NinthMusketeer

Ok but you can't just make a thread like this and not tell us what madness has caused you to actually WANT those things!

Just 4?

GW regularity upends the meta with poor-to-atrocious balance on new releases and only marginally better attempts at fixing it. This isn't an evil company twirling its mustache as it shifts the meta to generate sales (and certainly the evidence never supported that); it's a bunch of primarily narrative gamers who are only now realizing that outside of their group optimization is not a rarity but the norm. Are there benefits associated with that? Yes, absolutely. But we are a loooooong way from a state where imbalance is a net positive for sales. Meta-chasers are less common than people who stop playing because of one-sided matchups. But now that I'm done with my mini rant over awful balance, I do want to say I am very happy with the update. I like almost all of the changes, love the scalpel-not-hammer nerf to unleash hell and heroic recovery. Those two plus the amulet nerf I think put AoS in a noticeably better place just by themselves. But more than that it represents a change in outlook with GW acknowledging that balance is a serious concern and everyone stands to benefit from it being addressed more significantly and more often. There is a lot they didn't fix and/or should have known better than to break in the first place, yet a step in the right direction is exactly that. I am quite happy to forgive mistakes when there is a good-faith effort being made to fix them.

I am a firm no. I have played both 40k and AoS a good bit, and honestly it doesn't make the gameplay more fun. There are a lot of things it could do in theory, but in practice it only adds depth in edge cases of very low str vs very high tough. 40k needs that to represent tanks and anti-tank weapons (whether it does so effectively is another matter) but in a setting like AoS it simply isn't a factor often enough to warrant all the extra rules & stat content. Any arguments surrounding balance are probably good in theory but moot in practice; while GW is making a good effort at improving they are still truly awful at balancing even the simplified blocks of AoS. Yet the biggest factor for me, as a community organizer, is simplicity. It is easier to explain and attract new players with the current layout. AoS needs that, as it does not have the megalithic popularity to draw in players by social gravity like 40k does.

I am a big proponent of game balance, so suffice it to say I am EXTREMELY happy with the recent balance update by GW. Not just at what is in it but I am quite pleased they are making the effort. Big thumbs up to GW!

Got to play several games with the Everwinter Wonderland mysterious terrain rules, gotta say they were a lot of fun. Great combination of theme and practical gameplay, the 'festive' was very fun to utilize!

Thematically they want to give monsters these extra buffs, but mechanically that needs counterplay to counterbalance it. I think they did a reasonably good job on that front, and Hunters is a part of that. A big factor is that most battalions units go into are lackluster by comparison. Heroes go into Command Entorage, then units are left looking for something. Back when the 1/game free command battalions let you double-up on the same ability once per phase they had a unique niche.

Ironjawz were a whole line of new Orruks, and pretty popular at that. What I've seen lately is people getting into Destruction because they like the Kruleboyz plus existing players picking up new models as allies.

Sold a ton of boxes in my area. Thing is we got almost as much as Indomitus for a game with only a fraction of the popularity. I think at this point it is safe to say GW overestimated demand by not understanding the relative popularity between the two games and/or the space marine effect. Still, Dominion has sold multiple times as many boxes as Soul Wars, it has been a vastly more popular launch in my area.

Please no, we have MORE than enough massive models stomping around.

I have my own Nuzlocke. Create a single-drop army, pick second turn, and never take a double. It's like playing the game without cheat codes!

So despite the atrocity that is not including the ability to push enemies into lava (fortunately an easy house rule corrects that error), I am digging the new Warcry rules. I had some concern the special terrain rules would be more complex than fun but they kept things simple and efficient. Also the inclusion of branching campaigns is a great feature I am really excited to have.

Well I dunno about you guys but I am pretty hyped to have some generic marauder sculpts via the new Darkoath warband!

I really, honestly wish I could offer you some optimism here but that just wouldn't be honest. I CAN say that it's not all bad, and avoiding the social equivalent of dangerous terrain is part of life. But yeah, the community is more toxic now than it was at the dawn of 2nd. At least it isn't 40k.

Better yet, give us a more powerful vampire on foot AND keep the current one. We used to be able to take hero-level and lord-level vampires (and a lot of others besides) and I miss that. More importantly though is a vampire on steed. Make it a conversion option from the blood knight kit if need be. But it's dumb that we have entire units of mounted vampires yet the lords suddenly forget how to ride horses.

I believe we will see more and more kits meant to be dual-purpose and be used in TOW. Zombies, skeletons, zombie dogs, blood knights? Those are needed for TOW Vampire Counts. While many AoS armies are unique to AoS, I'll be keeping a close eye on what releases for crossover factions look like.

I would like to suggest that the "No Flaming" rule be amended so it specifies that insults delivered in a passive-aggressive or non-specific manner do not violate the rules. It leads to confusion when the rule says all insulting posts are to be avoided when it is actually just where another user is explicitly pointed out. Moderation has repeatedly shown that flaming someone under the cover of something like 'oh people who have X opinion tend to be terrible' or 'I'm sure no one with any intelligence would hold that opinion'. That kind of flaming is tolerated and the site rules should reflect such.

Eh, I find older lore to be dry. They had a fantasy setting with tones of narrative tools they barely touched. My perception of the lore quality is that is has been getting better (on the Fantasy side) bar the section of AoS first edition where stuff was just getting pulled from the backside. But even during that the writing for a characters and factions was surprisingly good, far better than so much of old fantasy where stories were 'look how awesome this character/army is getting crushing victories left and right until some event happens and it all falls apart instantly'. Battletomes add a lot of cultural depth and context to how the faction acts off the battlefield, stuff that was few and far between in tomes. GW has also made excellent use of a slow-advancing narrative to shift tones between editions. By the time of 8th WHFB lore was basically just trying to find a new way to rehash stuff that had never changed. And of course the whole 'dark gritty' nature of the setting was always an urban legend. All it ever amounted to was 'the good guys are doomed to fail, the bad guys are predestined to win, and nothing can be done about it'. Which to me reads among the most boring, cliche themes a setting can have. What makes AoS fluff seem worse than WHFB is people only referencing the best elements. That stuff sticks in the memory while mediocre or disappointing lore is forgotten. Once the whole body of lore from each game is compared WHFB fluff is revealed for the immense tangle of dead-ends, inconsistencies, and simply bad writing that it is. But there were also a lot of good parts and those are what the community remembers, not all the bad that came with it.

Looking at the new meta watch article, I'm happy to see how the last round of nerfs had a positive impact, and I'm also happy to see that GW isn't simply denying that there are issues.

I miss challenges.

Eliminate it? No, I think pushing it to round 3 is a better alternative for gameplay. But if it is going to result in a bunch of people perfectly happy to sling insults for expressing how their training wheels harm my community then it would be better in the end for it to be gone--along with them. That reality with no double turn? I've lived it. It doesn't look like what the critics are describing. Once the prospect of a come-back double is gone people look for alternate solutions. And find them, in abundance. If you want to see alpha strike lists get utterly wrecked, have a community play without random initiative for a month.

Oh the game without the double 100% works--I have hundreds of games done like that. I know from a wealth of experience the gameplay doesn't break down. That is just hard reality--I have tried it, it works, period. The claim that alpha-strike dominates is objectively false, but that was never really a point in contention because there was never any evidence raised. Only shooting lists billed as alpha strike, which the double empowers as much as solves. But I should have known better than to engage the toxic people, I should have known they don't, won't, understand. What this has done is convince me more than ever that people who support the double do so from a lack of skill in the other ways to win--skills they never needed to develop when the double exists as a crutch. But they are there, alpha strike lists can be easily, crushingly countered with no double involved. The only way to reach a rational conclusion that alpha-strike lists need a double to counter is to be unaware of how to counter them otherwise. When the viewpoint is so based on ignorance it was my mistake to engage it at all. I should have known better.

Ah, this is on me for not communicating clearly. The 40% is not an exact statistic but rather an approximate chance of a 1-2 double occurring (the exact stat being 41.66%). Obviously that chance is not a guarantee that the game is ruined, but then doubles on later turns are also capable of ruining games. But naming a statistic was the wrong choice on my part since it indeed implies a specific occurance when really what I meant was to highlight that while the issue does not hamper the majority of games it is not a small fraction either. That is on me for not communicating properly, my apologies.

I like how the new battletomes introduce counter-play elements. Tools that can be really punishing against skew or gimmick lists like Mirrorshield or the Kruleboyz spell that denies ward saves (totally want to see it used against Gotrek one day).

I realize why my opinion is so different. It's the looks on players faces. I'm at the events, I'm checking in on games in my community. I see the looks on people's faces when double turns happen. You guys support a 'solution' that stasticially unbalanced as many games as it balances, and you don't have to witness players' passion for the game die. Over and over again.