NinthMusketeer

Yeah, Chaos was a lot more diverse back in the day. There's a lot from the Realm of Chaos books better left in the past (the writing is SO BAD) but also some real gems. Most of the good stuff has been carried forward, but AoS is still far from previous versions of Warhammer in terms of customization. You really can't make a unique character like you used to. In other news, the 'new' anvil isn't new. The archetype changes we saw previewed are almost the only ones. They didn't even include the additional content from WD. It's 95% reprint. Huge disappointment.

It is so interesting from my perspective, where I love the battle tactics for adding an extra layer of strategy to the game, to see people who don't prefer it for making things too complicated. A good reminder of the diversity in mindsets and how people play the game differently. I wish you all good luck in your endeavors!

It would help with the rampant cheating too.

For me personally, 40k doing badly translates very directly into AoS doing well. One of the most common reasons I get new people in my local AoS community is from them leaving 40k, so that does predispose me to a certain mindset. This is coupled with the more pragmatic side, where I understand that due to the nature of popularity feedback loops 40k is, in practice, too big to fail. It makes them the low-handing fruit when it comes to tongue-in-cheek mockery. On the more serious end, the standard for design quality for AoS is much higher because massive player participation is not a guarantee. I see this in the 'scalpel' style of making relatively small changes and seeing how they work while also ensuring they are well-integrated into the established mechanics. Even their experimental change with the most recent balance update works within the framework of the established system. Comparatively, 40k updates are a sledgehammer. Among the most common criticisms of 40k is that it is too lethal and has too many rules. The recent update exacerbates the latter, and for Guard does so in a manner completely disjointed from their army mechanics and narrative immersion. The former is certainly addressed but only for marines and sisters; NPC factions are left out. I prefer the AoS update even if it does not work because it is the designers showing a degree of thought, a willingness to try new things, and a strong consideration for quality-of-life during gameplay. Comparatively the 40k update is throwing more rules at the problem to see what sticks, and while it does more or less hit the right problems it shows a lack of understanding as to why they are problems. Finally, AoS is in a better state balance wise than 40k is even after the recent update. A lot better. Put more simply, I get the strong sense from the AoS update that the designers do care and are making an honest effort to improve whereas with 40k I am just scratching my head. But it wasn't all that long ago that AoS was in the same place, so to me it is a reminder that while AoS still has plenty of room to improve there is a striking contrast between where it is now and where it used to be. Sidenote: three lines of text from one person does not make this a 'dunk on 40k thread'.

The ability to download and read a full digital version of the battletome. Normally I wouldn't ask for that much but when they are charging $50 for the things...

In other news, the last balance update for AoS suddenly seems much better by comparison to what it could have been... Never been quite so glad that the people involved in AoS rules development are not doing whatever drugs the 40k devs are apparently on!

This seems to be getting increasingly abrasive and off topic, so I'm going to drop it.

Uhm, if an army gets a new book that is way stronger, that's a buff. We are on the same page in regards to 40k. AoS does not suffer from that problem; despite a strong showing of players Nurgle is not sweeping the meta, while Fyreslayers and Idoneth are hardly taking over the scene. Even Stormcast and OWC are limited to very specific problem options and not overpowered as a whole. AoS balance is in a way better place than 40k.

It is good if an army cannot win large tournaments. Only overpowered armies win GTs. Every single GT winning army has elements that should be nerfed, because being a good player is not enough to top those; they need an overpowered list to compete against other overpowered lists. Take it from someone who takes part in running such events. People raising the sentiment that an army needs buffs because it can't place in GTs is what leads to things being like 40k. Does anyone here want AoS balance to be like 40k? Anyways, yeah I agree this will cause problems. It isn't an unsalvageable concept but it needs work.

It doesn't have to go wild to eat spells; it's just a monstrous rampage. Edit: Oh you mean ones summoned by the controlling player, derp! At any rate the play is going to be having a hero bound to it then intentionally kill the hero (there are a variety of ways to do this) because it fights better that way and the chances of it actually harming friendly models are minimal.

I think it is anti-shooting; it doesn't care how much damage it takes in one turn, the most it can lose is one level. Shooting armies can only reliably knock it down a peg in one turn per round, meaning it only needs to eat one endless spell per round to stay up indefinitely. Melee could drop it down twice per round; once from each combat phase.

It's more like a unit with extra steps, including extra steps for your opponent to kill it. It isn't going to be difficult for certain armies & characters to make it quite practically unkillable.

Or use endless spells to kill the hero, which the incarnate then eats!

It is yet another example of GW being good at creative rules design, but shockingly bad at predicting the mechanical ramifications. I suspect we'll have to wait for the inevitable balance update/eratta to get a fixed version, essentially making this initial release more of a beta.

I'm excited to run it in narrative, as for matched I think it is going to have a big impact on the tourney meta. That it takes a minimum of two turns to kill no matter what is a really big deal, similar to Morathi in that way. Also the running 'wild' is hardly such since you still control it, so there isn't a reliability issue.

I respect the points made. That said, this is taking us off on a tangent so I will bow out at this point so as not to drag the thread off topic.

RAW yes, you are just screwed out of that benefit. PtG feels weirdly unfinished in a lot of places like that. The way we would do it is figure out some approximation based on the scenario. If the goal is to wipe out certain units then we'd count those units as 'objectives' or if the goal is to survive we'd say the rule triggers for units wholly within their deployment zone, etc. And really that is far more in the spirit of what GW intends with PtG than sticking strictly to RAW

30 clanrats with spears are putting out 10 wounds before saves without any buffs, against an average 4+ that's 5 damage. Which isn't much, but 240 points for 40 clanrats isn't much either. A warlord's command ability doubles that, the army has the easiest access to priests in the game for curse, and warp-lightning vortex is a MW machine. Those clanrats can also bunker for warpfire throwers which will happily wipe 1w or 2w units off the board with ease. All of those are cheap enough to fit into a list on top of 40x4 clanrats, leaving plenty of room for a varminlord or bell. And during all of that the Skaven player doesn't even need to come out on top, just stall long enough to rack up VP from the objectives they definitely have control on. But it's a matter of practicality, even if the time limits weren't a thing people don't want to assemble, paint, transport, and physically play with that many models.

All part of most-great plan-scheme, yes-yes... It is funny, because the Skaven battletome has the tools to hit top tier but not the time. 150+ model armies can't realistically finish battles within the time limits of a tournament.

Need to filter for nuance. Good rule of thumb is if a response is 100% negative or 100% positive they aren't evaluating rationally and that opinion can be safely disregarded. Once those are taken out one can look at the remainder to get an actual assessment of the release.

Things like Stormdrake Guard should never have made it to print as they are because it is immediately apparent they are broken just from reading the warscroll. If something like that happened once it would be a fluke, but it has happened countless times. There is no 'we didn't have enough time to test it!' excuse for that. It took all of two minutes for me and countless others to realize that point cost was not appropriate. And they are far, far, FAR from the only example. Just last page I was being criticized for letting the devs off the hook for design mistakes (an entirely valid criticism, albeit against a sentiment I did not have), but a three paragraph post amounting to 'no, it's all GW corporate's fault' racks up half a dozen likes in less than a week. That's the level of thought the community is supporting right now, and that's the level of thought that goes into balance. It isn't good for things to be that way, for anyone involved, but one must admit there is a certain degree of poetic balance to it. Edit: I do know this is going to come off like sandpaper to a lot of people, it can be remarkably difficult to convey deadpan in text.

It sounds like the intended effect; an army not utilizing the meta choices having an extra edge against one that is. Must have been pretty close too, close enough that the increased points/reduced capabilities no doubt coming for megas would have still made the difference even if conventional balancing had been used. That's the nature of balance, the people running the best things are going to lose out. Personally I'd rather lose from a balance update than win but be left wondering if I did so from my own skills or just from running OP stuff. But that's just my perspective and it is one of many ways to view things.

None of those VP were from Maw-Crusha kills?

So looking to convert up a BoC warband shortly, anyone have commentary to offer on their options? Have a Bray-Shay as the leader and a Chaos Spawn as a follower (it gets in for narrative reasons). Generally going to be focused on infantry but not totally opposed to another big guy.

That is exactly the sort of thing that keeps killing matched play leagues at my flgs. People feel like one out of every three games is a landslide in their favor, one is a landslide against them, and one is a decent game. I've said before that calling the system "matched" to begin with is a joke. Players still need to self-balance or stumble on good matchups by blind luck. Though finding an even matchup could still be ruined by a 1-2 double. Taking this back out to the bigger picture, so much of that is in the fundamentals of how GW goes about releasing content in the first place and balance patches aren't going to address that. Which gets back to my original point of criticizing a balance update for not addressing procedural flaws is unproductive, because it was never going to. If the devs were skilled enough to sort out the bad feedback and the good, to break down the causality and nuance of the situation they would never have released things like this in the first place. They should do better, because making a better game is in their own best interest, and the company, and the stockholders. So when the community floods the field with muddy, hyperbolic feedback, they aren't providing it to skilled devs who can shift out the gems, they are feeding it to devs with a demonstrated lack of understanding torward the game's complex interactions. Put simply; when the community gives bad feedback, that has a negative impact on the resulting balance updates. Is that the only factor? Does it make things the community's fault? Does it mean the GW devs don't care? No, of course not. Those are exactly the sorts of hyperbolic straw men that reinforce the state the game is in, because they drown out criticism which is actually constructive. If the community wants better we can affect that by being better ourselves. It isn't about what's fair or what things should be, it is about the hard reality of what they are.