focused down. And no, there isn't a "healthy view" in most situations its actually a logical fallacy called called Argument to Moderation, or the Golden Mean Fallacy. Your argument is a subjective one, for many people what you didn't like about Skaven, is what they love. It didn't provide value for you, so I assume you chose a faction more in line with what you valued. They game is about the clash of these archtypes, 40k is a better game because they have improved the diversity and capability of the way each faction plays, in pursuit of the winning the game. BoC being unplayable is a problem from the enjoying your models pov, but trying to create a fixed standard of model attrition in a game with a spectrum of faction archetypes is impossible if you want to retain true variety.

Let talk about the bolded. 1. We have a lot of different words we use interchangeably; new, less experienced, hobby focused, etc. But, they all mean the same thing in the face of the ruleset. Low Skilled. And, that isn't meant to be a slight or offensive it is just an accurate measure of the skills they have to play the game. The good thing about being low skilled is that you can improve, but you can't do that by changing the game, you do that by improving your skills. This all starts with how people get into the game, and how as a community we generally great at introducing people to the hobby, but abysmal at introducing people to the game. As a Red shirt running intro games there was really two varieties. The first was getting someone excited about the hobby it used relatively few models and generally a character that the potential new hobbyist could relate to. The second was introducing them to the game and it included again relatively few models but the types of models was higher. This is about introducing players to the world of possibility, but it also comes with setting the expectation that they are going to lose... a lot. I spent my first 2 years playing Wahammer Fantasy as a 13/14 year old trying win, and losing games to grown men. Each loss I taught me something to be aware of next time. I read more army books and discovered more rules. This part is of the introduction is about savagely punishing misplays, stopping the game, rewinding and letting the new player try something else. Playing a 500-1000 point game with someone you are trying to bring into the hobby should take about the same time as a 2000 point battle. 2. It feels unfair. Well it is unfair you are punching down. You have a skill gap, there isn't a game in the world that has rules that even out a skill gap. Better players win their games, 80% of the time, and that is the way it should be. 3. Its tactically the right thing to do. Then why would you not want the other player to know what is their actions have brought about? The reality is if you are losing games because of alpha strikes in 2020/21 you are either deploying poorly, or you can't construct an army list. These are both skills that can be improved. Or if you choose to build your list under a certain paradigm that doesn't align with the philosophy of the game then you should expect outcomes in line with that. AoS is about as much on the board freedom as possible, and rules are there to create interesting tactical problems to solve. For example; the next time @Enoby you play the same player, assuming they have learned something, you will have to wonder if they left the alpha open as a trap or not. Using a players rules and abilities against them is a skill that you can only develop by first knowing their rules, and second by figuring out how the circumstances they see as optimal to use them, how to fake those circumstances, and to counter the opponent's moves.

These sorts of threads would be worlds better if it wasn't just paragraph length blocks of assertions without even subjective argumentation.

AoS is by design as light on core rules in-game restrictions as possible. It's an open ruleset, precisely to give players the most options as possible. While retaining some level of believable shared reality. I would be more open to adding additional rules, potentially having a positive effect, if players could pile-in correctly. The only way I can see shooting overall being tamed a bit. (And I'm not even agreeing that shooting is a problem generally.) Is by changing the phase order to Hero Phase; Shooting Phase; Movement Phase, Combat Phase. But, I think GW is fairly wed to the phase orders at this point so it is unlikely.

It's a wargame, not a model show. Every model is there to be sacrificed in pursuit of the objective, winning the game by accumulating the most points. Keeping models alive because feels is what causes a lot of players to lose games. I know because I often put pressure on models that people say or act like they are especially proud of and they almost always move them out of danger. Competiting in the game and acting out your love for your models is almost always going to prevent you from enjoying the game as a game. I voted agnostic because I want as many varied playstyles as possible and that is only possible if we buck up and find a way to enjoy the diverse set of feelings associated with a war game. I'm disappointed with how this "feels bad therefore it must be bad" ideology has permeated the hobby.

There is also the ophidian gateway and the other generation 1 terrain. But, the point was GW has produced AoS specific LoS blocking Terrain, if you want to pay for it.

The original AoS terrain and azyrite ruins all have a solid walls... I know because my local invested heavily at the launch of AoS.

I generally have two units of Dawnriders. The first cast Protection of Hysh, the second cast Twinstones first turn and has Solar Flare. But, Solar flare has a lot of utility including dispelling your own endless spells at the end of the phase and direct damage.

At the moment unless you play Ymetrica you need 20 wardens minimum. They are also possibly the best unit in the book point per dmg. I think for sentinels, you either max them out at 50+, or you don't take more than 20. I think their best use at the moment is forcing battleshock tests all over the board, or clearing small heroes like hags, or skink priests.

We used to have similar conversations in my local store, and with our friends. The reality is that life is stressful enough, and GW will very likely always be with us. If you are finding the state of the game stressful, just step away for a bit. Maybe you come back maybe you don't but you'll be happier either way. I stopped playing 40k, I played HH for awhile but AoS just aggressively invaded my head and heart. I enjoyed those things while I did them, and don't regret the money I spent because I chose to spend that money knowing what the product was at that moment. But, if at any point AoS was taking more than it was providing the only healthy thing to do is to move on. It might not be easy and you may have to organize your life differently. If people can stop smoking and drinking, then if, AoS and GW are causing you pain you can leave it behind. But, like stopping those activities you'll find you'll need to adjust your social life as well, its just the reality. Alternatively you can find a way to enjoy AoS and your interactions with GW for what they are, and not what they are not or what it could be. The hobby for me personally is my friends, the game, and then building and painting. GW really can only impact one of those things with their corporate behaviour. The game seems to be in a pretty decent place statistically with a wider range of top end armies, and a smaller range of trash. The content is interesting and full of character, the release schedule is demanding but I am in control of how much I buy. I'm an extremely competitive gamer, who games almost exclusively at tournaments I have a few armies that I can rotate through as my whims and meta demand and I can add to them if I feel the desire. You need to ask yourself some serious questions before you consider what you should do or be doing. Why do you have 15k points? Why those factions? Would you spend more on those armies? Why would you spend more, if you wouldn't today? etc etc. I spontaneously purchased a IJ army that I don't really have any specific plans for, besides an image of the finished models. But, they are pretty low priority and I'm ok with them cooling their heels. But, in a different situation I probably couldn't afford them economically so I shouldn't have purchased them, regardless of how good the army is, my desire or the marketing. You're a consumer, which means you need to make your own decisions and own those decisions, and it seems to me from the trend in this thread that the people who are doing that seem to generally be happier about the hobby.

Mate its game of toy dollies, its just not that deep. I bought and built enough models to play exclusively a Vanari build, and even models to convert into LRL proxies for IDK allies. Guess what? I'm thrilled to get the rest of the faction. I'll build and paint what I have and when I have the money I'll get whatever else I want, because its a hobby and its not life sustaining. On a scale of importance, this just isn't it. There isn't an obligation to buy anything, you are trapped by your desires not by what GW has offered.

A) Thats the total dmg for the 280 pt unit, it just feels bad because its mw dmg but its not egregious. B) Archaon makes you rr 6s to hit, ignores spells on a 4+ and has a 4+ against mw, and skink priests are 70 pts. The in-game effectiveness of shooting has been vastly overstated, unless you go 60-80 deep and one drop. Which comes with its own weaknesses. C) Lambent light is a 18" spell against a single enemy unit, meaning you aren't very likely to snip heroes (or the hero you want to snipe) early game with it. Unless you invest in spell portal aswell.