Neil Arthur Hotep
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Posts posted by Neil Arthur Hotep
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1 minute ago, Fulkes said:
Nothing is stopping GW from releasing AoS and 40k in the same months either. If we're only seeing 1 40k release a month, and they're doing releases every other week, then they can still slot AoS into Q1 with no problem.
Whatever caused them to switch to the slower release in Q1 is presumably stopping them from getting AoS out as fast as they originally planned (presumably the bottle neck is their factory not running at full capacity). But I think Hedonites in February after Death Guard are out of the way is a pretty safe bet.
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9 minutes ago, Overread said:
GW was right on top of the new edition for Indomitus - chances are the cardstock was already ordered for the box by the time lockdowns started happening. So they were committed to that plan from probably the start of the year and couldn't back down. AoS IF it has or had a new edition this year has given GW a period o time during corona where everything has been messed up so they are likely in a much more robust position to consider pausing it.
Of course there might be issues if they go through 2021 releasing multiple new battletomes that have 2.5 or 3.0 mechanics in them for an edition which isn't out yet. So there's that to consider which might mean they are locked into a release pattern.
Plus, Indomitus sold better than expected, to the point they got tied up prducing it Made to Order for a while.
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1 hour ago, Matt Effect said:
Can I ask where you have seen these rumours? I'm struggling to find anything concrete that a new edition is coming. However, If we get a new edition I'm sure Stormcast will be the first army to get a new book.
The Warhammer Weekly podcast speculated about this. I would not call this a rumour, though. They have no inside info or anything like that. It was more like:
With the delays we know are happening due to Covid and Brexit, like the slowed-down release schedule of Q1, and since the release of a new edition would need to be tied to the narrative of Broken Realms, a delay of the next edition to 2022 would make sense. They can't rush the narrative, those books are likely partially printed already. And they have been significantly delayed: The first rumour engines featuring new Hedonites are from March of last year. Since GW's fiscal year starts in June (I think?), they like to do their big releases around that time. They can't do AoS 3.0 this June, so doing it next year would make sense.I
EDIT: Forgot to say, this is all in no way indicative of neglect of AoS. It's just regular corporate scheduling stuff.
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5 minutes ago, Baron Klatz said:
This is my bet. Mortal Realms rule of thumb is 98% of animals are eldritch mix-and-matched critters unless undead(then the Ossiarchs solve that manually with bone chimera).
With how much spirit foxes are mentioned for the aelemental wind temple my thinking is fox hybrids to both play off of Hysh's geomantic deserts(probably why the Slaanesh have Persian & Arabian elements as enemies there) and to keep building the oriental aelven themes with kitsune foxes.
Shout-out to Gecktron for posting these images on discord and how I think they'll tie-in to being long-legged maned wolf-fox-llamas with the wind lumineth wearing appropriate fox helms as they glide through the deserts of the realms.*
*(which also fits a Ghur Excelsis confrontation build-up since it's a lot of wastelands and mountains there. It's all coming together.)
I was wondering if that's the paw of a "long legged riding beast", like in that piece of Lumineth fluff some people have quoted.
Interestingly, the Critters and Keys raven and rat are standing on ruins similar to the ones in this picture. Would be quite a twist if they were from Lumineth models.
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10 hours ago, FFJump said:
This guy is interesting. First Slaaneshi Duardin model or first Slaaneshi (and AoS in general) halfling model? Can't tell if he has a beard or not.
The small guy with the archers is called a "Blissbarb Homunculus", which is a real word that refers to small humans (by literal translation) and artificially created people (historically). So this guy might not be a halfling, dwarf or anything we have previously seen.
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21 minutes ago, Nighthaunt Noob said:
Not to disappoint anyone but what if the witch/vampire hunter is the store birthday model this year? Think about it - if all of these are coming in early 2021, I don't see room for it to release with a full new army. There are definitely other possibilities, but I think one way or another this might be a fairly standalone model for now.
After successfully calling the Vampire Hunter from the advent rumour engines, I'm going to double down on my other prediction:
Vampires (Legions of Nagash) vs. Vampire Hunter (Cities of Sigmar) duel box in March.
We have seen this exact thing with the new Hedonites: Put out two foot heroes in a duel box, telegraph the release with an Underworlds warband, full release of the army three months later. In this case, Cities will only get the Vampire Hunter, Legions will get their big release.
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4 minutes ago, Matrindur said:
Another one
I knew it! Vampire hunters confirmed baybee 😎
I can't even express how hyped I am about this one!
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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.
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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?
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4 hours ago, Drazhoath said:
So what are your experiences with house rules? It sounds like you know what you do.
The idea was to prevent alpha strikes: Unit A is fast and moves to unit B for a good position for the charge. But Unit B moves and so can avoid a charge when the phase is coming😉 But as I said befor, we just try different things.
Another idea was to change the shooting a bit like Oldhammer. Penalty for moving and shooting, no shooting when in close combat and so on.
But again, I want to hear sth about alternative rules sb tried. Let us imagine just a little bit 😉
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.
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26 minutes ago, Damosane said:
I kind of hope and won't be surprised at all if the old world is in a smaller scale, they would be insanely foolish to not tap into the Warhammer total war crowd. Odds are its just going to be entirely forgeworld and a replacement for horus heresy but I'm hoping for smaller scale miniatures so we can have massive battles.
Imagine if The Old World comes out and it's warmaster scale prepaints to capture that X-Wing market.
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1 hour ago, Drazhoath said:
We ignore the double turn and try to use an alternating system. So wie want to try alternating shooting in the shooting phase so in every phase (moving and charging) like in the combat phase too.
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.
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14 hours ago, Greybeard86 said:
Or a certain degree of imbalance is actually baked in by design. Given that similar companies openly say it (WOTC - MTG), why is it so hard to believe that this would happen in GW games?
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.
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15 minutes ago, shinros said:
Perhaps, maybe I'm just too cynical, but it's strange to me to see people get hyped for something when barely any information has been given, in most cases you are setting yourself up for disappointment.
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 ~.
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I agree with most of what you wrote, but would like to say something about two of your points:
9 minutes ago, Overread said:In a healthier system you want armies that compete on a more level playing field so that you retain a high diversity. This keeps the competitive area of the game (both casual and formal) open to all gamers not just those who picked the "right army". It means you're not devaluing those who buy different armies which means they are more likely to hang around and buy a second and third army; rather than leave because their first chosen army is useless.
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
23 minutes ago, Overread said:I can get behind the idea that you can start with overpowered and then tone it back, however that shouldn't be hitting the market, it should be in the alpha and beta and should be ironed out for the retail release. Rules shouldn't be the spearpoint of sales; it should be model sculpt quality, lore, visual design and all that. That way you retain gamers for a longer period of time.
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.
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3 minutes ago, Nighthaunt Noob said:
Where are these "constant references to old models?" I just think it is wise to temper expectations until we know more.
I think this refering to the Kislev models that were referenced in the articles about that faction.
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2 hours ago, SchleuderMann2 said:
that is really nice since it actually makes it much more probable that resummoned units directly make the charge
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.
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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.
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3 hours ago, SirSalabean said:
What do people reckon will be shown on New Years?
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.
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37 minutes ago, Beliman said:
Is anyone a bit intimidated by The Old World "so called" Comunity? I just checked some forums and there is a lot of hostility towards anyone that enjoys AoS. I'm not saying: "I don't like AoS" but "I hope AoS is retconned and everybody moves on as it never happened".
I really want to play The Old World (currently playing 6th edition from time to time), but I it's hard to be part of a toxic community.
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.
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15 minutes ago, Greybeard86 said:
4. Same scale as AoS and old WHFB (based on the new units sketches)..
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?" ).
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5 hours ago, amysrevenge said:
I know we already have a thread for discussing OW but it's going on here too....
I will be mildly surprised if OW is day-one compatible with models people already own. I do NOT expect this to be a game where grognards can blow the dust off their 20 year old armies and immediately start playing - what a catastrophic failure that would be, for people out to sell models!
Maybe - maybe - a model here or there could double up for something for the new game. But whole units? I wouldn't drop dead from surprise, but I'd be pretty surprised. I'd bet against it.
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.
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7 minutes ago, Tiger said:
Two years feel like a very short timeframe for the release date. I'd feel more confident in the release date, if they'd shown CAD models and the scale of the ToW project with this update.
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.
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2 minutes ago, Greybeard86 said:
Last I checked, it was compilations of events data. But I do not have the reference at hand, sorry.
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.
The Rumour Thread
in Age of Sigmar Discussions
Posted
Now we just have to dodge the second bullet called Warhammer Quest.