Saxon
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Posts posted by Saxon
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On 4/7/2021 at 12:39 AM, wayniac said:
4) There seems to be the idea that a meta is "healthy" if you see half a dozen different factions in them when all of those factions ignore 2/3 of their books to focus on a tiny minority of options that are deemed "competitive" and get pushed as the only way to play unless you want to get your teeth kicked in. This to me shows there is not a healthy meta or health balance because in an idea situation each faction should have multiple "builds" (and I hate using that word in regards to wargames) not a single one that shows up everywhere to give that faction a fighting chance. When you have a few outliers at the top and everything else at the bottom it shows that the outliers are clearly the issue, if the rest are "balanced" being low tier. It's not at all unexpected that a 100% optimized ("cheese") list designed for LVO or SCGT or whatever is considered the "grand championship" of tournaments will crush a non-optimized list, but there seems to be too much of a gulf between things again where picking what you like will just result in you losing most of your games because you were unfortunate enough to like Army X and not Army Y or Units A, B, and C in Army Y and not units K, L, and M which are the "competitive" options.
I think this is an important point. I have seen a lot of arguments that Cities of Sigmar are quite high tier based off tournament performance. I think the reality is far from that unless you use very limited, focused builds. Tournaments focus on extremely niche and bland builds like spamming phoenix guard and is a terrible representation of the army. A lot of builds using like 80% of the model range would result in extremely weak armies in comparison.
In my local group, one of our players builds very optimized lists. The rest of us build what we like and i have a large range of models for each of my three armies. I never beat him. I never get close. His response is that i need to build an army around a list instead of building a list around an army. I find this kind of approach tiresome. No i'm not going to buy 3 VLoZD just to make a 'f*ck you' list. AOS has a problem where by battleline is a chore rather than a useful tool.
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1 hour ago, HollowHills said:
Please sign this petition. We need to show Games Workshop that we won't be silent! The Idoneth deserve respect.
At least you have new models. Some of my sculpts seem older than i am.
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Just now, Clan's Cynic said:
I'd say that's a GW issue rather than one specific to AoS. It's not much better on the 40k front, if not even worse for it.
I didn't want to assume with 40k, i haven't played the game in 15 years. They too had shooting issues with the Tau for a while and now they've over-corrected and Tau are garbage. I'm surprised more people don't get more upset about these instances where armies become basically irrelevant overnight given the massive investment in time and money required to create a playable army.
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9 hours ago, Clan's Cynic said:
I think restricted/no pre-measuring in Bolt Action works pretty well because of it's focus on ranged weaponry (unless you're playing Japan anyway), so it 'feels' right to take a guess at how far out your squad is and have them loose ineffective (out of range) shots that do nothing.
In AoS however, the turn one alpha strikes aren't altogether that rare and I feel like it would risk creating a situation that is extremely frustrating for some armies and not for others (notably Ironjawz and Slaanesh).
The impact is also lessened in Bolt Action - if you're out of range of shooting an enemy, odds are the enemy would have to Advance (Move, then fire with -1 to the roll for those who've not played it) to close that distance anyway, whereas in a melee-focused game like AoS that mistake of being an inch or two out probably just opened up that unit to being doggy piled by half a dozen enemy units.
That said, I don't think restricted pre-measuring will ever come to AoS, it feels like one of those potentially frustrating features that most games moved away from for that reason - even Warmahordes of all things.
I wouldn't mind if the Ranging In mechanic was implemented for artillery in some form though.
Well said however i think it would be helpful for the shooting mechanics of the game which have been very much in focus since Khadron Overlords became good. You are right though that it could be a frustrating mechanic.
My concern with all of this is how 1 army book can make shooting mechanics a problem for an entire game. AOS has a major problem with armies going from good to garbage to good far too quickly.
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10 hours ago, Zashier29 said:
I just played a demoralizing game against my mate's Reapers of Vengeance Khorne list, in which it feels that my heroes, atleast one but sometimes two, are blown up by his Bloodthirster of Insensate Rage's outrageous Carnage. How can I protect my Heroes better from this 10" move, double fight hero with an 8" bubble of 4 mortal wounds on a wound roll of a 6?
In death armies I've found I've always had to bubble my heroes. Old opponents were seraphon with lords of space and time and gloominess who could also teleport. I hate that mechanic. Feels like I have to waste a unit to bubble a hero
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17 hours ago, Lich King said:
You know , reading all of this - does anyone else miss Declarations? Declare Charges, Shooting etc... Those were my favorite mechanics along with no Pre-Measuring (something 8th Ed Fantasy killed). Am I alone in this ? The hype of properly assessing or guesstimating distance being rewarded/punished.... Anyone? ...
I never knew the pre-measuring rules in GW games. Its a rule in bolt action which i have started playing and I like it. I feel it really makes you work hard on tactics rather than just running across the board.
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On 2/21/2021 at 11:21 AM, EnixLHQ said:
Looking closer at the model, he seems to be pulling out ethereal energy from the skull.
Could we maybe have a hero with a resurrection spell or ability? Maybe a summon?
Sadly it looks like another mediocre hero with a low wounds characteristic that will get shot off the board..... just like our existing heroes
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8 hours ago, Sception said:
They look nice, but I'm not sure I'm going to replace my existing zombies. 10 come in this box, so we could easily be looking at the full release being a box of 10, while a full unit of zombies is currently and might remain 60. New models generally get a price increase over old models, 10 old skeletons is us$30 right now, so maybe us$35, maybe even us$40. Chainrasps are us$40 for 10 after all.
If you need 60 zombies, and zombies are 10 for us$40, then even if you already have 10 from Cursed City you'll still need to spend a full us$200 to get that 10 up to a full unit. $200 for a chaff tar pit. For models that look good individually but will be murder to paint 60 of.
Again, don't get me wrong, I kind of like these models, and I hope GW is more reasonable about price this time around. The price point on chainrasps is utterly unreasonable for a weak hoardy chaff unit (though at least the models are smaller and have less detail so they're quicker and easier to paint), so much so that I simply could not afford to buy as many chainrasps as I would need for a nighthaunt army and thus never collected nighthaunts in the first place. The first and to date only GW undead army I never collected. And since then we've seen some better prices. Mortek Guard in particular are us$60 for a box of 20. That makes them 25% less per model than chainrasps! and that's for larger more detailed models and a much more elite unit that you need far fewer of per unit and per army.
Going forward I really hope basic battleline infantry starts coming in boxes of 20 in general, though honestly even at the same price as mortek guard I'd have a hard time justifying replacing my zombies. Not unless the zombies are also made a bit stronger, with a smaller max unit size.
We'll see, I guess.
What about us poor Cities players where half our units still cost the same and still come on square bases
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Ranged unit for soulblight? A man can dream right? 😁
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1 minute ago, stratigo said:
As balanced as its ever been. Or, damning with faint praise because AoS is not and has never been actually a balanced game. There's always been an army stomping in the meta. Once upon a time it was even BCR, who don't even exist separate from other ogors now :D.
AoS has never had great balance. Indeed it can't until the double turn is ejected. There's a lot of things AoS could do after that for balance. Overarching shooting nerfs would NOT be one of them. And wouldn't make Seraphon, or tzeentch, or even LRL care at all. Seraphon are an army that does everything, the nerf cycle will have to go hard to reign them in. Skinks aren't even their worst offender, that's Kroak. But istused to be sallies. Nerf skinks, it'll probably be something else (indeed the stats I linked didn't have the skink teleport specialist faction at the top, it was I think more monster rumbly one). While LRL are literally just crit fishing. Sentinel rules largely override any suggested shooting nerf. Tzeentch is a magic army, any time you nerf their shooting phase shooters, they just lean harder on the magic. And, like, how BS horror splitting is.
The only boogeyman that would be dumpstered is KO. Who don't look like they need to be that much any more. Competitive KO have been pretty one dimensional, and have some easy hard counters (Like, you can't even with a shooting war against Khalibron, and this is what people essentially want all shooting to face all the time. Khalibron and the IDK anti shooting rules are giant mistakes of their own)
Having watched a Daughters of Khaine battle report at the gym today where a keeper of secrets was killed in the hero phase (15 mortal wounds!) I feel like balance is getting much much worse.
I think you've nailed my pet hate with AOS. The meta changes so frequently. What broke me was by the time I'd painted my legions of nagash army, they were woefully underpowered once command point spam became a thing. Certainly impacted my future investment in the game. It is extremely disappointing that several armies are so very poor unless you build specific builds.
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14 hours ago, stratigo said:
So wrong that the game is almost as balanced as it has ever been. So wrong that the armies that broke 70 percent winrates were all melee, and the so called shooting meta doesn't.
The stats just have never backed this stuff up. The most super OP stuff just got nerfed hard and fell out of the meta. And you know, of the two top armies in the game, one of them can be, but is not always, shooting, and one can't be.
Shooooting isn't the prooooblem.
I mean... look upon these stats ye mighty and despair in the shooting meta. Deeeespaaaaair (hint, there's no shooting dominance)
https://thehonestwargamer.com/age-of-sigmar-tts-stats-15-2-21/
Wait the game is balanced? I'd love to see a nighthaunt list that can last 3 turns against Lumineth Realm Lords with the potato autocast spells and MW from shooting.
I also dislike using tournament stats to define how balanced or broken an army is. Those are mostly cheese lists that are designed to be unfun and WAAC.
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3 hours ago, yukishiro1 said:
The Vindicare is pretty terrible, if AOS shooting was as bad as him I don't think anybody would be complaining. 😄
Ranged MWs should just be really rare, it's such a powerful effect that removes so much counterplay. They should certainly not be keyed off an unmodified to-hit roll, not in a game where your primary defense to being sniped is a -1 to hit and therefore where the mechanic completely bypasses the defense.
It was a massive mistake to design a unit around the concept that they'd deliver most of their damage through mortal wounds at 30" range ignoring LOS. It's a real indictment of GW's design team that nobody spoke up partway through the design process and was like "guys...this is just bad. go back to the drawing board and figure out something else."
Lumineth are problematic for AOS on the basis that 1) autocasting spells is terrible and 2) MW from shooting on a 5 can rip apart anything.
To expand on point 1, autocasting against an army like nighthaunt is basically an auto-win. The autocast can basically knock out support heroes in 1-2 turns rendering the spooky boys useless. Whoever came up with this rule set really didn't think it through. It's awful. A player in our group runs Luminth and no one is particularly keen to play him.
To expand on point 2, i'd really love to see limits to shooting into combat. It would stop shooty lists tying up chaff with a throw away unit and then murdering everything else. For armies with no shooting, they have no choice to engage but these armies with obvious singular tactics of tie up the opponent and then pick them off at range is a bit boring. Not being able to shoot into combat would at least make them think more about tactics.
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4 hours ago, Nighthaunt Noob said:
I've seen a number of surveys like this where Fyreslayers score extremely poorly. This may be controversial but I think the best solution here is not to give them more models. You don't sink money into a loser. They should, at best, merge them into a combined Duardin book. It isn't just the number of options that causes them to score low. It is the visual design. There are other low kit armies that score much better in appeal and use.
It is strange to have dwarves and dwarves. The magma themed Fyreslayers are cool and i love their models but theres just no variety. I planned to start them after my sylvaneth but just couldn't bring myself to do it. I'd be keen to have a go if their range was filled out a bit more.
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Prices in Australia suck. It's beyond a joke how expensive it is now. My group has recently moved into 40k and none of them purchased anything new. They bought off buy/swap/sell sites on facebook or ebay to minimise their expenditure. They ended up getting 2k armies but a lot of redundant models they then sold on. I can't bring myself to invest in 40k again.
Even paints from Citadel are over-priced for the quality.
GW models are by far the highest quality, they make some beautiful models but i feel like they need to come back to reality with their pricing. As others have said, it's hard to get friends into GW games because the starts up costs are absolutely potato.
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On 1/22/2021 at 4:26 AM, MitGas said:
Fully agreed but I keep repeating myself in here - IJ desperately need more units, especially because it's not feasible to mix them with Bonesplitterz due to rules (and fluff too AFAIK)... plus Or(ru)ks are more popular than grots all in all, so they should have a similarly big roster. Right now, these first few AoS armies (minus Khorne) feel pretty half-a ssed IMO. But I guess there's a good chance they'll get expanded upon, I just hope it's sooner than later.
oh and Tzeentch Mortals/Arcanites apart from the Marauder equivalent.., do those soon too pretty please. Just while I'm wishing for things...I agree with this. Brutes and Goregruntaz are cool models but the variety you can have is so limited so it became easy to figure them out because the lists lacked variety.
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1 minute ago, stratigo said:
So, not a fan of any game that gets a double turn then?
I don't mind the double turn. When the game is practically a foregone conclusion by the time a double turn even comes up it kind of makes it redundant.
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13 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:
To me, it makes a lot of sense to release armies in the Lumineth style.
You get a release that is substantial enough to play and collect, but small enough to not be overwhelming. Plus, it's got to be easier from a production/logistics standpoint. And then after a little while you get a second wave, which results in another hype infusion and makes people who already have their 2000 points of Lumineth bought buy more, new stuff.
I could see how that would result in higher sales and, honestly, I don't even think it's especially anti-consumer.
My only concern with this is a lack of diversity available. Like cool you have a few units to choose from but it's annoying to buy say 4 of the same kit to fill your list out only to have half of that amount of models virtually become redundant once the second release happens.
Great for GW, they sell kits they otherwise wouldn't have sold, annoying for the player.
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On 1/19/2021 at 12:55 AM, TheCovenLord said:
This is a two way street. You shouldn't always have to adapt to how your opponent wants to play the game every once in a while they should accommodate how you want to play (less combo's and stuff). If they don't I would just stop playing with them in the long run as they clearly do not see a happy opponent as a good thing. Also terrible losers are the worst. Its fine to gripe if your luck goes sour for a bit but just give it to the winner they worked for it...
I always try to talk to my opponents to find out what they want to do that day/week/the next week. Is it tournie prep? I'll try and bring something hard. Goof off list? I'll bring my fluffy dark elf pirates list. Experimenting with something new? Usually I bring a middle of the road Hallowheart list as it can go both ways.
It can be difficult when an opponent doesn't see how their play style affects others. They often get upset if some of us just put models down to have a fun game and then give up when the fully optimized list goes brrr.... It can be our fault that we don't put in enough effort to be a WAAC player.
None of us do tournaments. We usually just play the game. The WAAC players are usually stuck watching because no one can be bothered with a 2 turn game
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17 hours ago, Charleston said:
My experience:
Bigger games are not really a solution. It would put the game more in the spot in which whfb lost many beginners: When the entry point of an army is too high, people won´t jump as easy into the hobby.What helps to really shake up the meta is playing smaller games instead. On 1k you really can´t assemble many deathstars. It does not allow you to play a list that can take it up against all opponents and forces you to play more reactive to your opponent. Playing 2-3 small 1k games in a match-setup can be really a nice refreshing experience that I like to repeat from time to time
Honestly this is why my group started on warcry.....
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12 hours ago, Kadeton said:
People often say this, but constant releases of bad rules never seem to make much of a dent in GW's success. It's one of those things that feels self-evident and true, but in practice just doesn't properly represent how human behaviour works in the real world. GW certainly churns customers, but doesn't seem to be reducing their customer base overall - quite the opposite.
New editions come out primarily to generate a spike in sales. Sure, they might also address some rules deficiencies (and usually introduce a bunch of new ones) but the edition doesn't change because people are "tired of it". New editions are released on a business-driven schedule, planned years in advance.
AoS 2.0 is a perfectly fine ruleset that could last for several years more if they wanted it to. But there will most likely be a new edition this year anyway, because releasing it will boost profits.
Probably because people buy models even when they aren't enjoying some of the rules. GW is a hard drug, you can't stop 😄
Everything i heard about 8th edition 40k was that it was broken and there was almost relief that 9th seemed to clean up a lot of the mess.
AOS is fine in general, their problem is internal mechanics within armies which seem to be either super powerful (Slaanesh summing for example before the nerf) or just awful to play against (Petrifix before the nerf).
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51 minutes ago, Kadeton said:
I don't really understand this viewpoint. GW isn't offering any excuses. They just do what they feel makes the most business sense. They don't care whether you or I are happy with it or not.
It seems really unlikely that they'll suddenly decide to throw a mountain of money at the problem of insufficient playtesting - that's a huge risk. To me, that suggests two options: either they keep the current level of playtesting quality, or they focus the playtests on a smaller number of units to improve quality. Yeah, we can all raise our voices and demand they put more resources into playtesting, but complaints on the internet rarely translate into business decisions.
They do care about their bottom line though. Poor rules can lead to dissatisfaction and people either curbing their investment or divesting completely.
Whilst they don't care that I am dissatisfied and fair enough they're making record profits, if enough people get tired of it they generally get forced into a major rework (i.e. a new edition). 40k has just had one.
AOS probably isn't in such a bad state with rules but it is a very complex game with a lot of mechanics. People seem to eye roll how good khadron overlords have become overnight.
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1 hour ago, Kadeton said:
I really don't think people understand how arduous playtesting is, or how fast-paced GW's release schedule is. Every additional warscroll adds a large overhead - the more there are, the more the overall quality of the battletome becomes a matter of random chance.
All I'm really saying is that I would prefer to have consistent quality over broad variety. I get that's not everyone's cup of tea, but I think it's important to acknowledge that given finite resources, there is a give-and-take tension between those desires. You can't have it both ways.
This is covering old ground and is very harsh but at the price point we pay which is greater than any other company i have bought miniatures from, this is no excuse.
Regarding your second paragraph, i agree. Quality over quantity. However, quantity maintains hype and interest. It's a difficult balance for GW.
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5 hours ago, Cchalmers said:
In the Kroak/Teclis world, is there much you can do about protecting them?
No you are sadly correct. These auto-mechanic stunts that GW are pulling with these two in particular are just poor rule writing. Armies like nighthaunt suffer disproportionately from these kind of mechanics because 1 - the support heroes keep the army together and 2- our heroes are pretty squishy despite the un-rendable save and the 6+ feel no pain. I guess it goes for most death factions.
Comets call (i think this is the infinite range lots of MW one) is a really poor mechanic for the game in general. You can hide Kroak out of sight and murder. It's just silly. I haven't come up against Teclis yet but i assume its similar?
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On 1/12/2021 at 11:34 PM, Thamalys said:
Wise of you to embrace the ethereal prowess... welcome aboard!
I second both options put forward by @Ranzou. I would just add that, within the semi-competitive space, this faction offers an awful lot of flexibility. Big blocks of ethereal units are definitely a way forward. The idea of MSU lists has been talked about a lot (you can do seriously silly things...) and I do not dispute that's a very strong option (albeit I do question the effectiveness of fishing for Wave of Terror), but at the end of the day your success is going to be dictated by your perseverance. Mastering Nighthaunt means mastering movement, which is never easy - particularly in the time of long-range shooting / mortal wounds output. If you can actually play, go for it and stick with whatever list you pick for a good while!
To add to this, remember your support heroes and what they do. A guardian of souls and a spirit torment together supporting your main units is big. Rerolling hits of 1 and +1 to wound from these heroes can really be useful. Nighthaunt in general lacks rending weapons so maximising wounds going through is big.
Always remember to protect the heroes. Like in any death faction, heroes hold the army together.
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Discussing balance in AoS
in Age of Sigmar Discussions
Posted
Well that's what I have. In my list I use most available units. I run guard, crossbowmen, handgunners, greatswords, a steam tank. It's a fun army but not even remotely competitive.