Neil Arthur Hotep

I knew I was forgetting something. In my head, Corpse Carts are +1 to cast machines, not Deadwalker buff pieces, which is why I always forget them. My point is more that what we have seen and can reasonably expect of Gravelords is just really surprising and exciting. There is a thread in the GA: Death subforum from October where people talked about the possibility of Soulblight succeeding Legions of Nagash. If you look into the early posts in there, people had the feeling like the most realistic scenario would either be that vampires become their own faction and skeletons and zombies just end up unsupported, or that skeletons and zombies would be grandfathered into Soulblight, but just left to linger without updates. This was a pretty reasonable take at the time, because old Warhammer Fantasy armies were not exactly known to get large-scale updates, skeletons looked like they would have no place in the mortal realms after OBR came out (the OBR fluff actively destroyed Arkhan's Legion of Sacrament, for example) and zombies were barely even a thing to begin with. But now we have seen a resculpt of a unit that everyone just assumed would be discontinued without replacement in the Wight King on Steed and a new Zombie kit and support hero for Cursed City. And the new silhouette looks to be potentially another zombie unit. Even the bat and rat side of the army seems to be getting updates plus potential support heroes (the rat vampire). It's just really exciting because if those units can get new sculpts, nothing is impossible when it comes to Soulblight. We might be looking at a large-scale update for old sculpts plus a few new units. And that's definitely more than I ever thought we could possibly expect for the old model soup army that is Legions of Nagash. I know, I know. Temper your expectations. Don't set yourself up for disappointment. That's fair enough. But it's also fun to get excited. At this point, I am hoping for a Hedonites-level release. But I will be content if I just get a way to play my current Deathrattle list in the next edition, plus maybe a new toy or two for it.

I would assume that branches growing out of bodies are the new general zombie aesthetic and that these guys and the tomb stone zombies are separate, distinct units. Would be good, because before Deadwalkers had only Zombies and Direwolves. They would definitely need more units to become a real subfaction.

Seriously, let's stop and appreciate for a moment how unexpected it is that we are apparently getting a refresh of large parts of the Legions of Nagash range! I definitely didn't have a new Wight King or Fell Bats on my 2021 bingo card.

Jokes aside, it's another type of Deadwalker zombie, right? Maybe the tombstone guys won't be a replacement for the old kit after all.

I don't know, I think this looks non-futuristic enough to be AoS. I think the safest bet is probably Kharadron, but I would love if it was new Ironweld Arsenal stuff for Cities.

Tournament data is only somewhat applicable as a guide to balance We should be mindful of the fact that tournament data is not necessarily reflective of how the game is mostly played. Most players never attend tournaments in their whole hobby career. High level play and average play look pretty different. What tournament players want out of the game is different from what casual players want out of it. What tournament players are willing to accept is different from what casual players will. To make this more concrete, I believe that casual players have more of an interest in having a diverse pool of options than tournament players. Casual players value diversity because it allows them to play what they want. Given the hobby component of AoS, that is a desire we should give a lot of weight to. Competitive players (those who are mainly motivated by their desire to win) are more interested in having a meta that's stable enough so that skill mostly determines the outcome of games. To that end, a less diverse, more well defined metagame is often preferable. A game in which there is a chance that someone will just blow you up with a random jank build is not attractive to compete in. Still, I recognize that tournament data is the only data we have about what is good in the game. That is due to the nature of casual games. There are no "casual records" and there is no one "casual meta". So if we want to be data-driven at all in our balancing, tournament data is probably just the only thing we have to work with. Still, it's important to remember that there is more to the game than tournament outcomes. What even is a reasonable standard for balance? We should probably be considering both tournament an casual play as different ways to play AoS with their own standards of what good balance would look like. For tournament games, I don' think it is realistic to expect every army to be viable. I believe this because in my experience with competitive games, I have never seen one succeed in making every option a player can choose equally viable in a competitive environment. I don't know of any TCGs where all deck archetypes are equally good, or any fighting games where all characters are. So I don't think we should expect all armies to be equally good in AoS competition. So what should we expect from a balanced game? I think it's reasonable to expect that there should not be absolute outliers in mechanical strength. We don't want a situation where a handful of armies are in their own tier and make up a majority of podiums. I think we are in or trending toward such a situation at the moment. So that's definitely not ideal. For casual games, we should want every army to be able to have a chance against every other army. And we should want many different lists to be reasonably playable. "Reasonably playable" does not mean "able to win in a tournament", though. Likewise, it also does not mean that we should expect be able to throw any random units into a list and have it be good. Due to the amorphous nature of casual play, what makes good casual balance is also a bit vague. I think we should think of it as balance at a "tuned" level, where players try to optimize to a degree and do powerful stuff, but the lists are not necessarily built for maximum consistency and are often restricted to a non-optimal theme. In that regard, I think AoS is still doing fairly well. There are a lot of different playable options in most books at a 7-8 out of 10 power level, often enabling a variety of play styles. Is balance what we should be worried about? Due to the nature of tournament data, when we look at it we only see effects, but not the process by which the numbers came to be the way they are. We always have to fill in those gaps ourselves. It's not enough to point to tournament data and say "See, that faction has a 65% win rate, that needs to come down". This is where, among other things, considerations of play experience enter the picture. There are a lot of ways a game can become not fun to play that are not directly related to balance. An example of that is Petrifex Elite before the nerf. From the data we have, Petrifex was never dominant in tournaments in terms of win rate. But the build was fairly terrible to play against and, perhaps worst of all, extremely easy to figure out. Ultimately, I think that makes the changes to Petrifex justified, even if the numbers don't bear it out: If an army is just terrible to play against, it should change. And the best build of an army should probably not be the most obvious one, too. Lumineth are another example. The army is good, but I think it's fair to say that it's not currently the strongest army. However, the Lumineth book is just packed with stuff that is terrible to play against, like Sentinels basically deleting a hero every turn with no counter play, Teclis auto casting and unbinding and Total Eclipse shutting down certain army builds by itself. A lot of what Lumineth are doing results in a negative play experience because it prevents interesting plays from happening. And even if that does not make the army too strong, we should be concerned about it. In my opinion, recent books have been trending towards overall more negative play experiences. The rise of strong shooting has resulted in a growing division between armies that have good shooting, and armies that don't. And if you don't have good shooting, the whole shooting phase is basically just somehting that happens to you. Magic has been similarly segregated: Some armies can just dominate the magic phase, and if your army can't, you will not participate in the magic phase if going up against an army that can. Those two aspects of the game I think should be closely inspected for the next edition, even if they don't directly relate to balance in terms of win rate.

Dragon Prince/Blood Knight dual kit. It's how everyone used Dragon Princes for the longest time anyway. Why fight it, GW?

I've looked into the options for non-legion OBR before, but I think there's just nothing there. I'm not even talking about going non-legion being weaker than taking a legion (although it is), but there is not really even any fun jank to be found in the non-legion options. The big thing you would get from going non-legion is a command trait. All the command traits for Liege-Kavaloi are minor self-buffs, so that's not really worth considering. Mortisan traits are a bit more interesting, but it's all stuff you could do in other ways, as well. And most of the time, better. There is just no hidden gem in the vein of Feast Day there. There is not even really stuff that makes you go "Oh, that's kinda neat!", like you can find in Legions of Nagash sometimes for example. No +1 attack bubble for Deathrattle or 3" hero phase move. Artefacts are in the same boat. Mostly minor self-buffs you don't mind missing out on. I think the Mind Blade is the stand-out, because the effect is really cool (opponent loses a command point and a hero can't use command abilities for the rest of the battle), but it's just a real gamble to take, since it's so hard to get it to trigger (need to roll a 6 to hit against a hero). It also looks a bit better than it really is, because a if you just kill the hero instead, they also can't use command abilities anymore. Overall, I think if I wanted to go for a fun build in OBR, I'd just go Crematorians or Stalliarch Lords.

The designs of the Old Ones are inscrutable at times.

This is some niche humor, but I am here for it. Had a sensible chuckle at that sneaky BEHEMOTH keyword.

That would be a cool mechanic! In any case, I am excited about Octren being in the game because he's definitely a cooler looking necromancer than the one we have right now, if nothing else. I wonder if he will get AoS rules as a Cities Battlemage or as a Soulblight Necromancer.

Agreed. Just from a gameplay perspective, large units are already among the best value in the game, while also being kind of frustrating to play with/against. There is really no reason to further incentivize taking large units. Maybe with an exception for certain armies where being a horde is part of the intended aesthetic/playstyle. I get that, of course. But I think it's interesting to speculate where GW is going with their recent rules writing decisions. Now back to memeing. Age of Sigmar: Broken Realms? MORE LIKE AGE OF SHOOTMAR: BROKEN GAME, AM I RITE????

It's hard to speculate what a new edition coming out might mean for balancing. For example, we have been seeing more and more strong shooting factions enter the game for a while. Right now, that looks like GW wants to buff shooting. But it might be a lead up to changes to the core rules for shooting in 3rd edition, which could overall reduce ranged power again. Since GW is not going to revise battletomes in the shift to the next edition, they might have to design the rules in these books knowing that they will be out of balance now, but OK after the next edition drops. That seems like it could be a logical consequence of how GW updates faction and core rules, but it is still not great if it means we have to live through a periode of fairly bad balance for a while. I am still curious to see what will happen after the new Lumineth tome. If Lumineth only gain rules and don't lose any of their current option, I can't see how that update can possibly be balanced to be anything less than game breaking.

What I personally like about the setting is that it is designed from the ground up to have enough space for people to carve out their own niche. I have played games in fantasy settings that were just suffocatingly well detailed, both geographically and historically. And I just find that exhausting at this point, always having to check if what you come up with is compatible with the setting. So I enjoy the freedom of the mortal realms in that regard, because it seems the writers are trying to leave open as many possibilities as possible for players. Deathrattle are a good example for me. In another setting I have played in, what undead skeletons were was completely explained: They are always under the control of a necromancer, they are always mindless, and they are always evil. In AoS, even something as basic as a skeleton has a lot to offer: Sure, some of them are evil, mindless undead under the control of a necromancer. But there are also Deathrattle kingdoms, where sentient skeletons do their own thing. And even cities in Shyish, where skeletons and humans live together. And then there the Ossiarch Bonereapers, whose relationship to a Deathrattle kingdom could really go a lot of different ways. There are just so many possibilities there if you want to be creative in the setting. On the topic of Bonereapers: Their book contains my favourite piece of fluff. Basic Mortek know they are expendable cannon fodder, so two of them will sometimes promise each other that, if one of them should be destroyed in battle, the other will collect their parts and put them back together. For me, that shifted my whole perception of them. They could easily just have been the Grand Necromancers evil minions who live only for war. But this little humanizing touch completely changes that for me. I also appreciate that the setting seems to be designed with the possibility of change in mind. We have seen this with BR: Morathi, with her ascension to godhood and the fall of Anvilgard. I hope the writers really keep pushing this. Being largely static was always a problem both Warhammer Fantasy and 40k had, in my opinion. And I appreciate that AoS is trying to not fall into the same traps.

I thought so for a moment, too, but since that Hammerhal Herald post is most likely about BR: Teclis, and we know Soulblight/Legions are not in there, I don't believe this anymore.

I think the term "negative play experience" is well chosen, because I believe it's not one single feeling we are talking about. In my view, it seems to be a range of different negative experiences, as the name would suggest. What those expriences have in common is that they are caused by a common type of mechanic. We can think about it very loosely as the type of mechanic that prevents the things that make the game interesting from happening. That's a kind of fuzzy category, but I believe if we really want to engage with the concept of NPE we need to be comfortable with this kind of vagueness. If we put the hobby component of AoS to the side for a moment, I think what makes the game interesting is the tactical decision making. Thinking about how to position, when to attack, what risks you are taking... That kind of thing. The list building portion of the game is another draw. You would (justifiedly) expect your decisions regarding what units you decide to bring to matter during the game. When mechanics go too far with nullifying these components, the result is a negative play experience. If this is correct, we can see why Lumineth Sentinels are regarded as an especially egregious example of bad design. Usually, you players in AoS can make a few meaningful decisions when it comes to how to defend their models from ranged attacks. Make sure your heroes are in cover and have Look Out, Sir!. But that's not effective against Sentinels, so there is no decision to be made here. Try to not give your opponent line-of-sight. Again, not a decision against Sentinels. Position out of range. This is possible against Sentinels, but if your opponent sets their Sentinels up correctly, you will have to put your hero so far out of position that they become effectively useless. This kind of situation where basically "turn 0", all options you have are bad is just frustrating and disappointing. Of course, we could take a look at the list building stage. But there is not really meaningful counterplay at that stage for all armies, as well. "Just don't take small heroes" is certainly not meaningful counterplay. The same goes for "just switch armies". At that point the hobby portion of AoS we put aside at the beginning becomes really relevant: It's just not super easy to quickly make large changes to lists in AoS, much less switch armies. And for less drastic changes, we might again be facing a point where there are no interesting decisions to make. If not bringing my buff hero makes my units bad, that's not an interesting decision to consider. Finally, I think there are also very different examples of NPE, like facing down a block of 40 Skeleton warriors. They are not really a threat, because they don't deal very good damage. But you might still be stuck watching your opponent roll 200 dice to deal like 4 damage to your Steam Tank. That's a different way how interesting decisions can be prevented from happening: Because you are stuck doing inconsequential stuff for a long time for no apparent reason.

AoS is a list building game and follows different standards for competitive fairness than chess. Your skill at putting together your army is supposed to influence your performance in a tournament. There is no reason to try to compensate for it by swapping armies or whatever. In chess, the difference between black and white is just that white goes first. AoS already has a mechanic that is supposed to mitigate that advantage: Rolling for turn priority (double turns).

That's not impossible (or even especially unlikely, really) but it would make their decision to reveal all the models a bit puzzling. Plus, there was this recent tweet by Element Games that they were going to preview the game. These two pieces of evidence suggest to me that the release of Cursed City was planned to be this month(ish), but it is probably being pushed back due to the logistics issues we know GW is experiencing right now.

Not to mention that people just care about whether or not their opponents have fun. I certainly know that I would not want to play an army that other players hate to play against, even if finding people to play with was not a problem. It would reduce the fun that I have playing that army, regardless of how strong the army is or how interesting the rules are otherwise.

If it's a Gargant, it better be a proper Frankenstein monster for maximum Castlevania vibes.

You're not wrong. The whole thing would not have gone down this way without Teclis. But saying that the Sentinels did not kill those Kurnoth hunters also does not seem quite right. They were both integrally involved and it's probably for the best to recognize that and not try to simplify our explanation further by trying to pin it to just one of the units. However, with 30 Sentinels, having them all deal mortals on 5+ and having Lambent Light on 20 of them is a fairly ordinary scenario. Power of Hysh casts on a 6 and Lumineth have several ways to boost or reroll that, so that's fairly achievable. Lambent Light needs another wizard, but what Lumineth army does not bring at least one extra wizard? I would say this setup does not really qualify as a death star, because it does not require buidling around your archers. You only really need to bring them and then make use of other stuff you would bring anyway to buff them. It really slots in very easily into your "standard" Lumineth army. What makes this situation kind of tricky to judge is that if you bring Teclis, casting Total Eclipse every round is just generally good. There is really very little reason not to do it. It's difficult to really call that part of a combo involving the Sentinels. Lumineth just have a lot going on as an army, not just with Sentinels, but with their magic dominance and other rules, as well. Honestly, I really wonder what the faction will look like after BR: Teclis. It's hard to see how GW could add as many models as they are planning and not make Lumineth an absolutely dominant faction. Just to be clear: I agree with you, using this case as an example of what Sentinels are capable of is a bit iffy. Having Teclis around, as well, certainly changes the scenario pretty significantly. Plus, dealing 20 damage when ~14.5 (if my math is right) are expected is certainly not the typical case. But then again, pure damage is not really the reason why Sentinels are a problematic unit in the first place. EDIT: Got mixed up about Lambent Light. It's actually a debuff, not a buff. It allows you to reroll all ranged hits against one unit. When I was writing the post, I thought it allowed one of your units to reroll failed hits. That actually brings the average damage to around 16, not 14.5.

Vince Venturella frequently makes the point on Warhammer Weekly that the GW design team needs to introduce an editor role into their process. I really believe that's completely right. It seems like currently GW's rules designers also do the balancing. But it would probably be much better to take that burden off their shoulders. Just let them be creative and come up with interesting rules and ideas. Have someone else whose job it is to worry about the math and put a damper on things if the designers get carried away. A lot of those rules that people have pegged as problematic day one of a battletome's release could have probably been caught that way. I'm talking about Petrifex, Kroak, Sentinels, the old Slaanesh locus... That kind of thing. I don't think GWs rules designers are incompetent. If you watch interviews with them, it's clear that they put a lot of thought into their rules. But it's good to have someone with a little distance to your work look over it sometimes. Frequently, as an author, you don't catch problems that are obvious too outsiders because you are just too close.

Although I value having a narrative for why two armies would fight, I feel like the mortal realms are large enough to narratively handle mirror matches or infighting within a Grand Alliance. It's really only in the case of GA: Death that it's a bit harder to justify sometimes. Something that takes me out of the fiction, though, is having multiple of the same named character on the board. But I guess that is hard to avoid if you want the game to have named characters at all. I guess you can always go the route of framing it as "Let's see who's the imposter and who is the REAL Nagash!" .

Are the riders cannibals or the horses? Actually don't answer that. Let's just leave it up to everyone's imagination.

It looks like we are getting dedicated heroes to pair with certain troop choices, so something like this is pretty likely. Although it will probably be that certain heroes, battalions and subfactions buff certain units, rather than make them battleline. Because, really, zombies and skeletons should probably be available as battleline to any Gravelords list. But with the heroes we have already seen, a Cities of Sigmar style structure of sub-allegiances and power pairs seems like a possibility. I think the Cities of Sigmar style would be a good match for Gravelords, honestly, because they are also a pretty soupy faction.