Golub87

Ummm... Why? It is not like they earned our patience. It seems to me that the community lives in perpetual "a few months from now this will be a balanced and fun game, you will see" state of mind. Always waiting for the next FAQ, never getting anything.

I am sorry, but we were overpriced to begin with. I have to admit that this forced positivity is even more grating than the nerfs themselves. GW dropped the ball hard. Was it intentional maliciousness or gross incompetence I really can't say, but it was one of the two. A very bad thing happened. Sweeping that under the rug or adopting "wait and see" stance for the umptheenth time in GW history is not really going to help. This is not the first time this has happened and I really feel that community should stop stiffing its feelings on the matter. Expressing anger and disappointment is both healthy and cathartic, especially in communal setting. There is a point at which looking for silver lining and insisting that everyone should see it is toxic in of itself.

Marauders needed a nerf. Chaos Warriors, an iconic unit that needed a boost also crumbles under new points and unit sizes. Best way to take them was 5 man for a very affordable but almost useless battleline or in 15 man unit for a pricey but resilient anvil. Now you can only take them in 10s or 20s (for a whooping 400 pts). Also they are not batteline for gods.

This is very important to note. I was already quite frustrated with the way the game is designed, but I talked myself into giving 3.0 a chance. It has some good points. But then, not just that my Slaanesh force was hit with these points hikes but I also lost the ability to bring in S2D as battleline. Technically I am able to field a legal army with the models I own solely thanks to Daemonettes. 3x10 for 420 pts. In the end I feel somewhat relieved - I don't have to give 3.0 a chance after all and I have a firm and objective reason why I will not play it. No need to play a game with 3x10 daemonnettes as battleline and definitely no reason to fork out $$$ for new battlelines. I can't play, even if I wanted to.

No, I do not think all of us will have a crack at the new edition. This just cemented my decision to stop playing the game.

What can I say about spending time here? We have new rules coming up and there was this hope that this time it will be different? I would not call this ragequit so much as realization how toxic overall situation around AoS and GW is. I also don't care if it is a skirmish game or a battle wargame, as long as it picks one and stops being the worst of both worlds.

Honestly, this just reads like Stockholm Syndrome. This is a hugely expensive hobby that creates personal connection to one's purchases. You pour money and effort into your army. This creates a huge number of very vocal members of community that will feel personally attacked any time any criticism is leveraged at the game itself. Hence the almost desperate defense of the game and constant attempts to dismiss or silence those who criticize the game. AoS is very very poorly thought out and designed game. It is not fun. It is not clever. It does not reward system mastery. It might be good at creating the feeling that you mastered the system when you put pink horrors in the list. AoS has good models. Great even. Pretty much the only reason why I am still here. Lore is a serious miss. Just heaps of bad prose. Rules are some of the worst I have ever seen in a wargame. AoS has an identity crisis - no clue if it wants to be a warband skirmish game or full battle wargame. Completely incomprehensible decision to make all these base sizes. There are other skirmish games with much tighter base size rules that are much better as a result. It is tedious - too many models and abilities and fiddling. Base rules are incredibly bland and unfun. Writers are clearly aware of this so they overcompensate by overloading the warscrolls with tons of abilities and bombastic effects - which is only great for the rules reveal but not when you see Kroak for the Nth time across the table. The game is just a boring execution of well known combos. The actual gameplay is barren because the core rules are poorly thought out mess. Due to this, playing AoS feels like watching same Michael Bay movie over and over again. Nuclear explosions do not replace good filmmaking. The lack of subtlety and restraint in the way armies are differentiated really reveals the lack of confidence the writers have in their base system. I have played wargames where minor differences in stats make for a completely different experiences with different armies. GW overcompensates in their army differentiation resulting in widely unbalanced armies and units. Yeah, recognizing good units from bad can be seen as a reward for system mastery, but it is kind of a moot point when the difference is this pronounced and when it can be easily net-listed. If anything, the game rewards tedious precise measuring and very accurate bubble setups so that your combo can be executed with maximum efficiency. Terrain is a gimmick, which is ridiculous for a wargame. There is clearly no design direction and the design process itself seems quite... insular. Odd silence and lack of any kind of engagement with community. Strange fixation on certain things (who wants to bet that in 3.0 we will get a two-pager about how Open Play is the bestest game mode ever in the whole wide world?) Looking back, I can easily visualize a lot of the games I played with other wargames, from the terrain placement, maneuvers to the results. When I look back on AoS games, it is just an endless string of games on the same flat terrain (I am sure there was terrain there, just it did not play any part in the game) with the same gimmicky armies, trying to pull off same fiddly combos, just blending together. When I think about packing my army and heading out to the club and then putting those models on the table... Anxiety sets in. It is like a chore. Playing this feels like a punishment. When I think about my upcoming Saturday Team Yankee game... I feel good. I am looking forward to it. I am going to lose horribly, as always, because it is a hard game to play that actually rewards mastery, but I will have fun. Yeah, in writing this post I realized that I am done. Maybe if I stop playing, maybe I will appreciate painting models more.

Interestingly, no cap on saves...

You are 100% correct, of course. That said, that is not an argument in favor of current system. I have played games where you simply put "unformed" token next to the formation that fell apart for whatever reason. It is not a perfect representation of what is actually happening, but it is far closer to the truth than whatever this is AND it is simpler for the player AND it allows for better and more interesting game due to the way it interacts with other elements of the game. From my standpoint, and feel free to correct me if I am wrong, when designing a rule for the game there are three things to be taken into account. Priority varies and sometimes not even all three things are considered, depending on designer goals, but any given rule must conform and reinforce at least one of these elements: 1. Gameplay - does the rule make playing the game more elegant? Does it provide more interesting choices to the players? Does it interact favorably with other rules? Semi-independent unit movement that we have right now fails here because the game is not more elegant (tedium of pushing individual figures), choices are not really meaningful due to lack of constraints (you can push your unit trough terrain the same way you push it over open field - no risk of being unformed vs reward of being in cover there), and it does not interact favorably with other rules (best example being within vs wholly within song and dance - game is a mess of aura bubbles now due to the nature of formations). 2. Narrative - does the rule help tell a story? Does it result in a spectacle on the table? Is it pretty? Absolutely not - two most common formations were noodle lines of infantry and sideways cav formations.... No legion-like tight blocks of Ossiarchs or the like. And now we get these complex geometries in the new rule-set. It is ugly. 3. Simulation - does the rule help simulate reality? Does it drive the game in the direction where the outcomes would be similar to RL? Again, a dud. See above as to why. No one has ever used the formations that are used in this game. Again, not every game has to equally support all three. Chess is all about gameplay, for example. But when writing a rule, you have to get at least one of these in order to justify it. And this is not the only rule where AoS simply fails to satisfy even one of the important game design points.

I bet that we will see nothing that mitigates UH. Best that we can hope for is that it will be once per tern (it is still too much(

Not to mention how it is simply a bad design to have a plethora of these gimmicky abilities. Hero Actions, Monster Actions, so many new command abilities (did we really need Rally in the game? What does it bring to the table aside from yet another piece of text to remember?) Also, why do so many people object to the community voicing their disappointment in sub par stuff we have been shown so far? I don't get it. Should we just not talk about the reveals at all or are only people who praise the new rules allowed to talk? How is liking a rule out of context different from disliking the rule out of context?

This is a definite yes. Jury is still out what happens if you are down to 40 brims. Do you roll 60 dice (20 for pinks and 40 for blues)?

True, but we should just go back to square formations. There is no reason, gameplay or lore, that requires the tedium of moving models one by one. Historically speaking formations were extremely important in pre-industrial warfare and there is no way to impose their practicality on the player via soft rules.

By that logic we should be all playing Flames of War because it has tanks and artillery and planes and machineguns. ...which is a rather brilliant idea actually, might take you up on that. Thanks!

There is truth to this. Reduction in table sizes was a decision made precisely for this reason. I suspect that UH was made because T1 charges are going to be the norm or at least they think that they will be. Even once per game UH will have a huge impact. Most games are decided by T3 and with these table size reductions that will not go away. It is a complete mess of a game right now and that does not seem to be changing in 3.0. That really should not come as a surprise to anyone who paid attention over the years and who tried to play any other wargame. AoS has an identity crisis on the most basic level - is it a skirmish game or a full battle wargame?

Gloom and doom is entirely warranted. Why? Well, one reason is that the company in question has a history of making bad rules and game design choices. WH has never been a good game, and more often than not it has been a rather poor game and right now it is trending in that poor direction. A new rule set is announced and we have been given partial information X regarding those rules. What constitutes this partial information X is entirely in the hands of the people designing the game. The fact that partial information X seems to just aggravate the current issues points to one of the two conclusions: people in charge do not know what the problems with the game are or people in charge do not care what the problems with the game are. Granted, they may stumble upon a good rule set by chance, but under these conditions, with their apparent awareness of the issues and past performance, it is far more likely that they will not. Bottom line is - organization that thinks that it is a good idea to come out with these particular snippets at this point in time, likely has no idea how to actually fix the game. I will not hold my breath expecting that people that have consistently made poor decisions come up with some brilliant piece of game design.

If it really works like that, at this point, honestly, I am not even mad.

Fortunately, only the starting models can be returned, so I assume that you only roll 20 dice? It is bonkers even in this "weak" state

This is the way. If 20 pinks die and you are left with 40 blues, one rally should bring you back around 3 pinks - 15 wounds total. I was under the impression that you could abuse it even more, if say blues die and then you roll for them, but blues cannot be returned to a unit as a friend pointed out. If they could and you waited until all you have is 40 brims (only ), one Rally would net you about 30 wounds, on average.

The base to base zig zag seen here is not the best way to get as much ground as possible. Best way would be 8 bases wide 1" between them and last two models tucked in the ends to make two anchor triangles. It is two models shorter than 10 model noodle line and if one is gone, half the unit dies. If you want to risk your 32mm bases that way it covers 23.07" of frontage Edit: my mistake, the reddit zig zag formation does not actually crumble after one casualty

Well with the way shooting is shaping up with Unleash Hell, I find it hard to see how will fragile melee army live. It will be like the battle of Somme, 4+ save or no. That said, did Lurid Haze just significantly drop in utility with the introduction of AOD? The only reason to take it now is outflank I guess.

The way they release new rules shows that they do not understand what was wrong with 2.0 and what frustrated people and if they do not understand what was wrong, why should there be any faith that they will be able to fix it? In what world can someone both understand the problem and provide information on the new rule set in this way?

Yeah, and every move does not only include normal move, but also run, charge, retreat and pile in. Good catch.

I am inclined to agree. Formations, facing, flanking, morale... all of those things were big in pre-industrial warfare for a reason. I do not think that soft limitations that will create natural formations and facings as emergent tactics are easy to make or even possible, and I am quite certain that the GW design team does not have what it takes to pull it off even if it was doable. There is 0 gameplay or fluff reason for individual model movement in AoS (Monsters, Heroes etc notwithstanding)

Yeah, this hurts Fiends. And if the rumors about no more buff/debuff sackings are true, Fiends are back in the bin, just as they started to shine