yukishiro1

It seems like by very definition putting free warscrolls behind a paywall means free warscrolls are gone...you know, the whole "free" part?

Having reviewed the potato cam photos, it does look a bit like the Monster Hunter monster, albeit with way more spikey bling. But just wait until you see how it's dynamically and precariously posed upon a truly magnificent tactical log.

Sorry mate, even GW have some standards.

I am 300% serious about the Platypus Dragons. My source is impeccable and you should definitely trust me. Also they will get another piece of faction terrain that is a bridge, which you may be interested in...

I think you mean Pangolith Battlebounder.

Just wait till you see Tyrion riding a majestic Moose-otter.

The Lumineth 3.0 release coming out next May will have River Temple monsters that are half-dragon, half-platypus. The heroic version has a rider with a duck-billed hat.

It's minor, but the difference is the latter isn't creating a new mechanical system and therefore the potential for further bloat. E.g. all the abilities, artefacts etc that are specifically keyed to mortal wounds. But I would want attacks that ignore armor saves entirely to be extremely rare, it shouldn't be the default even for spells. Poisonous wind orbs are only rend 2, so why wouldn't a spell be the same? A Bastilidon shoots you with a laser that's only rend 1 in this game. Etc etc. Ignoring armor saves entirely could be saved for specific types of spells, e.g. Arkan's Curse of Years, which could then be balanced accordingly either with higher casting values or lower average damage. And stuff like Sentinels on 6s certainly shouldn't be bypassing armor entirely, a rend boost is more than plenty to account for that sort of thing.

Was WHFB ever very much into the satire and political commentary? That always seemed more like 40k's specialty to me. 40k really came out of the 80s in the UK, whereas WHFB always felt a bit less overtly political and more timeless to me. They've definitely moved away from the political element to 40k, though, presumably when they realized how many of their fans seemed to not be in on the joke.

I honestly don't know whether this one is unpopular or not: Mortal Wounds are just a bad mechanic. They shouldn't exist. Just give stuff high rend if you want it to go through armor saves, or even let it ignore armor saves entirely. MWs in 40k sorta make sense because you have a toughness stat, they don't make sense in AOS. Spells should just deal x amount of normal wounds at x rend. It would give you a lot more room to work with in that space too, instead of having practically every damage spell be "yeah, you guessed it, this one does d3 mortal wounds too!"

They definitely need to change Look Out Sir in some way that makes it not completely useless against mortals, the failure to do so is one of the most surprising oversights in the AOS3 ruleset. But I would be very surprised if that's an unpopular opinion.

Now you're just repeating the same straw man that's already been debunked. Neither one of us said we "support" this "solution." We both said it isn't ideal, and that we'd like to see a different approach. The sole point I was making was that you can't just remove the double turn, that isn't a "solution" either, to use your term. The first turn advantage in the game is too great for that. You'd need to change a bunch of other variables too to create a game that wasn't largely determined by the roll-off to go first.

Actually, Lumineth are one of the very few factions that probably can win that game even if Tzeentch doubles them - assuming you got your 5++ up and your army is mostly castled within the protection and spell shrug, and you deleted significant portions of their army using your T1 alpha or at a minimum forced them to blow their good fate dice preventing you from doing that...you're in a comparatively pretty good spot. Under 50% win rate? Yeah, probably. But probably not dramatically under that. Definitely in the realm of still worth playing. But your general point that it's hard to win against someone who gets the T1 to T2 double is absolutely true. For the fourth time...you're preaching to the choir there. My preference would be that they remove the double and reign in alpha strikes, because I don't like either of those things. But you can't do one without the other, the game would just collapse.

Shrug, we'll just have to agree to disagree, then. I think you're absolutely wrong that first-turn advantage isn't a major thing in the absence of a double, you obviously think I'm absolutely wrong that it is a thing. I don't think there's anything I could possibly say that would change your mind if you don't think removing a significant chunk of your opponent's army and moving up to control the board before they get to do anything is a significant advantage. But FWIW, on the question about why we supposedly don't see lists that go in hard on the top of T1...uh, we do. They're literally all over the place. There was recently a game at a high profile UK tournament where the players actually rolled to see who went first and then the player who got second (playing Lumineth, against Tzeentch) conceded without even setting up. Now I personally think that was a mistake precisely because of the possibility of a double...but without that possibility, that was probably a fairly reasonable thing to do.

Oh, I have empathy, don't get me wrong. You should be able to trust that a rule means what it says. But this is GW. History shows you unfortunately absolutely cannot trust that a rule they publish means what it says. You're right re: foxes being able to move in the opponent's shooting phase (though that's slightly different in that it's not like we had a established rule where people can move in their shooting phase, but not the opponent's and then foxes came out and failed to have that limiting wording - the thing that made translocate so obviously not intended was it didn't include the common limiting language that every other similar ability does). Sometimes GW really does (apparently) mean what it says, even if it appears ridiculous. But 9 times out of 10 when you see something where it looks like they just left off the limiting language that every other ability of that type has by mistake....yeah, that's what happened, they just left off the limiting language that every other ability of that type has by mistake.

With all due respect, you're simply not reading what I'm writing. I'm not contesting the double turn ruins a lot of games, you're preachign to the choir here. What I am saying is very specifically that if you removed the double-turn right now, in the absence of other big changes to the way the game works, you'd see the win rate for going first immediately spike to competitively unacceptable levels, i.e. well above 60%. Nothing you've written here addresses that. In a game without double turns but otherwise the same as it is now, everyone goes 1 drop and tries to go first every game because there is every incentive to do so, and the advantage from getting that first turn is immense.

I dunno, I think that depends on where you're viewing it from. From within the system, ranged lists benefit more from a double turn than melee lists. But if you're looking on a macro level, without the double turn, 50 Sentinels or any other similar list that can hit the opponent hard from the top of T1 wins 80% of the time or more if it goes first, and the game goes to a place where the one-drop list is the only list that is vaguely competitively viable, and where the outcome of most competitive games is essentially determined by who gets first turn. I'm not a big fan of the double turn conceptually and I'd prefer a system that tones down the alpha and removes it, but if you only removed double turns right now, the game would become unplayable competitively.

The new FAQ is up. Don't think it should really be a surprise to anyone that no, they didn't actually mean to make this ability much more powerful just like no, they didn't actually mean to let you move after translocate, just like no, they didn't actually mean to make Celestine immune to damage 1 weapons, just like no, they didn't actually mean to make Reavers 10 points instead of 20, etc etc. But I'm sure next time they release a new tome and it has something like this in it, people will still be arguing that this is the time that they meant to do it!

Yeah, I always try to do something weird and original with my painting schemes. I'm technically pretty ****** at painting, so if I didn't, I'd just end up with the 997th best painted Sylvaneth army, or whatever, which is sad days.

I'm not complaining, I'm defending the double turn as necessary to the current state of the game. They aren't janky outliers, the whole point is that many, probably most top-tier competitive lists can hit you hard the top of T1 these days, often with fairly limited ability to mitigate. And we're specifically talking about tournament lists and the current state of the game and the "extreme edge of play." That said, I don't want to get this discussion sidetracked even more into the double turn - I think we already know it's the most controversial thing in AOS, and we probably don't need to make this thread all about it, too.

I don't think this is really true. GSes actively reward lists that table their opponent because tabling will almost always get you a points advantage from the GS differential. Battle tactics and hold one hold more, combined with the smaller maps, mean that on most maps it is a given you'll score max points going first on T1, whereas in 2.0 going first was generally a scoreboard disadvantage. All these changes are pro-alpha strike IMO. What is anti-alpha strike in 3.0 is the ability to boost saves by 1, or sometimes 2 even before you get a turn, and, against melee, redeploy and/or unleash hell. But the value of these is wildly variable depending on what your opponent is hitting you with, and top-tier competitive lists tend to focus on ranged MW output, something that bypasses every one of these tools, while the top-tier melee lists generally have tools for this as well (e.g. Tzeentch Archaon will just charge you from outside 9 so no redeploy, and he isn't going to care about an unbuffed T1 unleash hell because basically every unit that's good at shooting needs buffs to make it good which you can't put on till your own turn). Now I think you're right that pure alpha strike lists don't do great in 3.0. But that's not really what we're talking about. Something like 40-50 Sentinels is a top-tier list precisely because it isn't a pure alpha list - it can castle pretty well as well as long as it gets the first turn to get those buffs up - and yet it still has the ability to take out key targets T1 as well. Tzeentch Archaon has staying power from Archaon, pinks, and its summoning engine, but it also starts deleting your army from the top of T1. Most other top lists have this aspect to them as well. They will ruthlessly alpha you, then settle in to win the attrition war because they start out the war 20-25% ahead of their opponent if they go first. The double turn is the only thing that holds this advantage in check right now. I tend to agree that the game would probably be better without the double turn, but at this point doing that would require rebuilding a lot of the game rules and the mission structure from the ground up.

No offense, but this sounds like a comment from someone who iisn't familiar with top-tier competitive lists. You can't hide from 50 Lumineth Sentinels. Assuming you're playing on standard AOS boards (i.e. where LOS blocking is extremely limited), you can't hide from shootcast that port on a 2+ and have 30" range, and you can't hide from Morathi and the Bow-snakes. IJ will get into your army T1 with most of their army with 3-6 units double-moving then charging. Smashcast can port a unit of fulminators and then move and charge afterwards, and it's only going to get worse once the dragons come out because those have a guaranteed T1 flying charge. Tzeentch Archaon will hit you with 6MW from Kairos *and* hit you with a T1 Archaon charge. Etc etc. Seraphon can both cast and shoot off stuff from T1 reliably. Almost all of the top tier lists these days have the ability to hit you very hard from the top of T1, and several of them (i.e. anything with 18"+ ranged attacks and mobility) do it in a way that largely bypass screens, too. In fact what distinguishes top tier competitive lists these days from ones that aren't top-tier is largely whether they have a credible top of T1 alpha strike or not (this doesn't mean they necessarily want to go first every game, mind you, but they have the tools to go first if they end up doing so). They aren't all like this - e.x. SoB don't have a strong alpha - but most top-tier lists do. It's not that they'll delete your entire army, but killing 400-500 points on the top of T1 is totally doable these days, and that's enough of a built-in advantage to wildly skew win rates based on who goes first in the absence of the potential for the player taking second to get a double. That doesn't mean there's nothing you can do to mitigate an alpha strike, there definitely is. But a lot of it is very list dependent. I.e. my BoK list actually does pretty well against T1 alpha lists because it has copious screens and pre-game moves to push out the screens, and a few tricks to hide key support pieces from anything but Sentinels as well. But a 50-Sentinel list that comes up against another 50-Sentinel list doesn't really have much option; you roll the 4+ for who goes first and whoever wins that roll has probably an 80% chance to win, and that 20% is because of the potential for a double turn to make up for it. And there are lots of other lists that are more like the Sentinels than like my BoK (which to be clear isn't a top-tier competitive list, it's merely solid). Without the potential for a double turn to compensate for the copious advantages going first has in the current game, it's not exaggerating to say you'd see like a 65-70% win rate for the player going first.

This was definitely true in AOS2, but I find it less true in AOS3 - though as noted above, not necessarily for a great reason: it's because T1 alpha strikes are such a thing now. In AOS2 it was a rare army that could go in hard on the top of T1 through most of the edition, but these days pretty much everyone can do it aside from the sad left-behinds. Throughout most of AOS2 T3 was the decisive turn, which slowly transitioned to T2 over the course of the edition; AOS3 feels even more frontloaded, to the point where one person is often firmly on the back foot even by the end of T1. Going first T1 is now worth a lot more than it used to be because of the reduced objective counts, smaller map and the fact that screens have largely fallen out of favor, and greater benefit to be gained from alphaing someone before they can get their buffs up. So the old "give them first turn, then double them and win" strategy is not as foolproof as it used to be, because by doing so you'll likely lose a significant amount of your army to your opponent's T1 alpha, and if you don't get the double, you're going to only have half your stuff left when it gets to the bottom of T2. I don't think this is great game design - it isn't fun to play a game where a key piece (or even multiple pieces with some of the new alpha lists) of yours get removed T1 before you even have a chance to move, nor is it fun to be doubled on the T1/T2 changeover - but it does feel to me at the moment like alpha strikes and double turns are somewhat keeping one another in check.

So here's the really unpopular opinion on double turns: they are neither an abomination nor a genius design feature that makes AOS great. Sometimes a double turn ruins a game, sometimes a double turn breathes life into a game that otherwise would have been stale and predictable. You cannot plan around them fully, so the people who say that "good players don't lose to a double turn" are wrong. But you can take steps to mitigate their effects in many circumstances even against competitive lists, so the people who say "you just lose if you get doubled, there's nothing you can do" are also wrong. They're also needed in the current game not because they're a great mechanic per se, but because the game has become so alpha-strike heavy that without the threat of a double, taking a 1-drop list, going first and alphaing your opponent hard would be the only competitive choice, and competitive games would largely come down to the roll-off to go first between 1-drop lists. If people think 40k has a going-first problem, you can't even imagine how bad the going-first advantage would be in AOS without the double turn. But that's not a great conceptual justification for them, because the game shouldn't be so alpha-strike heavy in the first place; it's like breaking your nose in one direction and then "straightening it" by breaking your nose again in the other direction to try to even it out.

I'm not sure this really holds up to scrutiny. Although it's true that obviously some characters in WHFB were more important than others, there was also a vastly larger cast of significant characters with meaningful backstories. Bretonnia had at least 3-4 meaningful characters; the AOS equivalent in FEC has zero. High Elves alone had a dozen meaningful characters (or at least half a dozen even if you are super picky about who qualifies); Lumineth have none that don't come from WHFB (it's theoretically possible that some of the new special characters could become significant, but right now they're just another warscroll with maybe half a page of backstory, they haven't actually done anything). You can go down practically all the old WHFB factions and see the same pattern - the AOS equivalents have at best 1, maybe two new characters that are significantly developed (e.x. Volturnos for Deepkin, Skraggrot for Gitz), and many factions don't even have that. Part of that is the relative age of the games, but it doesn't begin to fully explain it. AOS has been around for 6 years now. It's not a new game. And yet with a tiny handful of exceptions, its cast of meaningful characters is still overwhelmingly from WHFB. It's hard not to think that the overwhelming focus on Gods has contributed to this lack of significant new characters, because it tends to relegate new characters to simply pawns rather than protagonists. I don't think it's a coincidence that the few new meaningful characters they have created tend to come from factions without a God; it's because the lack of a God frees them to actually be the heroes of the story, not just bag-carriers. I think you have hit on something with the "every character gets a mini" thing, though. This is also part of it IMO: characters are now attachments to a miniature, rather than the miniature representing the character that's already been fleshed out in the story. In WHFB, characters generally preexisted their models, and they got a model once they became important enough to merit one. In AOS, it's the opposite - models get characters designed to go along with them, so the characters tend to have an interchangeable "tacked on" feel to them unless and until the story writers spend a lot of time and energy imbuing them with a level of depth that doesn't exist initially.