Reinholt

I picked Gluttons for a reason: there are other, better MSU units in the same book that someone else already raised. Why would you ever run a Glutton when you could take a Leadbelcher or Mournfang now? There will be whole units that are just unworkable in several books because weapon range / unit size / unit upgrades / base size are now horribly misaligned. My point is that large units on 25mm bases are likely still fine, but large units on larger than 25mm bases are actually extreme dead weight unless you have 2" (ideally 3") weapons. The secret dominant factor for AoS 3 without a revision to rank fighting will be base size, which is very weird. As in, if you could put the same model on a smaller base you would pay more points for it, with no other characteristic changes. I know people have gone MSU before, but there are warscrolls / abilities / points for units that now are completely broken even internal to their own book because of the coherency changes. I just hope GW has the sense to do rank fighting or we're in a very weird place because they already seemed not to understand the value of smaller bases!

There are a lot of large base units (even larger than 32mm) that don't have greater than 1" weapon options; if there is no fight in ranks rules, as I said elsewhere, GW primarily nerfed model sales. Take, for instance, Ogor Gluttons. Why would you ever, ever, ever, ever run them in anything more than 3s with a 1" range on those bases? Without fight in ranks, it's min units or don't even take them.

This is a problem with the army books being wildly inconsistent. "Oh I have specific artifacts I want!" is also a pretty minor class of problems as books go, as opposed to "Oh most of my units are insanely overpointed" like Slaanesh or "Oh they clearly didn't understand my core rules or adjust them for the new updates so a core feature of my army, terrain placement, is often literally unworkable. Also my units are also insanely overpriced" which is Sylvaneth. I think you have to judge the core rules as they are, and not ask the basic ruleset to fix absolutely jacked up design for some of the army books. Those need to be fixed with better army books, not band-aids in the core rules that create a leaky foundation. Which is to say I agree with you, but really, the problem is the army book design.

Flip side: if literally everyone can do it, now it's not such a big deal. Especially as that battalion does have some real restrictions around it (e.g. it's not spam anything you want). Before it was a huge problem because only a small subset could realistically do this. If something is broken and you give it to everyone, it's not actually broken anymore, back to addressing the power disparity in rules.

I think part of it is also thinking about Stand & Shoot for the median shooting unit you encounter, which is honestly not that scary. Who cares if 5 Judicators stand and shoot? Now, 6 Vanguard Raptor Longstrikes or a Kharadron Ironclad or Salamanders hitting you when you hit the screen, hitting you again in their turn (twice for the longstrikes!), and then hitting you AGAIN when you finally charge them. That's less friendly.

For my part: I am glad battalions are gone from matched play because the artifact + drop modification + battalion ability is nightmarish to balance, points wise. GW never got this right but I'm also not sure it is something you can get right in a tabletop format. That's a lot of variables to balance all at once that are also dependent on other parts of a book. Standardizing them for everyone and making them less powerful is a good decision to me. I maintain my stance that the army construction rules looking more like a beefed up meeting engagement will be quite good for the game. A lot of the problem in competitive games is if you spam X unit or can max out combos for buff synergy. Now that is all harder. Not impossible, mind you. Harder. I do maintain my reservations about Unleash Hell but given it's literally one thing, the response of the community could be to simply ban it. If it as broken as my initial tinkering shows, it probably will be. Or it needs to be errata'd in some way (probably to be only if you charged that exact unit, not their screens or other units around them - then it's still rough but you can play around it). I still think 95% of the changes will make the game better. I do agree army books also need major work (nothing in this set of changes makes Sylvaneth anything other than bin tier, but that's a problem with the book). One thing GW should consider more often is that if a book is particularly failing, the WD expansion / modification as they did with Gloomspite seems to help significantly and is nearly cost free. Use that tool to help the community GW.

To address a few points and quote one: 95% of the changes we have seen for AoS 3.0 are quite positive. The army building rules, the wording changes, a lot of the hero and monster abilities, most of the command abilities, etc. I think this is good for the game. Coherency is needlessly complicated as they have written it. I would not be shocked to see GW revise it. Just be within x" of the unit leader is probably the easiest way to make it work, and allow all units to have a designated leader for movement and if that one dies, you nominate a new one at the end of the phase. Also, major changes to weapon ranges or the 40k style rank fighting will need to be introduced, or GW will primarily have nerfed their model sales because 32mm+ bases only work in 5 or less units for 1" weapons. Soulblight, to me, are a big maybe. There's a lot of stuff in that book which seems less than useful, some baffling design decisions around how magic was allocated, but also some clearly decent stuff and a shocking amount of mobility. There might also be some real power pieces if the rumor about Blood Knights from today's article (that they can leave combat and then charge back in the same turn) is true. In general I think the jury is still very much out on SBG but my tentative prediction is that they are decent but not great with one or two potential power lists. The one change I hate for the game so far is Unleash Hell. I say this as someone who plays shooting armies because I already am thinking hard about how I can abuse it. The biggest winner from everything I have seen about 3.0 so far might also be the KO, as they just DGAF about most changes and the ones they do are largely positives for them.

On the topic of the article, did they re-word the movement phase with the new keywords for AoS 3.0? I don't recall seeing it but one possibility would be to have separated normal moves from retreat moves in the actual rule text and then the Blood Knights don't work in AoS 2.0 but work as intended in AoS 3.0. Have we seen that yet? As if they can move and re-charge, that is a top tier competitive option and I think SBG is a much stronger book overall as a fast, hard hitting, potentially battleline, 5 model cavalry unit is exactly what the doctor ordered for this faction. Especially with Unleash Hell as you can jump screens to get to the actual unit with the special move. Likewise, I do think Vengorian Lords are one of the quiet winners here. Have access to the hero and monster actions, can attempt to heal with the heal action in addition to the Hunger, can Monster shout at people to shut down their command abilities, blocks -1 rend, etc. My estimation of that piece (along with the Mortarchs, obviously) is going up in an MSU world. Edit: multiple generals is also strong as this army will use CP well

One always has to remember that with greenskins, it's not about if you are actually wearing armor, it is if you BELIEVE you are wearing armor. My personal canon is that all orks are naked and unarmed, but what we see on the table is how they visualize themselves in their heads and thus have that power because of the WAAAGH. "Everything you can imagine is real." - Pablo Picasso and also Orruks

Are you seriously trying to tell me that a naked barefoot dude who shaves his upper lip and wears a loincloth is not dramatically different from a naked barefoot dude who has a full mustache on his upper lip and wears a loincloth? I see you are a horrible plebian who has no appreciation for the depth or nuance of expression through facial hair! DISGUSTING.

I feel like KO are the big winner of the reinforcement rules because they are still just taking boats. Unleash Hell Ironclad is still very much a thing.

So after sleeping on it, I've changed my mind on Unleash Hell. Certainly in a game where some shooting units (flamers, salamanders, vanguard raptors, KO Ironclads) already power some of the dominant lists in the meta, GW understands what they are doing by giving all these armies the ability to have their best already NPE producing units the ability to shoot twice for a single CP, and this will obviously make monsters and heroes better because reasons. Yeah, no, I'm not buying it. These things were already too points efficient. Unless GW literally doubles the points of every shooting unit in the game, I predict Unleash Hell will make AoS 3.0 the shooting army only edition and anything with the ability to batch massed firepower to abuse the rule will create a truly oppressive meta for everything else. Again, for years everyone agrees Anvils was the best Stormcast faction by a mile. Well, guess what? Now everyone with a good shooting unit is Anvils on the charge where they double tap you before you get to them, AND they also are still their old allegiance at the same time. This is fine, right?

If that's true (it might be), then management needs to act and bring in more competitive designers to balance out the team and get rid of the people most opposed to having balanced and level rules. Or, they need to bring in quality control so after the designers go nuts, people actually properly test it, including some technical readers, and those people can fix the broken stuff and make corrections. You also need a head of that division who ensures it all comes out working together and you don't have things like Sylvaneth vs. Seraphon games in the same edition (like WTF, you're throwing rocks at a tank in that matchup). GW is a public company. If they continue not giving customers what they want, it will be a matter of time until other people step in and will do it, because GW is not a company where their management owns the majority of the stock. This sort of approach is exactly how and why hostile takeovers happen, and it's a matter of time until you attract one if you could deliver far more for your customers and consistently don't. The crazy part of this is tight, balanced rule sets are better for narrative gaming as well. I remember someone who wanted to get into AoS about a year and a half ago (time has lost all meaning in the pandemic). One of my friends lent them some models when they came to play in a small round robin set of games we were playing at a weekend in a bar another friend owns. Game 1: tabled by Slaanesh in round 2. Game 2: I played the poor ****** with my Shootcast, and while I didn't table him (largely because I was being nice), he got his ass thoroughly kicked. Game 3: tabled by OBR in round 3. So what was the problem, you ask? Turns out the poor kid really liked Sylvaneth, you see. And because GW wrote a ****** book and hasn't bothered to fix it for years, they lost a potential customer because the game was so poorly balanced and the experience was so un-fun he decided not to pick up the game, despite all three people he played being very nice about it and trying to teach. But when the answer to "what do I do in this situation?" is ultimately you can play 2x as well and you're still going to get wrecked, you have bleed around the edges. I get that GW is doing well enough now (unlike the end of the Kirby time), but unforced errors of large magnitude create a lot of small cuts that can slowly turn things around to where WFB ended up in 8th, and it's so trivial to fix them that it's kind of insulting GW won't. Put differently: I would not eat at the restaurant Chikout described more than once. Edit: the part that kills me here is I like a LOT of what they are doing in AoS 3.0. But in my view, as a long-time shootcast player, if you don't fix the Unleash Hell bit in a day 1 type errata, that does more bad than all of the good they have done with a single rule that will be so dominant it will control the game.

Also, if it's going to be house rules all the way down that vary across the world, by store, by tournament, and by playing group... What exactly are we giving GW money for? If we want hack-y rules the internet can do that for free just fine. If GW wants me to pay premium money for rules, they need to delivery quality and a solid benchmark. Regardless of the good intentions of the "just modify the game" argument, there is no consensus and it destroys the ability of the community to expand and have events. It is in GW's best interests to not have garbage rules, but that's something they seem to be unable to comprehend.

McDonalds does not charge premium prices. If you deliver McD's quality for fine dining prices, you don't have a market. GW nuked WFB for a while during Daemons of Chaos era, and it's part of what lead the game down the path in terms of popularity that caused AoS to happen. This was during the darkest Kirby days of "we are a models company jewels of wonder rules LOL" thinking, but the brand damage persists to this day. Unleash Hell is the kind of thing that needs a literal day 1 errata or you're heading down the path of massive NPE for many players that will turn them off for the game again. Edit: this would also be far less of a problem if they turned the lethality up to 11 for everything. But this is a narrow section that was already very good. A better comparison would be one area of premium super nice seating at McD's and every other seat having nails on it. So people all jam into that one area, and if that area is full, people won't eat there at all. So you both crush your customer base and create a bunch of resentment at the same time.

On the best shooting units in the game, in combination with blocking charges. If you can't see why getting to fire 12x Vanguard Raptors in the other player's turn if they charged or why Ironclads or Salamanders spamming shots on charges is a problem, I'm not sure you've been playing AoS since 1.0. The only counterplay is not to charge things, which means all shooting all the time meta? These things already drive the best tournament winning lists, and now for the bargain basement price of 1 CP, essentially every army in the game is Anvils from Stormcast or the Anvils are Double Anvils. It's asinine. At 1 CP so that something like a basic handgunners unit can do this once, or if it were limited to 1 use per game, I could see this being okay. But 1 CP per turn with no unit restriction always, all you have done is taken the already dominant shooting units in the meta and made them roughly twice as effective for the same points. I'm genuinely flabbergasted at what GW was thinking (and I play shooting armies and have drifted away from them because it's already alienating people in our gaming group when I just face stomp them with Shootcast or Kharadron, so GW naturally buffed them to be way better).

WH has had some periods of being a good game, but also some really dire periods (anyone remember Daemons of Chaos dominance?) based on the rules being exceptionally poorly written. I think most of what they are trying for AoS 3.0 I am actually a big fan of. The coherency rules are dumb as written, but a good idea in concept. Would be easy to errata them to "all members of a unit must be within x" of all other members of the unit" and just fix that right out of the gate based on how many models are in the unit. That way you can have various formations but no conga line as you know the maximum size of a unit. What is shocking to me is the Unleash Hell rule, given it is a mistake they already made, already had to errata, and now being given to other armies that are potentially even MORE powerful with it than Seraphon were. It's just mind bending and I don't see how any non-shooting army will be competitive until that rule goes.

Am I missing something in the rules here with regard to Unleash Hell, or does this mean my shootcast army can both block someone with Aetherwings in front of my 12 strong unit of Vanguard Raptors, and I will get to Unleash Hell because they charged the birdies, they will obliterate the Aetherwings, I will get to double tap in my turn with Anvils, and then if anything is left of their army, I get to Unleash Hell again? So they are eating a minimum of 4 volleys before they can charge my unit? I cancelled my plan with a friend to buy a box and split it after the news today. Why? Because unlike the people at the GW design studio, I have friends and I would like to keep them. If the rules work as written, I'm not going to have any of those if I play this game with them. Unleash Hell was such a problem with Seraphon they already had to fix it. It's incredible they would then give it to everyone. Doubling down on failure. Edit: to those talking about a knee ****** or without context, there's no context in which army-wide stand and shoot is going to work unless they completely re-write and massively nerf a huge number of shooting warscrolls (Ironclad, half the damned Seraphon book, flamers, Vanguard Raptors, Mortek, Sentinels, etc.) currently in the game because giving this ability to maximum sized already overpowered shooting units is like "nerfing" Kroak by allowing him to cast his mortal wounds spell in every phase of the game using commands.

If the 2H dudes were only 1 damage, given the majority of their damage output against my foes will come from the mortals, I can't possibly see an argument for taking them over the shieldbones. An interesting typo in the app, to say the least, as it looks like they just reversed the values (book is -1 rend, 2 damage). Edit: also, nothing wrong with the points; they are both slow and fragile, but hit like a truck. Given a lot of things can shoot them off the board before they ever get close, I think the points are fine. Maybe even a touch expensive at 14 points per wound with, at best, a 4+ given the current shooting meta.

I'm just going to leave this here: after one game using proxies for them, if the new Blood Knights are FAQ'ed and/or the wording of the movement phase changes in AoS 3 to make clear they can leave combat and then charge again, BKs are going to be very competitive and the source of a major power build for SBGL.

No you cannot. There are elements of mechanics that one could, in theory, copyright. For example, if they rip your exact wording with no changes you have a much better case than if they re-word or re-describe the exact same mechanics (see the same arguments re: code with writing code to perform the same function vs. using exact code). If they used specific terms that are copyrighted or trademarked, like a horrible mangling of the word dwarf or elf (just as a theoretical example), you could probably ding them for those terms. But using the rules concepts / framework / mechanics so long as you did your own design? Almost zero chance that's a problem in either the UK or the US. It's never actually zero because you don't know how a judge or jury will interact when they come into contact with the real world and there's a reason for an appeals process, but this kind of thing is where one could be as confident as one can reasonably be. Likewise, I again raise the point of if someone sent a demand letter to GW, they would 100% want to publicize that their work was good enough for GW to rip it off as that alone will create future work (or GW would just hire them), or the payment from GW to silence them would be large enough they'd have to be disclosing it as a lawsuit settlement in their financial reporting (which they are not). I re-iterate my previous point that the only lawsuit element that would cause this to go totally silent in this way would be gross misconduct by GW leading to the departure of an employee who was integral to the project and retained some rights, or a safety concern (seems very unlikely in this case, it's a board game). I am not saying this to suggest GW did that (I am in fact expressly not suggesting that), but rather saying the lawsuit element is extremely unlikely here (I would say less than 1% odds; it's never zero but much more likely the issue is in production rate and/or 3rd party suppliers).

I seriously doubt the lawsuit angle here, or at least as a reason for the silence. First, in most common law jurisdictions (UK, US, etc.), law is considered a matter of public concern and completely confidential court filings with no record of proceedings is extremely unusual. If GW lost a fight in China, maybe, but that seems highly implausible. Thus for this to vanish with literally zero paper trail would be wild if there was actually a lawsuit. Could there be a demand letter of some sort and a private agreement? Yes. But on what basis? Did GW rip the entire product from someone? Even then, you'd expect they would be allowed to make an announcement as to future content and/or that the other party would want to do so in order to profit from their work. For it to go totally silent out the back would indicate a deliberate destruction of value by the person/entity who won the fight with GW in this context. Incentives don't add up if you are following the money. The one exception to this would be if there was a GW staffer materially responsible for this content, who retained some degree of rights, and was terminated unjustly by the company and the legal fight there involved a large payout and cessation of all work around that person; things like that are usually prohibited workplace conduct (sexual harassment etc.). The complete lack of any announcement and behavior that GW (even in their infinite denseness) knew would ****** off their customer base should lead one to Occam's Razor: whatever happened is more embarrassing than just cancelling it and walking away silently. If it were a private agreement about rights, I would expect a disclosure to that extent from one or both parties (what's the motivation to keep that totally secret?). Completely silence on that is unusual for a retail facing product unless it was a safety or conduct issue. To me, that means either they seriously ****** something up, something of the sort I reference above that would be supremely embarrassing to reveal happened ("our staff were insane racists and drove out a key employee for the project and then we had to pay a huge settlement" is not something you would want to disclose generically, though to be clear I am using this as an example and NOT accusing GW or any other company of this conduct), or they relied on a supplier/producer who went bankrupt/insolvent and it was probably a demonstrably dumb idea to use them (the company of the spouse of a board member with a shaky track record or something).

So after reading all the leaks and ignoring the thread so far, my initial impressions: 1 - This army plays very differently. Respawn giant units? Gone. A lot of the previous spell combo stuff? Gone. Some of the units are dramatically less useful (looking at you, mounted wights). Some of the heroes are... lackluster (regular foot vamp?). 2 - Some of the new stuff has serious play. Blood Knights are a thing with the toughness, ability to leave combat and refresh charge, etc. I think my initial read is that Kastelai, Vyrkos, and perhaps the Avengorii are going to have play (objectives could be an issue for the latter unless AoS 3 changes how that works). Corpse carts seem useful again. The zombies and grave guard dishing mortals is a real thing, especially with the right buffs. 3 - Wound efficiency for the new direwolves changes their role from cheap chaff to kind of annoyingly large amounts of fast moving wound spam. Not high quality wounds, mind you, but quantity is a quality of its own. 4 - Overall I rate these guys as solidly in the fat middle with maybe a power build or two (I think Blood Knights might be sneaky good in that people tend to underrate movement nonsense on paper until they see it on the field, and unpinnable highly durable battleline that can dish it out is exactly what powers Idoneth, so... maybe not quite at that level but those guys have play). I think the fail is that there's some stuff that obviously is just ****** (why make an insanely good wight model and then give it insanely bad rules?) and/or just underpowered, but there's also some good stuff. A real mixed bag, but neither despair nor euphoria seem justified.

Also: I don't know if this is working as intended, but I cannot get to the CoS subforums if I am not logged in, and instead get an error that I don't have permission to view them. Anyone else getting this?

Counterpoint: my most common opponents were Idoneth and Gobbos. The former went up, if slightly! So for me, it's been a noticeable difference when his list is the same and mine has added units; I agree if your other side went down that's funky, but for those of us playing against DoK or Idoneth or Skaven a lot, it's been noticeable, I think. Which is another good point: your local situation likely differs from the average of this board! Always use your own brains.