Sarouan

Please note that I mentionned WHFB, not TOW. I know Morale works differently TOW, what I wrote was true (and happened) for WHFB. Still, units running away in TOW still have a lot of headache inducing situations with a lot of interactions from other rules. It's still far from simple, quite the opposite : it's like they were saying to themselves : "You know what was lacking in WHFB ? More special rules !"

They're cool, and they're still easy to paint. Big win for me.

Box is still not released, and the previous marauder units are still in the rules / in store, that's what I meant.

There was a rumor about teams for AoS and TOW competing a bit in intern and such. But it's pretty clear than now TOW is there and it's all focused on having the old miniatures back in line, making definitive separate miniature ranges for both games does have more weight. It will indeed take time before all AoS current miniatures get a proper "AoS specific design" (ogor, beastmen, we see you - skavens are getting it and Chaos will have its old marauders replaced soon...and CoS, yeah, I totally can see GW flatlining the old dwarf / elf / empire units definitevely and making them TOW only in the future).

TBH, I don't really understand the point of this poll. It's silly to oppose gameplay and balance, because balance can't happen without gameplay while the opposite is true. A game never needs to be balanced to be fun : it's only players thinking balance as some kind of gaming holy grail who can't enjoy a game they don't see as "balanced" - and even so, it's always a subjective point of view because they'll only aknowledge balance from their specific view of what balance is (mostly points used to build a list). So of course, it's never perfect and constantly changing. Because balance doesn't come from numbers or stats, it also needs to involve the players themselves and balance themselves each other so that a battle seems "fair". Fun fact : last game I played, I forgot one of my units in my bag and I didn't notice until the end of the game. My army was basically unbalanced in comparison to my opponent's, because I obviously had less points than him with my list. However, he didn't know and I didn't know either : so in our eyes, the game was balanced (it was tensed and I indeed managed to win, neither me nor him though the game was "stolen"). But in terms of points, it wasn't balanced at all. It just shows how balance is a trick of the mind, and it actually doesn't make the game any more fun or competitive than it can be.

Morale in WHFB isn't simple at all, in reality. It creates a lot of headache inducing situations in game and adds a lot of interactions with other existing rules. There's also the question of fun of having your entire army running away because of one poor unit failing a morale test and causing panic amongst the entire line. Basically, when a unit is running away, you don't have any control on it. Getting rid of it is a question of game simplification and enjoying playing your units the most when they're on the table.

People rarely get enthusiastic about a game mechanism, because they're not the real focus of the game. When you play it, do you say to yourself : "damn that charge phase in my game of The Old World is really an awesome mechanic !" or rather "damn, that charge of your imperial fire line by my horde of goblins was really epic !" ? Which is more likely to stick to your mind ? In the end, that depends what is your objective in game, but I find players that are -really- into the game internal rules to the point of being excited about them are more the exception than the rule (and usually those who tend to love designing entire game systems themselves ). I think though that Double Turn mechanism is also a problem for a specific category of players : namely those who already know a certain number of game systems (usually with a favorite). True new players, meaning those who never played a miniature wargame before, tend to accept rules as they are presented. When Double Turn (priority roll, to be indeed more precise) is presented to them, they see it as simply rolling a dice each turn to see which takes the first round - and that's it, it's not a question of "bad" or "good", it's just the rules of the game. Such a person doesn't see the problem because to them, there is none.

With every new edition, it's unavoidable the community loses a part of its old players. That's how old editions are still played even if they're not officially supported anymore. However, I'd personnally refrain from writing threads about me "leaving forever if GW does do that", because I would feel really silly when I come back to the game after a while in the end. Life is about change and adaptation, and only the dead never do.

I dunno, when I see new players trying AoS, Double Turn isn't really the turn off : it's more about prices, rule bloat or player's mindset of the community they're playing in (like deemed too "competitive" or too "casual", it really depends where you learned to play TBH). Remember, when you question the AoS designers to think Double Turn is "this amazing", it also goes both ways : people can also ask why you're so focused on Double Turn being "this bad". Your post there sounds more like personnal belief about what game mechanism is good or bad than hard data / numbers, and a reaction to the poll numbers not going your way of thinking, IMHO.

Between the 2 ? Gameplay 100 %. Balance and stats in a vacuum are useless.

They do have a presence in the narrative - I saw them in more than a novel in the White Dwarf, just to mention them, with names and all. As for named character miniatures, that depends when GW decides to release new Ogor models. Watch the next window for Ogor battletome, I'd say.

They're talking about the next Warcry box

Not really, because there's no point in playing a game if you have no one to play it with you - it's an investment in money and time, no matter what it is or the price it asks. Like it or not, GW games are the easiest to find people for that. In my area, Warmachine died : there's litterally no one around who wants to play anymore. And it's not a question of trying to attract new blood in it.

Proper win ? What do you mean by that ? They have already quite great named characters so far (I mean, at least litterally given their size).

Yes, that's one of the core problems of Mordheim. Core scenarios really lack incentive to play them, too few of them actually give you enough rewards that's worth risking your heroes and (more generally) the well being of your warband on long term. Some scenarios made after in expansions or players did try to adress that problem in being more generous in its rewards, or give more options in the campaign system to cater to that (one of my groups did change the way to gain money afterward by allowing surviving heroes that were out of action during the game to still roll for exploration - helps a lot to involve more your heroes in dangerous actions). But sometimes, you indeed still want to rout voluntarily rather than going full out. That problem doesn't exist at all in Warcry. Even if some people here don't want to aknowledge it as Mordheim's spiritual successor, the reasons why its campaign system is so "light" and forgiving is directly because of Mordheim's own - and Sam Pearson himself said so in the interview he made. Warcry designers did want to make a Mordheim-like game, but better. And IMHO...they kinda succeeded (Warcry is a damn great game, easy to learn and fast to play) even though it's not replacing Mordheim at all. Frostgrave is often seen as another of those Mordheim's spiritual successors - and one of its greatest mechanisms is to tie the money each band gains afterwards directly to the treasures you get during the game : thus giving a hell of an incentive to actually play them and get those treasures.

Well the point with smaller games is that they take less time. There is also the player mindset that is important. Allow me to give you a comparison with another situation from another game : Warmachine. It had a special mechanism where when you kill the warcaster (basically a heroo-like character that is the center of your army, let's say it's your warlord), you instantly win the game. Even if there are plenty of other units on the table, no matter the scenario. And it had a very sweet new player entry with their starter boxes, which are basically one warcaster and a couple of warjacks (2 to 4, depending on their sizes - they are basically big robots), that you could immediately play out of the box like this against the same content from your opponent. Of course, these games were very quick in the case you managed to take the opponent warcaster out of battle. The point of Warmachine with these rules was that "dont get stuck on your loss, roll with it and play another game immediately after, because it's quick !". Yes it had a "git good" mentality that was plainly written in their core rule book (the infamous page 5). But the think is could be similar with Spearhead : the game ended fast because your army got wiped out, double turn or not ? Play another and get your revenge ! If the time needed to play is lower than a "normal game", then you can more easily feel less like you "lost time playing a "bad" game". Player mindset is key on that matter, and it also has to be trained just like your "skills" with the game.

Mordheim is the living proof that a game doesn't need to be balanced or have "good rules" to be played and loved. It's funny you mention Necromunda, because the version before Mordheim was exactly the same situation : using rules of 40k edition as its core mechanisms. It wasn't that balanced as well with experienced gangs vs less experienced ones.

Interesting point. Which leads me to wonder if Spearhead mode for 4th will have a different handling of Double Turn or not, since it will definitely in the "smaller game" category.

Results aren't really surprising. The more you play, the more you get used to game mechanisms. TBH, the question asking if you "like" or not wasn't especially the best to choose, which is why I said this poll will prove nothing. "Like" has a lot of different meanings for lots of people, after all.

Old Necromunda was the inspiration to Mordheim campaign rules (main difference is that there weren't any henchmen, everyone was treated the hero way in progression - and the way to gain money was significantly different, more territory based : it was actually much more narrative driven than Mordheim, since it was more linked to something more substantial than "exploration somewhere in the town for Wyrdstone"). So if you like SF setting and punk gangs, it's definitely something to try.

Ah but the thing is, once you introduce xp gains / extra gear etc, the Holy Balance is upset between bands. That's why a game in Mordheim between an experienced band and a beginner one tend to be...let's say quick - and the beginner band better rout voluntarily as soon as possible, to get that juicy bonus xp while still have enough heroes to gain money properly. When a game has mechanisms that incite you -not- to play the actual scenario for better long term results (which would be normally the point of a game, after all...moving your models on the board, instead of having them on the sidelines while you just roll dice on exploration tables), that's the hint there's a problem. You can say Warcry campaign rules are less exciting than Mordheim's, sure, but you can never say Warcry doesn't incite you to really get engaged in the actual games preceding the aftermath phase. In Warcry, you rarely try to rout voluntarily, because you know playing the scenario to the best you can won't punish you as hard as in Mordheim. Unfortunately, I believe such a game is simply not to the current standards in GW industry. Which is why I don't believe we'll see a "true Mordheim remake"...if such a thing was actually necessary. I mean, the rules are already out on the internet, in more than a complete way to say the least. Why doing a remake if you already believe it's perfection ?

Edit : double post

Mordheim isn't difficult to learn, but it has a lot of clunky mechanisms that come from the fact it was a mere adaptation of Warhammer Battle rules to a more skirmish level - even so Battle was made for mass battle games. That's why there are a lot of weirdness in its core rules, and for example why armors are completely useless in the game (critical hits tend to completely nullify them, and if it's not, it's the save modifiers from weapons / strength that are way too easy and common to have...saves were already way too low from the start, anyway). If you knew the edition of Battle from that time, it was actually very familiar and easy to move from one to another...and that was the intent, IMHO. Warcry isn't at all the "anti Mordheim". If you read its background, it's actually quite grim. Surrounding is hostile, death is at every corner and there's a heavy hint on the futility of these bands' actions in the way most of them die in the dark with their dreams of glory and riches unfulfilled. But the difference with Mordheim is that Warcry's campaign rules don't translate very well that, because they're meant to be balanced and less frustrating than Mordheim. Wounds are in most cases temporary, death of one of your miniatures in campaign mode is rarer and, in most time, quite without real consequences (you replace the lost guy much more easily, and the "progress" system is so light that it doesn't really matter if you lose an "experienced fighter". On the other hand, Mordheim campaign rules are cruelly random, it's easy to completely mess your band because of a few bad rolls and the way you gain money to recruit / equip more guys punishes you really hard if you actually play the scenario to the end (ie fight to the last model). Basically, if you lose a Mordheim game, you tend to get punished in the campaign phase because if your heroes were out of action during the game, well guess what, they're also your only money makers - so they give you no money. It leads to stupid situations like routing voluntarily as soon as you lost the minimal numbers of fighters and keep your heroes away from action so that they can search optimally for wyrdstone in the exploration phase. In Warcry, you care not for your models because they have no depth. In Mordheim, you better care not for your models because they die / get crippled to the point of being useless easily (even your warband, before you simply make a new one from scratch). I'm not sure Mordheim is really that narrative friendly on that matter, TBH (I mean, if you get unlucky with some wounds rolls / got your band heroes wiped out and you just restart your band because it's otherwise unplayable, it's not really narrative driven either). And I said that as a Mordheim player, who started from the very first day it released to still nowadays, 25 years later. I'm just very aware of Mordheim's flaws, what it is and what it is not. And I certainly don't paint a lovelier picture of it because of nostalgia's bias. I'm not demeaning Mordheim players at all...I'm just amused at how some people tend to believe Mordheim is way better than it actually is / was (mostly those people don't play anymore or certainly not the core rules without heavy "patches" / fanmade rules to make the rules better, which is not my case).

You never played old FB RPG books, didn't you. Damn were they grim, dark, brutal and merciless. Mordheim invented nothing, it was just the natural continuation of what already existed before.

It has spoken indeed. More seriously, this thread will actually prove nothing, since anyone can vote, there's no real control and no cadre either. It's just random numbers, and you can always twist them to whatever narrative you like.