NinthMusketeer

That variable within the formula only applies to Marauders silly.

Marauders are inversely proportional, so be careful what you wish for. Right now their models are hilariously bad but their warscroll hilariously OP. Were they to get a new good looking kit that would inevitably come with a warscroll update which makes them awful. There are arcane equations and specific ritual balances which GW must observe for these things you know.

Presumably basic Orcs & Goblins will be back for Old World, and there is no reason for GW to not dual-purpose them into AoS. Orc models wouldn't even need a new battletome since they fit into Big Waaagh! allegiance.

GW basically came as close to admitting they made a mistake as they could without stating it outright. There was a sudden, dramatic change in the direction of AoS and an unprecedented surge in community involvement for the first time in decades. AoS got massive rules overhauls, battletomes became packed with content, and prices for miniatures dropped (often quite significantly). Start Collecting boxes were introduced as well as yearly point updates and FAQs. It was not some token effort of throwing out a battletome to support old minis, it was a complete revamp in how GW approached business as a whole. People saw that, and that's what brought many of them back. It was as far from a blind loyalty decision as one could possibly be without simply holding a grudge. Brand loyalty is a factor, but it has far shorter limits than GW black knights care to express. The theoretical 'blind loyalist' that buys GW no matter what is rare to the extreme if not nonexistent.

This may not be exactly on point for the thread, but when I get pessimistic about Age of Sigmar or the AoS community I tend to look towards 40k. It very quickly makes me feel that even at their worst things in AoS are reasonably manageable and not that bad 😅

Knowing what I do of Cities players; yeah, I think they would. They are playing the army because they are passionate about it, and murdering that by cutting Cities would create a huge amount of bad blood. Enough to quit GW entirely.

Skaven also come to my mind first. Some of their resin/metals are relatively modern and still look great (warp grinder and arch-warlock, looking at you) but others really need replacement. Jezzails and acolytes are units that are good and people like but do not run as often because they are difficult to convert making third-party the only practical option. And third party Skaven tend not to be all that good. There are also plastic kits that NEED replacement like rat ogors and night runners. Beast of Chaos would be my second notable faction in need of updates. A lot of non-plastic hanging about which, like Skaven, brings suspicions that it may be cut and makes customers have even more apprehension about buying (seriously GW you guys really need to communicate better on this front it is costing you sales) on top of the other problems. They need a new battletome too, while BoC are all about primal chaos that shouldn't extend to their internal balance! And then, again as others have mentioned, Seraphon. A combination of models that are resin & dated and models that are plastic & dated. Skinks have aged pretty well but saurus just don't look good anymore. And saurus knights are simply awful.

Above all, KISS. Remove random initiative from matched, keep it for narrative/open. Failing that, at least push the first roll back to round 3. A simple (read: one paragraph or less) rule to penalize alpha strike without eliminating it. 'Fog of War' that imposes a -1 penalty to shooting Heroes (stacks with Look our Sir) and to charges in the first round could do it. Maybe make it a thing for some scenarios but not others. A decent selection of basic terrain warscrolls. Forests, rocky ground/rubble, obstacles, shallow water, and ruins would do it. Change the current 'overgrown' rule to a simplified 'can see into and out of but not through' format, and make it so fliers only ignore this if both they AND the target fly. Also make it so the fly rule is lost if a move begins or ends in overgrown terrain, because you ain't flying in terrain that dense. Rework ethereal. It doesn't work like it does in the fluff, and it creates balance issues which simply cannot be resolved via points. For starters, making it so units can move through terrain but not enemies as opposed to straight-up fly (units could still be given fly on top of this). Rework battleshock. As others have mentioned it is currently far too easy to simply ignore entirely. And actually mention that it can also represent models being overwhelmed in combat or crumbling rather than just running away. This isn't a core rules change but it is a design philosophy; less MWs, more rend. There are more units (FAR more) that deal MWs than have rend -2 and that is absurd. Abilities that are dealing MWs on hit rolls should transition to either wounding automatically or dealing the MWs from the wound roll instead. Dealing MWs on the hit roll should be extremely rare and limited to units actually designed around the mechanic (spirit hosts, for example). Also, spells don't HAVE to be dealing MWs all the time; they can make normal attacks, or inflict automatic hits/wounds at a specific rend/damage profile. Related to the above; holy ****** stop making abilities that add extra damage or rend on a hit roll of 6. It is irritating because it means those wound rolls have to be made separately and slows down gameplay for no appreciable benefit. Have them happen on the wound roll instead. Refine the narrative realmscape rules. A lot are fun, others are game-deciding on their own for certain matchups. Ditto for the spells (and reducing them down to just three+signature would be nice). Keep the separate matched realmscape rules, having those split off is great. When shooting into melee at a non-monster/war machine, make it so missed shots can hit friendlies. Add keywords for infantry, cavalry, etc. This will help overall rules design a lot. Make 1+ saves rendable, because holy ****** is the way it works now unfun.

Version 1.5 is now up, mainly this is a readability update where I split up paragraphs, added more labels, and re-worded things to be more easily understood. Hopefully I succeeded; from my perspective all the rules are perfectly clear so I have NO IDEA if something is hard to understand unless I get feedback 😅 Awakened Artifacts also got a small update and some clarifications, plus (optional) FFA & alternate-by-phase rules were added. The FFA because they have use for Rampage campaigns, and the alternate-by-phase because they have use in FFA. But as always feel free to adapt whatever portions of RtR you like for your own use! And I am still very happy to hear any feedback you may have!

Skaven have different parts of the army with their own allegiance abilities, traits, and artifacts but can draw freely between them; there is more hard synergy within a clan but more soft synergy from mixing clans. It is a brilliant design which makes both mono-clan and mixed-clan viable.

*cough*petrifax*cough*

The Fyreslayer Lodges should be renamed something like "Clans" IMO, since the sub-factions seem to represent not just the namesake lodge but many closely affiliated descendant lodges.

We are also not mentioning the snippet in the Fyreslayers battletome that is more or less graffiti saying 'prophet of Hashut waz here'.

I can see Lumineth players being justified in feeling cheated, for reasons others have already covered. For DoK, eh... There was never a need to get the campaign book for the new warscroll so it was simply a matter of wanting the different sub-faction and the battalion. Really I would guess that BK:Morathi is more about the fluff for DoK players than anything. I certainly enjoyed reading it. I would also note that BK:Morathi has a bunch of other content for other armies and has the Har Kuron allegiance abilities which will not be in the new DoK battletome. Which itself is coming out in... March? Which means it'll have been 4-5 months between the two, not a long time but not insignificant either.

Just to be clear: for the purposes of this thread I am defining "sub-faction" as just being the optional choices in battletomes like SCE, OBR, Idoneth, etc. I categorize the likes of Cities of Sigmar separately; they MUST pick a free city and the allegiance is designed such that a large portion is supposed to come from that choices. Slaves to Darkness also function like this with their choice of dammed legion. LoN in general is rather dated and a bit of a mishmash of disparate concepts anyways, so also excluded here. Of course if anyone wants to comment on these things they are welcome to, I just want to clearly communicate what I mean when I say "sub-faction".

Fyreslayers pretty much get half their allegiance abilities via sub faction.

Nothing wrong with the likes of Chaos Warriors, they are just a unit which looks like a blunt instrument but actually has a bit of a learning curve. A skilled StD player can do some horrible things to people using nothing more than Warriors + support. Will it get crushed by an optimised tourney list? Yes. There is a term for that; reasonably balanced. As for marauders not being OP, I don't know how to begin to approach that. Will have to agree to disagree.

Back in the days of yore (known as 1st edition to you young whippersnappers) sub-factions began as meta-battalions. You had to first take a normal battalion(s), then you could take a sub-faction battalion including it (with enough room for the rest of your army to go in as well). Everyone in the battalion would then get the sub-faction's benefit. Back in these days sub-factions were something you needed to build your whole list around, with many not even possible at 2000 points due to the amount of units needed simply to meet the requirements. First with Kharadron Overlords and fully with Daughters of Khaine we moved to the modern incarnation of sub-factions; free to pick as a part of allegiance, a 'cost' of a fixed artifact and/or command trait that may be sub-par, and a small side benefit for the trouble. However the concept of sub-factions as an optional side-grade quickly vanished and today they are more or less mandatory for factions that have them. While an army can technically be run without a sub-faction they are almost always at a significant disadvantage for doing so. Additional artifacts can be gained via battalions, the current state of sub-factions has led to the command trait tables for those armies being mostly useless (since they are replaced by a mandatory trait anyways). Those, along with other elements like the customizable code for Kharadron Overlords, have been made into what I call "wallpaper"--it is there to add décor but never actually used. What do you think about this? Should GW abandon non-factioned forces and make sub-factions mandatory for armies that use them? Should they go further and have them work like dammed legions and free cities*? Or should sub-faction benefits be scaled back? Should a cost be added to them so that going non-faction is viable? Or maybe some other idea could work? *For reference; Cities of Sigmar armies have about half of their allegiance abilities as universal across the whole book, but must also choose a specific city which fills in the other half of their allegiance abilities including artifacts and command traits. Slaves to Darkness have dammed legions which work the same way.

Oh absolutely there's plenty of resources for StDs to draw on, I'm just cracking a joke over how comedically OP the marauder warscroll is.

Thank you! I am really glad that others are enjoying this content.

I think you are misspelling "marauders".

If something is new and OP it gets used frequently and is easily noticed. If something is new and UP it barely gets used and easily goes unnoticed. The result is many people only see OP new releases, not realizing all the new releases they AREN'T seeing. When one actually goes through releases and re-releases it is clear there is no correlation between new stuff being particularly better. There is simply an average power creep over time, something that happens in new releases and existing content (via point updates) simultaneously.

It didn't, because the White Dwarf Syll'Esque host exists and doubles depravity generation within 12" of them. I was literally there watching it happen.

You must have a much nicer matched play meta than mine.

...pardon? I was originally responding to a concern over playability difficulties of mass-cultist armies, explaining that they won't be a thing in the current environment so it's not something to be worried about.