Zeblasky

I am quite sorry for that, mate. I haven't yet a chance to play with my army on the table, but new edition is quite more lucky for me, due to my army being based around Sisters of the Watch and 3 monsters (Dreadlord, Annointed on frost and Treelord) x) Although I can still get killed by new Sister points.

Just read in Cities subforum about an amazing idea, that you can do now - Priest with Curse + Sisters of the watch, MW on 6 to hit and to wound, both in addition to normal damage. Would be quite unreliable and hard to pull off without double turn (Curse range and answer value are quite limiting), but damn, 10 Sisters could do ~6 mortal wounds with this.

Last main things left right now are points and warscroll changes. Wonder when they will be up for preview.

So, we got some good things and some bad things. Good is that we get more CPs, and Cities like to have a lot of CPs. Having some decent ways to boost CP generation in addition to this makes us very liberal with CP usage, thus making us stronger. New CAs are very good for us as well - boosting out shooting is always nice, giving Dreadlord on a dragon +1 to hit feels extremely valuable (his hit rolls can be quite swingy), and making 20-30 Sisters of the Watch with no buffs an unchargeable bastion for the price of 1 CP seems quite strong as well. Bad thing is that any CA can be used only once per phase. Unless our Cities CAs get FAQed, here goes my dream of Strike then melt Awaying 2-3 units every battle round. And even then you can be denied a 3 inch charge for your single unit with your opponent Redeploy and then still get shot to bits with your opponent Unleash Hell. Phoenixes with Annointed will be invaluable as overwatch breakers. But another good thing is that Redeploy command is quite good for our screens. Another good thing is that with new Warlord batalion (which I believe we can take multiple times), we can get more enhancements, thus more of those great Cities artifacts. Our monsters (especially hero monsters) got stronger, but so did every other monster and hero in the game. Still, Annointed on Frost Phoenix in Living City potentially healing 1+2D3 wounds every battle round would be quite an unkillable bird. By the way, the intersting thing about modifiers right now is that it's only ROLLS can't be modified by more than +-1. If you opponent has -1 ho hit, +2 to hit is still useful. If you're under attack by -2 rend, +3 to your save is still useful. So buff stacking is still quite useful, just less so than before and more situational. And that's why I love Sisters of the Watch btw - they largely don't care about such things now due to how they work.

So no rules for enhancing melee fighting in multiple ranks? Well then, it's going to be okay for most infantry - a nerf, but a minor one, if you position them right, which can be supplemented with abundant CP buffs. But for cavalry and monstrous infantry... Not great.

By the way, there was another intersting topic here. Let me say it first, I have nothing against the physical books, in fact I quite like them for good visuals and all extra content. But! All faction rules being behind a paywall is actually an abysmal thing. You have all the right in the world to sell books with all the pretty art and extra lore material, you can demand that people can play in tourneys only with official models. Honestly, sure, you can even demand that a person who wants to play an army must have that army battletome, physically or digitally bought (even if this is going slightly too far for my liking). But you must provide all the factions matched play rules for free. An average person doesn't want to buy 23 extra battletomes to see what rules for other factions are and what he actually has to prepare for. And I am one of those people that want to have a good understanding of opponent faction before facing him. Now then, what other ways are there for learning other faction rules? The most obvious is just learning them with expirience, by playing tournaments and checking rules together with an opponent. Decent, but not all that efficient, you don't have much time to think, it's all in your memory, and rules change overtime, leaving you with outdated experience. Looking at videous of different battle reports? Better, but still cumbersome. Looking for rules explanations? 1d4chan for example have good tactic pages on every faction, but their wording is not as precise as the rules are, sometimes leading to questions on "how exactly does this or that work?", and those pages can still be considered as borderline piracy by some. So yea, if you are a new player, that want to properly be prepared and be knowledgable of all rules, or even if you are an experienced player, that want to do some brainstorming and deepen your game knowledge, your most effective and simple way to do so is piracy. And it's not that hard to remedy this situation. Just make all matched play relative material (abilities, spells, warscrolls, etc) to be free and consolidate it in a single and constantly updated document. It does not invalidate books, as you still get quite a lot of other extra material in them in a physical form. But it would solve A LOT of quite unnesesary problems, like inability to update certain things in time. It would also give new players a lot more material to learn from, giving them a better understanding of the game beforehand, leading to a better starting army composition, less frustration and much better new players retention. So, yea, I guess it's my wish for AOS 4.0 then, heh. At least we already have general core rules for free, that's a start.

So, a bit late, but let's talk about the idea that core shooting rules are bad. First, I'll have to repeat the usual fact about the shooting - ask for examples of OP shooting, and it's always Lumineth, Kharadon, Seraphon. All this while Cities have Sisters of the Watch - damage per point one of the best unbuffed shooting units in the entire game AND with overwatch. They also have Irondrakes, which at one point you could buff up so much, that 30 of them damage wise could solo an entire enemy army off the board (and I am not joking here). But do why you see them so rarely on the board and why a lot of people barely aware that they exist? Because in order to use the effectively, you need to teleport them to their targets, they don't want to do a basic move. And that was quite expensive and unreliable, especially due to auto dispells. So damage and focus fire are not main problems with shooting, especially when big potential damage comes with serious drawbacks. Usually problems with shooting balance come from too powerful combination of high and/or reliable damage, high range, high mobility and survivability. Kharadon has extreme mobility, good range and high damage. Their tankiness though point wise is not too great, leading to "kill everything or lose" meta. Limineth instead can reliably hit anything almost anywhere from a backline safety, leading more to an NPE situation, while being quite tame damage wise; their main problem is an ignore terrain rule, which is, well, questionable. And Seraphone overbuffed skinks have everything going for them, potential wise transforming from 240 point unit into a ~600 points of shooting tanky mobile cute lizards of doom; their stacking buffs are very reliable and you get all of them almost always. So all of those problems are not created because of core rules. They are created because of wascrolls or battletomes giving some units too much of everything. Too much power, not enough drawbacks or risks. There is a lot of other very solid shooting in this game, that has enough going for them with a certain setup without having too much power or being too abusive. There are also quite a few shooting units that are actually quite underpowered (Cygors anyone?) and need direct combat buffs and/or better rules to be competitive. It's just the usual situation of OP, UP and balanced, nothing new. But even if you were to discard anything I said above, just ask yourself - what problems that are caused by shooting are impossible to fix with warscroll or battletome changes and require only core rules changes? Sure, with some core rules changes you could make shooting more diverse and interesting, but that would also make the game more complex.

A small reason to take battlemage on griffon then? x)

Btw, I wonder why they gave so much lore about new Cities, even gave Cities related terrain, but haven't revealed any new gameplay details for them. Seems a bit... Weird.

Well, while handgunners and Sisters (especially Sisters) have very strong shooting, when on inbuild overwatch (or in melee for that matter) handgunners get -1 to Hit, while Sisters lose half of their attacks. With UH handgunners can basically overwatch twice if charged or get a long range overwatch once. While Sisters with UH can either get a long range overwatch with all of their shots on -1 to hit, or, if they get charged, they shoot half of their usual shots with -1 to hit, and half of their shots without. Funnily enough, Sisters get 1 more attack in the second case, due to the unit champion always having +1 attack and basically doing 2 half power attack actions in a row in the charge phase. So charging handgunners or Sisters directly now became almost twice as deadly, but Sisters long range UH is especially deadly if compared to others. As to why they weren't quite meta now, well, because they pay for their inbuild overwatch, if compared to other CoS ranged units.

A bit too late here, but if you actually want a melee game, go 40k. I heard a lot that melee there is the meta right now x)

While most of your post is correct, it did not start that long ago. Cities release introduced some strong shooting, but CoS remained more of combined arms faction, and they were not meta defining. Most people started ranting about the shooting meta only when new Seraphon tome was released, and it was just a year ago.

Oh, Unleash hell is basically a longer range and slightly weaker overwatch. Which can be shot with full power (not losing extra attacks or other bonuses) if it's a screen that get charged, and not a shooting unit itself. AND you can do it multiple times if you have enough CPs. Wow this is such a strong buff to any shooting, you just can't charge in. Yea, even for me, this is too much across the board. Now, big brains time, does it stacks with usual charge overwatch, that units like Handgunners and Sisters of the Watch have?

There is a difference, when some units gets MW on some of their attacks on their warscroll, and when the whole army gets MW for most of it attacks as allegiance ability. MW from warscrolls were somewhat rare and pricy, but now we will have 2 armies that have MW almost everywhere, while Stormcast deal a bit more of MW as well MWs are not something special anymore, just another way to deal damage, and soon there will be more ways to mitigate them specifically as well. Which is kinda... Eh?

Kruleboyz have MW allegiance ability just like Lumineth to cause MW on 6+ or 5+? Ugh, even if it's on to wound, this is definetly too much MW for this game. I guess they have no new creative ideas to throw around, so let's make new units with always reliable MW DPS, and then later throw in some factions with allegiance ability that ignores MW on a 4+, that will spice things up.

Well, in a vacuum, it's a weird change that will making fighting in melee much worse for big blocks of infantry, which would be quite an unneeded nerf. And it does create some formation challenges for certain units. But, as Verminlord said, it could be a part of a wider change. So I'd wait and see what will happen before starting to distribute torches and pitchforks. There could definetly be additional rules or even price changes that will make sence of this. I do wonder though if 2.5 mm bases coherency rules will be FAQed as well to consider those bases theoretically slightly bigger than an inch for coherency rule only, as to prevent single file spagetti lines. Would be a weird fix, but still.

This pretty much means that endless spells are back on the menu (unless there will be a severe points increase), especially if you have tanky wizards to use them with. Monster Wizards can now now have a Lifeswarm pet to heal themselfs each turn, which seems very strong. Wish Cities had good Monster Wizards though... Having at least a single priest in a army now seems to be a good idea as well, even if you won't benefit from his warscroll prayers.

Then please name the overperforming shooting units, that hit too hard or too well for their point cost if compared to melee. Then compare them to a list of 3 factions that I've said are in need of nerf to their shooting potential.

I've never said anything about removing "within 3" limit for ranged when in melee combat (neither I think this is a good idea), so this argument is quite irrelevant to this discussion. As for close combat, a crossbowmen against lets say a armoured Chaos warrior has much better chances of surviving by trying to shoot his crossbow in warrior face instead of trying to hit him with his small dagger. Fire discipline is also a thing.

Not only Kharadon, Lumineth and Seraphon have shooting units. And when you have a few overperforming shooting armies, you don't nerf shooting across the game, making OP shooting balanced and the rest of the currently balanced shooting bad. You nerf overperforming armies instead. Why such themes in general are such a hard concept to understand on this forum? Also, I can imagine quite well how a single unit of aetherwings in melee with 30 crossbowmen would look immersion breaking for some with such ruleset. You have just 3 birds (40 pts), that are stopping 30 men (300 pts) from firing at least for 2 battle rounds, possibly 3. And you can't even shoot them off with another unit, because they are in melee with your troops. Can you see why rebalancing would be a must together with such a rule change? The thing about support heroes is very tricky though. You don't want them to be dead at the sight of shooting and magic MW spam, but you don't want them to be not worth the effort to focus down either. Hard to find the middle ground here.

Here's the thing though. If you give units penalties for shooting into friendly melee and make it possible to shut down unit shooting completely by tying it down in melee, you will have to severely BUFF current shooting in order to compensate for such a weakness. So in some cases, you could shut down enemy shooting too early (like with a few aetherwings for example) and remove a lot of power from an opponent, and in some cases overwhelming and concentrated shooting will be able to easily kill enemy forces wave by wave, thus leading to even more one sided games and less fun for both melee and shooting lists. So while such rules are indeed would be more immersive, they would also be much less fun on a table. As for the for the rules change, it's kinda funny how my Living City army with 3 Monsters (2 of which are Heroes) and 5 battleline units became so much stronger with the new rules (just waiting on batalions info). I will probably add an Adjutant into an army now though instead of an extra CP on the start. Having potentially 4 CPs per turn is good, but having a 4+ chance for another one seems even better because now there is so much more useful things you can use CPs for. So there will never be too many CPs.

Oh, Battle Trait, Command Ability and all Command Traits all look quite awesome. "Cunning foe" is an amazing trait for Dreadlord with Lance and Shield. You get +1 to save, +1 to hit (this does not affect dragon attacks though, right?), -1 to hit, constant charge bonus for lance and you can dance around enemy army with your flying 14 movement. Having no way to heal your Dragon besides Lifeswarm is a bit of a downside here though. "In the right place" though is amazing, if a bit random trait as well - the ability to deploy your big block Irondrakes or Sisters with 100% guarantee in front of the enemy turn 1 is pretty great. Add this City battle trait for an almost free +1 to hit, add some extra buffs (especially for Irondrakes), and you've got a very effective deepstrike. The fact that you potentially can also redeploy not 1, but 2 or even 3 units is quite great as well - may be you can move another shooting block this way, or a wall of Eternal Guard spears on the far away objective. Btw, I guess that it's a usual 9 Away from the enemy anywhere on the map deepstrike type of thing? "Darkest secrets" is quite specific CA, but it's a great Silence ability IF you have some heroes you want to shutdown this way (like let's say a bunch of Skink buffing support heroes). Artefacts and especially Spells seem quite lackluster though. Charm is a good artefact, but the rest... is quite meh.

As a Cities player, I love well done soups, especially 1 in 4 conditional ones, as those give a lot of reasonably balanced options, and having a reasonably big pool of options is always great for lore and army building. Armies that always fight by themselfs can get pretty boring for me, while having an option to mix it up with some allies that get all the keywords feels pretty great. It also help to show active interactions between certain factions right on the table, which makes the world of AoS feel alive and linked. So in the perfect world for me most factions could go for some subfactions with rules for pure armies as well as for certain subfactions with 1 in 4 or even 1 in 2 with other closely allied faction. Besides promoting loreful ties, it also promotes having or carefully expanding into multiple armies (those 30 Dryads are still waiting for me...) as well as giving a greater build diversity. Kharadon and Fyreslayers issue though... Both were born out of the extremes of a single faction, which went even further. Kharadon became popular, Fireslayers did not. And at this point, I am not sure that you can reasonably fully bring then together once again. May be as 1 in 4 in certain subfactions at best. It would also be wrong to think that Fyreslayers thematic is all completely exausted - just because they are a magical berserker faction, does not mean they can't have something done with it. You could add new lava shooting big beast, that is long ranged focused, heavily armoured and slow big transport beast, Flaggelant-like no save going mad Berserkers (hello Death Company!), that explode into lava on death, Fireslayers that are fused with magical lava or fire or kinda looking like beasts themselfs and do more damage, the more damage they absorb, lava beasts cavalry.. Honestly, this is just what I've created on the fly in like 20 minutes, I'm sure GW can do better. The question though is probably about if this army is popular enough for such a model investment for GW.

Skeletons also have a 6+ (instead of promised 5) save and a funny typo on Azur. Still, for a unit that wants to pretty much go last in combat phase, it's not too bad.

My 40 deepstriking Sisters of the Watch would like a word with your army about CoS and CoS shooting specifically being meh (as long as that army is not Idoneth though). I would also formally invite any Disposessed players with 30 overbuffed and bridged Irondrakes to this discussion as well.