Reinholt

So after a little more testing, I'm pretty convinced that GW is either going to have to significantly raise the points of a lot of shooting units or just get rid of Unleash Hell as a command ability. The ease of dialing up the efficiency of already efficient shooting units by allowing them to shoot again is grotesque, at least so far. Right now the MVP by far of my few early games tinkering with the new edition are all shooting units. Unleash Hell just basically doubles your points efficiency as now you shoot twice where before you would have shot once. Not quite because there is the hit modifier, but on the flip side, using a screen to block and then shooting is really a ****** move that is clearly not accounted for. Vanguard Raptors in Anvils have become almost un-playably unfriendly with the aetherwing charge block / unleash hell combo, for instance. A close to ironclad (itself a problem unit with unleash hell for KO) guarantee that you can unleash hell twice while being able to double tap shooting in your own turn is downright oppressive. There are a handful of builds I think could give it problems that aren't just using "shoot back" as an answer (namely Idoneth Eels and maybe the new Blood Knights given how they jump screens), but even then... it's bad.

Lumineth Sentinels with their auto mortal wounds and Vanguard Raptors (esp. in Anvils with the double tap) would be two examples I would give that I've seen be genuinely oppressive when people have to play against them with regard to the ability to dish kind of perverse amounts of long range damage. In one of my test games for the new edition I had someone rage quit on me because of the VRs; I shot them twice in turn one, blocked a charge with Aetherwings and used Unleash Hell, shot them twice in turn two, then unleashed hell again when they finally charged the raptors (which wiped the charging unit). Six shots from a unit that is 2s/3s/rend-2/2 damage and dishes 2 mortals on a 6 to hit and has a 30" range fired SIX times while they got one effective charge off and wiped a 40 point unit of aetherwings while I'd wrecked several units in that span. It is an oppressive level of shooting with Unleash Hell.

I obviously won't name names but my impression is that it has likely INCREASED piracy. There are many people who don't want paper books for physical (heavy, clunky, hard to transport, especially for people who have disabilities, etc.) reasons, and there are many people who don't want paper books for environmental reasons. You have taken away the ability of these people to buy an e-book from GW and actually pay them for it. They can get the rules only, but not the rest. However, they can still get the e-book. Just they don't pay for it anymore. My honest belief is GW has cost themselves revenue by eliminating the PDFs, and if W+ as rumored is a step to the AoS app becoming the awful 40k App and eliminating e-books, they will simultaneously make the game less popular than it would be as the crowd who cares about marginal environmental issues will be pissed, and they will sell less books because the committed e-book people will now pirate everything because GW literally will not take their money. It's... confusing.

This is what a properly crafted anti-SLAPP law covers, and there are multiple states with them. A lot of attorneys take these kinds of cases on contingency because you get fees when you win if it's clear fair use. I get the sense most people get a DCMA and don't even explore their options because it's much easier to punch back in a lot of places than expected. Some states less than others. You'd be foolish not to at least consult with a lawyer and it's usually free to have the first discussion (and if it's not, you're into something really messy and shouldn't be on a message board but rather loading your munitions into your private jet etc. kind of things). This is not legal advice blah blah blah. Edit: RuneBrush is right and to get this back on track, I'll stop here.

Depending on what state Doug is in, that could be extremely profitable for Doug. There are surprisingly strong anti-SLAPP protections in some places and I would strongly advise anyone to pay attention to those before DCMA'ing someone in the modern day. What Doug is doing is almost certainly fair use under any plausible interpretation of the law, and in certain jurisdictions, that means GW will be writing Doug a pretty fat check for doing this. Be aware of your rights and don't take this laying down. On the W+ front: I won't be getting it because GW's digital products have sucked, other than PDFs. But if they cut PDFs for AoS books, that's both insane from an environmental perspective (and people should get on them about this and refer them to some of the local UK organizations that oppose this kind of thing as they literally will organize protests outside GW's HQ and what not) and shareholder perspective. This is recreating the anti-Napster movement that ultimately crippled and massively damaged the music industry. Boomer logic and then some from GW. You don't have to get into the clash of shareholder vs. public interests when a specific action is genuinely dumb from both perspectives. I'm just surprised 80 year old people who think the computer machine will lead to the death of humanity are still running GW in 2021.

I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome Blood Knight battleline is. Joking aside, I think the zombies are also interesting for the pile in nonsense. They can move surprisingly fast. I like the skeletons to hold objectives but in the new form of the game where the primary weirdly might not be your main points generation tool at all times and holding 2 objectives might be enough, I'm not as sold on them. Still useful, and require less babysitting. Zombies are occasionally totally filthy though, especially if you run some buffs via a necromancer, vamp lord, radhukar, etc. on them.

Wait he wasn't!?!?!

So here is my counterpoint: I play a shooting army that only melees when I have a decisive advantage, and I win a lot of games without getting into melee combat at all with anything other than my screens and one or two key pieces. I'm speaking specifically about shootcast but there are Tzeentch, Kharadron, Lumineth, DoK, and Seraphon armies that would say similar things (edit: hat tip to magic flying eels which are the exception that prove the rule). If you look closely, these are also mostly the armies ultimately dominating the tournament scene and that are the most competitive. The melee units these armies use are largely not going to care about the coherency changes, except in that it makes their opponents even less able to fight them (Archaon in the corner laughing madly right now). In my local gaming group, I have had to all but stop playing my Stormcast because nobody can beat them. It's not for lack of trying; their armies, excepting the one monster mash Ogors player (who has a super fast hard hitting stonehorn list and can sometimes double turn me), just don't have the tools. They aren't fast enough or durable enough to get to me before I take them apart. High volumes of long distance mortal wound inflicting shooting really DGAF about the profile they are shooting at. In many ways, the tougher the better, and bigger units are fun because I have less wasted wounds to overkill if I roll well. Therefore, in response to this shooting meta, GW has responded to balance things out by reducing their army sizes via points increases, making it harder to get units into melee, and making shooting relatively more efficient because rank issues with melee output don't matter to things that were just going to shoot you anyways. Also, as a side benefit, they've dramatically slowed the game down without really fixing the spaghetti string screen issues (because you just do it anyways as if a unit was intended to be wiped in one turn, who cares if they die to coherency breaking when a key model dies vs. getting absolutely tanked in melee because it was 10 gribbly dudes who were never going to live to begin with?). I get the whole idea of "bring back rank fighting" and that ranks were the traditional behavior in WFB. That's cool. But then, bring back rank fighting rules and points appropriate to fighting in ranks? Doing that halfway with the current coherency rules is just going to dramatically enhance the NPE aspect of the game and make things like trying to fight the Lumineth Kangaroo Boys even more annoying for other armies; you already could barely touch them and now it's way harder, and to boot, slower? This is why I am confused. The rule change hurts things that needed help and helps things that were already too good. Who was really running around saying "you know what is causing trouble in AoS? Large units of large base 1" range melee". Nobody. But now I can stand and shoot with Vanguard Raptors for a command point and you have to lose half your output in melee to fight in ranks. Who's up for a game!?

That's not an accurate representation of what I said at all, though. What I specifically said was this: The new coherency rules, by being more intricate about the value of small distances, make the game significantly slower. This is a factual statement, backed up by other people who have started using / thinking about them and by 40k, which I also play. The interaction of >25mm base sizes, coherency for 5+ units, and 1" or less weapon ranges produce some very weird outcomes for units such that taking them in any size larger than 5 is almost certainly going to be sub-optimal in all circumstances because you do not get horde discounts. You pay full price for the damage output of a unit that can never bring that damage output to bear, and because there is not a unit cap, 2x3 will outperform 1x6 in virtually all circumstances even if you literally stand them together as a single "unit". In the cases where unit sizes do not work (Gluttons are a perfect example here because Leadbelchers and Mournfangs both also exist as battleline in better configurations where in the new rules they dominate Gluttons in all facets and thus Gluttons basically should not ever be used), you may have totally obsoleted some units. If that's game design working as intended, I think someone needs to have a word with GW's game designers about what their customers want, which is probably not materially slower games with less choice of models. If it's not intentional, I suggest they fix it. If you disagree, I want to know specifically what you disagree with that I said. Do you think the new coherency rules are faster? Do you think it's good for a game where shooting and magic already dominated most melee to have even less efficient melee and more efficient shooting? Do you think the coherency rules are buffing melee in some way I have missed? Do you think people want slower games with less model choice? I'm genuinely curious what the actual rebuttal here is rather than "git good", because that's not my concern (and my tournament army is shootcast, which is already one of the big winners in the new meta, in my view), rather my concern is I think the impact of the changes will be negative play experience, especially for newer players and less competitive players.

To be clear, again, it's not "me", I didn't take them. I am saying if marginal units are already not particularly good, and now you have nerfed them, why would you ever take them? You're bringing a rock to a gunfight here. Shooting is already stronger than melee, monsters and heroes don't have coherency problems in the new edition, and when I point out that taking Gluttons is slow from a play perspective, inefficient for melee, and they were already not good, your answer is that it's working as intended? That is exceptionally poor game design. "Hey half our units are unbalanced garbage don't take them they have no place in the game sorry you paid money for this trash throw it in the bin" is not how a company should operate, to be blunt. Edit: and before someone brings up competitive vs. narrative, I think this is actually a bigger problem for non-competitive players. The competitive types can self-police and will build armies that can fight. I'm worried about the new kid who loves Sylvaneth and builds a bunch of Kurnoth with swords because they look awesome only to find you can't get half of them into melee and gets absolutely trucked a few games in a row after spending money and just quits after the NPE.

I will bring this up to make a point: the history of GW has been awful balance. Anyone remember nigh-invulnerable Falcon grav tanks way back in 40k? Blood Angels turn 1 rhino rush? Anyone ever play against Daemons in 7th ed? Eldar in Gothic? GW doesn't get the benefit of the doubt because over a 20 year period they have repeatedly shown they don't deserve the benefit of the doubt. The next time GW produces a tightly balanced main game and/or is responsive in short timeframes to both balance and quality of life concerns for players will also be the first time GW has ever done this. This is just calling a spade a spade; we are all here and play the games regardless (though I have already lost at least 1 player from my group in the AoS 3.0 change when he finally threw in the towel on Sylvaneth). However, to say GW has a good grip on any of these things would be a bit like saying Fiat has a good handle on automotive reliability. We can still like the game and criticize the company where valid. To that end, it's pretty obvious there is some stuff that doesn't work well as 3.0 is currently designed. I think in particular, the interaction of larger base models and coherency for units over 5, Unleash Hell as an ability, and some of the points changes for a handful of factions (Slaanesh and Sylvaneth in particular) are going to make for some pretty justifiably salty people until that gets sorted out. My hope is GW sorts it out quickly while people are still in the annoyed/angry phase, because that means they are engaged. The danger zone is my friend who I had to email to ask if he still wanted a core rulebook because he'd said nothing about AoS for close to a month, and then responded with "nah I'm good" and is busy playing other games while shelving his trees. Once they disengage, it's much harder to get people back.

So as a starting point, I played AGAINST the Ogors, not with them. I'm actually the ****** who took the MSU units of skeletons and Blood Knights and smashed the face of my opponent through the table, essentially. What I am saying is that some of the design changes are going to promote some pretty material negative play experiences. First, taking Gluttons as an example, you CANNOT take them in a small enough unit that coherency is a non-issue (min 6!). Therefore, the only conclusion is literally never take them. I'm not sure if AoS 3 was intended to create a meta where a good 30% of models should not be taken at all and another 30% taken only in min sizes ever, but that appears to be what has happened. I doubt this was intentional. Edit: also, hilariously, this buffs a lot of 5 strong or 3 strong hard hitting units, because Idoneth Eels needed the help, since their likely foes either are smaller and can get wiped on the charge or can't get everyone in to fight them. Second, my main complaint is also the slowness. Now that tiny fractions of movement determine both coherency and ability to melee, sorting out basic moves is going to be way slower. And for those of you who say movement trays are a solution, that's only true if your opponent is a tool who doesn't understand if you lock formation, they can respond in kind with a different formation to cripple your ability to melee. Then you have to get off the tray to try to pile in while maintaining coherency next turn anyways. It's just slow all the way down. I'm not saying you can't change how you build an army (you can, sometimes, though some units like Gluttons you literally cannot and probably should not take them without further rules changes), but I am saying that unless everything is 5 or less, the game will be slower. Perhaps WAY slower, depending on circumstance.

In a very meta sense, this whole divergence that took multiple posts is actually an excellent demonstration of my feelings on the new coherency rules, as the amount of time we got sidetracked here is pretty much the same as sorting out that 9 Ogor Glutton charge. Where, I would add, after 10 minutes of tinkering, it was concluded that yes, about half the unit had no possible way to fight no matter how it was done and the Ogor 40mm base with a 1" reach for a foot unit does produce some super weird outcomes, especially in a case where I had deliberately compacted my unit down to a 5x2 on 25mm base footprint to minimize the frontage that he had to deploy against. The issue is ultimately not the funky formations (that's silly and dumb but really that's GW's fault for just not adopting cloud coherency), but rather that one, it's way slower because you have to do a lot more work to sort out moves, and two, base size is an actual determinative factor of power and is something that should have a points cost attached to it. As in, if I could take Ogor Gluttons on 25mm bases I would pay more points for them than the same Glutton on a 40mm base and I think GW genuinely doesn't understand this.

After playing with the new coherency rules, it really depends on your base size. In general, I would say: 25mm can work in units where you can deploy well in two ranks, so your size there can be big. 32mm melee units with 1" range are 5 or less, or don't even bother taking them. It slows the game down and if your opponent gets the new geometry you will never get all of your unit into combat. Cavalry really depends on reach and base size. You can do some weird formations with the oval bases so long as you can make triangle arrowhead type tips to make sure they are in coherency. So as a rule of thumb, 5 or less, or be on 25mms and/or a shooting unit if you want more.

I think this last part is the key point. It's easy to house rule things in small groups but when you want an army you can play at the shop, you have to assume that you live with the default rules for the game. To that end, with points and the new coherency updates, I kind of feel like Slaanesh and Sylvaneth are literally bin tier right now (as in don't even bother to bring them), and GW needs to hear a lot more about how they are causing players to leave / quit the game by not bothering to take the 1 hour of effort to at least lower points for these armies even if they won't fix anything else. It is downright comical that Blissbarb Archers are basically the same price as Idoneth Eels and someone thought it was okay to put that out there for people who had bought the former. Edit: while the plural of anecdote is not data, the Sylvaneth player in my group has declined to buy the new edition of the game and let us know he won't be picking up AoS 3.0 until when/if GW fixes his army. Dumping money into the Song of Ice & Fire game instead, which he plays with some other people (I don't play it myself). So heads up GW you are literally losing at least one customer over this.

So after playing a game with the new coherency rules, I will say this: MAN that is janky. I don't think it actually changes much that matters, with one exception. Screens are slightly smaller (though not as small as one would think as if you have a truly cheap screening unit that was only going to live one turn anyways losing a bunch to coherency is no different than losing them when they get mulched in combat). However, it literally made our movement phase take more than 2x as long to sort out the new rules. It will get slightly faster as you go but instead of just "whatever here is kind of a line" now setting up screens took a much longer time. I would estimate the movement phase was >50% of the game and my main prediction is the new coherency rules are likely to make the game significantly slower as now you need to fiddle with formations way more. Likewise, being on a 25mm is a superpower. I can fight in two ranks with them. On the other hand, 32mm models with 1" reach are absolutely shafted as you need these funky jagged formations just to fight and an opponent prepared for that can really reduce your ability to hit. So I think this may not be working as intended for GW and unless they want the game to grind to a halt and/or intend to get rid of models on 32mm bases, I would make the base weapon reach for all 32mm models 2". We literally had a 10 minute single move where tons of measuring happened to get a block of Ogor Gluttons into combat. The conclusion by my opponent is that he is putting his Gluttons in the bin and will just be running min units of Mournfangs now, which is probably not what was intended with the new coherency rules. Third, and I think this is really the unintended part for GW, the formations look even dumber. If you thought conga lines were bad before, my battleline of Skeletons, deployed to hold an objective, were heroically charged by a group of mournfangs alternately charging straight at us sideways or at a 45 degree angle, with not a single one coming on straight, to make sure they could all fight. Formations look WEIRD when you get bigger bases in larger units just to get things into combat. Like comically weird. So I think my conclusions are as follows on new coherency rules: Game is slower Formations are even jankier Base size matters more than almost any other attribute for melee units >5 models (single models or min units who cares) Probably not working as intended for GW but that's my initial read. Anyone else tried it and feels differently?

I feel you on that and I think it's justified. What I hate is the design PROCESS for GW; a lone designer of a tabletop game should have support (playtesters, an overall project manager who ensures all the books are in line, technical writers/readers to help with clarity, etc.). I am all but certain GW does not have that. In a way, they are hanging the designers out to dry as well by not giving them proper support.

This TED talk was super insightful but the thing I slay GW for that you take for granted is all the controls: You don't have just one person who tests their code in prod designing the whole game/army book, which is essentially what GW is doing. You have alpha to beta testing, the latter of which is often public for some games in a limited way, and you have QC, and there is a framework around your design and what you are doing. The main reason I will hammer GW is we know for a fact that they don't have good infrastructure around design. In fact, studying how video game companies do it would go a long way for them, and I don't sling nearly the same nonsense at people who at least try to beta test and get things right at a much grander scale as I do at GW, because it's much easier for them and they still f it up badly. Source: I actually think Cyberpunk 2077 was a good game and the hype just got ahead of itself and I think people should chill out about Overwatch balance. So I don't think I'm some super judgmental ****** here (at least about this). GW does just get an F for process.

We've tried like 10% of this. You have to get Honest Wargamer on a hardcore campaign to ban Slaanesh in all tournaments, get the LVO to stop allowing them, get this forum itself to lock the entire Slaanesh forum except for a single "how to fix Slaanesh" thread, spam Youtube and GW's twitter and social media with comments about them, and literally pay for billboards (cheaper than one thinks!) talking ****** about GW for being so dumb they can't fix them. I used to work at an investment bank. What we do is downright polite and kind; nobody is getting a mob together and storming GW's lobby and breaking everything. Edit: Yet? To be clear not recommending the mob but also didn't want the internet to dunk on me by having this happen just after I wrote it so heading karma off at the pass.

So as someone who has worked a bit in this field (human behavior / product development), I will tell you that there are ultimately three ways to get a company to listen to you, in the end: Vote with your wallet Vote by publicly shaming them for bad performance Vote by supporting them and offering constructive ideas for how to make a better product Given GW is not exactly a PR titan on the level of, say, Coca-Cola that can effectively respond to most influencers, I would suggest a combination of all three of these things would be ideal. To take Slaanesh, as an example, a three-pronged approach would be as follows if they are now a sub-30% win rate faction that is the equivalent of a Blood Bowl joke team but for an ostensibly balanced game: Stop buying them, and make sure to tell GW you aren't buying them because they are substandard Get influencers to comment negatively on them; in an ideal world you have videos at the top of the stack on youtube advising people not to buy or play them, you have them being banned from the tournament scene because they distort the meta by being uncompetitive and being "free wins" for whomever draws them, and you have the general "meta" knowledge of them being just don't. Get the forums to lock all Slaanesh threads with a note that discussion is banned until GW fixes them. Ban painting/art/discussion of the book. The ultimate nuclear bomb is if you advise new people to literally not play the game vs. play Slaanesh. You also write to GW, or have major influencers and tournament personalities, speak out on what could be done to improve them. "Here are the key weaknesses, here is why this book doesn't work". Have them ask for replacements, directly, and offer to help in that process. Put open source statements on all videos about improving them so GW can use the ideas without fear of any IP issues. And so on. Basically, in addition to the refusal to give pounds/dollars/dollarydoos, you use the carrot and the stick to get a company to change their behavior. I have a feeling this kind of thing would be effective at getting through to GW precisely because when a high intensity campaign that influences people emerges among consumers, companies HAVE to respond. New Coke was rolled back for a reason. I think, in many ways, with the greater influence of people on YouTube and in the community as the internet spreads, if there's a real consensus problem, people don't throw their weight around enough to say "your product is garbage, do better, but if you do better, we will support you".

Being souped and getting reinforcements are not mutually exclusive arrangements! There's definitely room for more crazy stuff in Fyreslayers, and recently GW is showing the willingness to add 1 unit at a time for armies (see Sylvaneth). I think it's actually very good for the game if they throw a bone to every army once in a while in that way to keep things fresh, especially those with older (BoC?) and more limited (Fyreslayers) ranges. So fingers crossed for both, as that would give Fyreslayers the maximum options, as if you do an Ironjawz style soup where you can take the grand alliance version of the faction or each subfaction in its own army and all work, that would be ideal as all the options still exist.

60x Zombies is going to be a nightmare for coherency but pretty strong on almost every other level. The fact that most of our units don't need and, in fact, don't want (for coherency / maneuverability reasons) to be reinforced makes this much more viable, though. With lots of min units around, another consideration for zombies that I am tinkering with is should you use multiple smaller units of them to see if one can snowball; it's a lot easier to wipe out a small unit, especially if you send in zombies with a hero or something to bat cleanup if needed, meaning the chance of one unit just adding stupid amounts of zombies over the game is now higher as a wave of those gribbly little piling in jerks could actually produce a huge unit by the end if you just roll up several 5/10 strong enemy units. Or, as happened in the game I play last night, you pile into a unit of already partially decimated horrors with buffed zombies. I literally did not have enough zombies for the result.

The core problem with black knights, after a bit more tinkering, is this: Can they screen, with the new coherency rules? Yes! Unfortunately, so can Dire Wolves, and so far those have been more effective, even with the coherency rules, because you just want more wounds and both have garbage tier saves. Can they hit hard? I mean, no, honestly, just, no. If you want that, Dire Wolves again spam cheap attacks or you can just take Blood Knights and actually do the thing. Can they move fast and/or deploy from off board? Yes, in many cases... but why not just take Vargheists? I think the core issue is that given how weak their save and hitting ability is, they can do many of these things but we have better options in our book to do the exact same thing. It's not a unit that is useless in the grand sense but it is useless in the relative value sense, unfortunately. They either need a new warscroll (unlikely), a white dwarf update to give them a dynasty/faction bonus (more possible, especially if a wight/necromancer subfaction were created in WD in Gloomspite style updates), or they need a major points drop (most likely, I suppose, as if they went down to under 100 now they actually might be worth it). Right now it is 120 points for 10 wounds with a 5+ and they hit like a wet noodle. The only real upside is the mobility. It's just not worth the points for no output and no save vs. our other units. Dire wolves are 135 for 20 wounds on a 5+ and Blood Knights hit like a truck. Even Vargheists are 155 for 12 wounds on a 5+ with way more damage output. I just don't see the niche for Black Knights until the points hit 100 or less.

Being on a 25mm base is going to be the secret superpower of AoS 3.0 for most foot models. The other superpower is being 5 models or less for a hard hitting unit. Too bad Soulblight don't have a bunch of cheap battleline options on 25mm (zombies, etc.) or a really hard hitting really mobile really effective hammer unit that comes in 5s (Blood Knights) or anything... Ahem.

I lived in Singapore for a bit and now live in NYC and want to echo this. 6'x4' tables are a fun idea for gaming, but the reality of that becoming non-viable for a huge segment of the population (as by humans, by which I mean potential customers, they are also broadly more concentrated in large cities) is not a good business strategy. Part of the genius of X-Wing, to pick another miniature game, was the space required to play. Keeping things to a scale you could fit realistically on a square dining table is an exceptional decision from a sales / marketing / accessibility perspective. It's the same reason I think the pathway of skirmish -> full scale battle is still a pipeline more companies need to get right. Most businesses that do well in the long run don't get there by making it harder for you to engage with their products, after all. And since I love miniature games and I want GW to do well, anything that does improve access for customers (old and new) is a plus in my view. Edit: by which I mean AoS 3 shrinking the table a bit and creating more viability for armies of a few large models vs. total hordes is something I fully and completely support.