yukishiro1

The mass dragon list is a problem that people don't seem to really quite understand until they actually face them. Comments like "they don't actually hit all that hard," "they're weak to mortals" etc are a prime example of this - yes, that's true on paper...until you have 9-10 of them hitting you T1 and then grinding you down because you literally can't move any of your army because they're all either engaged or moveblocked by the huge dragon footprint. There are a lot of lists - even otherwise competitive lists - that dragon spam will just beat no matter what with absolutely no chance for the opponent to do anything, and that's a big problem for the game. They are a prime example of a broken warscroll - they just have so much powerful junk crammed onto their scroll that they are always going to be auto-takes or never-takes from a balance point of view, depending on their pointing. And the particular way they are broken makes spamming them more valuable than not spamming them, which is the exact opposite of what's good for game health. They are the ultimate skew list and unless you have one of the small handful of lists that specializes in doing masses of non-spell-based mortal wounds, you have basically lost the matchup before it even starts. It's a recipe for NPE and bad feelings. Building a warscroll that can cross the entire board and charge in a turn, that has mortal wound shooting output, that has 3+ saves, is a monster, has decent combat output, can spread out to have ridiculous board coverage, and has a spell shrug...it was just a terrible idea. To be clear, it's not an unbeatable list. But it's a list where your ability to beat it is basically dependent on you having copious amounts of a very specific set of tools, and that's a disaster for the game. Auto-wins and auto-losses are terrible for creating a good competitive game.

I really don't like the effect the 40k terrain rule approach has on hobbying. When you have terrain rules so restrictive that TOs tell you you can't swap out the terrible flight stands GW provides for custom ones that look cooler (e.g. smoke trails for jetpack units) because that's "modeling for advantage" because even the slightest deviation in height or model profile has gameplay effects, that's not a good set of terrain rules. How your model is posed should have no impact on the game rules, everything should be keyed off the base and uniform vertical height dimensions. I get that technically this applies to AOS too, but nobody cares about LOS rules in AOS because they're essentially irrelevant. 9th has some moderate steps in that direction w/ obscuring, but they still use the basic framework of true line of sight, which is just a terrible game mechanic in a hobby game.

Yeah, and they do path of glory etc too IIRC.

Season of War is really the only thing comparable to 40k in 40 minutes; the production values aren't quite the same but it's a similar approach. It's much more competitively focused than 40k in 40 minutes, though.

AA obviously, but assuming we're not talking changes that big: 1. Move all MW on 6s to the wound roll. MWs on 6s to hit are terrible design because they render all defense irrelevant. MWs on 6s to wound at least allow Look Out Sir to do something, and make minuses to hit more valuable generally. 2. Introduce universal base-and-height-based LOS rules. In other words, rather than using true LOS, LOS is determined by whether you can see a unit's base, and, if not, the unit's height characteristic compared to the scenery they are behind. Each piece of terrain is given a height characteristic to blocks line of sight up to - a 3" wall blocks LOS for models with a height of 3" or less, which is on their unit card. Now you don't have to worry about "modeling for advantage" because there is no advantage, hobbyists everywhere rejoice, and drawing LOS becomes a much easier, less contentious thing to do, while you can also open up more visually interesting terrain options while still having an in-game effect. This opens up LOS becoming a relevant part of AOS while still allowing freedom to hobby the way you want to. 3. Clean up the terrain rules generally. They are literally unusable in a lot of edge cases, people just wave their hands and make stuff up because that's your only real choice. Like how do you actually move through Sylvaneth Wyldwoods? Do you pay movement to go up and down those little slopes? Do you not pay movement? What if your model is a foot model but too tall to not hit the branches? Can you just not move through at all? Can you ignore the branches and pretend they weren't there and just "counts as" being somewhere your model doesn't actually fit? Do you have to go on top of the branches? Can you end movement on the slopes even though your models fall off when placed there? Can your foot model end movement standing on top of the branches? Even if we put aside the branches and assume they don't matter, can you make a wood out of three of the small pieces that simply can't be charged into by models on 100mm or larger bases because they can't fit between the trees from any angle - even flying ones, since if they go on top they can't come down afterward? This is an integral part of a faction that revolves around moving to and from these terrain features, but the rules literally don't work on the most basic level.

Oh hey you're right, good spot. It does say that in the FAQ'ed endless spells. Thanks!

I know that you can no longer take endless spells from outside your allegiance in 3.0. But do allied wizards know the endless spells of your primary faction? E.g. If I have a Knight Incantor in my Sylvaneth list, can I use him to summon my Spiteswarm Hive? 19.0 says that "In addition, a WIZARD knows all of the spells on their warscroll and on the warscrolls of endless spells (see 19.3) in the same army as them." I read this to mean that yes, the Knight Incantor does know Spiteswarm Hive - which is a bit odd, since it doesn't know a normal Sylvaneth spell, or even a generic spell, because it doesn't get enhancements per the allied rules - but that does seem to be what the text says, doesn't it? Am I missing something? edit: The Sylvaneth tome itself says: "There are three endless spell warscrolls that detail the rules for unique and powerful spells that can be summoned by Sylvaneth WIZARDS (see pages blah blah blah)." Does this limit the general rule of 19.0, or is this overridden by 19.0, which just blanket states that all your wizards know all your endless spells? (Also, note that weirdly, "Sylvaneth" is not in caps here, i.e. it isn't a keyword, as it is everywhere in the book that imposes limitations based upon it, e.g. spells that can only target SYLVANETH; the non-caps version is used only to denote an army drawn from the Sylvaneth allegiance generally. So arguably all this is saying is that you can't take them in non-Sylvaneth armies.)

The new SCE book passes the "works in practice" test, mainly because it is so simple and reliable. The few tricks it has are overwhelmingly things that just work - translocate on a 2+, probably rerolling, for example, or dragons that just move and then charge on a 2+ in the hero phase - no spell you have to get off, no conditions you need to meet. They just do what they do. The closest things to fail points the book has is stuff like Fulminators being ungodly good (as opposed to just very good) only on the charge, meaning in theory you can kind-of waste them if they get charged rather than charge themselves, or longstrikes being very squishy for their points. But that's very minor and basic compared to the restrictions and issues a lot of books have built into them. It also passes the "doesn't force you down one path" list, at least in terms of theory. You can pick and choose elements pretty freely; you don't get locked into one archetype hard because you need to spend a billion points on synergies that only work with part of the army. Gitz is the polar opposite of this, where you basically have to go down one path because the whole book is built around expensive, restrictive synergies. Where it falls down is internal balance, but that's at least fixable, and a lot of it is because there's just way too many units. It's also probably a little bit too compressed in terms of skill floor and cap, with little room for the really good players to shine. But IMO it's ok to have some armies that are just kind-of generically good; skilled players will always just play better generally and I'm not sure you need to deliberately build in a lot of ways to distinguish the better players into the book structure itself. 3.0 has enough of that built into the basic rules now that the books themselves can carry less weight on that front IMO. Honestly the thing I like least about 3.0 tomes is that the sub-allegiances have been neutered to the point where they are almost irrelevant. I think it's great they no longer lock you into command traits and artefacts, but they didn't need to go as far as they did; now you're as likely to take them for the conditional battleline as the actual rules, and that feels a bit weird and like a lost opportunity. It's not as if simplifying them has made them better balanced, either - despite having such a small impact there are still clear winners and losers.

Maybe the most important thing good books have that GW fails to deliver consistently is rules that actually work in practice. Sylvaneth are maybe the epitome of this. The Sylvaneth book is great in many ways. The book is full of both fluffy and - on paper - powerful rules. But where the book falls down is in the way those on-paper rules actually translate to the real game. Basing a lot of the faction's gameplay around forests is great on paper...and then you get to real life, and you find you can't place forests where you need to, or that every turn is basically a multi-stepped flow chart of probabilities and you need everything to line up to do the powerful cool thing your army is built around, but the actual probabilities of all those fail-points being passed is very low. So the theorycrafting ends up completely different than the actual gameplay experience, where you're endlessly frustrated because you failed to cast your wyldwood, or you succeeded your cast but you can't place it where it needs to go because of the stupidly finnicky 3" from everything rule. And playing the army competitively becomes an exercise in funneling your list down to the choices that minimize that RNG - a treelord ancient to be sure you can summon at least one more wood where you need it, the warsong revenant because he's the only way to reliably cast spells that you 100% need to make the faction work, etc etc. So the book ends up being very narrow in practice even though it looks much wider at first glance. It would take so little - letting you give the awakened wyldwood keyword to an existing piece of terrain in lieu of summoning a new one, for example - to vastly improve the faction's actual gameplay experience. But that takes designers who actually play their own game and understand it on the level of a player, not a designer, and the Sylvaneth book is a great example of how that doesn't really seem to be the case. You could make similar observations about a lot of other books that struggle. Nighthaunt, Slaanesh, Gitz - all these are books that work on paper but that don't really work in reality. There's probably others I'm not thinking of at the moment, too.

There are some weird cases of stuff without the monster keyword that are still as resilient as monster heroes - e.g. Eidolons - so I'd rather key it off wounds than the monster keyword. But in general I agree, it makes sense to have some artefacts that can only go on smaller, less resilient heroes.

I'm glad we don't. Priests, unlike wizards, have no real counterplay to them and being able to make super resilient and/or mobile stuff able to give out debuffs like curse or heals would not be very wise from a game balance perspective, even before getting into faction-specific prayers. I don't think Knight Draconis Priests or Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon priests is really what the game is crying out for. If they wanted to make one that could only go on foot heroes of 7 wounds or less or something that'd probably be ok I guess.

What they did to Amulet is definitely the lamest, most boring solution possible...but I'm actually ok with that. Generic artefacts probably should be somewhat lame and boring.

I dunno that this is really true. I don't think you'd necessarily see more diversity even if units were better balanced. More diversity of armies, possibly, but not necessarily more diversity of units within a single list. The fact is that AOS' mechanics don't easily lend themselves to a lot of different unit roles, and many mechanics - above all the emphasis on power pairs and buff synergies - tend to reinforce the value of spamming the same unit rather than taking two different ones, even if the two are perfectly balanced before you figure in the cost of supplying buffs to them. You see this in practice in how AOS units actually work. Nobody takes anything but Mortek in OBR because the elite infantry choices don't measure up. But if you made them measure up, then why take Mortek? Expecting perfect balance is not realistic and as long as the balance isn't perfect people will just take whichever is better, unless they are forced not to, in the absence of some basic rules that actually distinguish the two on more than just unit stats. Meanwhile in Fyreslayers nobody takes Vulkites because the elite choice do the same basic role, but better. And I don't think that'd change by just buffing Vulkites, unless you buffed them so much that everyone would just start taking them instead. I can see a world where you could viably base you army around either, but it's hard to see one without new rules for basic troops where you'd want to take a mixed force of both instead of going heavy into one or the other. GW recognized this with monsters - without a toughness stat it's difficult to make them have an obvious role - and gave them new rules other units didn't have to make them more useful. I don't see why it'd be a bad idea to do the same thing with basic troops, another generally under-used unit type in AOS. It could be simpler than monstrous rampages, but something to give you a good reason to take those units in all or at least most armies seems like it'd be a good change. There are exceptions - I think Nurgle is a good example of a book where all the units (except some of the heroes and maybe foot blightkings) have play, and where it makes sense to take a combined arms approach rather than spam. But that's because the basic units are so extremely specialized - Plaguebearers pay for nothing but wounds and models on objectives, having absolutely zero mobility and damage output, and that naturally creates a role for the faster moving, harder-hitting units because you literally can't get across the board or kill anything otherwise. But few armies have basic troops as ridiculously specialized as Plaguebringers.

I think the way to make basic troops useful isn't to make them the most efficient but to make them the best at scoring. Ob-sec was the right idea, GW just goofed by giving it out to non-troops like candy in 9th edition books. But there are other ways you could accomplish the same thing re: making people want to take basic battleline not because they're the best at stomping the opponent but because they're best at actually winning your games. None of this matters as long as conditional battleline is thing, though. There's no way they can give battleline special scoring abilities when you can have armies where the "battleline" is all 12 wound monsters. I mean I guess you could put it right on the warscrolls of "real" battleline units and then battleline wouldn't have any relevance except for army construction. It'd be kinda awkward, though.

The trouble with conditional battleline is it makes it difficult to make battleline an actual meaningful thing. You can't have a rule like ob-sec in 40k that makes troops valuable (well, at least until they started handing it out like candy to non-troops) because almost anything can be troops in AOS. And it also greatly exacerbates issues with unit spam, one of the game's major scourges. And the bad approach to GSes has only made it even more attractive to load up on conditional battleline spam to get a free 3 points at the end of the game, too. I'd prefer a game without conditional battleline, but where battleline actually means something beyond list construction. Or at least one where conditional battleline allows you to take units as an alternative to battleline, but that don't count as battleline themselves. So if you really want that army full of stegadons you can...but you'll pay for it by not having access to powerful rules that normal battleline units have. The other upside to that approach is that balance is a lot simpler in an environment where competitive armies all look at least vaguely similar, instead of the current environment where they're stuck trying to balance 200-model 1W hordes against 5-10 model monster spam lists.

Haha, unfortunately this. Looks like a repeat of Blood of the Phoenix from a few years back - worse, even, since this box only has two new models out of 43. GW seems to learn nothing. Another foot hero for Fyreslayers in particular, when the army is desperately crying out for anything but another foot hero, is just beyond shortsighted and lazy.

Pants get in the way of slaying fire with the only firefighting method they've got.

Watch it be old Idoneth models led by a Stormcast with an Idoneth sword vs old Fyreslayer models led by a Stormcast with a fire axe.

Salamander spam took a significant hit too, but yes, in general, the points adjustments very much have the feel of a "hey guys, find a couple units in each book to make some nominal changes in so it looks like we did something. Job's a good 'un!"

SW: Legion plays on a 6x3 board, which is essentially the same size as AOS', just longer and skinnier. But army footprint is about 1/2 to 1/3 what it is in AOS; the highest model count army you can do in Legion is like maybe 70ish 28mm models, and the average is more like 25ish 28mm and 3-5 models on larger bases. Interestingly, unit count isn't all that different from Sigmar, though, with competitive lists typically having 9-11 units. The result is that Legion plays in about the same time as AOS, despite being AA, which typically takes longer than IGOUGO. If Sigmar had the same army footprints as Legion, games would probably play in 1.5-2 hours instead of the 2.5-3 hours they currently take.

I think we're talking past one another. That's not a fundamental resizing of the game, it's just a shift in the meta. You're not paying appreciably more than you were before for stuff of the same value, you're just being pushed to reject the cheap options in favor of the expensive ones. It's not like they cut the size of armies across the board by 1/3 or 1/2 or something like that, which is what they'd need to do to get down to the size of more recent games. And if you did that, games would definitely be a lot shorter. There was a lot of fanfare about how 3.0 points were going to go up across the board, but the actual increases were quite modest, and the winter update is already undoing some of those increases, in the typical GW pattern. The game scale is about the same as it always has been; maybe like 5-10% smaller at most. I'm not saying the current scale of the game is necessarily bad. Just that it is going to lead to games that are naturally going to be longer than in game systems with a smaller scale. AOS has always toed the line between being a skirmish game and an army game, never quite sure which it wanted to be, and that hasn't changed in 3.0. I suppose it could if all the horde factions are reworked so even their cheapest models are much more expensive, but it hasn't happened yet.

But points cost (which is how they price kits, roughly speaking) is roughly the same. That's the point. The current meta happens to be anti-horde and pro elite, but they have not significantly resized the game. You can still take your 200 model horde army if you want, and it costs essentially the same as it did in 2.0 (some minor increases here and there, but they're already being undone and if GW follows its usual pattern that will continue), it's just very bad with the current game mechanics. What I was getting at is that the army scale hasn't changed appreciably. If you look at competing games one of the big takeaways is that they are on a smaller scale and that is a big part of the reason they play more quickly. A SW: Legion army is like 1/2 to 1/3 the size of an AOS one, and that seems about average in terms of modern game scale.

GW doesn't want to lower model counts because selling models is how they make their money. They'd rather have a game where you have to buy 100 models and you remove 50 of them T1 than a game where you only need 50 models but you get to use them for more than a turn or two. I'm not convinced there's actually that much of a relationship, but I'm sure that's part of why they resist actually lowering model counts. Every edition in pretty much every one of their games they "raise points costs to lower the size of armies" to much fanfare and then quietly revert points costs over the first year or two, to the point where they're back to where they used to be.

There's definitely nothing more coming, at least not as part of the plan. That was it.

While I agree that in theory it allows for more meaningful differentiation than we have now, GW has gone precisely in the opposite direction with the proliferation of MWs on 6s, which completely ignore the defensive design sequence entirely. So this horse seems well and truly dead by this point.