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Beer & Pretzels Gamer

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  1. Beer & Pretzels Gamer
    Co’axe’ial felt increasingly disconnected.  He missed the good old days in Aqshy when you couldn’t swing a skink by the tail without hitting a Bloodreaver or three.  With all the action now elsewhere (boy was it annoying talking to those Galletian Vets & Champs these days…) his frustration grew at being stuck patrolling a land of dust & lava.  It had been so long since one of his foot patrols had turned up more than a roving band of Maneaters…

    The paradox of Aqshy was regular eruption meant everything changed whilst little of importance ever did.  So month after month as Co’axe’ial patrolled the wastelands the landmarks might change but the sense of monotony never did.  Hence, at first he dismissed his own curiosity when the horizon didn’t match his expectations.  As he got closer though he had to admit this… this was new. Or actually this was very old, yet hadn’t been here the last time the patrol had come through, nor had there been any hint of it during any of the dozens of patrols he had made past this area before.

    Co’axe’ial knew from intelligence reports that nothing good came from one of Sigmar’s old vaults being unearthed given his annoy8ng tendency of hiding nasty things in them (Slann knows why the Seraphon continued to support him…).  Ax’iom, his skink star priest companion, who would know more about these things than an old warrior such as himself, proposed the most important thing was to determine if the vault seal remained intact…

    Co’axe’ial should’ve known better but boredom must have dulled his edge in the face of this new novelty.  One should never let their guard down in Aqshy.  Distracted by their investigation it was only after they were surrounded by Troggoths that they realized the danger they were in.

    This was a ~500 pt narrative game to get myself and @Televiper11 back into the swing of playing.  The major victory condition was for the Seraphon to control the ruins at the end of five rounds.  The minor victory condition was for at least one Seraphon unit to survive and escape to warn future patrols of what had happened.

    Turned into a very back and forth battle.  Some bad saves and worse Battleshock saw the first unit of Rockguts fall to the Saugus Warriors who in turn got wiped by the second unit of Rotguts.  Eventually it came down to a one-to-one battle between the Sunblood & the Troggboss with the Starpriest strategically retreating (just in case).  Good saves & timely healing saw the Sunblood through as the Troggboss failed his regeneration attempts and after wiping a unit of Saurus Guard with a couple swings of his club struggled to get more than 2-3 damage in  a turn against the Sunblood.

    After a long time since we last played over Zoom tons of fun to roll dice again.  The narrative will continue as we up it to 750ish points and add in a Monster each.
  2. Beer & Pretzels Gamer
    What is a Wicked Problem?  It is a concept originally derived for social/political planning problems by Rittel & Webber in 1973 as having 10 characteristics (borrowing from Wikipedia for this):
    1) There is no definite formulation of a wicked problem.
    2) Wicked problems have no stopping rule?
    3) Solutions to wicked problems are not true-false, but better or worse.
    4) There is no immediate and ultimate test of a solution to a wicked problem.
    5) Every solution to a wicked problem is a "one-shot operation"; because there is no opportunity to learn by trial and error, every attempts counts significantly.
    6) Wicked problems do not have an enumerable (or an exhaustively describable) set of potential solutions; nor is there a well-described set of permissible operations that may be incorporated into the plan.
    7) Every wicked problem is essentially unique.
    😎 Every wicked problem can be considered a symptom of another problem.
    9) The existence of a discrepancy representing a wicked problem can be explained in numerous ways.  The choice of the explanation determines the nature of the problem's resolution.
    10) The social planner has no right to be wrong (i.e. planners are liable for the consequences of the actions they generate).
    I keep on returning to this concept as I read all the different discussions of balance on this forum.  While the framework above needs to be adjusted from a social planning framework to Age of Sigmar I think it can be incredibly helpful in sorting out why these discussions (a) get so heated and (b) rarely seem to lead to consensus conclusions.
    The first condition requires little if any adjustment as if 10 people are having a discussion of balance it is easy to pick out at east 12 different definitions of balance or more bouncing back and forth.  I want to be clear, this is a comment on quantity, the quality of these definitions is often excellent yet the very lack of any consensus highly that none of these definitions are, well, definitive.  Given this I feel comfortable saying the issue of Balance in Age of Sigmar meets the first condition.
    Is there a stopping rule in Age of Sigmar?  While there are definitive ends to individual games (i.e. individual games do have a stopping rule) as a system Age of Sigmar is not deigned with a definitive end.  Of course there will be new editions (3.0 seems inevitable this Summer) but in general these are conceived as updates or evolutions.  I guess we could argue that transition from Warhammer Fantasy Battles to Age of Sigmar represented a true "stop" but even then originally a majority of the armies and models transferred over to the new format.  All in I feel pretty comfortable in arguing that there is no stopping rule for Age of Sigmar as a system and thus the issue of Balance in Age of Sigmar meets the second condition.
    The third condition is one which I believe would be very fruitful to return to as a whole entire blog post could probably just be written about this one issue.  Certainly there are those who argue that there are absolute answers or solutions to the problem of balance in these forums.  Yet the response to their proposals suggest that they are far from convincing others.  So if there is a greater truth to be found regarding Balance in Age of Sigmar I think it is fair to say we haven't found it yet.  On the other hand reading these threads you can often see a consensus forming around what is good, better and even sometimes best and visa versa.  Again, I think this is an issue worth discussing in deeper detail but for now I will suggest that the issue of Balance in Age of Sigmar meets the third condition.
    I've already written a blog post expressing my belief that you have to play the games.  One of the stronger areas of consensus on these threads is that new Battletomes could use more playtesting - though even here there is a contrarian perspective that some of the problems should have been obvious....  If we look at each Battletome and each points update as a "solution" to the issue of Balance in Age of Sigmar though is there any other way to test these solutions except to see how everything plays out on the table top?  And given how massively multivariate Age of Sigmar is arguably we need lots and lots and lots of games for certain aspects (particularly large point updates).  This suggests the lack of an immediate test but what about an ultimate test?  Absent a complete pause in new tomes, models, etc. (again, the lack of a stopping rule) there can be no ultimate test as Age of Sigmar is always evolving.  I'm not as confidant in the fourth condition but I think it is okay for now to say that the issue of Balance in Age of Sigmar meets this condition.
    The 5th & 6th conditions are the toughest to translate into Age of Sigmar's context.  Again, in principle each time GW releases a new battletome or resets the points they are testing.  Until recently (looking at you LRL) though we could consider each of those tomes as a "one-shot operation".  The real question in regards to Age of Sigmar comes in that balance between trial & error and every shot counting significantly.  I believe a lot of the frustration with GW comes from the fact that they do seem to get an above average number of trials with the increased frequency of releases but players struggle to see where the learning is coming from.  That issue is clearly compounded though by the reality that every trial does seem to count significantly based on the responses new tomes receive from both their players and their opponents.  If I emphasize the latter point then we can say that Balance in Age of Sigmar at least partially satisfies the fifth condition.
    At first glance though there does seem to be an enumerable/exhaustive set of potential solutions in points, changes to the war scrolls which seem well described.  So it is not unreasonable to say that Balance in Age of Sigmar may not meet the 6th condition.  But again the context of the game matters and thus I think it is worthwhile to jump ahead to the 8th condition where whether the problem of balance can be considered a symptom of other problems in Age of Sigmar and how this may interact with the solution set.  Here I think the issue of feedback loops are vital to the discussion as what quickly becomes clear in reading these threads is how often the solution to one problems creates another.  To use a popular recent example a lot of the solutions (not all to be clear) to LRL Sentinels would seem to devastate other factions.  LRL Sentinels are certainly not unique in this way. 
    AoS is chockful of feedback loops and a lot (though again not all) of the issues of balance arise out of these feedback loops.  Put another way it may not be a war scroll in and of itself that is a problem but how that war scroll interacts with another war scroll's buff, a sub-faction ability, a spell and/or a battalion bonus.  This would be an example of a runaway positive feedback loop where something that may just be okay to good becomes great to OP once all the factors are applied.  There are examples of negative feedback loops (where an ability sounds great but the conditions required to make it work, whether from a points basis in support units or the limited range of an aura ultimately make it impractical) but these are less an issue when it comes to balance.  In theory solving a positive feedback loop is simple as removing one piece of the puzzle often causes the whole buff stack to collapse. 
    But here's where the problems begin.  All too often removing a piece of a buff stack causes ripples across the rest of a faction.  While that aura may be too good for unit X, without it units Y & Z are kneecapped for example.  Given so many of these buffs, are for example, KEYWORD based, and that GW has tried to a certain extent limit KEYWORD proliferation it may become a binary issue.  Either remove the buff entirely to prevent X being OP and accept the weakening of Y & Z or visa versa. 
    Again, I can continue to go on with the 8th condition just like I could the 3rd but for now I think it suffices to say I believe that the issue of Balance in Age of Sigmar meets the 8th condition.  With that knowledge I think it worthwhile to briefly return to the 6th condition and acknowledge that while the "solutions" may be more easily enumerable/exhaustive than the wicked problems of the original social/political planning issues the framework was designed for, the commonality of the difficulty in parsing apart the feedbacks loops in order to derive truly discrete solutions means we can argue for at least a weak case for Balance in Age of Sigmar meeting the 6th condition.
    After that difficulty fortunately condition 7 is a reasonably straight forward case.  Balance in Age of Sigmar cannot be solved by importing a solution from a different gaming system.  Certainly you can try and incorporate best practices from another system (see the push & pull between AoS & 40K in recent editions) but there is always an adjustment necessary to factor in the unique rule sets and numerous war scroll interactions.  Thus while it can be useful to look at gaming systems perceived as having more balance it is never as simple as just doing the same thing in AoS.   
    The 9th condition, like the 3rd and 8th, is one that we could spend multiple blog posts on.  Having read about balance in as many threads as I have I feel fair to say that so much of the discussion/debate is over how to define the problem.  The question I often ask myself when reading though is the order of operation.  Are people arguing for a given definition because they believe it is accurate and thus they are willing to accept the resolution that logically arrives from that definition?  Or, consciously or sub-consciously, are they starting rom their preferred solution and working backwards?  Regardless, I think Balance in Age of Sigmar strongly meets the 9th condition.
    How about the last one?  I think it is fair to say that the position of many on these threads is that GW has no right to be wrong...
    So if we can argue that Balance in Age of Sigmar is a Wicked Problem does that gain us anything or leave us in an even worse spot?  Rittel & Webber fortunately offered another shorter set of characteristics that I think are helpful (again, thank you wikipedia):
    1) The solution depends on how the problem is framed and visa versa (i.e. the problem definition depends on the solution)
    Honest AND HUMBLE discussion & definition is more likely to lead to progress than debating solutions whilst different parties hold different definitions.  The key is the honesty and the humility.  If it is a wicked problem than suggestions that the definitions are obvious and/or indisputable is NOT helpful.  Part of that humility is recognizing that you're never likely to convince everyone and that those you don't convince are not bad/stupid/ignorant etc. they just are coming at a wicked problem from a different perspective.  Than carryover that honesty and humility when you try and get your solutions implemented (unless you work for GW chances are this will be more in the context of TO rulings or tournament conditions), especially when it comes to how that solution may impact other players. 
    2) Stakeholders have radically different world views and different frames for understanding the problem.
    There are so many different stakeholders when it comes to Age of Sigmar.  Recognize that no one voice can speak for all of them.  Recognize that no one framework can represent all of them.  The solutions that work for one set of stakeholders may not for another.  There is unlikely to be any solution that makes every stakeholder happy.  If you are currently among the happier stakeholders, have empathy for the less happy.  If you are among the less happy, please don't subscribe to a "misery loves company" approach either in stoking the negative sentiment of others or trying to diminish the enjoyment of the game for others who are not (as?) impacted by the issue(s) you are facing but rather work to positively contribute to the debate surrounding the definitions of the problem and look for ways things can get better.
    3) The constraints that the problem is subject to and the resources need to solve it change over time.
    AoS has a variety of different constraints ranging from the cost to build an army (whether defined in money or time), the points limits of a given match, the rules for list construction (e.g. battle line or available allies) to simply finding other players to play against.  Different stakeholders have different access to these resources.  At different times in their gaming lifecycle different constraints will arise (ahh, the joys of trying to find time to game with a new child... or finding ways to play during a pandemic). 
    It is worth remembering though that it is not just players that face constraints.  GW only has so much production capacity.  New launches require vast timelines.  Stores have limited space to carry inventory, etc.
    All of these constraints and resource limitations may only indirectly effect Balance in Age of Sigmar but they're ones we can all probably find a few we can relate to or understand.  It is helpful to keep constraints and limitations, yours and those of others, in mind when discussing & debating a wicked problem.
    4) The problem is never solved definitively.
    Unless a stopping rule for AoS arises (and again, I think that would be a bad thing) any balance is more likely to be a brief point of transition in a longer journey rather than a permanent resting place.  If we ever get there enjoy it while it lasts as some new balance issue will inevitably arise.  The good news about this?  We'll never run out of things to talk about on these threads!
     
  3. Beer & Pretzels Gamer
    In our new tournament I am getting to run an experiment I have always wanted to try.  Four players are submitting 2K lists to play in a double round robin tournament.  In the first round robin each player will play their own list against each of their opponent's lists.  In the second round robin each player will play their opponent's list against their own.  To me ultimate bragging rights in AoS would come from being able to beat you with my own list and then turn around and beat you again playing your list against mine.  Looking forward to this new approach to the game.
    But I also thought it would be an excellent way to test another theory.  It is only natural that threads such as these would get very focused on the lists as they are the easiest thing to debate & discuss in such a forum.  Taken to an extreme though sometimes it can almost feel like there's no reason to actually play the games.  There seems to be some conviction that List A will always win against all comers across all battleplans, or List B has no hope against list C, or list D can't win Battleplan X.  As I've said before in a game with as much opportunity for tactical skill as for random chance I think you always have to play the games.
    But I am curious if the wisdom of the crowds can suss out a winner just from the lists?  In a normal tournament player skill may be too big a factor but here, with each list getting played by multiple players I think there is a little less room for that to completely throw things off.  So I've put the poll above and below are the four lists that were submitted:
    Allegiance: Fyreslayers
    - Lodge: Vostarg

    Leaders
    Auric Runefather on Magmadroth (270)
    - General
    - Command Trait: Fiery Endurance
    - Artefact: Vosaxe
    - Magmadroth Trait: Coal-heart Ancient
    Auric Runesmiter on Magmadroth (250)
    - Forge Key
    - Artefact: Ash-cloud Rune
    - Magmadroth Trait: Ash-horn Ancient
    - Prayer: Prayer of Ash
    Auric Runemaster (120)
    - Prayer: Prayer of Ash
    Battlesmith (140)
    Auric Runesmiter (120)
    - Runic Iron
    - Prayer: Searing Heat

    Battleline
    20 x Vulkite Berzerkers (280)
    - War-Picks & Slingshields
    10 x Vulkite Berzerkers (140)
    - Pairs of Handaxes
    20 x Hearthguard Berzerkers (400)
    - Poleaxes

    Units
    5 x Auric Hearthguard (120)

    Battalions
    Lords of the Lodge (150)

    Total: 1990 / 2000
    Extra Command Points: 1
    Allies: 0 / 400
    Wounds: 154
    -X-X-X
    Allegiance: Khorne
    - Slaughterhost: Baleful Lords (Host of Chaos)

    Leaders
    Bloodthirster of Insensate Rage (270)
    - Artefact: A'rgath the King of Blades
    Bloodthirster of Unfettered Fury (270)
    - Artefact: Black Brass Crown
    Wrath of Khorne Bloodthirster (300)
    - General
    - Command Trait: Thirst for Carnage
    - Artefact: The Crimson Crown
    Skarbrand (380)
    Karanak (140)

    Battleline
    5 x Flesh Hounds (100)
    5 x Flesh Hounds (100)
    5 x Flesh Hounds (100)
    5 x Flesh Hounds (100)

    Battalions
    Blood Hunt (120)
    Blood Legion (120)

    Total: 2000 / 2000
    Extra Command Points: 2
    Allies: 0 / 400
    Wounds: 101
    -X-X-X-
    Allegiance: Ogor Mawtribes
    - Mawtribe: Boulderhead

    Leaders
    Frostlord on Stonehorn (400)
    - General
    - Command Trait: Lord of Beasts
    - Artefact: Brand of the Svard
    - Mount Trait: Black Clatterhorn
    Huskard on Stonehorn (320)
    - Blood Vulture
    - Artefact: Alvagr Rune-tokens
    - Mount Trait: Frosthoof Bull
    Butcher (140)
    - Cleaver
    - Lore of Gutmagic: Ribcracker
    Icebrow Hunter (120)

    Battleline
    2 x Mournfang Pack (140)
    - Gargant Hackers
    2 x Mournfang Pack (140)
    - Culling Clubs or Prey Hackers with Iron Fists
    Stonehorn Beastriders (300)

    Units
    4 x Ironguts (220)
    2 x Frost Sabres (40)

    Battalions
    Eurlbad (140)

    Endless Spells / Terrain / CPs
    Balewind Vortex (40)

    Total: 2000 / 2000
    Extra Command Points: 1
    Allies: 0 / 400
    Wounds: 95
    -X-X-X-
    Allegiance: Bonesplitterz
    - Warclan: Bonesplitterz

    Leaders
    Maniak Weirdnob (140)
    - Artefact: Glowin' Tattooz
    - Lore of the Savage Beast: Gorkamorka's War Cry
    Savage Big Boss (90)
    Savage Big Boss (90)
    Wardokk (80)
    - Artefact: Big Wurrgog Mask
    - Lore of the Savage Beast: Breath of Gorkamorka
    Wurrgog Prophet (160)
    - General
    - Command Trait: Voice of Da Gods
    - Artefact: Dokk Juice
    - Lore of the Savage Beast: Brutal Beast Spirits

    Battleline
    20 x Savage Orruk Arrowboys (240)
    10 x Savage Orruk Arrowboys (120)
    10 x Savage Orruks (120)
    - Chompas

    Units
    2 x Savage Big Stabbas (100)
    2 x Savage Big Stabbas (100)

    Behemoths
    Rogue Idol (420)

    Battalions
    Kunnin' Rukk (140)
    Teef Rukk (140)

    Endless Spells / Terrain / CPs
    Extra Command Point (50)

    Total: 1990 / 2000
    Extra Command Points: 3
    Allies: 0 / 400
    Wounds: 142
    -X-X-X-
    To give you as much info as possible to help you make your decision the tournament matches are as follows:
    1st Round = Shifting Objective (GH2020)
    - Bonesplitterz vs. Mawtribes
    - Fyreslayers vs. Khorne
    2nd Round = Scorched Earth
    - Bonesplitterz vs. Fyreslayers
    - Mawtribes vs. Khorne
    Round 3 = Focal Points
    - Bonesplitterz vs. Khorne
    - Fyreslayers vs. Mawtribes
    and again, once we've completed the first round robin we will play through the same matches with the players switching lists.
    What else?  All players have now played in multiple Zoom tournaments and thus have adapted as well as possible to the conditions.  Oh yeah, due to set up we are playing on a 48"x58" map.  We do our best to scale appropriately (e.g. in Shifting Objectives the side objectives are 9.5" from the edge as opposed to the usual 12").  We do have a decent amount of terrain on table but don't go all out giving each terrain piece a characteristic because this just proved too difficult for the people zooming in to keep track of. 
    I think that is it.  I'll try to answer any questions below.
    And please let me know why you made your choice.  I am very curious to learn what other players think.
  4. Beer & Pretzels Gamer
    The first set of Ultimate Bragging Rights (beating your opponent with your own list and then turning around and under the same conditions beating them with theirs) came about in arguably the most predictable way.  The player who had built the Khorne list actually had even more experience playing Mawtribes so when the tables flipped, even though the opponent’s  list they were playing wasn’t the Triple Frostlord build they’re known for running they still had plenty of familiarity with how the faction worked.

    That said, they hardly played it the way the BCR half of Mawtribes is normally played.  There were no  rapid advances followed by daring charges in the first few turns.  In fact for two factions that tend to favor more aggressive play styles piloted by two players who tend to favor forceful opening gambits the early going was... pretty much a waiting game as the players secured their own objectives and tried to draw out their opponent’s units.  Small forays with Flesh Hounds were made and the Icebrow and his kitties came out of ambush to waste Skarbrand’s powered up profile in R2 but other than that the Stonehorns and Bloodthirsters were largely avoiding each other.

    Really the biggest difference in the picture below from the starting one above is just the Flesh Hounds were now Blood Tithe...


    The player piloting Khorne’s patience broke first as they began advancing up the table, which allowed their opponent to pick the charges for the Stonehorns.  The damage from the charges and the resilience of the Stonehorns’ 5++ offset the activation benefits.  As a result, once Combat was truly engaged it was over pretty quickly and we had our first flip of results.
    The second set of Ultimate Bragging Rights took a lot more effort as it required piloting the 0-4 Bonesplitterz list to victory against the 4-0 Fyreslayers.  I reported this battle rep in pretty decent detail in the Fyreslayers thread but the basics were that it came down to leveraging the battleplan’s multiple objective format to score points on the half of the board the 20x Hearthguard Berzerkers were not on while slowing their advance in their half and avoiding a big fight on that side as long as possible.
    While in this case both players lacked experience piloting the other’s faction it still epitomized what I’d pictured all this time when I’d thought about this style of play.  Winning both games required you to leverage your lists strengths first and then exploit its weaknesses second, and with only the tools at hand.  If the Bonesplitterz had been Drakkfoot the tools available (e.g. negating any wound negation...) would’ve been pretty solid but as it was it required a bit of MacGyviring to get it done.  For example, ideally you’re getting Savage Big Stabbas into your opponent’s MONSTERs, in this case Magmadroths, for all the bonuses they get.  In this match what mattered most was their movement to get them into a position to speed bump the Hearthguard Berzerkers.  This caused them to waste some of the Vostarg movement bonuses in R1.  Keeping them in the middle of the table an extra turn.


    At that it still required some luck with initiatives (I’m notorious for rolling 2s here but actually won two initiatives on them this game..) and the Rogue Idol still being pissed if at Forgeworld for discontinuing him, taking it out on any enemy models that might be around.  
    But ultimately happy that the format did show that it isn’t just about the list with two match flips now in the books.
     
  5. Beer & Pretzels Gamer
    No Ultimate Bragging rights were achieved in the first week of flipped tables in Zoom League for a replay of Shifting Objectives @ 2K with players now using their opponent’s lists.
    Until late in the game it looked like Bonesplitterz were going to pull out their first win.  Somebody apparently told Pebbles, or Rogue Idol, that Forgeworld had decided to cancel him and he didn’t take it well as he moved into the middle where it preceded to put a beating down in the early rounds; wiping out a unit of Ironguts and a unit of Mournfang.




    Pebbles would finally fall to the Frostlord on Stonehorn but by that point he’d allowed Bonesplitterz to hold onto a modest VP lead by giving them control of the middle of the board and essentially “freezing” the Frostlord in place for two turns before dying in R3.
     
    It was 6-5 at the end of R1.  11-9 at end of R2.  At the bottom of R3 it was the Bonesplitterz turn and if they did almost nothing they were going to go up 15-12.   Really they just had to hold on against the single Mournfang in the West (which would also remove the last battleline Mawtribes could use to wrack up bonus points) and an Icebrow Hunter.  At worst they  were well positioned to go up 14-12.  At that point the Mawtribes list would be scrambling to move around the board with the limited units they had left to close the gap in the final rounds and need a little luck as to where the primary objective fell at that.
    Instead, (maybe because they forgot they were no playing an army that largely sucked in melee instead of the Mawtribes they had grown used to?) Bonesplitterz tried to move their Arrowboys off the central objective to a potential charge into the Huskard on Stonehorn sitting on the primary objective.  But when the charge failed they were left in no man’s land, too far away to give a bonus for the Central objective but nowhere close enough to challenge in the West.  Net result was a 13-12 game at end of R3.
    Bonesplitterz got lucky and got the double turn but then charged the Arrowboys into the newly freed up Frostlord, (it went as well as you’d expect, refilling Mawpot to add insult to injury) conceding the primary objective in the East under the Huskard’s control.  This would push the score to 17-12 but in their turn Mawtribes would score the East and the West to close the gap to 17-16 at which point the Bonesplitterz only had two models left.  In R5 when the objective came down under Mawtribes control and Mawtribes won initiative Bonesplitterz conceded the game.
    As the concierge this was a tough one as I really felt like Bonesplitterz could hold out for a VP win even if they were tabled if they’d just played for VP at the end of R3. They’d get bad luck admittedly with how the primary fell a couple times it a 3 VP lead at end of R3 looks like it might have held and even been extended to a 4 VP lead in R4 that, without battleline and down to a few units, could’ve stood a tabling in R5.  Given how familiar the player piloting Bonesplitterz this game was with Mawtribes they should’ve known that the while they were low on models, the two Stonehorns were going to be pretty resilient.  But in talking with them post game they seemed to get fixated on taking out one of the two remaining Stonehorns and thus made moves that hurt them on a VP level and cost them the game.
    On the Fyreslayers main thread I went into detail on Khorne vs. Fyreslayers.  The net of that match was while as Khorne I had a plan to end the Fyreslayer win streak I’d built up it (a) took too long to develop so even though I pulled off the key elements it didn’t matter because (b) a couple failed charges and a couple dozen 2s on the dice in R1 meant that I scored 0 VP after my opponent had wracked up the full 7 in their first turn and it was just too big a deficit to climb out of.
    Coming up we have the Khorne v Mawtribes and Fyreslayers v Bonesplitterz rematches in Scorched Earth.  Really hoping to see a reversal this round.  Hoping Pebbles is still angry at FW and does as well for me as he did last week!
     
     
  6. Beer & Pretzels Gamer
    With a win against Mawtribes my Fyreslayers managed to go 3-0.  Yet, once again, how I won gives me hope that I will manage to pull off “Ultimate Bragging Rights” at least once as we flip the table and start playing our opponents’ list.
    To make for a more interesting tactical choice with the center objective in Focal Points we’d made sure the objective could be contested on two levels.

    As can be seen in the picture above those on ground level would be in the 6” zone of control but so would those on top of the hill.  In the second round it looked like exactly this scenario was going to come into play as the Ironguts moved into the lower zone of control.  

    With control of both objectives in the West and the Central objective Mawtribes would pull into the lead on VP and force me to make a difficult decision on how to regain control.   Getting up the hill and over the skull to get into combat was going to take a high Charge Roll anyway so the base case was they’d stay there.  But my opponent rolled an 11 and charged them in.

    Now based on previous games this still wasn’t a horrible idea.  The Ironguts had been making hay in previous matches buzz sawing though other units or severely degrading if not one-shotting Monsters.  In contrast, outside of giving the Run & Charge Command Trait buff to my Hearthguard Berzerkers my Runefather on Magmadroth had done almost nothing in prior games.  He’d lost out to a Maniak Weirdnob last game...  
    So the odds still seemed in Mawtribes favor, but due to other units in combat that turn my opponent prioritized a different unit with their first activation.  With the enhanced Rune of Fury giving me an extra attack and re-rolling 1s to Hit the Vosaxe Artefact buffed Latchkey Grandaxe finally went off.  With the Magmadroth kicking in some Damage as well was able to kill three out of the four Ironguts and leave the last with only 1 wound left.
    The swing in VP and my opponent’s combat effectiveness from this one combat would prove decisive.  If you’ve read the other battle reports for Fyreslayers there are moments like these where different choices or better or worse rolls of the dice helped swing things in my favor.  So while I am happy to finish the first round undefeated I don’t think things are hopeless once I start piloting the other lists against my Fyreslayers.
    Interestingly enough I am very hopeful about winning with the Bonesplitterz list that went 0-3.
    Against Khorne in the final game of the first cycle they had an interesting opportunity to exploit.  Bonesplitterz had used their pre-game movement to advance their Savage Big Stabbas up the board.  This baited Khorne into going first to try and knock out these threats before they got into their Bloodthirsters.  Except, even after re-rolls Khorne would fail all but one charge, only managing to get one unit of Flesh Hounds into combat.

    On Bonesplitterz turn they faced a choice of targets.  Do they commit both units into WRATH and FURY or do they split their attacks and try and take out Skarbrand using the Big Stabbas ability to run & charge?  They went for the latter.

    The Big Stabbas did one shot Skarbrand on some good rolls but Tyrants of Blood sequential activation meant WRATH and FURY both survived this combat.  Again, hard to fault taking out Skarbrand before he gets going but once the game was over we kept coming back to this exchange as being one that still left Khorne with the advantage after leaving themselves exposed by failed charges.
    I fully acknowledge Bonesplitterz is going to be the toughest list to pilot.  But in the Scorched Earth Battleplan I’ll be using them I do think they have some opportunities to exploit Fyreslayers limited movement once Vostarg’s R1 free 6” run is in the past and the Runesmiter out of the tunnel.
    Similarly, I like Khorne’s mobility to get to objectives and hopefully single out some of the support pieces Fyreslayers are so dependent on.
    Doubt I can go 6-0 across this tournament but I still think I’ve got wins ahead of me.
  7. Beer & Pretzels Gamer
    Savage Orruk Big Boss Proxy: Look Behind You!
    Irongut: Not Falling for That One Again...

    This encounter ended how you’d expect it to but the overall game had lots of twists and turns.
    Had been hoping to get more votes into the poll before posting but oh well.  Don’t want to get too far behind on these reports.
    Starting with Bonesplitterz deployment and decision to go first.  While the Mawtribes frontline deployment is consistent with their desire to get out and into the thick of things we were a little surprised to see the big block of Arrowboyz right up front instead of screened behind the 10x Savage Orruks.

    This was partially explained by the Bonesplitterz player deciding to go first and using their Hero Phase movement and regular movement to get that big block into range to shoot AND claim the primary objective in the middle.  The BS player was hoping to do more but the Butcher successfully unbound one of the spells they were counting in to buff that unit so while it did put some damage into the Stonehorn Beastriders they are still Stonehorn and thus shrugged more damage then maybe BS expected?  On their turn the Butcher would empty the Mawpot, further reducing the impact of those opening shots.
    (The incline on the terrain piece made the sideways position untenable hence the Big Stabbas temporarily in sides..)

    The other big BS gamble was charging the Maniak Weirdnob into the Mournfang on the Flank.

    Damage was done again but not enough to prevent moving parts unit past the Maniak towards the objective on Mawtribe’s turn.  Meanwhile the Arrowboyz were incredibly exposed to a Stonehorn Stampede in the middle (Our Huskard on Stone Horn Proxy is on left).  Fair to say this went very well 

     
    The Ironguts were also moved up enough to take the objective on the other flank while Icebrow Hunter and Frost Sabres popped out of ambush to screen the Western objective.

    If Mawtribes had won the initiative this one might have been very short but BS got it and ran away... sorry, Kunningly Retreated, from the middle.  One unit of the  Savage Big Stabbas made an end around onto the Stonehorns though.

    They’d do some significant damage, killing off the Stonehorn Beastriders but the Frostlord would drop kick their carcasses back into the Mawpot, refilling it.  This again would allow the Butcher to mitigate the damage done to the Frostlord by the Stabbas final fling.
    For the rest of their turn Mawtribes largely played for points leaving the Stonehorns in the middle but the did charge the Ironguts into the remaining Big Stabbas and the Icebrow Hunter and Frost Sabres into the Savage Orruks.

    BS again won priority and with the objective falling on the Eastern Flank again, Kunningly retreated in that direction.  

    Pebbles (The Rogue Idol) was able to finish off the Ironguts (as shown in the picture that started post).  
    On their turn though Mawtribes didn’t decide to challenge the primary objective with Pebbles and the small block of Arrowboyz on it but instead did clean up work in the middle wiping out the remaining Savage Orruks and the other Savage Big Boss proxy.


    Our initial reaction was that this was a lower probability play than charging the Frostlord (degraded though he might have been) into the remaining Arrowboyz with the probability of taking the objective if he survived given the counts as 10.  But fortune ultimately favored the Mawtribes as when the primary objective  shifted all the way across the board to the West at the start of the Fourth Round BS conceded the game as they were already behind on points and didn’t see a viable way to contest enough with all the surviving Mawtribes units still in the way.

    With the Butcher surveying his victory the Mawtribes start off the tournament 1-0.   Can they keep it going in Scorched Earth against Khorne?  Can Bonesplitterz get redemption against Fyreslayers?  
  8. Beer & Pretzels Gamer
    ... as I understand it is keep your key units in their buff bubbles.  I broke that rule and turned the game into a slow attrition battle that I barely came out on top of.
    My opponent had more experience playing against Fyreslayers than I had playing with them.  With a double battalion they were going to have fewer drops than I would and thus would choose priority.  When they placed their big block of Arrowboyz on the front edge of their deployment zone my guess was they’d use their pre-R1 movement to get into range to try and double-tap either my Hearthguard Berzerkers or snipe out a key Hero our two.  I tried to deploy accordingly, trying to at least make them use the Hero Phase action to move the Arrowboyz into range but there was only so much depth to deploy into and I didn’t want to be completely limited my first turn if they surprised me and went first.
    Well they did move their Arrowboyz forward (and the other half rounding up the army Bonesplitterz let them)... but then they gave me priority.  Their experience against Fyreslayers was against the classic Hermdar, double HB, Lords of the Lodge list so when this happened I had to ask myself whether they recognized that I had the movement with Vostarg to get in a first turn charge and they were intentionally trying to bait me into pulling out of my buff bubbles, or whether their lack of familiarity meant they’d actually given me an opening to disrupt their plans?

    Especially with the back line now also open to bring the Runesmiter and 20x Vulkites underground with him in from behind I ultimately succumbed to temptation and ran & charged my Hearthguard Berzerkers and ambushed and charged my Vulkites into the big group of Savage Orruks in the middle.  My hope was even without the best buffs going that I could clear enough of the opposition out and, if I didn’t get double turned, be in a good position to move things up in R2 to regain the buff bubbles.  Failing my Runefather on Magmadroth’s charge in this context was particularly painful, especially when my CP reroll was worse than my first roll and cost me the alternate option of charging into his Maniak Weirdnob.

    Suffice to say this was a mistake.  I didn’t do enough damage on the big block of Arrowboyz and w/2 battalions he had the CP to prevent battleshock.  As a result he still had enough left to contest one of the two objectives I was in contention for in his territory.  Simply put I fell far short of the reward I’d taken the risk of breaking my buff bubbles to get.
    While they held up okay in my opponent’s turn the now buffed Maniak Weirdnob charged into my spell damaged Runefather, significantly degrading him, while largely shrugging the limited Damage output of my Magmadroths.  Meanwhile, Pebbles the Rogue Idol flew across the table to challenge my 10x Vulkites for my far Western objective.  Fortunately just enough would survive to prevent my opponent from taking the objective and forcing them to spend another turn clearing them out.  

    Of course they immediately got that turn, winning priority for the double-turn.  My Runefather would fall but the Runesmiter on Magmadroth would finally finish them off.  Pebbles would take and then burn my (Western Objective).  Meanwhile I was “winning” the slow attrition in the middle, but at a higher price than I would have liked.  In my second turn I’d have to sacrifice my Auric Hearthguard and a Hero setting up a speed bump in R3 to Pebbles if I lost the priority roll again (I would). While I was finally able to get some of my buff bubbles back as the Runesmiter from the Magmic Tunnel that had ambushed with the Vulkites was finally able to get in position.
    It would push back and forth from there with Bonesplitterz consistently winning the priority and Pebbles rampaging in my back line but my winning the attrition battle in my opponent’s territory.  Pebbles had to burn to be able to move on as he lacked a support (until Wardok finally caught up in R4) while my eventual numbers advantage let me wrack up some extra points before I needed to burn.  
    Those extra VP would prove critical as it built up just enough of a lead as by the end of R4.1 my opponent was left with Wardok & Pebbles relatively uncontested  in my territory but my now unencumbered surviving Hearthguard Berzerkers ready to claim and burn my opponent’s Western objective in my turn while my Magmadroth was climbing the Bell Tower to try and kill off Wurgog.  If successful they could burn it but as long as the Magmadroth survived I’d score the objective again.  Mathematically even the latter would’ve been enough to clinch the game even if Pebbles got max points for the final objective in my territory in R5.
    So at midnight there was a concession, giving me a victory I was lucky to claim given how poorly I played.  I gambled poorly early and got bailed out by Fyreslayer resilience and some fortunate Save rolls and a couple cold rolls from my opponent.  I tried to play Fyreslayers as more free wheeling then they were meant to be played.  Won’t get away with that next match against Mawtribes.
    <Was focused on making up for my mistakes so not as many pictures from this game>
     
     
  9. Beer & Pretzels Gamer
    Most of us have probably succumbed to it at some point in our playing - that fear/obsession over one particular aspect of our opponent’s list that causes  us to make choices in our turn to address it that ultimately prove sub-optimal in many other areas of the match and ultimately self-defeating as at best we delay what we are worried about, not entirely derail.
    The last time these two players had gone head-to-head it had been Mawtribes v FEC with the double pile-ins of Feeding Frenzy playing a big role in the game’s outcome.  Given this it wasn’t surprising that Mawtribes was concerned about the Tyrant’s of Blood Battalion’s special ability if sequential Bloodthirster activation.  Add in a battleplan with 8 objectives and a limited number of units to address them with and there was a lot of room for mistakes to creep in as the Mawtribes player tried to avoid giving Khorne the opportunity.

    Still, from the outside looking in it was clear that Tyrant’s of Blood was dictating the game on both side of the table.  Mawtribes did manage to set up a solo activation with their Ironguts vs FURY that did go in their favor.

    FURY would fall to the Ironguts but unfortunately the Frost Sabres you see are an example of the type of mistake which was made because after coming out of ambush with Icebrow Hunter and thus being in range for Charge bonus they were sent into FURY instead of used against Skarbrand to force an activation and preventing him from using his ability to use his best Damage Table Profile the next turn.
    FURY’s fall had also come after an earlier mistake not to even try a medium-length charge with the Beastriders that would’ve likely wiped at least a unit of Fleshhounds.  This set up Khorne to one shot them on their turn with RAGE.

    And after FURY’s fall Khorne took full advantage of Baleful Lord’s ability to let Bloodthirsters run & charge to set up exactly the Tyrants of Blood sequence Mawtribes had been fearing with RAGE into the Frostlord, super-profiled Skarbrand into the Huskard and WRATH on Irongut mop up duty.
     

    The Frostlord would survive with a single wound left and kill RAGE on their next turn but by that point Khorne had enough Blood Tithe to summon in a fresh Bloodthirster and it was just left for Skarbrand to do mop up duty.

    Until the last few turns on VP this one had remained close with Khorne choosing not to burn objectives when they had the opportunity but Mawtribes maxing out their chance post -FURY’s fall to get as many points out of it as they could.  But ultimately in trying to avoid sequential activation Mawtribes gave up too much (particularly in the form of Damage on the Charge) to prevent being on the wrong side of the attrition by the late rounds.
    So now (with the upset?) Mawtribes and Khorne are both 1-1.  The Fyreslayers vs Bonesplitterz match had to be postponed but can Bonesplitterz pull even when it goes down or will Fyreslayers pull into the lead?  And can Mawtribes shake it off like new fallen snow against Fyreslayers in the final round before the table flip?  Can Khorne carry their momentum forward against Bonesplitterz?




  10. Beer & Pretzels Gamer
    Will have to wait to actually get the full flavor when the tables do flip but the mere knowledge that in a few weeks I’d be on the “other side of the table” piloting the Khorne list added a lot of flavor to my in game experience.
    Jumping to the conclusions:
    First, this was my first time playing Fyreslayers (opponents first time playing Khorne so even footing there) and I left the match feeling good overall about how I played but positive that there was still plenty of room for improvement in the next two rounds of the tournament.  For example, I missed an opportunity to maybe draw the match to a close a turn early because instead of Berserk Fury I had Berserk Forgetfulness.  My block of 20x Vulkite Berzerkers had been challenging some Fleshhounds for the Eastern Objective when the primary objective shifted over there in a later round.  I’d managed to get the 6 on my Ur-gold Runes giving my army -2 Rend.  
    With Skarbrand fully buffed then it wasn’t surprising that he charged in to them instead of immediately trying to break the Hearthguard Berzerker block in the middle again.  At that point I knew my Vulkite’s time on the table would be limited.  Perfect moment to pop Berzerk Fury and let them die fighting!  Except... I completely forgot about it.  Or more accurately I confused it with the Auric Runemsiter on Magmadroths ability to eat gold and give a Save bubble which has to be activated in the Hero Phase.  By the time I realized it is actually activated in the Combat Phase over half my Vulkites were already gone...
    So, right there a simple way for me to get more out of this army in my next two matches (even if the Ur-Gold Rune buffs don’t line up nearly as well...).  I’d still take Skarbrand down with my remaining Hearthguard Berzerkers in the next round but this was a clear missed opportunity and hopefully the painful memory will keep me sharper in games two and three.

    Second, while ultimately I won the war of attrition pretty decisively (Khorne conceded when reduced to a couple Fleshhounds, even with some Blood Tithe to summon because while all depleted I still had enough units on table to win objectives in last round) even without fully maximizing  my own potential I still think I have a decent chance in a few weeks of winning with Khorne as there was a close call for me in early going and I think my opponent had missed opportunities too.
    With a two drop list my opponent made me go first.  I’d expected this and accepted that realistically I could challenge one objective R1 with the bulk of my forces, two objectives R2 by bringing in my Runesmiter on foot and the 20x Vulkite Berzerkers with him in the tunnel) and MAYBE all three after R3 if I could afford to move the Magmadroths out as a separate unit.  Got lucky when primary objective fell in middle so I was able to move up in force with my 20x Hearthguard Berzerkers, my Battlesmith and both Magmadroths.  At the last minute I fortuitously ran the Auric Hearthguard in behind the Battlesmith.

    My base case is my opponent would claim the flanking objectives and position for a potential double turn with a fully enraged Skarbrand.  Instead he decided to test hitting his Hammer against my Anvil as hard as possible, bringing in all three of the unnamed Bloodthirsters and a unit of Fleshhounds to boot.

    I guess this was about as good a test of my Hearthguard Berzerkers’ resiliency as I was like to get and I was really regretting that the +1 Save prayer hadn’t gotten off and I’d gotten stingy with the Runesmiter on Magmadroth’s Ur Gold first turn.  Still, I had my Battlesmith in position (and I thought out of harms way) and paid my CP for All Out Defense (the Mystic Shield there to remind me of that as obviously no magic in this army).
    But I’d forgotten about RAGE’s axe dealing MW on unmodified 6s to Wound to all units within 8”.  Guess who was in 8”?  Yup, my Battlesmith whose buff I really didn’t want to lose before the real swinging even began... Thank goodness those Auric Hearthguard were there to eat 5 out of 8 MWs, preserving my Battlesmith.  That was a huge difference in my survivability as the other Bloodthirsters activated.  
    I understood why my opponent tried and had RAGE killed the Battlesmith we are likely talking a different outcome.  But with the Battlesmith intact I weathered the storm and while VP was within 1 point back and forth for next couple of rounds after his Hammer broke on my Anvil I had a lead in the attrition battle that I could build on despite my low mobility.  (Primary objective staying in the middle R2 certainly helped there too.)
    No guarantees but when the tables flip I think there was more ability to leverage Khorne’s big mobility advantage and an opportunity for better target selection.  Given how critical a few Auric Hearthguard wound absorption’s were in R1 I’m thinking it won’t take too much going right for Khorne to tip the scales.
    -X-X-X-
    So at the end of the first set of matches Fyreslayers and Mawtribes are both up 1-0 and Khorne and Bonesplitterz are looking for redemption.  Fyreslayers move on to Bonesplitterz while Khorne faces Mawtribes.
  11. Beer & Pretzels Gamer
    Can’t wait to put out all the lists for our new tournament format to see if readers can identify the winner in advance and thus test the list vs player hypothesis.
    But as I wait thought I’d put out a few thoughts on the threads that I referenced in my last post.  As I’ve discussed in previous posts I came to Age of Sigmar from historical war games and a lot of these thoughts fall into the dynamic of “Yes it’s is fantasy but...”
    I’d be the first to admit that much of this in the end is personal preference.  But as somebody who grew up reading tens of thousands of pages of high and low fantasy, and watching hundreds of hours of fantasy movies but came to AoS not directly from this love of fantasy but indirectly as I was also reading a lot of history books and watching a ton of historical movies and tv shows and thus first sought out historical war gaming as a way to better understand history (only to eventually be turned off by all the hidden abstraction in the name of veracity indulged by certain historical war gamers...) I thought I might offer a slightly different perspective on these issues.  And rather tha spread them out through a series of different threads, given the common link I thought it was useful to put it all together in one spot.
    There’s a Reason They Call Them Uniforms
    Lack of model diversity comes up in a lot of threads so over the last few weeks I’ve had a recurring vision of Eisenhower inspecting the troops before D-Day and turning to Bradley and saying “we’ve got to call it off.”  Bradley is obviously confused and pushes Eisenhower on why and he just keeps mumbling something about it being too visually confusing.  Bradley finally demands an explanation and Eisenhower tells him “Omar, they’re all in green uniforms.  It’s just going to be too hard to tell them apart on the beach.  How are we supposed to coordinate all the actions when we can’t easily tell the different units apart.”
    Thank goodness Eisenhower wasn’t an Age of Sigmar General so D-Day was allowed to move forward even though the Allied Armies “design aesthetics” didn’t clearly differentiate between different units.  To be clear, there are definitely cases where armies are praised for having a common look and color scheme but there are definitely cases where, fair or not, an army gets targeted for being too uniform.  Which again, just sounds strange if you’re coming to AoS from historical wargaming where so much focus is often paid to get the uniforms accurate and, yes, uniform across an army.
    So yes it is fantasy and there is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting your armies to look fantastical.  I’m all for painters coming up with diverse and creative color schemes not just across an army but within it.  Even the factions most associated with a particular uniform color scheme such as Ironjawz in yellow armor or Fyreslayers with the orange bodies and hair still always show multiple different color schemes in their battle tome so no one should feel restricted.  But even the most standard of AoS units still typically provide plenty of other visual signifiers besides the “uniform” to distinguish them on the table so if a player wants to go with a more classical approach to their army design I don’t think this should be such a focal point for animus as it seems to be in so many threads.
    Allies Aren’t Easy
    There are very legitimate complaints to be made about how allies work (or don’t) in AoS.  The only reason, for example, I can figure out that the KO wouldn’t let Gotrek in their flying boat is because he must get violently air sick and they’re just tired of having to clean up.  But I accept it because I know enough about game design to know how difficult it is to write rules that work across literally millions of different potential combinations without breaking the game.
    The one complaint though I really struggle with is the complaint that allies don’t get all the faction buffs and benefits.  Sticking with WW2 for a moment anyone looking at the dynamic between Patton and Montgomery would easily see how difficult it is to coordinate actions between allies even when there is a central authority issuing orders to both.  Thus it was for very good reason that when the Allies landed on the beaches of Normandy each country’s army units basically landed on their own front.  So the US landed on Utah and Omaha, while the British landed on Gold and Sword and the Canadians on Juno.
    Yes, it’s fantasy so there is nothing wrong with wanting your shiny golden boy Stormcast to work with your tree folk Sylvaneth and your armor bound dwarves.  And I’m thrilled that Cities of Sigmar has found a reasonable way to allow these combos to function a little smoother while also providing a good logic that said smoothness comes from regular interaction in the cities themselves.  But even a basic read of the lore of AoS is still consistent with the concept that the issues that make coordination of allies irl would be just as prevalent, if not more in AoS.  So even before we get into how game breaking certain combos would be if ally rules were looser I’m personally comfortable with the underlying logic to the ally limitations.
    They Have a Cave Troll
    Some of the logic regarding allying in units from other factions carries over to interactions between units within the more diverse factions.  As with the above my point isn’t that there aren’t legitimate complaints about how keywords work in AoS.  Again, my tolerance is probably higher because it is easy for me to see how easily looser usage could lead to an even greater degree of power creep/OP combos.
    Here though I think I pretty clearly have fantasy on my side (particularly  cinematic fantasy) as it is only slightly easier to coordinate vastly disparate types of units in live combat than it is to coordinate with allies.  Since GW has LotR franchise as well thought I’d use a “Fellowship of the Ring” reference here and the scene in the Mines of Moria when they first encounter the orcs who, as Boromir is sure to note “have a Cave Troll.”  In the battle that ensues the cave troll does as much or more damage to his orc “allies” as he does to the fellowship.  Friendly fire incidents are unfortunately common irl but if anything in fantasy they are even more common. 
    So absolutely yes, it is fantasy and it is super cool that it allows us to field trolls, sorry Troggoths, with our Grots or our Ogors, but given the prevalence of the friendly fire trope in fantasy arguably AoS isn’t penalizing such combinations nearly enough.  Forget synergies, if we are to believe the fantasy we read in our books and see on our screens we should be seeing mismatched units dishing out a decent amount of friendly fire damage each turn.  Now in this particular aspect I’m an NOT calling for AoS to implement a harsher friendly fire system.  But versus truly penalizing you for taking mismatched units as fantasy source material pretty consistently does, not allowing you to cross buff seems pretty fair to me.
    The best historical comparison to the fantasy I would say was the novel use of War Elephants in the Mediterranean.  Sure Hannibal made them famous with his relatively successful deployment but that wasn’t exactly the base case from the historical evidence.  Don’t have the details in front of me but where they were a novel unit (if any one has a good source for areas where they were more common/standard, such as the Indian sub-continent I’d be fascinated to follow up on the differences) my recollection is that in about 1/3 of battles they were a decisive factor for the side deploying them.  In another 1/3 they were basically non-factors (at least one opposing military leader realized they don’t exactly stop on a dime or turn around quickly and thus had his lines open to let them pass and then closed again to meet the charge of the foot units very successfully).  And in ~1/3 of battles they ended up directly contributing to the loss of the side deploying them (another military leader realized you could panic them by harassing fire with missile weapons and get them to stampede through their own lines). 
    So whether in fantasy or irl mix & match has been a difficult strategy to pull off.
    The Heart Wants What it Wants
    Again, my interest here has not been in arguing people are wrong for wanting what they want out of the game.  I can’t and won’t argue with them about their preferences.  Preferences don’t of course have to be consistent with real life or have properly noted sourcing from the fantasy literature and filmography.  The quality of the game experience, also, isn’t perfectly correlated with fidelity to either.   My confusion arises when these preferences though get rationalized by calls to fidelity to fantasy or realism.
    On that note I’ll end with the complaint about how battalions are often configured too narrowly.  While I know of a few exceptions in general the real military definition of a battalion is a group of the SAME TYPE OF UNITS with a Headquarters unit (to coordinate them and improve their efficacy)and a support unit (I.e. to resupply them).  While I’d be curious to play a version of AoS that forced you to manage your army’s logistics (if for no other reason than it gives an advantage to my FEC and Mawtribes armies whose rations are so conveniently delivered to them by their opponent...) leaving so direct a translation we are left with the basic concept of by bringing together a group of units with a common skill set, giving them enhanced leadership, and ensuring they are supported, you get a more effective force than you would have individually.
    Which to me pretty much sounds like most of the battalions people are complaining about because they reduce diversity.  Hey, I love diversity and in another context could cite plenty of the literature that shows how increased diversity improves performance.  And in AoS there are advantages to the additional tools diversity brings you.  But as my old economics professor always said, there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.  In other words there is always a trade off.  Specialization provides the benefit of improving the efficacy of a given solution, which is great except if that solution doesn’t work for the problem you are facing.  Having more potential solutions then can be an advantage over the long run when you are likely to face multiple different problems (in this context say over a two day tournament).  But the trade off is you might not have enough energy allocated to the solution to the specific problem you are facing (say in a specific match up in a tournament).
    Thats just how any complex system works.  Yes, it is fantasy but without flattening the game space significantly you can’t avoid it.  Nor, is specialization at all inconsistent with fantasy.  In fact many fantasy worlds are built around racial, cultural or socioeconomic specialization.  Which gets to what I guess is my final point.  Yes, it is fantasy, but with a few rare exceptions in order to get us to relate to the characters and avoid breaking down our suspension of disbelief fantasy authors tend to base much of their material on examples from the real world.  These examples of course may be exaggerated or twisted but when you look you can almost always see the through lines connecting these fantasy stories to the real world, whether the present or historical.  Given this I am not surprised at the consistent through lines to real world combat I see in the ostensibly fantasy battle system that is AoS.
    Anyway, thanks for reading my ramblings as I eagerly await Zoom League list deadline.
  12. Beer & Pretzels Gamer
    Oh Boy!  After a few weeks off for the Holidays during which I probably spent way too much time reading threads about how bad things supposedly are in Age of Sigmar land (there’s not enough diversity, there’s too much power creep, it’s being neglected, etc.) I am grateful to be back playing and having fun.  Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of thoughtful posters on all sides of these issues but reading through them in bulk just makes me incredibly grateful to have such a wonderful gaming group.  As @Kramer hit upon regularly in his posts on those threads when the social contract is strong you can have fun competitive games with a wide variety of lists.
    Tonight, for example I will be concierging a grudge match that came out of our last tournament which was a combination escalation league and round robin.  It was Big Waaagh!!! vs. Gristelgore vs. Boulderhead vs. whatever the heck you want to call the crazy amalgamation of SCEs I put on the table trying to play the new “Morathi” rules with the random models my kids had picked out because they looked cool.  Round 1 was 1.25K, Round 2 was 1.5K and Round 3 was 1.75K with the Championship/Consolation match at 2K.
    It was a fun series of matches (especially for everyone when they got to play me 😏) but the nature of the tournament meant that you might just catch a bad match where your point level was at a far more awkward state then your opponent’s when you went head-to-head.  Some good natured trash talk along these lines is the basis of tonight’s match up where the 2K Boulderhead list that got stuck in the consolation match goes up against the 2K Gristelgore list from the championship because Boulderhead was frustrated that they’d beaten Gristelgore at 1.5K only to not make the championship on a Tie Breaker.  Nothing for it but to settle it on the table.
    And if that wasn’t enough to make me grateful up next I get to try something that I’ve always wanted to try.  As those threads I referenced earlier have shown in certain corners there is a strong belief that list building plays an outsized role in determining game outcomes.  Having faced the White Dwarf multi-Keeper of Secrets Slaanesh list on a tournament table I’m not so naive as to say list building doesn’t matter but call me old fashioned I think you still need to play the games.  More than that, beyond the mathhammer that so often only lasts until the dice are actually rolled I do believe that the player can truly drive the outcome by how the move those models around the table and what they choose to do with them.
    So from the aftermath of the first game of Age of Sigmar I ever played I’d thought the best way to suss out the list vs player was, once you’d played through the match one way, you switch sides and play through it all again.  To me the ultimate bragging rights are if I can beat you with my list, then turnaround and beat my list with yours under the same conditions.  Now beyond the obvious time constraints there are often other issues (i.e. the taboo of touching your opponents’s models) that have kept this theoretical... Until Now.
    Given I’m moving all the models anyway in our little Zoom League there are no taboos.  Time constraints remain real but that’s solved by a little tweaking such that we will play through the round robin with each player playing the list they submitted against each of the other players over our normal period.  When we’ve finished we’ll then reset and each player will play their opponent’s list in the same scenario.  All lists will be 2K.  Scoring in the first Round Robin will be 1 pt per a major victory.  In the second Round Robin if the player who won the previous match wins with the list they beat they score 2 points.  If the same list wins the second time the player scores 1 point.
    By the end think we’ll have a very clear idea of both the skills of the players and the strengths of the respective lists.  I also have a strong suspicion that we’ll learn a lot playing against our own lists, something we rarely get to do.  Can’t wait to get started!
    In the interim here are some of the highlights of the last tournament:














  13. Beer & Pretzels Gamer
    Right up front it is worth acknowledging that the tournaments I played these two armies in were structured very differently.  Blisterskin was played in an Escalation based tournament that started at 1K and went to 2K in 250 pt increments.  Guild of Summoners was played in a three match tournament where you had a fixed 1.25K list and got an extra 250 points to customize to the battleplan and match up.  That said I think there were some key takeaways regarding what works and what doesn’t when playing games via streaming.
    1) Balance is Better FEC may not have many models, and with the exception of 1.75K when Crypt Ghouls made a cameo, I was playing an even narrower set of the range.  But FEC is very balanced across the phases of the game.  You’ve got some magic and, via a battalion, an extra pile-in in the Hero Phase.  You’ve got decent Movement that can change the board dynamics.  You’ll have some Shooting from Crypt Flayers and Terrorgheists.  You’re not combat averse so chances are you’ve got a few Charges to make.  And in Combat you’ve got a reasonable, but rarely ever overwhelming, number of dice to roll.
    In contrast the Guild of Summoners list was very heavily weighted towards casting in the Hero Phase plus some Shooting as I was trying as much as possible to avoid combat except with a couple units.  While I got pretty proficient in my casting it is largely a time in the game when my opponent is sitting there twiddling their thumbs.  If this isn’t exactly fun in person it is even more boring when you’re just staring at a screen where not much is happening.  Or at least there’s not much you can do.  Against Ironjawz with Mighty Destroyers there was some similar sentiment that you were just having to sit it out (at most roll some saves).
    The argument isn’t that you should ignore the strength of your list, just again, the recognition that some lists work better over Zoom than others.  I really want to further explore Tzeentch’s options but this doesn’t look like the right format for it.
    2) Dice Drama Stronger w/Fewer High Probability Rolls than Massive Quantities of Low Probability Ones At one point I got all 40x Crypt Ghouls into combat against a Mawkrusha and some Gore Gruntas buffed with the Abhorrant Archregent’s Ferocious Hunger spell so I was rolling 160 attacks.  In person based on Shootas and Stabbas I know there can be some drama to this but in a variation of the above the time it toook to roll all of the attacks, reroll is the 1s, and then reroll all of the wounds, only for the low probabilities to radically reduce the number of Saves that needed to be made and then, especially with the Mawkrusha’s Save in a  Defensive build, only see a few wounds actually go through, is pretty anticlimactic.  In contrast, Crypt Flayers were never rolling nearly as many dice but with MWs on unmodified 6s to Hit every roll felt like it meant something.
    Again, in person the stuff that matters is always more fun and interesting than the stuff that doesn’t.  Over Zoom inconsequential stuff is a momentum killer.  For context as half of us have kids we’re not starting these games until 8:30 PM and we mainly play on week nights with some of us having early starts.  So while the Crypt Ghouls were a very effective chaff screen, especially backed up by mustering and the Chalice of Ushoran, I didn’t bring them back at 2K in order to preserve the pacing and not drag games past midnight.
    3) Battleplans Make a Huge Difference Over Zoom there can be a tendency to want to just line your units up across the deployment zone and rush forward to try and Smash your opponent.  Anything that simplifies the Zoom dynamic of course makes some sense and then the format pushing you towards elite lists such as Triple Frostlord on Stonehorn Boulderhead or Double Cabbage Ironjawz where such tactics align well with what they do best only.  While these types of matches can be fun Zoom League would quickly lose its appeal if that was all it was.
    Blisterskin and Guild of Summoners are clearly NOT designed to play like that.  With Blisterskin I was often castled up to begin with and then relying on my edge Summons, Lord of the Skies teleport, and overall good mobility to maneuver around the board.  None of which would matter if Battleplans didn’t make such tactics a virtue.  Blades Edge has been the best Zoom League option as it forces a more dynamic play style.  Battleplans where holding an objective for multiple turns have also proven their worth in keeping games fresh and allowing for a slightly broader set of factions to be played.
    -x-x-x-
    Keeping games fun AND competitive is something AoS struggles with under normal circumstances.  Under current socially distant conditions we are clearly leaning towards the fun but we still want wins to be based on meaningful interactive aspects of the game.  So as we continue to play and tweak our approach maximizing meaningful interactive moments is a focus.  As a result again I will be moving on from Tzeentch for now as the play style too often minimizes player interaction.  FEC is coming back, albeit via a new player who is looking to go full Monster Mash v Gristelgore.  
    Me?  I’ll be switching over to Stormcast Eternals.  Partially because I have a bunch of SCE models from when it looked like my kids might get interested in the game that could use a turn on the table to knock the dust off.  But also because I think they may offer a lot of what I got out of Blisterskin without ever needing to bring a Horde unit a la Crypt Ghouls onto the table due to a wider variety of battle line options.  We’ll see...
  14. Beer & Pretzels Gamer
    My intent had been to track all the Zoom League games we’d been playing but found that I either had time to play the games or write about them afterwards and, unsurprisingly, chose the former.
    But with our third Zoom tournament kicking off next week I thought I would check back in and provide a broad update.
    The first Zoom League tournament was a Death & Destruction Escalation League that pitted Ironjawz against Boulderhead and Blisterskin.  We started at 1K and with 250 point increments worked our way up to  2K.  This one was largely about the MONSTERS as we saw Triple Frostlord on Stonehorn (though we were proxy in a Huskard on Thundertusk to have the models to do it) builds and a frequent pairing of Mawkrusha and Rogue Idol and even a double Cabbage plus RI finale.  The Abhorrant Ghoul King on Royal Terrorgheist was the weak link, getting one-spotted before they did anything in most match-ups but FEC’s Muster abilities with Crypt Flayers escorted by Varghulf Courtiers proved surprisingly effective as a counter, at least at the higher point levels.
    Ironjawz and Boulderhead did very well in the early rounds with Ironjawz in particular proving difficult for the other players to counter all the Mighty Destroyers shenanigans at lower points.  Blisterskin truly came into its own at higher points where the combination of summoning and mustering finally gave it enough resilience to hold on against the hard initial hits from the Cabbage and FLoSHs, allowing them to go undefeated at 1.75K and 2K and climb back from worst into a tie for first with Boulderhead.
    This tournament reinforced that Elite Builds work well over Zoom, and that we could manage some larger units (e.g. when a big block of Crypt Ghouls showed up in the 1.75K round) okay but the combination of larger units and higher point counts was pushing games too long.  We adjusted for that in our second tournament by creating a relatively novel format.  Each player submitted a 1.25K list that was fixed for the length of the tournament.  Based on the battleplan and match up though each game the player had 250 “flex” points they could add to their list. 
    Our second tournament also added a fourth player and saw Ironjawz go up against Mawtribes, a heavy Putrid Blightking Nurgle list and a Guild of Summoners TZ Mortals list.  Original intent was for November to Dismember to go three rounds followed by a Championship & Consolation match but as two players (Ironjawz and Tzeentch) meeting in the third round were 2-0 and the other two players were 0-2 the decision was made to make the third round the Championship, rather than play the same matches, even with different battleplans, two times in a row.
    The flex concept worked very well and was arguably the key to TZ tournament win.  In G1 a flex Soul Grinder was a useful Distraction Carnifex for the FLoSH and allowed TZ to ignore the FLoSH, stuck over on far side of table for a well timed double-turn that proved decisive.  In G2 the Blue Scribes and Fluxmaster gave TZ enough spell casting to summon a LoC R1, right onto an objective, so even after the Varanguard flopped against a unit of PBKs, TZ was able to hold on for a VP win.  In the third and final match Be’lakor wasn’t as much of a factor but may have goaded the Ironjawz player (very familiar with using B’s special ability in their BoC lists) into an overly aggressive T1.  
    We’ll definitely bring it back, but the new player (who’d picked up Mawtribes when the Boulderhead player switched back to Nurgle) wants to try escalation.  So Holiday Havoc (as in the Holidays will play Havoc with our scheduling...) will see Mawtribes vs Big Waaagh!!! vs Gristlegore vs Stormcast Eternals.
    Stepping back one of the biggest questions that Zoom League has created is the role of the “concierge” in games they aren’t playing.  As the one moving the models when I am going head-to-head I will go out of my way to call out opportunities and risks and work diligently to ensure things like pile-in are done to my opponent’s advantage, or at least make them aware that certain choices have consequences (e.g. if they pile-in an extra model they’ll activate a nearby enemy unit).  Some of this carries over clearly into matches where I am not playing but just moving the models around the table.  There has been some debate though regarding where the line between calling out things that may not easily be determined by remote players on their screen and “coaching” is.
    Some players prefer a minimalist approach (e.g. only providing the measurements they or an opponent explicitly asks for) while others prefer a more maximalist approach given they can’t check things out for themselves (e.g. when it is Shooting Phase the concierge calling out all the units that are in range).  As always though it is the middle case that seem to cause the most controversy.  Fortunately a good gaming group so in the end everybody rolls with it but a difficult line to walk, especially as somebody who wants to see everybody get better and thus wants to avoid games going off the rails just because of mistakes they were much less likely to make in person.
    Tried uploading some pictures but had problems.  May try again later.


  15. Beer & Pretzels Gamer
    A quasi-rematch and given the battleplan was essentially the proto-Starstrike we decided “narratively speaking” this would just represent another portion of the previous battlefield and thus used a similar set-up.   Learning from the previous match while sticking with Khorne Brass Despoilers, though adding a Doombull,  as the foundation of their army they switched from Darkwalkers to Gavespawn and switched out the generic Brayherd Shaman  for (proxied) Grashrak Fellhoof and his Despoilers. 
    In turn I switched from BCR to Gutbusters running a Bloodgullet list centered around the Goremand battalion plus a Butcher and Balewind Vortex.

    I had fewer drops and decided to let BoC go first after again screening my back line against the Bestmaster + Bestigors’ Ambush I knew was coming.  They came in on the East side (left in picture above) but only the Beastlord made his charge into the Leadbelchers.  But he had more than enough to wipe them out.

    Again, this left me with a choice given my Butcher (loaded up with the Wizardflesh Apron and hoping to keep him around the Mawpot on the Balewind Vortex to get the +1 on all four of his spells) was now completely exposed.    With the Bestigors able to run & charge wasn’t going to be able to hide the Butcher and still keep him by the Mawpot.  So I moved my big block of a Gluttons over and they charged the Beastlord.  With some nice Gut Lore debuffs on him even though I didn’t get all of them into him was able to take him out but... Gavespawn went off and a Chaos Spawn took his place ensuring my Gluttons were still pinned.

    Now arguably keeping my Butcher behind he Mawpot would’ve been better but with run and charge there was still a good chance the Bestigors were getting there.  And I was really hoping R2 to be able to hit he Bullgors with Voracious Maw.  Unfortunately it got unbound R1 so I didn’t get any damage into the Bestigors.  This, and arguably no getting the -1 to hit onto them, proved to be a mistake.  But there had also been  the possibility for a double-turn in the back of my mind  (little did I know I would lose all four priority rolls...) which would’ve allowed me to clear the spawn and better screen my Butcher.
    It was not meant to be.  BoC had their objective drop right next to their Bullgors.  Mine dropped in the center.  After BoC won priority the charge was on.  With the charge the Bestigors were getting +1 attacks and with the Chaos Spawn in range they could use the Gavespawn CA to add another.  With 41 attacks they were able to wipe out my Butcher...



    I would manage to clear off the remaining Bestigors in my turn but my opponent would be able to summon more to keep me occupied on that side leaving me with basically my Ironguts to hold the center objective.   The river (half movement) slowed the Bullgors down allowing me to get an opportunistic charge in R3.2.  
     

    But didn’t do enough damage providing time for the Doombull and other Bullgors to get in the next turn as well as Grashrak to do some damage.  

    When I lost the initiative yet again my opponent was able to kill off my last Ironguts and claim the objective.  With no way to even the score I conceded.

    So in both my last two games I forced my opponent to attack from the front but whether 1.75K BCR or 1K Bloodgullet I just didn’t have the bodies to handle an overload where my opponent got to hit first and further reduce my body count.
    A definite positive was this was the first BoC match that had both gone the distance AND finished in a reasonable time.  Still, with sufficient experience playing over Zoom at this point our plan was to set BoC aside for a while and try something a little more ambitious...
     

     

  16. Beer & Pretzels Gamer
    Playing against Gutrot Spume and his Slime Fleet if nothing else had taught me to screen my back line.  This time though I’d have my own unit coming out of Ambush in my Icebrow Hunter and a couple of Frost Sabres.  The hope was that once the objectives came down I’d be able to steal one.

    With the back line screened off Nurgle overloaded one side.  When the PBKs that came on with Gutrot made their charge they erased a unit of Mournfangs before they had a chance to fight back.


    While there was another unit of Mournfang over there with some Pusgoyles (proxied with Plague Drones), Gutrot AND Slimux all still waiting in the wings had the sense that I’d need to commit more to reclaiming that side.   As the fully buffed FLoSH was closer (and we were playing the river halved movement making it even tougher to get units over there) the hope was the remaining Mournfang could hold out long enough for the gigantic “cavalry” to arrive.
    Meanwhile I committed most of my remaining forces to the middle, hoping to take down the main block of PBKs getting buffed by the Harbringer.


    Unfortunately, without Brand of the Svard and Black Clatterhorn just couldn’t put out enough damage.  When the middle objective came down on the relatively open side I had hopes for springing the Hunter but I lost the priority roll.  Nurgle had enough to summon 10x Plaguebearers onto that objective which, even worse for me, freed up another unit of PBKs to crash the party in the middle.

    That was simply too much for the second FLoSH to handle...


    At that point, in my turn I needed to clear the remaining Nurgle units out of my territory to free my fully buffed FLoSH up for another big charge to regain control of the middle and then some luck with where the remaining objectives fell.  I cleared out the PBKs but that left Gutrot and Slimux as well as the now free Pusgoyles.  If the objective came on the other side in my territory I could try and hold it with my Frost Sabres and Butcher and maybe I’d get some luck with the final objective in being abl3 to spring my Hunter.

    It was not to be...
    The objective in my territory fell right under my FLoSH while Nurgle’s fell in the center.  When a Nurgle won priority they charged in the Pusgoyles, Slimux and Gutrot to pin my FLoSH.   The rest the pulled back onto one of the two objectives.  They even summoned a screen of 5x Plaguebearers just in case I tried something sneaky with my Hunter...


     
    With Gutrot stealing my best attack could only kill him and one of the Pusgoyles.  With the center objective being slightly less well defended tried to charge my Icebrow and Frost Sabres in there but no luck.  By the end of my turn and thus the end of R3 I didn’t see a path to victory and conceded.
    That made the score Nurgle 2  / BCR 1.5 over the four rounds we’ve played.
    Between the higher starting model count (increased by Summoning) and fewer things dying early this game did play slower.  Still hopeful to finish out with the 2K match at some point but we have another potential plan percolating...
     
  17. Beer & Pretzels Gamer
    After being literally knocked out of football I played golf senior year of high school and through college.  If you were like me, a bogey to double-bogey player on average you hit 90-110 shots in an 18 hole round all for the 3-5 shots that you’d remember.  That 300 yard drive you had that miraculously landed in the fairway, even if you mangled your approach and three putted.  That approach shot from the rough after a bad drive that landed on the green and gave you a shot at birdie, even if you choked leaving your first put a foot short and your second put a foot long.  That 16’ put you nailed to save par after barely making it onto the green with you third shot...  It is those shots that you remember that get you back on the course after you’ve sworn off the game having just put three consecutive balls into a water hazard.
     

    This...  this was like hitting a hole in one.  And I say that even though I was on the wrong side of it.  I was playing the Frostlord on Stonehorn.  I rolled 10 for my charge but only did 3MW.  That left the Beastlord with two wounds.  I activated my FLoSH first and he was fully powered and had Brand of the Svard Artefact plus Black Clatterhorn Mount Trait so I knew I had a solid set of attacks coming up.
    For fun I tried first to punch him out of the game.  Two landed, enough to kill if both go through  but with no Rend he easily saved.  Fine, onto the Frost Spear.  With three damage I only need one of the two Wounds to go through and with -1 Rend the odds are in my favor.  No dice though as he rolls 5s & 6s.  Not sweating yet as I roll 3 attacks with my Crushing Hooves.  All three go through!  But again he rolls 5s & 6s!!!  Suddenly the Everwinter is not looking favorably on me as ONLY ONE of my Horn attacks go through... But it’s the -2 Rend so only a 6 keeps the Beastlord alive.  Surely he has used up all of a Khorne’s favor in the last three Saves?!?  Nope, Khorne smiles and he gets a 6.  The Beastlord lives to fight another turn.
    -x-x-x-
    I’m obviously telling this game out of order and as far as this Blog goes I need to go back and cover the previous game given its importance to Zoom League’s operation but having just finished this game I just couldn’t wait to get this post done.
    Going back to the beginning we were playing the GH20 Starstrike Battleplan at 1K.  I was running Boulderhead Beastclaw Raiders and my opponent was running Darkwalkers Beasts of Chaos with the Brass Despoilers Battalion.  BoC had fewer drops so I’d had to deploy with a bubble around my FLoSH ( having learned the hard way how frustrating it is when he doesn’t get his a Charge off) as best I could with limited drops in case they went first and Ambushed units to try for 9” Charges.  No luck though as they had me go first.  I did my best to advance up the table so no matter where the first objective landed I’d have a chance at it R2 while doing my best to maintain my bubble.
    In their turn they positioned a set of Bullgors on the Western landing sight but instead of using their first Ambush to “pop the bubble” they instead used it to “claim the Eastern potential landing site.  They would charge a unit of 10x Bestigors into my Huskard and 10x Ungors into my Mournfang (we were proxying Gnoblars fir those looking closely...) as well as summon 10x more Ungors.  His Bestigors degraded but did not kill my Huskard while you Mournfang killed most of his Ungirs with the rest fleeing in Battleshock.  
     
    At the end of Turn 1 we rolled the landing site and I got lucky that it came down in the middle...

    I was less lucky when my opponent rolled the double-turn.
    With the ability to Run & Charge they were able to get the Eastern flanked Bestigors into my Frostlord (few four unit bubbles can withstand a double turn...) and they teleported some Bullgors close enough to have a 10” charge into my FLoSH, which they made.  They used the Ungors they summoned last turn to screen off my Mournfang.  On the other flank their Bullgors charged my Gluttons.  Only the Beastlord failed their charge...

    The Bullgors did some damage to my FLoSH but not enough to degrade him between good saves and his Stone Skeleton wound negation.  I overcommitted to wiping the Bestigors, killing them off with 5 Wounds to spare with my Horns, leaving only my Frost Spear and Punches & Kicks for the Bullgors. That was enough to kill one and Wound another.  (I’d finish that one off with my Frost Sabre in a later activation but that still left my FLoSH pinned with 1 surviving Bullgor.)
    The other Bestigors got my Huskard down to 3 remaining Wounds but in a rare case if the exception that proves the rule he actually dished our a decent amount of damage, killing enough units to allow Battleshock to clear a few more.  After the game my opponent realized they could’ve popped the Brass Despoilers once per  to help Bullgors & Bestigors reroll all failed Wound rolls.  Not sure how big a difference would have made for FLoSH given saves and Stone Skeleton as I also had the CP to a Dig Deep My Heels and ignore the damage when making my attacks.  But could’ve made difference with Huskard. <Corrected from initial post after opponent confirmed it was NOT Beastlord CA but this one he forgot>
    All in I had to be happy with where I was at when my turn in R2 started.  The Grasp of the Everwinter rolls were amazing for me and I cleared the surviving Bullgor, freeing my FLoSH to make a normal move.  My Hailstorm went off killing the remaining Bestigors around my Huskard who healed himself via both his Mount Trait and his spell, getting back down to 6 Wounds taken.  He was now free to move as well.
    I was hoping to charge my Mournfang into the Great Bray Shaman on the Bailwind Vortex but they only had enough when I rolled to get into the Ungors.  My Huskard made their charge into the Bullgor.  And my FLoSH charged the Beastlord, setting up the combat this post started with.


    Fortunately I killed off the Bullgor and the Ungors so all-in-all I was in great shape heading into R3.  Both of the objectives fell in the East.  My opponent won the initiative again and went first setting up a last stand on the Eastern Objective in their territory with the Great Bray Shaman and summoned Gors.  The Beastlord’s luck ran out though and died in the R3.1 combat phase.
    When it was my turn I had the choice of staying simple and just claiming the objective in my territory and in the center likely with little chance that anything could knock my FLoSH off the former nor a significant probability that I’d lose the middle if I plopped my Huskard, Frost Sabre and remaining Glutton on the middle objective.  That would still let me charge my Mournfang into his Shaman and Gors, and if they survived he’d pretty much be stuck there in R4 while I collected VP.
    But I went for the more fun approach moving everything I could towards his last redoubt (though I did position my too far away Frost Sabre so, if necessary, it could claim the objective in my territory and the solo Glutton would similarly be in position to claim the center objective in R4 as well.  
     
    My Huskard would fail the charge but get in range to Shoot at the Shaman, wounding him enough that he’d die on my Frostlord’s Charge.  The Mournfang would kill all but one of the Bestigors,  with a single model left on the table my opponent more than graciously conceded. 
    -x-x-x-
    Ultimately this one for both of us was about learning.  On my part a lot of the consideration was around the Huskard,  They’ve dropped in points and this game I got about as much as I’ve ever gotten out of one of them with all but one of my prayers going off and the Shooting Phase going as well as it has since the nerf.  While I again whiffed their melee R1.2 they didn’t some melee damage in R2.1 and then god charge damage in R2.2.  I’m still not sure that even when it’s about as good as it gets, even at the lower cost, that it is worth it?  But after this game I can’t completely dismiss the unit.
    For my opponent as much as the Battleplan theoretically favored Darkwalkers mobility their sense was that Gavespawn may have been better in this game.  There was also debate regarding whether the aggressive play going after the Huskard was worthwhile?  Post-game seeing how close they were to killing the Huskard (with the probability increased had they used the Brass Despoilers once per) and how much damage the Huskard did manage to achieve this game I’m guessing in 3 out of 5 tries the gambit would’ve paid off and then they could’ve been more patient in other aspects of the game.  But I’d acknowledge it is a tough call.
    -x-x-x-
    And of course part of the learning process always relates to the mechanics of Zoom League itself.
    Laying out and clearly labeling all the potential landing zones is probably overkill for an in-person game. (NOTE: before the game started we decided to remove the tower you can see in picture below.)  But in a remote game it was very helpful and a major time saver.  A side benefit was that the lines and markers also helped visualize the Herdstones range.

     
  18. Beer & Pretzels Gamer
    As “awesome” as a me against all comers dynamic might be 😏a lot of the fun of AoS comes from experiencing a variety of different play styles.  Sure, we could get some of this from changing up the armies more often but realistically this diversity best comes from playing against a variety of different opponents, each with their own playing personality.
    To achieve this we had to test “concierge” play.  Would the gaming Cage work with two remote players and myself as a 3rd party moving all the models?
    We tested this with a 1K match between Beasts of Chaos & Nurgle playing the GH18 version of Shifting Objectives. (The North-South orientation works better on our board than the East-West orientation in recent GHs.)  Kept the terrain relatively simple with one objective kind of boxed in by some mountains and forests with the majority of the board an open plane.

    If asking asking for clarification was key when it was me vs a remote player with two remote players it became absolutely vital.  With a lot of Ambushing and Summoning making sure stuff was coming onto the table the way the player intended was key.  This was compounded by there being a lot more models on the table than any game we’d previously played.  This significantly upped the difficulty of things such as pile ins.  The most obvious result of this combination of factors was that while we had been getting through 4-5 rounds in 2.5-3 hours pretty consistently in our BCR vs Nurgle Escalation League, despite higher points, we were well past the 3 hour mark when we called it we’d just rolled for the primary objective to start the 4th round.  Based on where it fell it was hard for one if the players to find a path to victory.
    Anyway game kicked off with a 4 making the center objective the primary objective.  BoC went first and ran their Bestigors onto the primary objective and then ambushed Bullgors onto the Southern objective and more Bestigors and the Beastlord onto the Northern.  In their own movement phase Nurgle would advance towards the middle and the Slime Fleet would land in enemy territory capable of threatening both units of Bullgors.
     

     
    Failed charges would mean not as many Nurgle units would get into combat R1.2 but in the South and the Center Battle was joined.


    Both conflicts would go reasonably well for Nurgle leaving them with an advantage re:those objectives they sustain the next two rounds.  Which ended up being big as in both R2, R3 and R4 despite the promise of the Battleplan’s title, the primary objective did not move on a rolls of 4,4,3... (For Ss& Gs we did a proxy roll for R5 and it finally landed in the North).  Thus even though BoC was able to establish dominance in the North on their next turn they would be having to find ways to get enough units with enough punch to the middle the rest of the game.


    Nurgle would summon Plaguebearers to screen one of the passes and threaten the Shaman and Bullgors in the East with the freed up Southern units.

    BoC nonetheless would force the fight in the middle.  Ultimately though they lacked enough punch to get the job done..


    With a significant VP lead at the end of R3 for Nurgle, and Nurgle winning initiative meaning they’d rack up more before BoC could try any last minute Hail Mary BoC conceded.
    The positive takeaway is that “concierge” games are viable which means that we can consider a broader Escalation League, one-off matches when an infrequent player can drop in, or even a mini tournament.
    Another takeaway (reconfirmed with a second BoC game last night) though is that Elite builds are far more robust and scalable in this dynamic.  Honestly can’t imagine trying to get 2K worth of BoC around the table (plus Summoning) in anything resembling a timely manner.  So as we look to “next steps” we are zeroing in on an Elite Meta.  Still ironing out the details but in the interim we’ve got two more games scheduled this week.  The first is the 1.75K game in the BCR vs Nurgle Escalation.  The second is another 1K BoC exhibition match, against a Bloodgullet list this time.


  19. Beer & Pretzels Gamer
    With proof of concept the big question was - What’s Next?
     
    With scheduling issues for one player and still working out logistics for some of our other previously regular players the two of us that could schedule more regular games set out to play an mini-Escalation League between Nurgle and Beastclaw Raiders.  Neither of us had been thrilled by our beta test 1K build so we both went back to the drawing board.  Nurgle proxied in a couple of Plague Drones as Pusgoyles to give their list a little more movement while I swapped my Thundertusk Beastriders for a Huskard on Thundertusk and his Everwinter Prayers.

    We played GH19 Total Conquest.  Without Rend the PBKs struggled to take down the bigger BCR Monsters but some cold rolling for the Frostlord and the Harbringer of Decay’s Command Ability left stuff a little too jammed up in the middle.  This resulted in a tie on VP as neither  managed a breakthrough, even with Gutrot and the Slime Fleet popping up in the backfield.  BCR took a minor victory by killing off more of Nurgle’s points than they lost.
     
    This stalemate would’ve been discouraging if it had been one of the Beta Tests but it played fast and Nurgle knew with the point jumps they could add in the Blight Cyst Battalion and get the Rend that had been sorely missing in the 1K matches.  And with the points jump for BCR knew I could add some bodies to give me a little more flexibility in maneuvering for objectives.  I’d also be bring a Butcher which meant the Mawpot was now in play.

    This time we were playing GH20 The Blade’s Edge, which immediately became one of our favorites.  The power of choosing which objectives got removed was potent enough that when Nurgle won priority rolls in later rounds they gave up a double-turn to be able to remove objectives from BCR’s territory.  This was a tactic that proved effective enough to put the game away on VPs even before they knocked most of the Ogor models off the table.  With a major victory Nurgle was now ahead 1-0.5.
    With another points increase  though BCR was able to roll out Double Frostlords on Stonehorn as well as a Butcher and a Slaughtermaster.  While Nurgle was able to load up on PBKs and try out Slimux the set-up for GH20 Forcing the Hand made Nurgle separate his big blocks of PBKs with the result that only one group got the Harbringer’s buff.

    Nurgle’s deployment difficulties were compounded but the Slime Fleet entering from the back corner and then failing their charges which allowed BCR to basically ignore the first few rounds.  Still, despite these advantages for BCR it took some very bad rolls for the Gnarlmaws and the Blessed Sons exploding PBKs (back-to-back ones when all that was needed to take the last wound was a 2+...) and some strong saves and shrugs from the Frostlords to keep them in the game long enough to secure BCR a major victory on VPs.
    Hopefully we’ll be able to complete the cycle with games at 1.75K and 2K but the scaling so far highlighted two BIG reasons why the “Zoom Meta” almost necessitates Elite armies/lists.  To start with even at the beginning Elite lists just have fewer models to move.  This is vital given the dynamic of remote players.  But arguably equally or more important is that as points go up damage goes up without being diffused.  Getting every model into combat with a Horde unit is rare so there is often a big differential between the theoretical damage output and the practical reality can be huge.  In contrast typically you’re goin* to get both a Mournfang in and barring creative model removal ALL of a Monster’s attacks almost be definition will be eligible (overkill can be risk).  
     
    The net was even though we were starting with more models by rounds 3 or 4 we were still down to the numbers we’d been at in lower pointed round as concentrated firepower was removing models at a faster rate.  And keeping matches at the ~2.5 hour mark is a practical priority for this dynamic.  Again, that is a very different meta than our in-person games where in early games Hordes of Grots were common and even in our more recent games where loads of Khorne mortals were finding their way to the table.  Not that we didn’t have elite armies as well (I was running Gristelgore last year at this time) but, pre-quarantinethe next Army we were expecting was Tzeentch.  So clearly we were adapting to the new conditions.
  20. Beer & Pretzels Gamer
    While scheduling caused a few more delays we eventually lined up two Beta Test games.  Both would be 1K with an emphasis on “the basics”.
    The first match was Beastclaw Raiders versus Nurgle.

    A simple two objective battleplan with minimal terrain did mean this was a bit of a race forward and smash each other in the face style match-up, though Gutrot Spume and the PBKs in the Slime Fleet did add a little flavor.  Mostly what this one did was serve as proof of concept.
    Our second match-up was an Execution Herd-centric Legion of Azgorh against BCR but “1st page” of Battletomes and war scrolls only.  (In other words no mount traits or Boulderhead sub-faction abilities but the trample and hungry/eating benefits for the Ogors while LoA got their Blackshard Armor buff...). Same battleplan but played different enough that we had conviction this wasn’t a fluke.
    There were two key takeaways though:
    1) You Need an ABSOLUTE Direction System
    As anyone who has had to say “No, not your right, my right” knows a lot of the basic directions we use on a day-to-day basis can be unintentionally confusing because of the inherent relativeness of the terms.  With the need to shift all around the table to move the models we needed something absolute to go with.  So the top of the screen became North, the bottom South, the right-side of the screen East and the left-side of the screen West.  Wasn’t always perfect (turns out it is as easy to confuse your East from your West as it is your right from your left, especially at the beginning, but after a couple turns everything was Running pretty smoothly.
    2) You Need Trust & Open Communication
    Especially for the remote player’s movements you need a running dialog about what there intent was?  For example, in trying to pile-in as many models as possible were they intending to activate (put pieces w/in 3” of an enemy model) that initially hadn’t been eligible?  In completing a charge we’re they trying to “tag” both adjacent enemy units or just one of the two?  In other words the in-person player should absolutely NOT be trying to create an advantage for themselves either by commission (i.e. moving an enemy model in a way that benefits them) or omission (i.e. not telling the remote player about a potential advantage or disadvantage that may not be easily evident from the God’s Eye view).
    The biggest positive though was that, despite our worries going in (and no doubt helped by the fact that we were only playing 1K), the game played very fast.  We’d been prepared for a lot of slowness but after some initial hiccups turns weren’t taking much longer than they do in-person.  This was a very pleasant surprise as it meant we could increase the points...
     
  21. Beer & Pretzels Gamer
    Of course at the time “everyone” was trying to by webcams to videoconference into work or for their kid’s remote learning.  My original plan had been to use GoPro cameras as then, when hopefully the need for a Gaming Cage was no longer present, they’d have other uses.  Unfortunately I ended up in a software update loop that hours with their Service Center couldn’t fix (basically it required a software update but until the software was updated it wouldn’t let me into the program I needed to get into in order to download the update...).  
     
    Once I’d identified some webcams that I thought would work I ran into another technical difficulty.  While our plan had always been to start at 1K on a smaller field once mounted we could see that the (now fixed focus) cameras couldn’t get the full 6’x8’ table into the picture.  Showed way more of the sides than necessary but you’d lose 4-6” on the ends.  Not a huge deal but with so many things these days coming onto the table 6” for the edge a potential complication.
    For now though we decided to make a bug a feature and played “sideways” which allowed for a 58”x48” playing area while leaving table space for dice rolling and “dead” models as well as an easier position for the computer we’d be using to coordinate all the cameras.
    A friend who had done some streaming recommended a particular software and a particular service and at first it seemed great as we quickly set up a three camera system (to which we hoped to add to).  Unfortunately we again hit software problems as, despite the fact that we’d downloaded the software directly through the service we just couldn’t get the service to recognize the software when it was fully set up.  We tried for a couple hours that first day and then again on another day just in case it had been a fluke with the server connection or something.  No dice.
    Many of our local gaming group also have a movie night and we’d been doing a Zoom meeting discuss a movie we’d all watched every other week.  It had been working well enough that we decided to try gaming over Zoom, though it meant dropping from a three camera set-up to a two camera set-up (God’s Eye plus a side view showing the player).  With a quick camera test showing it theoretically worked we were ready to beta test.
  22. Beer & Pretzels Gamer
    We were in the middle of a Khorne-centric narrative cycle when the lock down started that we were using in part to learn some new armies that we might take to a friendly small tournament (The Battle in the Barn) between our local gaming group and another gaming group an hour or two down Route 90.   Like a lot of people our initial perspective was to take a wait and see approach while focusing on the hobby side of the game in the interim.
    As it became more and more likely that our small tournament at the start of summer wasn’t going to happen and that in-home face-mask to face-mask games weren’t going to be practical anytime soon we started looking for creative alternatives.
    With the gyms closed I’d started hiking in the local county park. With relatives coupled up in Brooklyn I’d joked I was going to get a GoPro and livestream my hikes for family stuck in small apartments all day.  While that wasn’t going to be a thing as I was hiking I started thinking up ways I could hook up webcams over a playing table to stream the game to other players.
    Fortunately I called my Dad up and he talked me out of some crazier designs into a simple “box” design to go over the table that would allow for both a God’s Eye (top down) view and plenty of other angles and shots if they proved necessary.
    I measured the gaming table I planned to use.  I also measured the height of the ceiling fans that would be a major constraint to height in the spare room it would be set up in.  25+ years later my 8th grade industrial arts teacher would be very disappointed to learn that, after rigorous testing* to determine what size PVC pipe I would use for the frame I didn’t  go back to my drawing and re-adjust to allow for the width.  As a result, once built, the mid-frame was about 1.5” above the table-top instead of being flush.  This is a little annoying but not devastating.
    The other design issue was that, for simplicity of measurement I’d put the support for the God’s Eye Camera dead-center.  If I’d stayed with a GoPro that would’ve mounted easily underneath this would’ve been fine but when I switched to more traditional webcams this meant the side mounting biases the camera a little.
    After a few delays getting started actuallly working with PVC pipe and “furniture” grade couplings made the construction the easiest phase of the project.  All I needed was a sharp handsaw to cut the lengths and (by design) I’d maxed out the number of lengths that were exactly the same so frequently as long as I got the first cut right I could use that one to measure the rest.  In under 90 minutes I had a “Gaming Cage” set up in the garage.

    Unfortunately getting it built would prove a lot easier than getting it online...
    *By rigorous testing I mean I stood with the 10’ lengths straight up in the air and “shook” them to find the narrowest pipe that still provided enough rigidity for the structure...  believe me this elicited plenty of strange looks.  I settled on 1” which also helped because there was also a full range of couplings available and I needed some “non-traditional” joints.
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