yukishiro1

That's the problem with big models, they're inherently swingy and it's very difficult to get them to a place where they are both balanced and fun to play and play against. IMO AOS would be in a better design place if the most expensive models were in the 500ish range instead of the 1000ish range, with reduced power to compensate.

Teclis is a dispel scroll, that works every turn. Kroak is better than one in most ways. LoC or Kairos' average unbind roll is a 10. Etc etc. If dispel scrolls were awful (and they were, though they were a necessary band-aid for an otherwise broken system)...the current magic dom is just as bad if you're on the receiving end of it. The problems with dispel scrolls are essentially the same problems AOS' magic system has with magic doms.

Not if they came down in points accordingly (and less powerful wizards probably went up a bit to reflect the inability to shut them down so easily). Then that opens up more builds with the big characters in them, which is a net win. If Teclis was only, say, 600 points instead of 740, it'd be a lot easier to fit him into your list, and the Teclis lists you could run would be quite a bit more varied and interesting. Not to mention their points coming down is itself a win for GW, because it means people have to pay more money to get a 2000 point army. Those big models actually aren't great for GW from a $ point of view, they're pointed much more efficiently than most other stuff from a dollars-to-points point of view.

I think the contrast with priests, particularly in 3.0, is illustrative. Priests can't dominate each other; I mean, they can banish invocations and I guess in theory smite each other (which you never would except if you're out of range of anything else), but that's it. There's no "priest dom" issue. So when you bring a priest...it never feels useless. It can always do stuff. It's a feels-good, not a feels-bad like happens when you take a wizard, or worse, several wizards, only to find your opponent's list renders your wizards impotent. If there's a good reason why wizards should be doms and subs while priests just get to do their thing no matter what, I haven't found anyone who can explain it.

Again, people aren't talking about balance. I made the point about Teclis' points being able to go down if they made magic doms less good at shutting down less powerful wizards precisely to illustrate that. The issue isn't that Teclis is too cheap, it's that it isn't fun to have your caster totally nullified (as a caster) by the opponent's better caster. Put another way, what is good competitively about having a system where the magic dom can effectively shut down the non-magic dom caster? Does this produce interactive gameplay that fosters a sense of agency? No. Does it produce interesting gameplay? Not really, at least not in any way I can see. What's the gain from a design standpoint having a system where powerful casters not only cast powerfully but also more or less totally shut down less powerful ones? Because there is a real loss of both agency and in terms of the strategies that are competitive. If magic doms couldn't shut down normal casters so effectively, all sorts of builds would open up, especially in less powerful factions. What's the loss that would occur to outweigh that gain? People don't generally play wargames to watch their guys not be able to do things. It's the same reason that total eclipse is so hated. Nobody enjoys taking models and then not being able to do anything with them, whether the opponent has paid the correct points for that or not.

I don't think the complaint is that they're underpointed (though Kroak still is), it's the experience being on the receiving end. You can have a totally balanced game (AOS isn't, but you could) that was nevertheless a chore to play because it wasn't fun for one player. Teclis' points could go down and he'd be less of an all or nothing choice if he wasn't able to auto-unbind at 30" and therefore more or less completely shut down said chaos sorceror. Chaos player still gets to use his toys, LRL player gets to have more toys. I don't think that's a loser for either party.

I really think unbind ranges are the key. If wizards could only unbind within 12" of the target or 12" of the caster, magic doms would be much less oppressive. Right now what really hurts is the inability to get faction key buffs off with your minor wizards because Nagash or a Lord of Change are halfway across the board shutting you down - or even worse with Kroak. If the enemy wizard actually had to be relatively close to either the caster or the target, you could play around them as long as your effects were not offensive in nature. And that's the issue right now - it doesn't matter if Kroak can shut down your 1d3 mortal wounds or whatever, it matters that he shuts down your ability to summon a wyldwood, or to return models to your units, or to teleport a unit, etc. A magic dom could still control a portion of the board, but not the whole board the way they can now.

Dispel range is a big issue that empowers magic doms for sure. Rather than going to 18" dispel range, I'd rather do something slightly more complicated - you can dispel either within 12" of the caster, or within 12" of the target of that cast. It doesn't make sense that a wizard can't try to dispel a spell that is directly targeting the wizard or a close-by unit, just like it doesn't make sense that a wizard can attempt to dispel a buff halfway across the table. This means wizards can still be useful for dispelling offensive spells against themselves and their close-by allies no matter where the cast originates from - no more ridiculous stupid stuff with spell portal - but stops wizards from being able to shut down faction-key buffs cast halfway across the table. I think this would go a long way towards making magic more attractive for non-doms and towards reigning in the doms a little. It goes without saying that Slaan dispelling anywhere on the table should go away, too. Whoever thought that was a great idea should not be doing faction design.

It's been a problem with fantasy since before AOS, it was even worse in late WHFB in terms of "bring a T4 wizard or go home." For whatever reason, the developers either don't know how to design a magic system that doesn't allow magic doms to render non-doms useless, or they think that is fine and not a problem in the first place. This tends to mean that AOS lists either take a magic dom or they take one basic caster just in case they don't face a magic dom so they can do their stuff. It's the middle casting lists that get squeezed the worst IMO, you still see single 1-cast no bonus casters and you see doms, what you don't see is much inbetween. And armies that rely on their magic yet don't have the magic doms kinda just get screwed, it's a large part of why e.x. Nighthaunt and Sylvaneth are so weak.

Slaanesh isn't a terrible army in 3.0 with the new book, but it's a very frustrating one. Whoever thought making a summoning system that strong and then nerfing the rest of the book to be terrible to compensate was a good idea...don't let them develop any more battletomses, at least not as the lead developer. It's not that they end up being terrible...but an army can be decent and still be an unsatisfying experience to play with. It's like the opposite of Lumineth - Lumineth is much more frustrating for your opponent to play against than it actually is strong, Slaanesh is terribly frustrating for the Slaanesh player but actually fairly solid at winning games when played in the very unintuitive way you have to play to make it work. Two sides of the same flawed design coin.

Yeah, Soulblight has it and I assume any book from here on will have it too, but none of the other books do. Presumably that doesn't mean that, for example, Aspiring Champions from STD aren't actually Champions, though... Seems like something they should have FAQed if they weren't going to include a general definition, but I guess they couldn't be bothered.

While we're talking about holes in the rules, am I missing somewhere where "champion" is defined? It just says champions can use command abilities on their units, but the section on command models just says that champions, standard bearers and musicians exist, not what they are. The latter two aren't likely to cause any problems because they have no rule effects beyond what they actually do, but the lack of a definition for champions seems problematic. Some are obvious - Aspiring Champion for Chaos Warriors doesn't leave much doubt - but some are not. Is a Namarti Icon Bearer a champion, or a standard bearer? It has typical effects from both - it gets the +1 attack a champion usually gets, and also allows rerolls of battleshock like banners do. And you can also take 1 per 10, whereas conventional champions are usually one per unit max. So I'm leaning towards no...but it doesn't seem to be defined anywhere in the rules.

Yeah, unless it actually changes the save characteristic (i.e. "this unit has a save characteristic of 2+," not "add 1 to save rolls,"), it caps out at +1 total. Though you can always use multiple +s to offset rend.

The problem is that a minus to hit doesn't matter for hardly any of the stuff that actually wants to unleash hell. Sentinels don't care. Warpfire stuff doesn't care. I guess irondrakes do, but that's about it from the short list of genuinely scary stuff. As usual with GW development, the drawback to unleash hell mostly only hurts stuff that was already not good at it, while leaving the dominant things dominant. Change it to only work if the unit itself is being charged, and/or only if the model is within range, and reduce that range to 6", not 9", and you've got something that has more meaningful movement-based counterplay and I think it's be fine.

Gryos do roll to hit, they just get a number of attacks equal to the number of models from the unit in range. They're not actually very good targets for unleash hell most of the time, you can only take 2 in a unit, hit on 4s (i.e. 5s), wound on 3s, so even if the whole unit is in range of the guns on both copters, you're only getting a number of wounds equal to 1/2 the number of models in the unit (at -1 rend, 1 damage). Basically they're only remotely scary to hordes with junky saves, and even then, the gun is only 8" range so pretty much have to be charged themselves to be able to make good use of it. If 40 clan rats charge two copters you'll kill like 20, but how often does that happen? Meanwhile against something like ardboyz you'll kill like 1 for every 5 models. Hardly too scary. If they're buffed by a hurricanum and a runepriest to get +1 to hit and rend -2, they become slightly scarier, but still only to 1W models. Against anything else, they're a tickle.

edit: Oh, hmm, you get your 1 or 2 command points per battle round at the start of the round, not the hero phase. So I guess it is possible to use rally in the first turn of a battle round then, even if that interpretation is correct. It only comes up in the second turn, if you've already exhausted all your points from the beginning of the battle round and the first turn hero phase. So yeah, in that case, I think she is right and that you can't use rally, because of the language re: it occurring not just at the start of the phase, but before anything else happens. IMO that trumps the language of "start of the phase" for gaining the CP, so you don't even get into a discussion of whether sequencing could apply. In other words: Rally occurs at stage 0 of the hero phase, gaining the CP occurs at stage 1.

Well, a certain kind of ironjawz, anyway. Doubt you'd see much success with an infantry-focused army of primarily ardboyz and brutes. It's early to say for sure obviously, but I am concerned that we are seeing the same kind of builds being successful across all factions. It suggests that they haven't struck the balance right between various unit types. Unless it's just that everyone's still doing the obvious stuff and there are counters we haven't come up with. But I haven't seen much evidence of that yet.

I think this would be true if not for the 3+ base save models with massive sustain who can get to a 2+ with a ward save and then heal 2d3+wounds per battle round. If saves were capped at a 3+ regardless of modifiers unless the model's base save is higher than that, and if you could only use heroic recovery on a model once per game the same way as finest hour (you could make it flat 3 wounds instead to compensate), I think that'd fix all the issues and you'd end up with a system that's actually more clever than the old one.

Yeah, technically Pjetski is right here. As absurd as it is, they seem to have forgot to make their new box matched play legal, because they forgot to include the caveat of "and any other publications published after X date unless they specifically state otherwise" that they've included in the past in these sorts of publications. Although I'd really hope that TOs would be sensible here. The errata for the Skaven tome also tells you to use the plague monks datasheet from the app and delete the one from the Skaven book, but the app isn't listed as an acceptable source of rules for pitched battles, so I guess you arguably can't use plague monks either in pitched battles. 😀

My experience so far is that non-hero monsters seem like a trap, they give away more VP than they earn and still aren't points efficient. The sweet spot seems to be 1-2 tanky heroic monsters in your list. Going heavier than that has diminishing returns, as does taking monsters that aren't heroes and therefore can't access artefacts and heroic buffs and lack the survivability and sustain that makes heroic monsters so dominant in this edition. If you could do multiple stomps and roars that might change, or if those were limited to non-heroic monsters, but you can't, and they aren't.

Warpfire teams are stupid good now that you can hide them in units and unleash hell with them with no penalty. 75 points for something that does an average of 1W per model in the opposing unit...uh, yes? Also a neat trick how they can do that without torching any of their friends. Magic warpfire with homing technology. If anybody can make hordes work in 3.0, I think it's skaven with big blocks of clanrats and hidden weapon teams. Probably with several priests so you can get off a curse at a 75% probability if you need to kill something tanky.

It's not really that "things" are too tanky in 3.0, it's that very specific things - monstrous heroes with a 3+ base save and a ward save or other MW protection - are not even too tanky per se, but that they have too much sustain. It'd be ok if they were this tanky but once you wore them down they stayed worn down, but they don't, they just heal right back up using mechanics that the opponent has no real way to stop. And it doesn't feel at the moment like a lot of these models have points costs that reflect how much more sustain they gained in 3.0. IMO allowing monstrous heroes to use heroic recovery was a mistake, that should have been limited to non-monstrous heroes, to balance out their squishiness by giving them sustain instead. That'd create actual choices and tradeoffs, rather than just sending you to the monstrous version 99 times out of 100 because it's just better. In every game I've played so far, there's come a point - typically around the breakpoint between T2 and T3 - where my Anointed just had free reign over the table because there wasn't enough of my opponent's army left that he could ever realistically kill it when you factor in its ability to stack saves and then heal itself. And when the opponent had a similar model, a similar thing happened for them. Models that are theoretically killable by the opponent's entire 2000 point army quickly become unkillable once armies are whittled down. You have a very small window in which you might be able to go all in to remove the model - usually T1 to T2 if you can get the double - and then the window closes, and if you didn't take your chance early, you have virtually no chance to kill these models in the later game. This seems like the opposite of how things really ought to work, battles ought to build to a crescendo, not start out with gods dying on T1-T2 or not at all.

Yeah, save stacking is shaping up to the biggest change in the edition. Rend 1 now feels totally inadequate, and even rend 2 feels low. I find my lists are getting more and more skewed towards high rend and MW because otherwise it just does nothing against the anvils the enemy is bringing, whether it's a monstrous hero, a big block of blood knights, or whatever else. That theoretically opens space for counter-meta lists that just take hordes of cheap wounds with low saves that gum up the board for 5 turns, but my initial sense is that that doesn't really work in AOS the way it works in 40k because of damage carry-over. In 40k you can take 200 guardsmen and someone who only has anti-tank guns just don't kill them in 5 turns; in AOS, your anti-tank gun kills 5 guardsmen per hit because it's damage 5. I am just not sure that anything except maybe horrors is cheap and compact enough to be able to play the horde game.

One thing that definitely needs to be FAQed is that only models within 9" should be able to unleash hell. It shouldn't be you get to do it with the whole unit of 30 as long as one dude is within 9" of the charging unit. That would do a lot to address a lot of the worst edge cases, whether it's from taking a huge block of 30, Iliatha double unleash hell, or whatever else.

There is a definite lack of symmetry now between the ability to improve saves and the ability to improve rend. Given how rare bonuses to rend are, how rare even base rend -2 is and how almost nonexistent base rend -3 is, and how common bonuses to saves now are, a unit's base save now feels like it is typically going to be the worst their save is made at. I.e. something with a 3+ save is rarely going to be saving at worse than a 3+. Rend is more to stop it from saving at a 2+ than to reduce it to a 5+ like you used to be able to do. That said, for someone like Archaon, it used to be a 5+ rerolling when faced with -2 rend. Now it's a 3+ (assuming he has +2 to save), without the reroll. It's better, but not dramatically so. The bigger problem with the game I've seen with heroic monsters is that chip damage has become so much less effective. Archaon is essentially guaranteed to heal 3d3 wounds per battle round. This means that unless you can kill him all at once or close to all at once, there's not really any point in trying to wear him down. This is true of most of the big god-tier characters - unless you can oneshot them, you might as well not really bother any more. I am not convinced this is a great change - I don't think these all-or-nothing kind of gameplay systems are particularly rewarding or satisfying. I don't think monstrous heroes saving at a 2-3+ would really be all that big of an issue if they weren't also healing for 2d3 a battle round. If you could chip them down over time, that'd be ok. But you can't. I am not sure this is going to result in satisfying gameplay over the long term - even if you win. Kinda the LRL problem. I don't know that watching an immortal Archaon dismantle my army over 5 turns yet still lose on points is going to stay novel after the first or second time I do it.