Ferban
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Posts posted by Ferban
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So, in AoS 2.0, all of the models came with an instruction booklet (of course). But on the back of the booklet, there was always a nice color picture of the model and a list of what paints were used on which parts. It didn't discuss all the details, but it gave you sort of a rough idea of how to create the same look. And, for me, I used it as a jumping off point when painting. I don't like to follow it exactly, but it often gave me a starting base from which to go.
But with the 3.0 models in the red boxes, they've stopped doing that. Instead, they just have a link to the citadelcolour.com/guides. But when you go there, there isn't a guide for every model. It's essentially just what they've put up on youtube over the years. So now, when I buy a new model, I don't get that guide.
Luckily, I'm far enough into the hobby that it isn't as big a deal as it was when I first started painting. But did they ever announce why they stopped providing that info? It seems like good info and definitely promotes their paint line. So I'm not sure why they'd stop.
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10 hours ago, JackStreicher said:
First off, this shall not be a discussion about competetive gaming.
Settling into the new Edition
With the start of AoS 3.0 I was enthusiastic about the game. The Core Rules seemed mostly great, a real improvement. As of late I've had a feeling that the game isn't really grabing me anymore. It's not due to the Core Rules though. I gave it a deep thought for a while and I came down to a somewhat foggy idea of a conclusion that is hard to formulate.
The actual issues began with thew first Battletomes:
Stormcast Eternals: Due to the sheer amount of Warscrolls this book seemed fine for a long time. However it suddenly stopped interesting me. I didn't know exactly why then. I thought it might be the lack of actual Warscrolls that would be fun to play (which is certainly one part of it).One Reason, Maybe?
However, with the release of the new Idoneth Book it struck me: To me there's nothing in those books anymore that makes me go wow. (I am not talking about competetive gaming):
When I look at the subfactions, there's nothing there that actually makes them feel different. It's a minor bonus rule to unlock a battleline here or grant a buff there. There's nothing left that makes me go: Wow, Nautilar seems to be really cool with their defensive playstyle, I want to paint and play my army that way. All of the subfactions aren't that different to one another anymore. They've become a carrier for more rules, nothing more.
Carrier for rules?
Overall it feels to me like the books have lost most of their flavour so far. Every units feels boring to me, nothing sparks imagination. It's the same old same old with minor tweaks. This might be caused by the (over-) streamlining of rules or a change in the 3.0 design philosophy.
Maybe this is caused by the unwillingness to actually spice armies up a little and to mix things up. Like completely rewriting a warscroll to be closer to what it does in lore, or adding more interesting interactions (more abilities). Stormcast at least have had quite a lot of fundamental Warscroll changes for better or for worse which kept them fresh for a long time.
On the inside
Another factor might be the rather bad internal balance. Keep in mind I am not talking about competetive gaming here. With this I mean that every unit should feel interesting and not like a burden. Sadly, as of now, books tend to have a really bad internal balance with crystal clear winners and a lot of obvious losers. This also limits what one can do with an army while not creating a feel bad situation for oneself.Conclusion
This conclusion might be quite a leap. To me it seems that the books have become more or less a reprint with almost no new ideas and mostly minor tweaks to favour one playstyle over the other. There seems to be a shift away from making rules (and games?) flavourful and thematic - which is the number one reason I play this game. It seems like the books are mostly catered towards a competetive environment that doesn't need or want flavour, they want powerful Warscrolls and abilities. And the comp. players will be fine and even like this. However, most of us are not competetive players.Reactions
After watching the Review of the new IDK book (and the Fyreslayers book) the friends I watched them with (some of whom have started these two armies about a month ago) said: Well, that sounds boring. And I had to agree.
Path to Glory, our saviour?
I hoped for PtG to give us more customisation, more options, more flavour! However it became stale really fast (with my SCE). It also seems to be neglected by GW. So will PtG fix the game for me? It depends on the future of the system.
Your opinion, your reasoning
I am interesting if I am the only one who feels this way. Maybe some of you feel the same way and they can articulate their impressions better then me (if so, please reply!) or have other ideas about what exactly is changing about the game that might be pushing us away from it.Cheers
Jack
Thanks for your perspective! Although I don't feel the same, it's always good to read different views.
Although I play Narrative and Matched play, I do so very casually and locally. I don't follow the "meta" trends and I don't net list. So maybe that colors my perspective. And, I've only been in the Warhammer hobby for a couple of years (picked it up during lockdown), though I've been an avid boardgamer for many, many years.
But I actually really like the direction the Battletomes have gone so far. SCE and Nurgle both feel flavorful to me - especially Nurgle. With SCE, and it's bazillion warscrolls, you are going to have some stand-outs and some duds. But even with the relatively modest number of Kruleboyz, Ironjaws, and Nurgle, almost all of the scrolls seem to have a use. None are just utter duds (although, I understand competitive players might disagree).
I also like that the sub-factions tend to layer up an additional rule. Almost like your army has an extra adjustable battle trait. To me, it makes the armies feel more cohesive rather than loosely aligned hodge-podges. Which makes sense for SCE and Nurgle. But maybe wouldn't be as good for Cities or some other factions.
I don't play Fyreslayers or IDK. So maybe those tomes are terrible (I don't have the knowledge or experience to opine). But with the first three, I've been very pleased at how they have turned out and how the warscrolls and battle traits tend to reflect the lore. Are there some mismatches or misses here and there? Sure. It's not perfect. But I really prefer all three (SCE, Orruks, Nurgle) over their earlier tomes in terms of flavor and internal balance.
I feel like the Core Rules are a significant improvement over 2.0 and that the new battletomes have been a very positive direction. If there is any negative, it's that only a few factions have received new tomes and some are using rules from an older design philosophy that I don't prefer.
And Path to Glory has been amazing! If you want a way to tell a story and get involved, that is it. You can create a whole backstory about your warband and tell their rise to prominence - along with their victories and setbacks. My matched play games are fun, but they are one and done. My PtG experiences have all gotten me super invested in the game and I've very much enjoyed that experience - even when the battleplan or matchup puts me at a competitive disadvantage.
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I've played dozens of games 1k and below. Especially with Path to Glory. I think if you were trying to bring a hyper-competitive list, it would feel very unbalanced. But with narrative focused games, I've had a blast every time. And I agree that the shorter game time can mean the difference between getting Warhammer to the table or not playing at all.
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I've really enjoyed C.L. Werner's books. Lady of Sorrows and Iron Dragon were both excellent. I'm currently reading g Gloomspite and the writing of Alan Clark is descriptive and impressive. Probably gonna seek one of his out for my next book.
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I started an SBG force at the tail end of last year. So that became my "new army" for this year. Painting 80 zombies is no joke. Any individual model isn't painted to my usual quality. But on the table, the quantity you see has a quality all its own.
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Disclaimer: I play equal amounts of matched play and PtG, but only locally. I haven't played tournaments and I have no interest in chasing the online meta. Tournament players can feel free to disregard my thoughts since I'm clearly not playing "real" AoS.
I think the turn priority roll is, on balance, good. Could it be better? Sure. I think switching to an alternating activation would probably be ideal (though that brings its own problems as people pointed out above). The priority roll creates uncertainty that must be played around. Ideally, you have to set yourself into a position where getting double-turned is not an auto-loss. That adds strategy and tactical considerations.
Plus, like others, I think that it rarely seems to swing the game. If you're losing and get doubled, you're just going to lose faster. And that's OK. No one should be sad that they lost in an hour rather than after two hours. And if you're winning and get a double, same thing. But if you're losing and get a double, it may just get you back in the game (although, if we're being honest, it can help but it's not as impactful as some have claimed).
A change I might make is having the players score at the end of a battle round, rather than at the end of their turn. I think this would provide a lot of benefit to going second and may reduce the benefit of the double.
Again, if you're talking about the hottest meta list (oops, all dragons!) going up against an army that struggles (e.g. Khorne), getting doubled is going to widen the disparity. But if we're being honest, Khorne was already going to lose that fight. So having it happen quicker isn't necessarily a negative.
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Just wanted to give an update. I had a chance to play two sessions of Hinterlands with my kids (ages 9, 7, and 5). It went remarkably well. My oldest is my main gaming partner, so he was all about it. But the two younger ones had a blast living out the story and spending time with dad and their older brother.
I picked the Lord-Relictor as my hero, since that gave me access to some nice healing I could spread throughout the party. And one of my kids picked the Kinght-Judicator so that they got some Gryph Hound friends. The other picks were a Melusai Ironscale and a Bloodwrack Medusa.
The battleplans were, perhaps, just a little bit repetitive, but overall pretty fun. And the cooperative nature really helped to keep everyone involved and feeling good. Since there was no "loser" all the kids were pretty happy.
Overall, it was a good experience and the kids are asking to play even more. If you're looking to introduce wargaming to younglings, I think this is an excellent approach.
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So I was perusing through some of the W+ vault and found an issue of White Dwarf that provided some co-op rules. It's not a full game and probably only marginally balanced (plus written for AoS 2.0). But it looks fun-ish and seems like a great way for my 7 year old to play (she's been wanting to play, but it's a little beyond her just yet).
Anyone try this out or have some experiences or stories to share?
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I completely agree that some warscrolls just don't seem to do what they are intended to do. I think that is an issue that can and should be updated with warscroll updates. A good example was Pink Horrors being too good (still seem pretty good) and the changes to make some of the Nurgle demon heroes more relevant.
But, I generally think that Warscroll changes should be infrequent. As noted above, a warscroll change can (much more easily than points adjustments) lead to some unintended consequences breaking other parts of the game. And I could definitely see it causing confusion for players who aren't as up on the changes being told about warscroll changes mid-game at their local shop.
I also think warscroll changes could could lead to a real feel bad moment. If you ran out and bought a particular unit because it did some cool thing that you wanted as part of your overall strategy, and then the warscroll was changed to eliminate that ability, that could be a feel bad moment. It might make you feel like you wasted the time, money, and effort. And, undoubtedly, it would fuel accusations (which might or might not be true) that GW was nerfing old warscrolls in order to sell new models.
I think warscroll adjustments should be targeted to the most problematic units (either too good or too irrelevant) and should be done only very rarely. Otherwise, I think reserving significant warscroll changes for a battletome refresh (2-3ish years apart?) is about the right frequency.
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The Dominion novel was ... ok. It had some really cool moments (the tower scene, the epilogue, and others), but some of the stuff didn't make much sense. And, (let me stress that this is entirely subjective and a personal opinion) I didn't find Niksar all that likeable. In fact, he made some fairly despicable decisions early on that really cast him in a bad light going forward. I also didn't like the Dawnbringer much, or the Knight Arcanum. Or Niksar's weird friend (Ophelia?) who seemed to show up only to help advance plot points.
However, if you liked it, I'm glad you enjoyed it! We don't all have to like the same stuff. Also, I'm not a literary critic by any means. I just like what I like.
For me, I would put my top three as Overlords of the Iron Dragon, Lady of Sorrows, and probably Thunderstrike and Other Stories (in no particular order). The last one is a collection, but almost every story is a fun read. I ordered Stormvault as an ebook on Black Library. Haven't started it yet, though.
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I agree with some of the above in that I think faction specific core battalions (and Grand Strategies and Battle Tactics) aren't a great idea. It's too easy to fall into the trap of creating BTs that are essentially "auto-complete" and battalions that will be overpowered. And because they aren't available to all armies, the ones with the good battalions/GSs/BTs will have that much of an advantage. (Although, to be perfectly fair, some armies have way easier grand strategies than others due to how they are set up - Tzeentch is basically guaranteed to do Prized Sorcery moreso than many other armies will be with any of the other GSs)
That said, I would actually like faction-specific stuff if they were highly situational and focused on flavor. That way, they would be unlikely to have a significant impact on competitive play, while also providing additional "fun" tools for either narrative or casual play. I think the SoB faction specific stuff has already shown that they aren't following this design philosophy, but I don't hate the idea intrinsically. Just as applied.
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I have the app on Android on my Samsung S20. It works fine at first. But if I return to the app after a few hours, it will not open and crashes. I've had to uninstall and reinstall twice now (losing my army lists). That is super annoying and needs to be fixed as it isn't currently functional.
Assuming that gets addressed, though, I think the app is fine. I've found some little issues here and there, but hopefully it will smooth out over time. And since I already subscribed to W+ (my son and I are big fans of the animations), it's no extra cost for me.
A couple of main improvements I'd like to see: (1) Ability to re-order your army lists and units within a single list; (2) Ability to re-name lists; (3) ability to change sub-factions (like Stormhosts) without having to create an entirely new army; (4) when selecting a special item (general, artefact, spell, prayer, etc.) for a unit, it would be nice if that info was then written on the unit's entry in your army list so that you could see it all at one glance rather than having to click into each unit.
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This came up in a recent game. Do the Venom Encrusted Weapons (unmodified 6 on a hit does mortal wounds equal to the damage) apply to the stab grot that accompanies the Killaboss on foot?
The card that comes with Dominion says that all Kruleboyz Orruks get the Venom Encrusted Weapons, but that it doesn't apply to a mount. The stab-grot is listed on the Killaboss's card as a "Companion." But it doesn't include the usual language that a companion "is treated in the same way as a mount." In fact, it says the stab grot and Killaboss are treated as "one model" which, presumably, means that they together have the Kruleboyze Orruks keywords and, therefore, the stab grot's weapons should get the benefit.
My guess is that the upcoming battletome will address that. But given just what comes in Dominion, anybody have thoughts one way or the other? We played it that the stab grot did get the benefit. Which made for a better overall narrative. But wondering what others think.
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You can still use mystic shield and/or all out defense. But the final number can't be better than +1.
For example, if your hero had a 4+ up save, you could give the artifact and mystic shield, but the end result would be (effectively) a 3+ save.
However, if the attacker had one rend, your 2 bonuses and his one negative would still result in a (effectively) 3+ save.
In other words, all modifiers apply, but the final total can't be more than +1 to save.
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Thanks, all! Warhammer Community also posted up a note about the new queue system. So we'll see how it goes.
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I've never Pre-ordered anything from GW before, but I'm pretty excited for Dominion. I know the preorder starts on Saturday, but does anyone know what time? Is it 10am UK time or 10am in each time zone? (I'm Pacific)
Also, any quirks about their system I should know about?
Thanks!
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Just to report back. I ended up getting a Kroak. No assembly instructions, which was annoying. But I was able to piece him all together. There was no major bubbling and only slight warping that I fixed.
Kroak was out of stock online for a short while, but looks like he's back now.
So far, no finecast horror stories for me, but plastic is by far my preference.
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So I'm building up a Seraphon army. I got some Kroxigors and found out they were finecast. Eh. I prefer plastic, of course, but didn't experience any of the horror stories that I've seen online. I'm probably going to pick up Lord Kroak in the near future and I've read that he's finecast as well. Any special concerns with that particular model? Would love to hear from those who have built and painted him.
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25 minutes ago, Underworld40k said:
I can confirm The Daughters of Khaine information isn't working correctly - I sent a support email and this was confirmed as being passed on to be work on.
There has also been a long standing issue with the Big Waagh list building not registering battle line correctly. I like Azyr but bugs remain a feature of it...
Thanks so much! I'm glad I'm not the only one.
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Hello all! I have an issue with the Azyr app and I can't tell if it's just me or if this is a universal issue.
I've been creating a new list for Daughters of Khaine. All the new units and points from the battletome are in there, so that's been updated. However, when I go to add a warscroll battalion, it has only the old ones. None o f the new battalions or point costs are there.
The interesting thing is that if I just go to the main page that lets you search for any unit or battalion, the new battalions are listed. It's only when I'm actually in the army builder (y'know, the part you have to pay for) that the battalions don't seem to be available to be selected. Is this happening to anyone else or is this just me?
Thanks!
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Thank you so much!
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Hello! I'm brand new and tried to search for this info but came up empty.
I've been building a Slaanesh army and came to a descepancy. In GHB 2020, Hellstriders are 110. But on Azyr and Warscroll Builder, they are 100.
I tried checking g the FAQ to see if the points had been updated, but as far as I can tell they haven't. Is there some source I should look to for the most up to date points?
Thanks so much!
"More" people from the Realms
in Age of Sigmar Discussions
Posted
I don't mind unique rules on named characters. The reason they have big stories behind them and tons of lore is precisely because they do more than a generic character of the same type or class. Guardus wouldn't feel like Guardus if every Lord Celestant gave a 5+ ward.
As long as they are pointed correctly (which is a whole 'nother issue), I think unique abilities bring good flavor. And they make those characters feel special on the tabletop.