Neil Arthur Hotep

Bringing battle tactics more closely into alignment with the fiction would definitely help. Or victory points in general. I have a fairly easy time understanding how controlling territory could mean that you win a battle in AoS. I can understand how that might be the aim of the mission. But it is harder to rationalize how something like this can be the "aim" of the battle for my army:

I hope today's article on Battle Tactics is good. I can't say that I really enjoy Battle Tactics in their current form, but it's not like I have never had fun moments with them. I still like the idea of having some kind of secondary system. Anything that can encourage movement on the board and make the game less static (although AoS already does a good job with that). I recently played a Core Rules only game, and was reminded how much battle tactics have changed since the start of AoS 3rd. Cities of Sigmar have a tactic where you need to destroy 3 units in the shooting phase, which is so difficult that I have never managed to do it even though I play a shooting list. In contrast, the core book basically has "just go destroy a unit, idk". All the tactics were so easy that you literally could not fail to get them every turn. I hope 4th manages to strike a balance. I think ideally, we get a few tactics that are not impossible, but also not guaranteed and encourage players to make use of the whole playing field. I don't mind faction specific battle tactics, they could be a great tool to reinforce the flavour of a faction. But there needs to be much tighter balancing on them. No more free "just move two units up the board I guess" tactics like Daughters of Khaine get.

I started Warhammer by painting a unit of Tomb Kings skeletons and it was so difficult for me that I didn't paint another model for 10 years.

The new Skaven hero only has Crit(Auto-Wound), which is much better. One of my number 1 wishes is that we don't see units with 4 barely different shooting profiles anymore. I can get behind one profile for a big main gun and one for all the small guns, but having to also roll for the pistol that one guy on the model happens to be carrying is super tedious.

A more concrete idea of what reduced shooting range means would be nice. I would like to see if there are specific abilities on shooting attacks other than "shoot in combat", as well. Would be cool to see them say something like "there are no more mortal wounds on hit for shooting attacks" or "the line-of-sight system has been reworked" if those changes are in the game.

If the recent article is telling us all there is to know about seasonal rules, I am OK with how they are now. Everyone getting a honour guard unit with one of three traits for a few months seems fine, IMO. I strongly disliked the recent Andtor rules, too, but mostly because of how much they push faction list building towards generic options, how intrusive the seasonal mechanics were and how the GHB battle tactics just don't feel fun. If new seasons don't have these kinds of generic must-takes, intrusive mechanics and battle tactics, I am fine with getting a different little gimmick every year.

I don't know which of our experiences is the atypical one, but I have heard a lot of complaints of games going over 3 hours online, especially with the seasonal GHB rules. I don't think games going longer than 3 hours is that weird. That's why I am pretty excited about the changes in 4th. The game looks like it will play a lot faster.

Yeah, I think that's accurate. I have been playing games with a timer recently, and 3 hours usually gets us to mid to late round 3. I get a whole game done in 3 hours occasionally, but only against opponents who are really familiar with their lists. AoS just takes really long. Especially for synergy armies.

Personally I find that the first two turns of the game take 3 hours and the last 3 take 1.5 hours combined, so I am not so sure going to 4 turns will save that much time. By turn 5 I usually have, like, three units left on the table

Neat twist, I look forward to forgetting it the second I step up to the table.

Put that one down more to a purge of Finecast rather than Spiderfang. So I would also stay hopeful that Spiderfang as a concept stick around.

Yeah, this is interesting and we will have to see how the news of 4th ed develop. It kind of feels to me like there has to be some way to get extra toys (artefacts, traits, spell lores). In 3rd, foot heroes are kind of underwhelming on their own, as a rule, but if you kit them out they can be pretty scary. I think the big problem is that your return on investment for traits and artefacts is generally bigger if you put them on a better base unit. Why would I put my +1 rend and damage artefact on a foot slogger who can't get anywhere if I could put it on a 14" flying move guy on a monster mount?

There is an idea in game design that players will tend to optimize the fun out of a game. I think that is also a danger when it comes to painting miniatures. Especially if you paint them with the intention of using them to play, because then you start to think in terms of points per painted model and efficiently getting units on the table. For me, batch painting a unit I don't love, but which is good in game absolutely turns painting into a chore. Conversely, I have never regretted painting a one-off model that I just liked the look of. Even if it never ends up hitting the able at all. But of course, if you want to have a fully painted army eventually, you will have to sit down and work through the less exciting parts of that at some point.

I see the confusion! Dwarfs are missing because this is a list of stuff people actually want 😘 ...will you put my name in the book or should I do it myself to save time?

I kind of feel that if spiders were out, they would have gone at the same time as Bonesplitters.

I have to say, though, the new Prismacast stuff and even Heroforge colour prints look a lot better than traditional prepaints.

The Megaboss is one of the units I would point to as an example of a good brawler hero. I think the fact that he's slow is a weakness inherent to the role of an infantry brawler, which is honestly fine. They have trouble getting in, but should be really scary when they do. This probably means that you will rarely see even good brawlers in competitive lists (because a damage dealer without a reliable delivery mechanism is just not that useful), but I don't think competitive viability should be the measure of success here. As @Beliman said, I think it's more about the characters matching the fiction, or perhaps about them having any role at all (even if the role is not that valuable).

Other people playing pre-painted miniatures doesn't really take away from the enjoyment that I get from customizing my own army, honestly. I don't think GW will ever go for selling pre-paints, but I really don't have much of an issue with other people only enjoying some parts of the Warhammer hobby, but not others. I also don't get angry at people who play netlists or, in the future, Spearheads. I get that list building is not fun for everyone.

I don't know, I think damage is very much one of the issues for melee brawlers. 4 3/3/1/2 is just kind of a bad stat line. The expected damage is almost exactly the same as a 100 points screen (10 dudes, champion, 2 4/4/-/1). I honestly don't know how much of a problem it would be from a gameplay perspective to just double the damage output of infantry heroes whose main role is to fight. It feels like the game can handle it, honestly.

Oh wait, new Brutes too.

What was the last dual kit of this type? Slaanesh Twinsouls? It feels like this kind of thing is not very common for AoS anymore.

I would definitely agree that there is a bit of a problem in so far that one very specific type of hero, namely infantry brawlers, are almost across the board too weak to be worth using. And as you say, those are some of the most iconic archetypes in warhammer. The Chaos Lord frequently crops up as a negative example in these discussions, because he basically just brings his combat profile to the table and nothing else. And then that combat profile is not very impressive. But this is also a unit that a lot of people love for its "your dudes" potential. I think it's important to acknowledge that infantry brawlers have a lot working against them from first principles, though: Good combat units need to deal damage and have a way to deliver that damage, and by virtue of being on foot, infantry brawlers are usually slow. This means that in most games they won't have an impact until turn 2 or 3, at which point a lot of the action will already be over. So even if they got their damage output buffed substantially, chances are most pure melee damage infantry heroes would still not feel very good to use.

I wonder how it will go. What do people think would be a good point cost for a unit like the new Vindictors?

Here you go, guys:

Since it seems to be a popular topic, here's a separate thread for it. Infantry heroes are often pretty weak in AoS. Can this be changed? Should it be changed? This episode of Warhammer Weekly gets into the topic and has some explanations of why things might be as they are: