NinthMusketeer

That's because of the double-turn, not because of an inherent ranged-melee imbalance. A double turn is more advantageous to shooting/magic armies because the enemy gets no chance to fight back. This will naturally skew overall results in those armies' favor. An edition change isn't really needed to do what a six-word house rule can accomplish; deploy first go first, fixed initiative.

TBH I am a bit overwhelmed with the pace of releases and am quite glad if things are slowing down for 2021. But then I do AoS and 40k. Regardless, I can see how someone would see AoS as somewhat of a neglected second child. It obviously does not get nearly as much attention or resources as 40k. And for my part I say thank goodness, because the attention AoS DOES get is clearly more caring than 40k. Don't get me wrong; I am sure the 40k devs are passionate about the game, but they have a lot more to do in the same amount of time and it shows. Look at Psychic Awakening vs Broken Realms. They are polar opposites. PA did almost nothing story-wise with only a handful of plot points across all nine books that mattered, the content was largely a dump of new stuff that was mostly too niche or too bad to be viable on the table, but the stuff that was good made the books mandatory because it was a free upgrade that an army was objectively worse for not having. Broken Realms has meaningful story developments, content that is both thematic and viable, and the overwhelming majority of that content is totally optional to boot; players lose nothing by not having it (bar Idoneth, who do need it but receive some welcome and needed updates in the process). So ultimately I am pretty happy with AoS' state as 2nd-favorite.

I'm not. People don't just start games in a situation where one 9+ on 2d6 will seal the victory; one needs to create that situation through their own gameplay.

It did, we just didn't get them.

Double-post, oops!

I'm not intending to express it that way. An early game double-turn is just having the win given to you, a late game one is the same unless the result is already way in one side's favor. It is totally random and no action taken by the player affects it. Compare to winning a game via a 9+ charge; -You positioned the unit in such a way that making the 9+ charge will get them into a combat that allows you to win the game. There are a TON of decisions which involve only player action and no random elements just to get to this point, let alone semi-random elements of risk management. -Your opponent either did not take action to prevent it or was unable to. This is another consideration with a huge number of factors, many not at all random, factoring in. -The game state as a whole has reached a point where that charge into that combat will determine victory. Even if it was a turn-1 alpha strike this still involves a load of deployment decisions being made on both sides in reaction to the context of the game. Ultimately I think you are selling yourself short when you say you won from a single roll. The reality is that when 'one roll wins the game' there have been a massive number of non-random decisions leading up to that point, YOU got yourself to the position where that roll could win the game. Were there random factors? Absolutely! But you managed those, made decisions, and reacted appropriately. The situation where one roll will decide things does not arrive out of nowhere. Except with a double-turn.

Those have bell curves of probability and multiple factors affecting them involving player choice. The double turn just happens. I would legitimately consider it an improvement to ditch initiative in favor of rolling d6 at the end of the game; on a 3-4 the result stands, on a 5-6 player A wins a major victory, on a 1-2 player B wins a major victory. Players like me don't have to deal with the double turn while players like you can still have a game result overturned completely at random, and everyone wins.

There is a certain amusement factor in the argument that 'yeah the double turn can break a balanced game, but it can also even out an unbalanced one!' As if that is a merit and they aren't just rewording the double turn being a completely random mechanism.

I don't enjoy the double turn because of how easy it is to win with it. If I am building for matched play I know that the ideal is to go for low-drop to ensure turn choice, choose second, then play every round assuming the double turn won't happen. Why? If it does I know I will have such an overwhelming advantage that any preparation hardly matters. There is no 'strategic' element of planning what to do if the double does or doesn't happen, it's just planning what to do if it doesn't because if it does I just win. But it doesn't feel like a win, because I didn't earn it. Even if I was going to win anyways it feels hollow, heavily-considered tactics and plans rendered moot because victory was handed to me on a platter. Like getting half way through a boss fight then the boss just freezes up and lays down while being beaten to death. I prefer to lose a game because I didn't take the double than win because I did.

Right now the LoS block of forests (wildwood, overgrown terrain feature) is weird because if you or the target can fly it's ignored. I get the idea is that fliers can see over it but... that doesn't really make sense. A unit within a cluster of trees would be *less* visible from above, not more. IMO, fliers should only ignore the LoS if both they and the target are outside of the terrain piece in question. Units should lose the Fly rule while they are inside forests for that matter; they have to land to go in.

@Eldarain in a 1v1 it's the same thing either way. @Sarouan the design and balance of AoS warscrolls is based off units being able to fight in two combat phases per round but only shoot one. Doing only one combat phase would be, in effect, doubling the strength of shooting and magic. The dynamic of the charge phase does change, in specific situations it can be extremely different tactics than normal. Unfortunately addressing that element is more complex than it's worth (I've tried). These rules work because they can be explained to someone in less than five minutes and be readily understood without needing to reference them, but that does carry sacrifices to keep simplicity. Regardless I appreciate your commentary!

To be honest I wrote these for Road to Renown but they are worth having a thread for on their own. I have played using the below dozens of times and can confirm from experience that they are extremely effective, particularly because they are simple enough to explain to someone right before a game. Free-For-All Matches: To play a free-for-all match, each player rolls off and the player with the highest result chooses their deployment zone, followed by the player with the next highest, and so on. Each player then deploys their entire force in the same order, and this order is used for initiative in the first battle round. Each battle round consists of one turn for each player following the normal rules, with the exception that in the combat phase a unit is only eligible to fight if it is within 3” of any enemy unit(s) and at least one of those units belongs to the player whose turn it is. Initiative: When determining initiative for a battle round, the player with the highest result may choose to either keep their place in the initiative order or ‘pass’ and go to the end. The next highest player may then choose to either keep or pass, and so on until each player has chosen and the order determined. This initiative order is also used for other sequential elements in the round, such as picking units to fight in the combat phase. The current player goes first, followed by the next player in the initiative order, and so on (this includes ‘looping’ back to the highest initiative after the lowest, when needed, so that every player is accounted for). Alternate By Phase: An alternative to the normal sequence of play is alternating by phase, particularly useful in free-for-all matches because it prevents any one player from waiting a long period between actions. Using this method the player who is first in the initiative order takes their hero phase, then the next player takes their hero phase, and so on. Once each player has taken their hero phase the round progresses to the movement phase which proceeds in the same manner, and so on with subsequent phases. Note that while there is only a single battleshock phase it uses the accumulated casualties of the whole round. Second Combat: In an exception to the normal phase sequence there is a second combat phase immediately after the first which uses reverse initiative order. Abilities that expire at the end of a player turn or which rely on a type of move (other than pile-in) being performed in the same turn do not apply during the second combat phase. For example, an ability which grants benefits if the unit made a charge move the same turn can only grant them such during the first combat phase, not the second. Please let me know if you have any comments, feedback, or questions!

Slaves to Darkness battletome references Azorgh by name so they aren't forgotten at least.

I think any system based off players putting 2500+ points on the board is going to be a niche product at best no matter how good it is. The impracticality of fielding that much stuff gets in the way of the appeal (literally, more often than not).

I'd say you are vastly overthinking it Sarouan; people just want more balanced point costs, GW to actually do the math when designing warscrolls, and maybe for a handful of obviously broken artifacts/abilities to be fixed. They don't mention specific changes because they are rather self-evident. Going back to what I said before, the concerns you have will never occur and I would say you have nothing to worry about. That is simply not how GW designs games, nor is it realistic to expect any company to create such a 'stale' balance with the number and pace of releases. Sidenote; if you want a lopsided narrative-driven scenario there are TONS of them across the various GW releases. They outnumber matched play scenarios (by far). Or you can use the regular realmscape rules to throw a wrench into normal matched play scenarios. Or use the open play battle generator. Even in a perfect balance state these things would still be there, and still throw things out of whack to get the cinematic effect you are describing. For players not looking to find well-balanced matches the tools GW provides are mind-boggling in their quantity, diversity, and quality. For players who ARE looking to find a well-balanced match... good luck. Literally, because double-turn is a thing.

I think getting into high-level conceptual discussion of balance is losing sight of the reality. When people argue in support of balance in an AoS thread, they are saying they want AoS to have better balance than it currently does. Anything talking about an ideal or near-ideal state of balance has already veered off to a different topic entirely, because it simply is not going to happen in the foreseeable future. It goes from a discussion of desired changes to a discussion of a theoretical game state that could not exist until multiple years from now at minimum. Such a topic is entirely valid and worthy of discussion, but it also a distinctly separate topic from discussion on alterations of the present game state.

@House rules making things worse: if they so, people change them until they don't. That's how house rules work. @Balance makes a stale meta: it theoretically could. But it also absolutely wouldn't. Even a well balanced AoS would still have an exploitable meta--there is way too much stuff in AoS to render it all balanced, and releases hit way too fast for even an honest concentrated effort by GW to keep everything on par all the time. To say nothing of other meta-shifting factors. @Double turn needed to counter alpha strike. No. Roll off before deployment, winner chooses to deploy first go first or deploy second go second, and initiative remains fixed. If the alpha strike player is going first they will have everything deployed before the second player puts their army down--allowing the second player to deploy in a manner to counter the benefits of the alpha strike. Is it a perfect counter? Of course not; that's why you still have to play the game. Besides, for every player winning off alpha strike there's one losing to being doubled on round 1-2 or 2-3 by a shooting/magic army. There is no net benefit even if the double WERE needed to counter alpha strike. And besides even that, the counter to a strong type of army build is blind luck on a roll off? And this is coming from a player who spent all of first edition and some of second beating down people at tournaments using the double turn. I know the advantages of getting it very well; it is the easiest and least satisfying way I have ever had to win games.

The ones who want imbalance are the meta chasers, it's right in the name after all! Experienced tourney players have more to gain from continuous meta shake, because they are the ones ready to pounce on hot cheese as soon as it appears (which, for the record, is largely at random--not specifically new releases). But casual players getting utterly crushed is a great way to lose those customers. Warmahordes has shown us how well games without the casual playerbase do. At any rate, I think we can all agree it will be pretty difficult to really analyze things overall, because of the pandemic. Even with the situation presumably getting back to normal sometime in 2021 the rebound will be affecting behavior. It'll be halfway through 2022 before the big picture is intact again. In the meantime I doubt GW will be shaking up their standard routine in regards to balancing. But who knows? They have pulled some crazy stuff before, sometimes good sometimes bad.

@Enoby, I think you make a lot of great points, especially about balance getting better over time for AoS. Despite a massive inflation of options the game has remained at approximately the same level of balance overall, which is a notable feat in itself. I also agree that the internal balance of options within books is a bigger issue, because while I enjoy and fully support GW adding more options that only counts for so much when about two thirds of them are irrelevant for their inferiority. @Greybeard you are issuing a passive-aggressive accusation towards me at the same time you are asking to chat amicably. Not only do I find your implication unjustified, but hypocritical given the nature of the request; clearly you are not willing to abide by your own suggestion. You asked a question, I answered. Disagreeing with my answer doesn't mean it is uncivil.

Because MTG is so completely different from Warhammer in so many ways that we would be better served comparing AoS to Starcraft. Because for every other wargame on the market balance is a priority--why are they doing that if they would be better off with an imbalanced system? Because every wargame, even GW, has seen its popularity suffer in the long term when its balance has degraded. When the meta shakes up it generates sales relatively immediately, the consequences of continuously imbalanced meta can take years to become apparent. Because we all know that GW would not get away with the balance swings (and prices) they do if they weren't the most popular by a huge margin. Because 'baked in by design' implies an active inclusion of imbalance. They went from spending no resources on balance (AoS release) to a considerable amount (yearly GHB, frequent FAQ/errata). If they wanted more imbalance they would scale back the amount of effort put into balancing, not spend additional effort to put imbalance back in to the system after spending effort to remove it.

If the Kirby-era mentality was working so well, they wouldn't have changed it. Or become the best performing stock on the London market when they did. Even the worst imbalances we face now would be merely average by the standards of the late Kirby era. AoS was released with no balance at all!

They could, but some part of GW management must see that the current system is working and feel it does not need to be improved. That it could easily work better... meh. I imagine they are blinded by the short-term sales benefit of meta shake-ups.

I just want to know if Legion of Azgorh will be continued or cut. I want to make the army and am willing to pay for it but as things stand I don't know if that army would be invalid in 6 months.

Hey Overread remember when people were trying to defend *wounds count* as a legitimate balance mechanism? 😅

You really can't, though. Even PL is better than eyeballing it for all but the most experienced players, and even then many are surprisingly biased.