Joseph Mackay
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Posts posted by Joseph Mackay
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1 hour ago, Rachmani said:
All solutions targeting dragons specificly would not prevent the next spam, regardless if dragons need it or not.
To stop spam AoS needs the rules to stop spam or make it unattractive.
Yeah this. A lot of solutions seem to be specifically targeting the Stormdrakes but completely ignore the other things that would be hurt if it applies to everyone (eg limiting duplicate warscrolls), or make no sense as a specific nerf only for dragons (eg the flyer idea above, why shouldn’t all flying units have this? Also no, I disagree with the idea that you can just walk away from anything, retreating from combat needs to have a consequence-no shooting or charging)
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6 hours ago, Clan's Cynic said:
Not sure about him if this is his only gimmick. Fyreslayers shouldn't really be dying in droves,
2 of these abilities are already on some unit warscrolls, which makes me wonder if we’re going to see some massive changes?
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3 hours ago, yukishiro1 said:
IJ is different because you can do stuff against an IJ list - you will get crushed and lose T1 if you deploy badly, but once you learn that and pick what you want to sacrifice to absorb the initial charge, you can fight back because the army isn't super resilient and doesn't have the tools to just sit there tying you up.
The problem with the dragon list is that literally the entire army can be on you T1 sniping your heroes with MW shooting that ignores look out sir before locking you down in a way that you can't break out of if you lack the right tools (i.e. copious non-magical MWs). It's frustrating not because you lose all your models immediately - you don't, the output isn't actually all that high - but just because there is literally no counterplay for a lot of lists. You get tagged T1, and then you lose. Game's over with no opportunity to do anything at all. And even the lists that can beat it generally do it by generating enough output to smash through, not by anything tactical. The whole game just comes down to whether your list rolls enough of the right sort of dice. And nobody really enjoys that.
Three solutions that would work:
1. Remove conditional battleline.
2. Remove the hero phase move (and probably reduce the move to 10", too).
3. Remove the spell shrug and put them on a 4+ base.
There are probably others too, but these are all easy and each would probably fix the problem on its own, albeit in different ways. Solution 1 retains their flavor but limits them in a way that stops the SCE player from being able to utilize spam to lock down the entire opposing army, solution 2 stops your ability to cross the entire board in one turn to tag the army in the first place, giving the opponent time to get out and start establishing board control prior to getting hit, and solution 3 makes them squishy enough that the alpha strike bunker doesn't work any more.
My vote is for solution 1, but I doubt GW would want to do that because of the anger it would (justifiably, given how much GW hyped up the all-dragon army) create among people who have dropped hundreds of quid on an army they can't use any more. So I think more likely is that the scroll gets toned down and/or points go up again, which unfortunately probably ends in a place where nobody takes them except in spam lists.
1. I don’t agree with, because gw marketed them as being able to run a full dragon list.
2. Hero phase move I can agree with, but why shouldn’t flying dragons move faster than dracoths?
3. 4+ doesn’t make sense as all Stormcast units with shields have a 3+ don’t they?. As for the 4+ spell ignore - give it to Krondys and Karazai too or take it off-
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9 hours ago, Warfiend said:
This argument gets thrown around a lot and it’s a really bad one.
for the lore part I understand it takes a while to write stories. But for the rules they could and should reflect and adjust them a month before the book goes into print.
It’s just a lazy excuse
I don’t know about AoS, but with 40K 9th edition, the play testers said all the codexes were written at the same time, so theoretically should be balanced against each other. But because gw release them piecemeal and so slowly, certain books are stronger than maybe they should be, because the other books aren’t out yet, and so they have to keep adjusting points or erratas which changes how things were supposed to play out
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18 minutes ago, Carnelian said:
For anyone who wants "proof" that many ppl don't care about playing matched play, just go to hobby discords and hang out or listen to all the hobby podcasts that aren't focused on matched play
Hell, a significant number of people who go to the big matched play tournaments will tell you that their preferred method of play is to play narratively or that they're at the tournament primarily for the painting awards
This. We had tournaments regularly getting 40-50 players in Wellington NZ, we struggle to get 20ish now (depending upon who the TO is) as most of the people who play AoS only went to tournaments for fun, to play more games, more experience. They stopped going when the competitive players became too much and ruined the fun as it got to a point where you couldn’t avoid playing them (the ‘weaker’ players used to end up playing against each other at the ‘bottom’ tables, while the better players/armies would knock each other out. It seems that’s no longer the case as the bottom players somehow end up against the top players, and I think that’s what drove them away)
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1 hour ago, feadair said:
There are some indications that Stormdrake Guard spam lists are a problem for the game. In fact, there is an entire very lively thread devoted to this in the AoS Discussions subforum. If this proves to be true (in my view there are some indications of this, but more data are needed), how should it be handled?
a) Should the points go up? If so, how much?
b) Should the Warscroll be altered? If so, how?
c) Should the conditional battleline status be removed to prevent the spamming of SDG?
I personally would prefer c, the removal of the conditional battleline status (but only if there indeed proves to be a problem). I cannot see individual units of 2 or 4 being a major issue. I would not want to see these beautiful models nerfed to gather dust in the back of the cabinet with Knight-Heraldor, Gavriel Sureheart and the other casualties of the new battletome. I would hate my unit cards becoming obsolete due to changes to warscrolls. And I can also appreciate that the status of SDG as battleline is questionable: they are very different from your normal battleline units like Liberators or Judicators, and the condition imposed – a Knight-Draconis general - is not a major detriment, given that he has nice synergies with SDG in any event. At the same time, I would feel bad for anyone who just bought and painted 11 big models. I get that if you did that you took a risk, but at the same time the GW heavily marketed the option of an ‘all-dragons army’.
Views?
I don’t really think they are a problem, but if it’ll kerb some of the hate I’d go with B on the condition they receive a points drop (I’m not sure they’re worth 340pts as it is, let alone getting nerfed).
as for what changes
-drop the hero phase move, it’s not really needed
-give the 4+ spell ignore to Krondys and Karazai, or remove it from the Stormdrakes - doesn’t make sense for them to have it if the bigger ones don’t
-remove the Knight Draconis ability to let them shoot in the hero phase
-drop Krondys and Karazai to 550pts each
i think they’re fine otherwise, in fact I actually think the dragons themselves are a bit weak -
2 hours ago, yukishiro1 said:
You would think that if you were right about narrative players being the majority and narrative players liking rules like Stormdrakes have, the game should be absolutely full of units with similar scrolls, right? Not the exact same abilities, but a similar idea in terms of warscrolls being absolutely stuffed full of rule after rule. But that isn't how warscrolls in this game look. Stormdrakes are very much the exception, not the rule.
Eels, Evocators, 2+ rerolling saves and pile in 6” after running Varanguard, Morathi, almost the entirety of Lumineth, Tzeentch, Slaanesh are just some examples (admittedly all AoS2 books but still). Now sure, a lot of that isn’t on the units warscroll but rather allegiance abilities, command abilities and other buffs stacked onto them, but the end result is similar
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3 hours ago, Aakkxxzz said:
So... Where are all of these people who play Narrative AoS instead of Matched?
Judging by amount of representation each mode sees in pretty much any online space (forums, subreddits, Youtube channels, etc), Narrative players look like a significant minority as far as "number of games played" is concerned.
There are definitely people who play kitchen-table games, and people who run Narrative campaigns with their friends. There are definitely people who mostly collect models and read books, who might play a game or two with Open rules.
But for as often as I hear the argument that "Matched players are the minority," there doesn't seem to be much evidence for it.
The people who are actively playing this game, on a regular basis, and playing it the most, are - by a significant margin, I'd bet - Matched players.
Because the narrative players generally don’t need to discuss the most op units/lists online, or argue about rules interpretations. They simply don’t NEED the internet like the matched players seem to.
matched play is the loud minority and narrative is the quiet majority
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1 hour ago, yukishiro1 said:
And yet the vast majority of AOS games are matched play.
This is exactly what I was talking about earlier when I said the competitive/tournament players think they’re more important. Matched Play is the vast majority that gets talked about, not what is actually played. The internet as a whole, is a very loud, but very small minority of overall players.
matched play was them throwing you guys a bone, but it is 100% NOT how AoS is intended to be played. That’s not to say you can’t or shouldn’t play that way, but you need to realise and understand that the game wasn’t designed for that, and as such there will be ‘bugs in the system’ that gw probably won’t address, because they don’t need to.
i personally don’t think the dragons deserve the negative attention they’re getting right now, and I think 90% of it is just anti Stormcast bias. People getting salty if the poster boys they don’t like beat them. we have a few of them in our tournaments who get really mad about it if the good Stormcast player beats them simply because ‘Stormcast suck and shouldn’t be able to win against me’ and I think a lot of that is what’s going on here, with a sprinkling of jealousy that Stormcast get an army of dragons and everyone else doesn’t. People were, and probably still are, legitimately angry that the dragons ended up being Stormcast units
just for openness sake, these are the armies I play: Cities Of Sigmar (Disspossessed exclusively), Fyreslayers, Stormcast, Seraphon, Flesh Eaters, Ogors, Gloomspite Gits (Squigs and Troggoths), Bonesplitterz, Kruleboyz, Beasts Of Chaos (Warherd exclusively), Kharadron Overlords, Sons Of Behemat. So I’m not bias because I play them
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9 hours ago, Clan's Cynic said:
Remember when GW themselves said they didn't expect people to spam Iron Hands Dreadnoughts, despite there being stories of playtesters warning them exactly that was going to happen?
Either they're wilfully ignorant, do not care, or are woefully naïve when it comes to these situations.
Over the years there have been many times where we’ve seen that the GW rules writers are horrified by what the community (more specifically, the competitive/tournament scene) are doing.
fact is, the rules writers play mostly narrative, and so they write rules with that type of play in mind. AoS is largely a narrative game (AoS1 before the GHB is proof of that), matched play was simply them throwing a bone. They don’t really care about the competitive scene, and frankly I don’t think they should.
if the rules writers are mostly, or even, purely narrative players, they are never going to be able to write rules with the competitive scene in mind, because they don’t think the same way about the game.
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9 hours ago, Ragest said:
Age of Sigmar has a core problem still unsolved: the "competitive" lists of mostly every army in game are based on spamming a unit.
ScE with raptors or drakes, Orruks with gruntas, Lumineth with Sentinels, Dok with Stalkers, Fyreslayers with HG, Idoneth with eels, Nurgle with flys...
2 or 4 Drakes are not a problem, 11 are, the same as 60 Sentinels, 30 Stalkers etc.
Part of the problem with spam is how small a lot of the armies ranges are still.
im going to use fyreslayers as an example because of how much it annoys me and goes against their lore.
Fyslayers have: Vulkite Berzerkers (Battleline), Hearthguard Berzerkers (conditional Battleline), Auric Hearthguard (conditional Battleline). The other 10~ warscrolls are all heroes. GW can’t restrict the use of Hearthguard or Aurics because you would create a situation where they literally have NO options or variety and every Fyreslayer list would be the exact same with only a choice of heroes (I’m assuming a Rule Of 3 like 40K, although I suspect if AoS did it, it’d be Rule Of 2). The issue with Hearthguard spam is that in the lore, they are a bodyguard unit not the main fighting force, and therefore in game SHOULD be restricted. Additionally, both the Auric Runefather and Auric Runemaster, there is only EVER one of each per lodge in the lore, but in game you can take 6 if you wantedAoS3 just made Hearthguard spam better and even more of an auto take
+ward save (vulkites lost theirs in the latest book)
+min size 5 so don’t care about coherency
+2” melee just to add extra insult to the above
+cheaper than vulkites (less models but how much better they are makes up for it)
Vulkites
-lost their ward
-1” melee on 32mm bases
-min size 10
-instead of the ward they used to have, they got a once per game ability to attack upon death - however you have to activate it at the start of the phase so they might not even take any casualties (should have just been a copy paste of the Blood Warriors ability or kept the ward)
-more expensive than Hearthguard
-shields are +1 save rather than changing the characteristic so All Out Defense is largely unusableas a side note, I feel Fyreslayers have been broken (not op, just they don’t work properly) since their AoS2 book. It is my belief that they did the points based on what the army was doing and how it played, THEN, they changed the rules and didn’t adjust the points - this is mostly visible in the cost of the foot heroes who saw the biggest changes in what they did vs do now
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9 hours ago, Nizrah said:
Because its IMPOSSIBLE and horribly wrong to balance game with the casual players in mind. Game must be balanced with compepetive and tournaments stats. AoS is a game of deployment and movements, the diffrance between new player, good player and pro player IS HUGE.
GW games, except Warhammer Underworld’s, are NOT meant to be competitive games.
matched play, and the GHB in general, along with the tournaments gw run, are purely about throwing you guys a bone
covid showed that the tournament players aren’t as important they like to think they are, gw sales were greater during a time where there were no tournaments
controversial opinion, but AoS1 (pre GHB) was the best form of AoS, as for one thing it was absolutely clear what the game was intended to be, and it turned off a lot of the hyper competitive tournament focused players who tend to ruin the experience of other players. Matched Play, and the apparent widespread adaptation of that style of play has harmed the game more than it helped
back on the topic of Dragons though, I’ve played 2 games using them (only one unit with lances) and here’s my thoughts
-game 1 was vs Knights Of The Empty Throne. This game just exasperated the reasons why save stacking needs to go away, the Varanguard in this list were always on a 2+ rerolling saves even AFTER the dragons rend, and as such I couldn’t get through them. The 6” pile in they had, that they can seemingly do even if they ran without needing to charge, AND being able to attack twice was just an utter trash experience of a game. Everything else in the list wasn’t worth targeting/was hidden behind the varanguard anyway, so they had to be focused on - everything other than the dragons did even worse.
-game 2 was vs a heavy shooting based Freeguild Cities army. This game was more enjoyable, and the dragons just folded under weight of dice.I don’t know what the right points for them is, but I’m not convinced they’re worth 340pts while Dracoths are only 220-240pts. Additionally, the 2 named ones are missing abilities the little ones have which doesn’t make a lot of sense to me? (the 4+ ignore spells, and the ability to slay a model after fighting)
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14 minutes ago, Aphotic said:
I'm unsure why winning a 5 game GT is a measure by which we assess if something is fun to play against, engaging, or broken and abusive. I don't think that's a good standard. But I do think you'll see them winning plenty in the coming weeks.
Because some people only play in tournaments and believe themselves and those like them to be more important than anyone else, and that the ‘casual’ players are just a myth and don’t actually exist, sadly 🙄
there’s a bunch of armies in the game that are terrible in tournaments, but bring it to the local gw store and the casuals are going to have a terrible time against it. The tournament players don’t consider these armies to be a problem because it doesn’t affect them
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19 minutes ago, Aphotic said:
Over the weekend saw one of the top US players, Kaleb Walters, lose every model in his army to a SCE Drake list with 11 dragons. Literally no counter play; the second the SCE player dropped in, half of the Tzeentch army evaporated; upon winning the double turn, the game was over. 33-0.
Now, I know what folks are going to say. But having seen this list play, 9 dragons and 2 chariots, or 11 dragons, the things are utterly dysfunctional.
They have deep strike. Access to a 2+ save. Multiple rampage options per unit. High rend, high damage melee. Ranged mortals that can shoot out of sequence, with no hit modifier. They have quality in faction buffs that make them harder to wound. They have native spell immunity half the time. They can double move, and so on.
The warscroll is a bloated nightmare of "buy these please, and if you could, ignore the bloat."
Give it a few weeks and you will see these lists dominating the meta. They have totally shaped my local meta, sweeping multiple tournaments yesterday, and, becoming rampant. IIRC, next weekend there is an event of 26, and a quarter of the field plus will be SCE dragon lists.
How the hell does anyone deal with this stuff?
Only one model per unit can use a Monsterous Rampage. They’re weak to mortal wounds, like pretty much everything. Their attacks aren’t very good compared to other options in their book.
I love those models, but I actually find them quite underwhelming for their points
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9 hours ago, Lucur said:
In the god-meta Krondys has a godly pricetag but not so godly survivability (read: no ward). Against any opponent that can nuke a gargant a turn, big drakeman just gets deleted.
Why is everyone seemingly so obsessed with named characters having to have a Ward or they’re considered trash?
why isn’t the conversation instead that mortal wounds are a problem (there’s too much of them flying around these days) that needs to be addressed?
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2 hours ago, Lord Krungharr said:
Haven't seen the Stormdrakes in real life.....wondering if a Magmadroth is bigger-bodied....wondering if magnetizing wings might be do-able. I bet the drakes are slimmer and smaller based on the wounds. eg: Bloodthirsters, for all their wingyness, aren't actually that huge.
Magmadroth is MUCH larger than a Stormdrake, at least 2x the body mass (the wings on the Stormdrake does a lot of the heavy lifting to make them look big)
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1 hour ago, Ghoooouls said:
Other than cities those armies have always included those units... especially soulblight, can't really call undead (who have *always* included skellies, zombs and heroes (deathlords) a soup army, that's just their different units. Kinda the same as saying flesh Eater courts are a soup army because they have abhorrents, courtiers, serfs etc.
Orcs, or Warclans, already got split ages ago and lost all their gobbos etc. So just splitting an armies book into different types of orc does seem a little strange, I'd rather it was just warclans/bigwaagh with 4 subfactions and you could mix and match anything like most other books... but some people like the current style I guess.
The only soup army we have is Cities - and that's a collation of loads of random units from pretty unsupported armies shoved into one army. They also squatted 50% of the range when doing so. I hope that doesn't happen again.
I do consider Soulblight Gravelords/Legions Of Nagash a ‘soup’ book, because like Cities, it was made up of a lot of smaller subfactions that they could have expanded out eventually - take the Soulblight subfaction for example, all the new vampires we got after Cursed City was enough that they could have made Soulblight it’s own expanded book like Nighthaunt or Flesh-Eaters
how long ago something was souped or not isn’t really relevant, because the point I was arguing against was that soup means less books gw can sell to people, but that all the armies I listed above don’t support that line of thinking
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8 hours ago, Starfyre said:
- FS and DOK will not get souped. Why? Because then they couldn’t sell 4 different books e.g. fyreslayers, cities of sigmar, dok, dark elf-ineth. There will be no souping.
Ironjawz, Bonesplitterz, Kruleboyz, Orruk Warclans, Disspossessed, Wanderers, Darkling Covens, Order Serpentis, Freeguild, Ironweld Arsenal, Cities Of Sigmar, Soulblight, Deathrattle, Deathlords, Deadwalkers, Soulblight Gravelords/Legions Of Nagash all disagree with your reasoning. Not saying dwarfs will or won’t get souped, but the reason you say they won’t I certainly not the case.
with Fyreslayers, it really comes down to what GW are going to do with them. If they aren’t going to expand them with new units, then they need to be souped with the other dwarfs as a Band-Aid fix for their lack of options. If they do expand them, then they should remain separate
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A few thing I’d like to see in a new battletome
-Loonboss on/with Giant/Mangler Squig, Mangler Squigs, Squig Hoppers, Boingrot Bounders, Skargrot The Loonking, Sneaky Snufflers, Fungoid Cave Shaman to all have both the SQUIG and GROT keyword
-Squig Herders become a separate unit from the Cave Squig models - the herders having 2 wounds like the squigs feels off, make them heroes that don’t use up LEADER slots (like Grimwrath Berzerkers) or something.
-Loonboss on Mangler Squig to have more wounds than a regular Mangler.
-Squig Hoppers and Boingrot Bounders go to 3 wounds each (1 for the rider, 2 for the Mount - it feels odd that cavalry have the same wounds as the unmounted beasts). Squid Hoppers minimum size goes back to 5.
-Squig base save goes to 5+ (they’re tougher than a goblin so should have the save to reflect that). Boingrots and Manglers keep their 4+ and the mounted Loonbosses go to 3+
-Loonshrine no longer relies upon your general (at least for keywords anyway). An example of what I mean is currently if Skargrot is your general then you can’t bring back Squig units, that needs to change.
-Rockgut Troggoths need at least 3 attacks each but otherwise seem fine.as a side note, I would expect to lose the Alegazzler Gargant (not saying I want this, just what I think will happen) in a new book and they just became Sons Of Behemat only (they would of course be an ally option for Gloomspite).
I’ve been enjoying messing around with squigs lately, but the age of the book is causing some frustrations with the current edition of the game - so many redundant abilities now you can’t stack modifiers for example
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On 1/3/2022 at 7:53 AM, Dankboss said:
It's to give the Madcap a niche; the Fungoid is clearly the superior Shaman, but the Madcap gets his own special toolkit to balance it out. Otherwise you'd almost never take the Madcap.
I feel like this is the same reason Boingrot Bounders can’t be Battleline - no one would take Hoppers.
I think this points towards a bit of bad internal balance within the book, which is interesting because upon release Gloomspite Gitz battletome was considered the ‘golden standard’ of how everyone wanted the rest of the books done
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On 12/31/2021 at 6:44 PM, Lord Krungharr said:
Is everyone hoping for a new pure Fyreslayers tome, or is anyone else actually rooting for a united Duardin tome....like me?
My thoughts are this: if we get new units (not heroes, or at least not only heroes) then I want them to remain separate. However, if all we’re getting is a single foot hero, I’d probably prefer a Duardin soup book as a Band-Aid for the issues fyreslayers have that rules alone can’t fix (we need more non-hero units damnit!)
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5 hours ago, Doko said:
That isnt fun,40k have(or had? I havent played this edition) some veeeery similar with dark elfs archon that have a invulnerable save of 2 untill he faill one save and then loose it.
Some games he saved all the 2000 points firepower of my army because he had luck and never rolled a 1 and was broken and isnt fun.
The big difference between Dark Eldar and anything like that in AoS, is that Dark Eldar are paying for that item
also, you can’t seriously think that item is too strong when the bearer is a T3 W5 5+sv HQ right?
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11 hours ago, NauticalSoup said:
But shouldn't arcane tome have been nerfed as well then? It also outshines nearly every army book relic in the game, and really only faced competition from the amulet.
And a 6+ FNP is garbage on nearly everything except possibly the fattest monsters, it could've stayed 5+ for squishy foot heroes.
I like Arcane Tome because it gives me access to wizards for my narratively themed armies that don’t normally have a Wizard (unless you break theme). Stuff like Warherd exclusively or Squig units exclusively, that can’t otherwise get magic.
Lets take Gloomspite Gits as an example - more specifically, units with the Squig keyword only (Loonboss on Giant Cave Squig, Loonboss on Mangler Squig, Squig Herd, Squig Hoppers, Boingrot Bounders, Mangler Squig). In the Moonclan spell lore (which the 2 Loonbosses have the keyword), there is the spell Squig Lure that lets squigs run and charge. If they nerf or remove the Tome, I would have to include a non-squig Wizard - like Skargrot The Loonking. Skargrot doesn’t have to be my general, but he loses half his warscroll if he is not. Making him my general, I lose Squig Hoppers as Battleline leaving only Squig Herd
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If we only get a new foot hero, I’m gonna be hugely disappointed
Stormdrake Guard Are Beyond Absurd
in Age of Sigmar Discussions
Posted
I think There are enough units in the game that are problematic when spammed, that we can say spamming is a problem