Ganigumo

As I've mulled it over a bit I think GA BTs might actually be worse than army specific ones. You still have the same balance issues if you make them too easy/too hard, except now it affects 4-9 armies winrates instead of just 1. You can't target GA BTs as an effective balance lever unless all 4-9 armies of a GA are over/underperforming (Not that I liked this balance lever anyways) The narrative is worse. BTs always struggled with being battleplan agnostic objectives, but GAs are pretty loosely defined with tons of variation in army composition. You're going to end up leaving armies out unless they're so generic they may as well be generic ones.

So unfortunately its basically the same system. I'm shocked BTs are still in the "first blood" battleplan, its an easy thing to leave out for starter games. The core book tactics are legal in the GHB, interesting. if its not just for the first season they're going to get very old. GA tactics are the same thing as faction ones, with a bigger risk of some armies not being able to do them well. Its not lost on me that the destruction one previewed is the hardest out of the 4. Like its actually incredibly tough unless you're playing ironjawz. you can triple charge a single unit, destroy it, and still fight but still.

Thing is, if they were getting shipped off to old world exclusively, why wouldn't they do it at the same time as bonesplitterz/BoC/Gitz line cuts.

Spearhead boxes will probably rewrite the wizard spell into a buff, maybe on a single die roll, with no unbinds or miscasts/etc.

I'd be fine with their own tome, maybe they'll take spiderfang too, but I think we should expect more warclans-like battletomes in the future, to reduce the number of total battletomes. High elves were squatted because of lumineth, in that same vein greenskinz were squatted for kruleboyz. I know the models were also old, etc. but they had to have been planning the kruleboyz range at the time they squatted them (2019), and kruleboyz are our greenskinz reimagining. Narratively there's a bunch of differences, but when you look at the units available it maps into kruleboyz pretty well. Its possible gitmob was squatted just because they were old and didn't make it into the gitz book, but its also possible they had plans for a refresh there as well. Gitmob continued to show up in narrative stuff (broken realms stories) and received 2 kits after they got squatted.

new grots and spiders, after that the moon's the limit.

I'm not arguing that secondaries are bad. I'm arguing that the current system isn't great, and any system that rewards you for doing stuff tangential to the primary game is going to feel weird and out of place especially if you care about the narrative of a battle. Plus they become busywork if you can solve them(skill ceiling), so its just playing the old game with extra steps. I'd be a lot more forgiving of the skill ceiling if the system was less complex, and somewhat more forgiving of the complexity if the skill ceiling was higher. Seasonal rules, and balance updates can play just as big a role in pushing people to play certain units as specialized battle tactics, and we still get those "ideal lists" anyways, the only difference is that the heavy handedness of the seasons would kill them faster than we're used to. A lot of problems stem from BTs trying to be battleplan agnostic too. I'd be quite happy if secondary scoring got built into the battleplans. Where sometimes you could have kill points, sometimes something close to BTs, etc. In that way having a variation on secondaries would both make games feel less "samey" and encourage diverse lists since you need to be able to adapt to the different secondary systems. You could maybe fix the current system with incredibly tight BT writing and strict unified design constraints on them, but I'm not sure its worth it. I haven't played much 40k 10th, and i'm not a huge fan of how it handles secondaries, but at least it knows what its trying to do with them. Take consistent ones you can achieve (safe), gamble on random with more potential for points (risky), and gambits as the super risky comeback mechanic where you give up on the primary.

Just as they require you to build your army a certain way they also hurt armies that can't be built that way. BT selection always takes people out of the game in my experience, and people can take a while to decide. Sure it might just be a minute or two, but it feels like an interruption. The more I play at events the less I like BTs. If you stick to a single army the effect is way worse. I played Big Waaagh! for a couple, literally every game the same 5 in the same order, and I would often go 5/5 even if I got tabled. Played Kruleboyz for a few, same 5-6 every game, roughly the same order. Yes, you do need to plan for BTs, but my issue is that its a solvable system. You'll optimize your play and do the same plan every game. "I'm going first? I'll plan for a t1 magical dominance and a t2 surround and destroy, then save intimidate for t4/t5" Then you do that (with that army) nearly every game you play until a new GHB drops. Usually the way BTs get denied is by your opponent (mostly) tabling you anyways so they can't score any. in my opinion the problem is the skill ceiling for BTs is way too low, while the complexity tax is too high. Either raise the skill ceiling or make it simpler. I also really hate the narrative of a lot of them. Magical dominance sounds cool, but the play is to hide a wizard in a corner and cast a spell that probably can't reach anyone useful. Reprisal? Yeah the optimal strategy is to get my general killed so I can score more points. I get there's a desire to not have the game just be about killing stuff, but its a wargame. taking the table is the game, optimizing for damage/defense is how you take and hold objectives. Forcing people to play suboptimally, or bring bad units, to score points is just taxing victory. You go from playing with 2000 points, to playing with 1600 points and 400 points of junk to score points. Just shrink the armies at that point. Honestly having BTs being stuff you want to do anyways isn't even bad design, it forces you to communicate a plan to your opponent, which lets them burn what resources they can to try to deny it. The system might be better that way, it would certainly fix the narrative issues.

There are substantial design problems with 3e's secondary system that weren't just tied to accessibility (faction BTs). Obviously they dropped the ball on balancing them, as they clearly never considered army strength when they wrote them initially. A weak army, with easy BTs could make for a balanced design as an example, even if its not fun to play. The ones they patched in with battlescrolls were aimed at balance, but were also just addressing that the first few tomes had particularly bad/few BTs. In terms of design BTs are terrible for new players, because you've got to weigh 6-10 options and don't know what any of them are. They're bad for experienced players too, since its actually a solveable system for most armies. you do the same 5-6 every game, in roughly the same order, and makes every game feel the same since you need to get 5/5 every game to do well. This isn't even an issue of they're too easy, the top players are going to go 5/5 every game unless you make all of them very difficult to the point where newer players are going to get maybe 1 or 2 out of 5 every game. They're pretty good if you're in the middle, where you're still figuring the system out and enjoy weighing the options. This is a huge design problem because that's pretty much the worst demographic to target with a secondary system like this. Making it easy for new players makes onboarding easier, but makes it less effective at breaking close games (and probably boring) for competitive play, and targeting competitive players makes it bad for new players, but it becomes a great way to help break ties and decide close games. There's also a lot of conflicting priorities when it comes to BTs as a whole. Failing BTs feels bad (git gud etc), but it just becomes busywork if everyone is going 5/5. Some BTs are given out like pity points to make games closer, but if its supposed to help decide winners shouldn't it be a win-more mechanic? WH weekly did a fantastic show about it last year. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6QyHanz-IY For reference, my preferred system would be taking like 1-3 "Grand strategies". Then you make them difficult or easy to interact with/deny. With some being end of game checks, and others being "if you did this difficult thing at any point you score it".

In the both versions of border war in warcoda the tactics are only worth 2points. for 6 or 7 primary/2 BT. This new one has 6 primary/4BT. which feels like a pretty significant bump when the max points you can score without the "home" objective is 3 points on all versions.

I would trade a lot of the listbuilding complexity we have in the game for AoA to be matched play enabled. Artefacts, spell lores, battalions, seasonal rule options, unit options/upgrades. Being able to have your guy actually lead your army is such a good feature. A lot of narrative would naturally flow from that direction too. Border war might actually be ruined by the presence of BTs, since it predates them, and they're still worth 4vp on it and its one of the ones previewed.

Hopefully they don't overtune the underdog bonuses. I despise nexus collapse because of how sandbagging is the optimal strategy.

On the contrary I'd much rather than GS than BT. Battle tactics are really weird narratively. I get the use case of having a secondary scoring system, and tying it to things that aren't things that you do anyways to win the game is an extra challenge, but so much of it feels like busywork and intentionally making "bad' strategic decisions to score points.

I think they'll still be part of gitz, so from a strategy perspective thats moonclan's gimmick.

My thoughts: I thought upping the scoring to 6/4 from 3/2 was wierd but I don't hate that every battleplan is designed to have a max score of 50 points. I like this. Although I very much agree that events should just treat all 5-0s as being first place, and we should be comfortable with multiple 1sts. Battle tactics 🤮 Extra 🤮 on border War. Either table your opponent or be better at doing backflips. BTs are worth more than the primary unless you cap the home objective (I really hope we actually see BTs soon and they're different than the 3e ones) Suggested Terrain Layout: I absolutely love this, its a massive improvement. having a suggested terrain layout also helps when you write BTs/GSs that care about terrain placement. Seasonal honor guard: Seems like it might be boring, which is good for the first season of an edition.