Neil Arthur Hotep

I made pretty good headway on my Tomb Kings, even though COVID kind of sapped my will to paint for a few months. Other than that I just painted a bunch of Leonardo DaVinci machines for Cities of Sigmar. I don't think I got any models that were released this year other than the Mindstealer Sphiranx, which makes it my model of the year. I like the Lumineth range a lot, but did not feel like pulling the trigger on them quite yet. My favourite model to paint this year was probably the Khemrian Warsphinx. Really too bad that it is OOP, it's a very fun kit. My favourite kitbash I did this year is Kurdoss over here: I think he will be fairly hard to beat for me, because everything just came together so well on him.

Since we have been seeing a lot of maps for TOW up to now: Do you think maps will play a bigger role in that game (maybe through some kind of territory control element), or are maps just the easiest type of art asset to produce and show off early?

I don't mess around with house rules too much because I enjoy the game as it currently is and don't see the double turn as a problem to be solved. But if I were to change something about it, it would be to make it more interactive. One of the biggest complaints about the double turn you see all the time is that it makes one die roll super impactful, to the point where it decides games (although I personally feel the impact is just one more instance of randomness you need to mitigate). My solution would be to make you able to play to get or deny the double turn. An easy way to implement this as a house rule would be something like this: At the start of a round, before the priority roll-off, any player can spend a command point to gain priority without rolling. The opponent can then deny this by spending another command point. Players may keep trying to gain priority in this manner until one of them does or they run out of command points. If no player gains priority this way, proceed to roll-off as normal. This allows a player to force a priority/a double turn by conserving command points. In particular, it almost guarantees the double turn after an alpha strike, which are usually very command point hungry. Another implementation would be to tie gaining priority to secondary objectives somehow, but I have not really though this through. But back to topic: Right now the thread is going off the rails a little with discussions of balance, house rules and meta diversity. All of that can tie into the topic of power creep, but it's not a consequence of it necessarily. Magic provides a pretty good example: In modern magic you frequently just get more for your mana now than in the past. For example, an X/X creature without any abilities for X mana is no longer a good rate, when it was in the past. Similarly, in AoS you generally get more for your points during list building than you did in the past. A unit of Liberators for 100 is no longer really a good deal. That's what power creep is: You get morr oomph for less resources spent compared to the past. That does not necessarily result in bad balance, but likely will if newer books can get this extra oomph when old books are still working on the old level. In my opinion, AoS balance is currently pretty decent for casual, but somewhat serious games (people try to win and somewhat tune their lists). It's the top level where newer books frequently (not always) outperform older ones. I believe that it's more important to balance for the middle than the top level because top players can usually deal with imbalance, so I think this situation is not the worst. In a perfect world we would of course want the game to be balanced at every level, but allow for several viable army lists for each faction at the same time. But I don't personally believe it's realistic to expect every model, every faction, and every way to build that faction to be viable at every level of play. My general position on power creep in AoS is this: It definitely exists, but is not out of control and does mostly not negatively affect balance at the mid-level too badly.

Imagine if The Old World comes out and it's warmaster scale prepaints to capture that X-Wing market.

I have said this elsewhere before, but I think these house rules just make worse the problems a lot of people have with AoS already. Going from the double turn to I-go-you-go makes alpha strikes better, because those usually carry the risk of getting double turned. Of course, another system might work better than the double turn at keeping alpha strikes in check. Making the shooting phase alternate like the combat phase just means that oppressive shooting armies get to shoot twice as much. It especially makes things worse for armies without any shooting.

MTG is a bit of a different case in this regard. Wizards can afford to have a few bad cards in every set, since the average set has between 150 and 250 cards. As far as I know, they said they put bad cards in to make the good cards stand out more/be more exciting. Plus, there are several different ways to play MTG. Apart from the regular deck building style which is kind of like list building in AoS, there is also draft, where you open sealed boosters and have to build your deck with whatever you find. The function weaker cards serve in that environment is more clear: You might find yourself forced to use them in a draft even though they are not optimal. By contrast, in AoS there is little reason to use a weak unit apart from aesthetics. There is no real environment that would force you to deal with it. Plus, you can't switch armies as easily as you can switch decks in MTG. Overread correctly pointed out that you are expected to stick with an AoS army a lot longer than you are with an MTG deck (although I still disagree that aesthetics should be the primary sales driver in AoS). The comparison weak cards to weak models or even weak factions does not really hold up in that regard. If an army is weak that's more like a deck archetype or colour being weak for a few years. Which, when it dos happen, makes MTG players unhappy, as well, much more than a few weak cards per set.

That's exactly the kind of scenario that gets people exctied, because at that point the game could be ~ a n y t h i n g y o u w a n t ~.

I agree with most of what you wrote, but would like to say something about two of your points: I think AoS is doing pretty well in this regard. I would say for all armies on sale right now, you can have an interesting game between two reasonably tuned lists. I also think the idea that all armies should be viable at the top level, while a good ideal to strive for, is probably close to unachievable. At least I have never seen a game with lots of choices that managed it. And that is looking at tabletop games, but also fighting games, card games and other video games.I If this is right, then it's definitely because of the special nature of AoS as a hobby game. You definitely would not expect Magic players to mainly buy cards for their artwork and lore. I suspect though that it would be best to focus both on the game and modelling sides of AoS and drive sales both through what you mentioned as well as interesting and powerful new game mechanics. I know that I definitely only really get excited about an army if it can do something cool or unique. And I say that as someone who gets a lot of enjoyment out of the painting and modelling side of the game.

I think this refering to the Kislev models that were referenced in the articles about that faction.

I don't know about that. Deathmarch bonus movement is in the hero phase while Endless Legions happens at the end of the movement phase, so I don't see how you could resummon and exploit the bonus move in the same turn.

I'll try to bring this thread back onto the topic of power creep for a bit: I think the question should not be whether or not there is power creep in AoS. There obviously is. But power creep exists in all long running games to some extent. I have read opinions of some people that it is even a necessary feature of the design process of such games, but even if it is not: Writing rules that allow you to do cool stuff with the newest thing added is definitely the easiest way to sell it. I think the question should be: Is the power creep in AoS too much? I personally don't think so. It seems to me that many of the oldest battle tomes like Nurgle and Legions of Nagash can still compete pretty well against the average list at a 7 to 8 out ot 10 power level. They may not be able to consistently win tournaments anymore, but it's not like the books are completely invalidated at this point. I would say that puts us in a better place than we were about one or two years ago, where there definitely were armies that could not compete even casually. I belive what the OP complained about was not so much power creep, but meta shifts. Which, fair enough: If you really love a slow, grindy game nobody can tell you it's wrong that you are not satisfied by a more aggressive meta.

I think it will probably not be more Slaanesh and probably no Death stuff yet. Maybe more of the Seraphon Underworlds warband. Maybe Keys and Critters will finally be announced, that does not seem to be part of Slaansh or Death.

That's a weird thing I have been seeing too. Although frequetly it has not even been "I hope The Old World replaces Age of Sigmar" but "No point getting into AoS anymore now that The Old World will replace it". Some of this has come from people who have only played Total War Warhammer and have never played any tabletop games at all, and I think in that case it's mostly confusion about the announcement of TOW. For anyone who pays attention, it should be obvious that GW won't discontinue AoS anytime soon with how well the game sells. But I have seen the same sentiment from highly enfranchised Fantasy players (grognards) as well, where I can only assume it's caused by a dwarf-level grudge against AoS.

I think most of your suggestions are reasonable assumptions, but I would like to push back on this bit of reasoning for a bit. As far as I am aware, we have only seen some concept art for Kislev so far. But concept art doesn't tell you anything about the scale of the game. Translating concept art into models is a step that comes later. The concept artist does not necessarily have to work with the scale of the game in mind. I think TOW being 28mm scale makes far and away the most sense, just for the extra sales to people who want to convert or proxy models for AoS. But it's possible that they will choose to go with a smaller scale to capture the larger battles a rank and file game might be best suited for. So far, I don't think anything rules this out or even tips the scales more toward 28mm (other than the obvious thought of "They'd be fools not to make TOW compatible in scale with AoS, right?" ).

On the one hand, I agree with what you wrote, but on the other I don't believe Forgeworld has the capacity to produce full parallel model lines even for the factions we currently know of (Kislev, Empire, Bretonnia, Wood Elves, High Elves, Orks). There is no way Forgeworld can make a complete third war game of the scale of AoS and 40k. So if what you suggest is right and there will be minimal model crossover, I have no idea how they are going to achieve this.

It's probably safe to assume that everything will be delayed by another year due to COVID. All other GW releases sure seem to be about a year late, judging from rumour engines and how long Sons of Behemat took to come out.

That's what I though. No doubt that data is meaningful to a degree, but I wonder how well tournament representation translates to sales. I'd guess a lot of those armies are Warhammer Fantasy armies that were converted over, which would mean fewer sales of new models. Still, it's a large install base of people who might be interested in new Cities models.

I hear people say this all the time, but have never seen a source for it. Does anybody know the data this is based on?

I painted around 2500 points of Legions of Nagash last year, so that's good. However, I still need to paint about 50 skeletons of different types next year to finish the army, so that's less fun. I feel pretty confident that I will manage it, though. After that, I'm going all in for my Cities of sigmar side project. Or maybe vampires if we get a cool vampire army this year.

The question is if you really need a power level for that. It seems to me that you could just put stuff on the table until you both agree it looks about fair for quick casual games.

Are we playing the same game? I still find big units of infantry to be some of the best stuff in AoS, if you have got a way to get them where you need them. I'd say (and I think this is the conventional wisdom) that GW is just in the beginning stages of making elite units and monsters good in AoS.

Merry Christmas everyone. I didn't really get anything warhammer related, but finally had the time to finish up this boy who's been sitting on my painting table for way too long.

The return of Greasus Goldtooth confirmed. Lock it in, boys!

Engaging smugness routines. Although a Slaanesh reveal was really the most probable outcome for this preview. The models look great, though, I really like the new, distinct aesthetic for Slaanesh.

I personally think the timeline will be: Slaanesh battletome announcement today Release of the line in February First Death stuff (like the Underworlds Warband) in March Release of Death within 3 months That seems realistic to me given the recent timeframes between the reveal of the Dread Pageant and the Slawnesh release. Would be nice if they cleaned up all saves now that the battletomes are all out. 4+ is probably the highest saves on Battleline should go without expending a resouce.