NinthMusketeer

Let's not miss the forest for the trees here; people are willing to put up with Warhammer rules quality for a number of reasons and the quality itself is one of them. GW writes a lot of bad rules and really pushes the boundary for how mind-blastingly inane something can be, but they also write a lot of good rules and often push the bar on stuff that may not be the most balanced but is simply FUN. GW understands that competitive play is very visible but also a very small fraction of the game. A wargame can't run on competitive players alone; it lives and dies by its casual community. Take the AoS hero & monster actions. While they can and are exploited to cause issues it is hard to deny that outside of those minorities (and even within them to some extent) they are a heck of a lot of fun to play with. More sane rules writers may never have produced such a crazy concept. Warhammer has always thrived on a certain level of madness. And I feel the above leads into why a lot of fan comps fail; they are so focused on what Warhammer does poorly that they forget the point is to better highlight what Warhammer does well.

I was able to fix up the classic PtG system just as some dude stacking up house rules for flgs leagues. I wouldn't say it's easy but it is definitely doable. T9A was plagued with issues from the start IIRC but I feel it fell into a classic trap; they forgot to KiSS.

Yeah. I did a thread on here recently just showing a few house rule comps for casual play (not even changing any rules) and the response was overwhelmingly toxic. I was immediately accused of just nerfing things I personally didn't like, multiple people popped in to say how much they don't like house rules without even engaging in discussion, and those posts were further reinforced with likes from others. Granted that's just one anecdote, but if that is how people will treat an honest effort to improve the play experience of others it's no surprise there's little will to take action.

The whole concept is just an urban legend; the evidence overwhelmingly shows there is no intentional buffing/nerfing of models to support sales.

Given that I specifically took time to address the tournament data and account for its place in the overall picture, can you explain exactly how I was invalidating that position?

Tournaments are currently dominated by a meta focusing on fewer large heroes that need to maintain mobility and/or are casting multiple spells already. That is a hit to the effectiveness of cogs at the top tiers from two sides, and the icing on the cake is that the meta is extremely punishing to small characters who can be easily sniped by sentinels, snakes, and others. Which is to say the tournament meta could hardly be designed to be more inhospitable to cogs. But tournaments account for ~15% of available entries, if that. To raise up tournaments as an example of the game entire is to imply the other 85% isn't relevant. To defend that implication with 'but there's no statistics on casual armies!' is both untrue and particularly dismissive of people describing their own experience. It comes across as a sentiment of 'if your experience doesn't exist on a data chart it isn't valid' veiled under talk of technicalities. Piled on top of that is how plainly the potency of cogs is displayed on paper, something that was evident and commented upon from the moment the new warscroll was out and now has plenty of people backing it up with real-world experience describing how yes, it does work that way in practice. The icing on the cake was his 'it isn't OP because people will mess up using it' argument which speaks to a dismissive mentality towards other players in general. Really, the only evidence that cogs are not overpowered is that they don't show up in tournament winning lists. And I very much hope no one needs to explain why the claim 'if it doesn't win tournaments it's not overpowered' is nonsense.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was just some mistake where it was meant to affect only one wizard (like the old cogs), no one caught it, and they are too stubborn to fix it.

Going by the precedent set with previous AoS rules expansions, yes they will be carried forward. Generally there are small updates here and there but the bulk of the content is preserved.

@Zeblasky I don't want to turn this into a discussion about the preferred use of handgunners last edition, so suffice it to say that while we may have different opinions on what the unit WAS I am certainly on the same page as you with what the unit IS. And that change does go further to, for me the ability to 'double up' on a command ability in the same phase was what made the free-command-ability core battalions viable. Without that they are just something I'd use only because it's free and I have an extra leader + two artillery sitting around. Between command entourage and the Matched battalions leaders, troops, and behemoths have better places to be.

The problem with so many endless spells is that making them worthwhile to an average army means they are total cheese for armies that can exploit them, while making them balanced for the armies that get the most use makes them worthless to everyone else. Different endless spells are worth different amounts of points between armies, and not in a minor manner that can be overlooked but by several orders of magnitude. One army may have no problem paying 100 points for a spell that others would not take for 20. This could be overcome by careful attention to balance and clever rules writing coupled with judicious use of errata, but...

Then stop acting like your perspective is the only valid one.

Why yes, because most tournament winning lists of a single army do not use it it must not be that bad! /s C'mon, at least show some respect for the people discussing this. And to answer your question: YES. It is completely broken. It could be seen in 0.00% of winning tournament lists and STILL be broken because the topic is not exclusively restricted to competitive play. Easy to get rid of? A smart player will be getting rid of it themselves so that it cannot be unbound at the start of their subsequent hero phase and thus block them from casting it. Being easy to get rid of actually makes it stronger. There is no downside to attempting to cast it because a failure to cast Cogs would almost certainly have failed to cast anything else while a success means immediately getting that spell back, plus another for each wizard within (not wholly within) 6". There is nothing in AoS that comes even remotely close to offering the same level of battlefield effectiveness for 45 points.

If you cast cogs and the opponent unbinds it, they would have unbound whatever other spell one would have attempted. Either way that spell isn't doing anything. The difference is the opponent NEEDS to unbind cogs because one simply cannot survive Tzeentch getting that spell off. Even if it never successfully casts just by taking choice away from the opponent there is tactical value. But let's be honest; this is Tzeentch. They are going to get it off. If unbinds are really a concern have blue scribes cast it on a d6 roll of 2+.

Eh, sometimes it isn't a choice between stand & shoot or unleash hell; it's just stand & shoot or nothing. I agree that crossbows are better though, hangunners really relied on stacking hit buffs to be on par with them. The rend doesn't mean as much anymore either.

Woa there this is Sylvaneth we are talking about, let's not start throwing out hyperbolic phrasing such as "good"!

I'm sorry for your loss. At least you have endless spell revenant cheese!

So I'm going to come back to this here as an example leading to a larger point. Originally, AaronWilson made a post simply stating that he does not like house rules and does not use them. I questioned as to why he was posting in a thread explicitly about house rules and got this response. What he posted is not discussion. It was a statement, and one that added nothing to the thread. Going to a rumor thread and posting "I don't listen to rumors" is not discussion. Going to a narrative thread and posting "I don't play narrative" is not discussion. It is trolling. I still did not express any 'attitude' but he is coming back here painting my response as emotional rather than a rational question. And I see this repeating. People are coming in to post that they don't like house rules, people are painting my house rules as being personally-driven based on no evidence whatsoever. I put a lot of time and testing behind these. I never implement house rules based on what I personally dislike; I collect feedback and see what is bothering people across my community. To come in and unilaterally dismiss me as someone just trying to nerf the things that cause me problems on the table is an insult. It is a baseless assumption with no backing and not even any reasoning. All of the rules I posted are broad, game-wide, and cannot be rationally stated to pick out a certain army or armies in particular. To skip evidence, to skip reasoning, and go straight to 'this is subjective your opinion is bad' is an insult, doubly so for all of the effort that is actually behind this. Going back to the quoted example, yes, there apparently IS a need for attitude 'buddy' because multiple people are coming into a thread dedicated solely to improving the play experience of others with no purpose other than smearing it. No, that does not mean I do not want to hear critique. It means posting 'I don't like house rules' or 'these house rules for casual play are inappropriate for competitive play' is not critique. This is been the most souring, disgusting experience I've had on the forum. I can only hope the mods see it as something that needs to be prevented from repeating.

I didn't mean to express that you were the source, I am sorry if it came across that way. I do think the change of 5 models to 6 would be perfect, because it is really the 6-man units that are suffering.

These PtG games were at 1500-2000 points, I shudder to think about what things would look like at 1k... I do think point adjustments would be the correct way to handle the hero-monster overlap, and see the related house rule as a temporary measure to hold things over in the meantime. I will look forward to it

Some examples and reasoning as to why such extremely high-shooting armies are common at casual play levels would be appreciated regardless. I'll be honest; at this point in the thread I think the very concept of house rules is attracting the most toxic members of the community who are just here to take a dump on the discussion rather than provide anything constructive. There is critique, then there is coming into a thread about house rules, posting to say you don't like house rules, then getting aggressive when someone asks you why. There is raising concerns about unintended consequences, then there is immediately and exclusively applying these to tournament play as a straw man. There is expressing an opinion, then there is loading posts with passive-aggressive language and claiming 'what no I didn't mean it!' when called out. This forum gets more like Dakka every day.

Can you provide some specific examples of lists that are, as you said, sniping a Maw Crusha turn 1? And can you elaborate on why you feel these lists are commonplace at the casual level?

@Scurvydog they are indeed for casual play. Is there anything specific that suggested otherwise? I would like to know so I can edit it.

I'd say maybe 1 in 10 matches have been decided by grand strategy, as a rough estimate of my experience. Would definitely be interested to hear what others have found.

I completely agree with you that it is an issue and I would change it if I could. The reason I have not addressed it is because my focus is to only work within the existing rules. Note how all of the house rules I posted can and do happen in the game already (the majority of matches don't have a 1-2 double, for example). Dealing with coherency would mean allowing things that are not possible within the existing rules.

In my defense; that was the way he was treating me, so I assumed it was the way he wanted to be treated.