Erosharcos

The strike last and KoS commanding itself to attack twice doesn’t seem like it would make Hedonites a top tier faction in the current game state. I would bet on a 55% win rate if that were the case. I don’t mind strike first/last effects, but what I don’t like is how lame it can be to just waltz around your opponents models, while they watch and wait while your murder their units. Even when models weren't getting outright deleted by our KoS and daemons, it just didn’t feel fun to play with or against. the trend with 3rd Ed Tomes is to have solid sub faction traits, toned down re-rolls and cheesy mechanics, and unit buffs. I would love to see a few different locus abilities in the form of sub-faction traits, and have additional traits to choose from, like Sylvaneth do with their seasons, only flavored with the Six Circles of Slaanesh. limited strike first/last effects would be cool to have, assuming they truly are limited and don’t feel lame in gameplay. There’s a 99.9% chance we get unique monstrous actions with KoS’. I really hope they move away from the Syll’Esk 50/50 mechanics.

I played a casual game with my Slaaneshi daemons for the first time with them in a while. It was godseekers with 3x20 daemonettes and fiends as bounty hunters, KoS with Into the Fray, Epitome with tome, and a exalted chariot with flaming weapon. Took in off-meta khorne mortals. I’ve played off-meta Cities and on-meta Sylvaneth, and Slaanesh battle traits and scrolls just feels so nonbo now. We’re supposed to be a mobile glass cannon army but we’re not that mobile and not that much of a cannon… so we’re kind of just glass lol. I went all in on 3k worth of models when the first tome released and I found it really unenjoyable to play because of how brain-dead easy it was to win with our strike last effects and points efficiency relative to every other army… no reward or challenge, just move and roll and summon. GW put our new abilities at being bad in every direction it seems…it’s disappointing because I really love the aesthetic of our range. Anyways, I’m going to rebase my models and maybe re paint the big ones. I’m thinking a Circle of Avidity theme with gold pile bases using gold glitter and rhine stone. Any thoughts or tips?

That’s my problem with the double turn, it’s something you have to play around and keep in mind with your decisions. There’s risks and rewards to playing around the double turn but the heart of the gameplay shouldn’t be about a single d6 role for initiative. The double turn just creates a feel bad moment for someone 99.99% of the time. As others have argued in the thread, the double turn can either accelerate a win or grant a player a comeback… in both of these perspectives, it’s a single d6 roll that decided the outcome of a game. Taking risks in a wargame is absolutely fun and true to the spirit of the game-genre. However, a single d6 changing the entire course of the game by affecting initiative, especially with the smaller table size in 3.0, makes it a frustrating and annoying facet. I think only one fellow made a brief comment about how the double turn is inconsequential, everyone who argues for or against the double turn acknowledges its significance over the game. It’s the “key” to the initiative portion of the war game. 40K with it’s fixed turn order yields me much more exciting and close/competitive games. Bolt Action’s initiative system is the most interesting to me, and feels more like a component of the game rather than a determining factor - IE, the biggest factor are the decisions of the players in the gameplay loop, not a single roll-off on a d6 and whether a player got unlucky.

I love AoS and I always have a good-time overall playing the game. It's by far been my most invested-in hobby over the last 5 years. As I've dipped into other war-games, I have found that one of the biggest hurtles for AoS' enjoyment is the double-turn. I know that this is a controversial topic in the AoS community. And whenever I've seen the discussion come up, I've always gotten a sense that some very bitter former fantasy players come out of the woodwork to take it as an opportunity to just hate on AoS. I don't hate AoS, I think the game is great overall, despite its lack of balance on a competitive level to comparable games. As for the double turn, I don't believe that I am alone in that it just feels really bad to get double-turned, especially on turn 2 or 3. The fact that the double turn occurs solely on a d6, the statistical odds of a player getting double-turned are pretty certain. From my experience and from complaints I've seen/am seeing, this leads to frequent "feel bad" moments as you or your opponent watch one another just steam-roll over the other. When getting the double turn, this doesn't feel satisfying... it just makes me feel guilty. Either guilty for getting and taking the double turn or guilty for "taking it easy" on my opponent when I decline a double turn just to make the game more fun. Doing search strings on the internet, this is a very common phenomena among AoS online posters and when I played a lot at my FLGS it was a common complaint among the small AoS community there. Another common occurrence is that new players can find the double turn to be a sour mechanic just as I've described above. Again, I'm obviously not alone in any of these impressions on the double-turn. We all know that the double-turn often times will decide the outcome of the game. When I think about it that way in more competitive play, it just seems like a very obvious flaw that most games are decided by a single d6 roll and less about the generalship and order of battle of the players. Wargames in general take a while to set up in terms of building, painting, and arranging of the models and terrain, and a common gripe with AoS specifically is that it often times takes more time to set up than play, which I certainly share. To reiterate, I love AoS. The game is great overall, and it would take a lot to get my to stop playing painting and collecting. I just kind of realized the errors of the double turn when a buddy and I decided to just not do double-turns and have turn-order determined by drops. It made the game longer, more exciting, and less dependent on setting up for a single d6 to decide the outcome of the game, and more dependent on cleverly working within the remainder of the framework of AoS and each others' army moves, and led to an overall better experience. Sincerely, another anti-double turner.

For a visual, I uploaded a photo of some possible interpretations of Wyldwood Placement rules. I want to be as honest and fair as possible during gameplay. By my interpretation of the rules, set up methods per the photo 1 through 3 would be RAW, either being 3 trees, 2 trees or 1 tree. 4-6 COULD be arguable based on the rules wording.... but don't seem to be the rules as intended. Thoughts?

Are can/do we place an Awakened Wyldwood? I am new to Sylvaneth and I've been asking around and trying to understand it, but with the frequent warscroll changes I am having a hard time discerning how set up of the Wyldwoods is intended, and how we can legally place the woods. Rules state, Is a "scenery piece" an individual tree from the new GW Wyldwood Kit, or is the "1-3 scenery pieces" part of the set up rules referring to the old Citadel Wood model? Regarding the rules, so I can play it correctly and know how many Wyldwood models to buy, can Awakened Wyldwoods be placed as individual, singular tree pieces, a pair of trees or all 3 tree pieces from the kit? Or do they absolutely NEED to be set up as all 3 tree pieces from the newest kit? Simply put, can 1 Awakened wyldwood kit be used as multiple Sylvaneth Wyldwoods in play? What's been the norm for Wyldwood placement for our faction recently?

I hope you enjoy if you end up using them! I know I'll be using them whenever possible as I wait for my armies' Battle Tomes to get released Thank you so much! If you end up using them I hope they're fun to play with

I got really excited when I read the 3.0 path to glory rules and wanted to fill in some of the gaps, like Outposts, and have rules that made a basement campaign I’ll be playing in more narratively interesting for my mates and I, so I made a Homebrew supplement. This was a lot of fun to put together and I hope the community can get some joy out of it too! link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OJBhQya3DG1w2OQ7g1BAPf46-2gglmM6/view?usp=drivesdk Cheers!

Yeah, I was talking with another fellow who said that "included" is typically only in reference to the starting army, and that the rules don't explicitly call out faction terrain, but it's probably considered a summoned unit... which would mean that LC could take it? I definitely don't want to lose my LC dryad factory though lol.

I’m not 100% confident but I think that the new RAW removes our ability to have an Awakened WyldWood in 3.0. 3.0 FAQ for Sylvaneth changed the wording in the Awakened Wyldwood warscroll to include this wording: “Only Sylvaneth armies can include this faction terrain feature” The Treelord Ancient warscroll says: “Once per battle, in your hero phase, you can pick 1 friendly model with this ability and set up 1 AWAKENED WYLDWOOD wholly within 18" of that model and more than 1" from any other model, terrain feature or objective, and add it to your army.” So, what I’m uncertain of is if we can still summon an Awakened Wyldwood with the Treelord as Living City with the new 3.0 FAQ wording. While it’s not taking the Wood as a terrain feature in the starting army, (we’re summoning it), but the wording on the Treelord Warscroll says “add it to your army” which sounds like it might be considered “included” and therefore would not be eligible to have on the battlefield. I’ve been sifting through my core book and the FAQs trying to see if there is anything on summoned terrain and my interpretation of the new rules is that Living City cannot use a Treelord Ancient to summon an Awakened Wyldwood in 3.0 like we could in 2.0.

I like this a lot. The hail of Doom Arrow is a really nice change. I made some notes a while ago for a Homebrew battletome, I will share if you want to adopt any ideas or anything like that from the notes I made as a starting point. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-GOLScMwAk-SLd5H2uhGPMiFddAtBwHeXxC8ec9xSRo/edit I definitely think you should add a Waystone terrain feature. It would allow for some really cool modeling possibilities, true to the Wanderers lore, and could be tactically fun to play with. I envisioned the terrain piece having 2 parts, a “site” and a “stone”. When Wanderers units move to the sites and the controlling player places the stone part, and then you get an AoE buff or debuff in range of the stone. I pictured the following: -wanderers can use Realm Wanderers to and from 6” of the stone as if it was a table edge. +1 to bravery and spell casting/unbinding while within 6” - a realm-themed buff or debuff selected by the player or determined by the realm of battle (if any). My thought process was that, since the wanderers are nomads and travel around mostly on a mission to restore the broken ley lines with Waystones, it would allow for a) a cool terrain piece b) tactical Funtime c) hobby freedom/inspiration and d) a lore-appropriate buff that is in-line with newer armies! Of course you can do whatever you feel makes sense. Anyone reading (except GW) has my full permission to use my notes for their own homebrew stuff.

Then why have a matched play system? Why pay people to make something for competitive purposes when it’s inherently not a competitive game? GW makes great models and they have said what you’re talking about, but my take on matched play is and the game system in general is still valid and cogent. I whole heartedly agree with this, but the competitive system of AoS is mathematically not balanced, and therefore a flawed competitive game. The point of my post wasn’t to discourage fun or choice, but really to critique the state of the competitive, matched play mode of the game. In narrative or open play, players decide what is balanced for them, or what is fun for them. It can be with the matched play points GW sets out, it can be matched points but the “weaker army” has more points than the “stronger and OP army” or it can be something entirely new and unique to the group playing, like making up your own battletome and rules for those models you spent thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours painting and modeling. Regardless, I think my take is a hot one. AoS is not a competitive game, and if you want a competitive experience you’ll be better served by using your own imagination and ingenuity to determine balance with your FLGS and play groups.

So, if people are treating YOU poorly, then they need to play in the middle of the highway, as they are not good members of the community, nor are they desired. As for the bitterness from people over rules/factions, that’s totally justified and IMO a very good thing. I’ve been wargaming for four years now, shorter than most, but competitively gaming since I was a teenager (in my mid 20’s now) and critiques of the competitive state of a game trying to be competitive are healthy not only for the growth of the game but for the state of it as well. Conversations about the game, positive or negative, mean people are invested in it at some level, which is good for us! AoS tries to be a competitive game with its matched play rules and FAQs, etc., but it is fundamentally a non-competitive, fundamentally imbalanced game. I’ll say again, Age of Sigmar is fundamentally unbalanced. And I personally don’t think the design team tries to make it perfectly balanced. I say this because in the 4 years I’ve played AoS, mostly competitively, there have been many changes to various units, buffs and nerfs, and sometimes, the decisions and matched play points outcomes just don’t make sense. Some units do jack shite and cost a lot of points, and others do a waaaay too much for the points they cost. You can find tons of discussions on points analysis around the web, I won’t get into it here. So when a game that spends a lot of time Making a system for competitive play, which should be more about the general/player than the models(newer models tend to get better rules overalls) and publications purchased(codex creep), produces a product that is clearly and consistently unbalanced, shouldn’t the community invested have the right the be upset? Fundamentally , AoS is a bad competitive game, due to its natural imbalance, and seemingly it’s dedicated to power-creep of new models. I think this is a very bad thing for the game itself too, as it creates bitterness within the community and buyers remorse. Matched play points are the easiest way for players to quickly build a seemingly equal force and play the game. GW would be wise to acknowledge this and make attempts at pure balance. Seemingly, the power creep explains the mentality that GW tailors it’s rules to sales and marketing goals, whether by intention or accident, it clearly happens based on how new models obviously get better rules than old ones. Age of Sigmar is much more fun when you focus more on open and narrative play, and use it as a social device, with shared story-telling. My group was super competitive with Age of Sigmar for a while, we all grew insanely disenfranchised with matched play, and then have had much more fun playing narrative and open play. You can tell from the warscrolls and tomes that most units and armies are given a theme, flavor, etc., and are intended to feel cool or true to lore rather than fulfill a competitive need. My advice, play this game purely for fun and enjoyment, don’t bother with it competitively, and enjoy the company of the many good people in the warhammer community.

Waywatchers weren’t really that good. I always ran 2-3 in my lists though. Any chance of a re-sculpt for the metal heroes?

That’s the truth. An aelves tome would be awesome.