Bosskelot

Plus for many people the pace is still glacial, especially if they have no point of reference for the bad old days.

You only have to look at how LE versions of books sells between the two games. Recent LE versions of battletomes and BR books often take around 1-2 weeks to go OOS. An LE 40K codex will go OOS on the day of its release, even for a less popular army like Drukhari.

This is certainly something GW has definitely fallen behind on. They want to do more regular updates for their games, like balance patches in videogames, but then they don't realise that in balance patches the developers will often have extensive commentary about why a change was made. Just look at updates for games made by Valve, Blizzard or Riot. In fact GW doesn't even do patch notes. It's up to the community to try and find out what even changed!

The scope of changes while also not really addressing the biggest issues with the core rules is.... very bizarre. Of course there could be lots of unforeseen and subtle changes in how the game plays because of innocuous things, but yeah their direction for the game is kind of confusing honestly? Shooting is actively better, terrain is unchanged, battleshock is unchanged and some of the changes made to certain unit types probably won't amount to anything because of the previously mentioned things. Monsters/Behemoth's problems weren't that they lacked damage, it's that they died really quickly. And they will still die really quickly. It really feels like GW is actively ignorant of how people played the game or just doesn't care about their concerns. 9th ed 40k core rules aren't perfect, but every single change made was made in an attempt to fix a perceived issue with 8th edition and from that perspective it's been wildly successful. With AOS 3.0, the game will certainly play differently in some areas, but it doesn't look like a lot of the core problems with the system have been solved or changed at all. In fact when we got the leaked and full rules for 40K a lot of the worrying and gnashing of teeth died down... but with AOS 3.0 there's still a load of worrying and negativity.

I really hope they have some more actual units. Half the roster going from the leaks feels like different varieties of Killabosses on mounts.

It's clearly both. You can lay the oppressive nature of shooting at the feet of battletomes all you want, but it is because the game's LOS, terrain and core shooting rules are so bad that this kind of stuff happens. With the way the rules are currently written, the only way to balance shooting is to make every shooting unit actively bad or overpriced because they suffer no real drawbacks or limitations within the rules. But that's a horrible way to go about things because it reduces design space and variety in unit and faction design.

The difference is, in 40K you cannot shoot into melee. In AOS you can.

How relevant are the monster buffs though? All I've seen is ways to make monsters slightly more killy, when really their issue has been survivability. With shooting (seemingly) not being touched and in fact made better with Unleash Hell what's really stopping them from being yeeted off of the board very quickly? Also depending on how missions are constructed they could also be made extra useless. Also points changes could relegate them to irrelevancy. Look at 40k 9th; pre-release GW went on about improvements to monsters and vehicles and people were looking at the previewed and leaked core rules and predicting a monster and vehicle meta. We're a year into 9th edition and outside of Drukhari Raiders that has not materialized. Massive point over-corrections because of severely overestimating those buffs, a mission design where vehicle usage doesn't win you many points, a rise in average lethality without a rise in survivability for vehicles/monsters and the introduction of the Core keyword have led to a 40k edition that discourages those unit types pretty heavily. Not all of this might apply to AOS of course. But with changes to a game there are often so many unseen interactions and unintended outcomes that Monsters getting 4 unique "command" abilities could be the wettest ****** imaginable in terms of actual game impact.

Personally I'd have wanted to see more comprehensive terrain and LOS rules. Not that this solves some egregious units (hello LRL!) but it is something at least. The fact that in their hype video for the new rules terrain was mentioned nowhere is a little concerning honestly. Compare it to the similar video that 9th edition 40k got which everybody reacted to really positively because it looked like a bunch of ideas focused around fixing issues with 8th edition. The video for 3.0 is like half fixing stuff from 2.0 and half stuff which doesn't seem to matter or is actively not fixing issues. This obviously doesn't mean these fixes or improvements are not there of course, and the actual act of playing the game can often give a drastically different result and outcome than theorycrafting on paper, but it's slightly concerning that a lot of this pre-release hype is avoiding talking about what many people to consider to be the biggest core issues with the ruleset and how, or if, they're being addressed.

All the dripfeed does is make people angry until someone leaks the full ruleset two weeks before release. Happened with 40K lol

The idea of counter command abilities is something I actually suggested either in this thread or another one as a way to deal with the problematic nature of the double turn, specifically how it increases downtime. I'll be curious to see how it pans out but even then, it still feels like GW is wedded to their IGOUGO system too much and is putting increasing amounts of bandaids on it in order to fix what is fundamentally broken. Spending resources to do counter abilities that disrupt the normal flow of gameplay works great in LOTR.... but that's also because LOTR is alternating phases. The lack of any information about terrain changes is also pretty concerning, but it wouldn't be the first time GW has underestimated or misunderstood how big of a deal the changes they make can be. Drukhari got hardly any rules previews in the run up to their release but they're currently the strongest army in 40k currently, with all the strongest rules interactions and units being stuff that had 0 marketing or hype behind it.

GW have an incredibly insular studio culture that, even when it does do outside playtesting, is generally up its own ass and unwilling to listen to any other points of view. A comparison to Blizzard Entertainment of the mid-00's to late 10's is very apt; "if you aren't part of our system and don't do the things we do, you literally have 0 idea what you're talking about." There's a lot of discussion in the 40k community right now about this subject because a few of the youtuber batrep channels that playtested 9th edition have been pretty candid about some of their experiences and its highlighted how flawed GW's core design methodology and playtesting system really is. Add to this a disconnect between what the designers are trying to achieve with a book and what players are looking for and a studio system that rewards people that can drink the corporate kool aid and show passion and enthusiasm for the IP over actual design skill, and issues like the new Sylvaneth model will keep happening.

AOS should be introducing more of its own characters, rather than trotting out the corpses of WHFB fan faves for nostalgia points, especially when these characters are entirely different to their original incarnations. Teclis and Tyrion got done dirty in this respect; they might as well have not even called them that to begin with because AOS T&T have nothing in common with their Fantasy counterparts. And then you've got decisions like not making any use of Thanquol who is one of the greatest WHFB characters they ever made and is practically non-existent in any events going on currently. However GW are also writing themselves into a corner because the only important characters are increasingly becoming god-level beings which kind of kills any hype or interest around anyone not that. Plus many of the existing characters and Gods just are not interesting enough currently and this is especially apparent in the Greenskin named ones. Skragrot and Gordrakk just don't really hold a candle to old characters like Skarsnik, Azhag or Grom. Hopefully this new destruction focus changes some of that a little, but Kragnos himself is still emblematic of the problem I mentioned above. He's automatically important because he's a god, but is anything about him actually that interesting? Especially when he had 0 build-up? Part of it feels like an attempt to move Destruction away from being the Greenskin Grand Alliance by giving them a new figurehead that isn't that.... but then they make their brand new antagonist faction Greenskins too so idk. Kruleboyz look cool though. Since I have Gloomspite and Ironjawz I'll obviously be picking them up too.

I'll need to see more of what AOS3 actually entails before really deciding. We know very little about it outside of vague statements and rumours. Some of those sound interesting and other sounds disheartening (double turn isn't going anywhere, boo!) And even once they've announced all the changes and made a fancy trailer and Warcom article going through all additions, actual game experience can lead to very different results than previously held expectations. In the hype period for 9th edition 40K, people were saying the edition was going to become Vehicle and Monster spam for every army only for the actual reality of how the game plays to squash that notion completely. I have no doubt that a few advertised changes to the rules, heralded by GW and the playerbase as being massive gamechangers end up being big wet farts in terms of actual impact. It is the nature of these things. What IS a concern however, is whether or not AOS will have an actual design lead or some sort of unified vision for what it wants to be ruleswise. 9th edition 40k has been remarkably consistent so far in that all of the books released have been decent to good and have mostly done an okay job with feeling coherent and like they're part of the same game system with roughly the same goals. That's not to say they've been perfect and mistakes haven't been made, but even the Necron and Drukhari books feel like the same game, despite the large power differential between them. If we shift our gaze over to AOS however, HoS, DoK and LRL all feel like they've been made for 3 completely different editions with wildly different goals and visions. There is no consistency in AOS battletomes currently and it's a huge issue.

I already pay for Netflix and Amazon Prime. I'm sure lots of people pay for Disney+ and Crunchyroll and whatever else on top of those. Yet another streaming service is one too many at this point and is why a lot of them are slowly failing. We've reached peak saturation. With Warhammer+ specifically they look to have very little in the way of actual content and what the quality of content that will be there on release seems to be dubious at best. GW's IP's are good, but not good enough to make me pony up another £7 a month and sit through a couple of hours of potentially ****** animated shorts. I watched all of Invincible on Amazon recently and rewatched all of Avatar The Last Airbender on Netflix. I highly doubt the Warhammer animated stuff will come anywhere close to the quality and execution of those, at least for the moment.

The issue with this, and many of the other theories, is that CC was up for sale for like an hour at most before disappearing and all mention of it in social media posts started to be removed and past warcom articles started to be edited. So, during that weeks period of pre-order basically everything that could go wrong in the continued production of CC did go wrong? That's not to say this all didn't happen, but my point is that if it did happen, it happened months or weeks in advance and so GW would have likely known the game wasn't going to be a long-term product. But they still continued to advertise it as such. So putting the blame of things on tariffs or shipping issues or print companies going under either makes GW incompetent or actively malicious.

A redesign of Stormcast is one of the best ideas they could have had since the current designs are a massive turn-off for lots of people. The Vindicators look great and what SCE should have looked like from the beginning.

The full reveal is a little underwhelming for me. I have to echo the disappointment at the absurd amounts of named characters in the release schedule. A big part of Warhammer for me is the concept of "Your guys." Being able to create an army for yourself and fill it with your own lore and characters. I play Craftworld Ulthwe in 40k and so make heavy use of Eldrad, but my two main HQ's are an Autarch and her twin Farseer brother and I've created an entire backstory and ongoing narrative for the two of them over the past few years. Same with my Necron Phaeron and his entire royal court and its political intrigues. Same with my 3 Raiding Force leaders for my Drukhari. Sure, I'll use Drazhar in that army sometimes, but in none of these cases are special characters really a big part of the faction identity of even necessary for them to function. In AOS my gobbos of the Yellow Nose Tribe have an entire hierarchy and storyline going on, carried over from WHFB. In all these cases there's enough given to you in order for you to make your own storylines while being able to dip into the named character pool every now and then. With Soulblight it really feels unbalanced in the other direction, especially as outside of a single Vampire Lord on foot and one on a Dragon you have no other options to represent an un-named Vampire character in your army which feels a little limiting. There's no way to represent an un-named "Feral" vampire either it seems. Radaukar or bust I guess. Really though it's a further indication of how splitting up a lot of armies from WHFB has had mixed results and the extreme focus on special characters within AOS really kills a lot of my interest in it as a game and a setting. Soulblight are not the VC reboot people were hoping for, but that's because VC already lost half of their units to other factions. And that is not some insurmountable problem, but it would have been nice to see some more actual new units and new generic characters to flesh the faction out and make it feel more alive. So many AOS factions have the majority of their Warscroll entries just be characters which a lot of the time makes them feel less interesting and more simplistic than they otherwise might be. I know a lot of people like the ongoing narrative of AOS, but I've always struggled to get into that sort of thing within a wargame setting. Not that I object to it or can't enjoy parts of it, but a setting is more important than a narrative to me mainly because in a setting-focused medium I can create my own stories, rather than being fed them.

Something like Strength and Toughness. That's really it. The current system has all the same amount of dice rolls as a S/T system so it doesn't make the game much more streamlined. However the flattening of defensive profiles and removal of stats like this causes a few issues for the game; namely that it becomes harder and harder to differentiate and portray different kinds of units and their resilience and it contributes to the spam problem that AOS can suffer from. There's little need to diversify unit choices when because of static wound rolls that can be easily buffed an ordinary battleline unit can be anti-anything it pleases. Similarly something with low numbers of attacks but high damage turns into a horde-blender because of damage overspill. Now, obviously a S/T style system isn't the only way to address that problem but it's the most obvious one. Another way to do it would be to limit hit/wound roll modifiers to +1/-1 like 9th ed 40k, while also removing damage overspill as a mechanic. You then start to encourage different unit types to be used to deal with different threats while also making more units feel a little different.

As much as I would love to see an overhaul of Warscrolls and a removal of double turn, going off of the previous rumours I can't see it happening. I can definitely believe GW invalidating really recent releases; they do it constantly after all, but in this instance I don't think it's going to be the case. From the other rumours it really seems like 3rd ed, for good or bad, will be another iterative edition.

Incredibly disappointing if that video is true and the "priority roll" (what a cute name for double turn...) isn't really going and is just getting more band-aid "fixes." It just doesn't work in a pure IGUGO system and it never will. The "fix" stated in the video just shows what a mess it is too. If it truly is essentially unchanged then I really think GW doesn't understand how divisive the mechanic is and how much it is actively holding AOS back. The amount of people I have seen bounce off the game because of it is staggering, especially for a system that prides itself on being accessible and casual. What's extra frustrating is that they already have a functioning and excellent priority roll system in LOTR and it works there because the game is alternating phases. It's very sad that 40k and AOS are still both wedded to their antiquated turn systems, especially in a world where GW corporate doesn't meddle very much in rules design anymore so the designers have a lot more freedom than they did in the days of Kirby-GW. One of the reasons Andy Chambers left was because he wanted to alternating phases/alternating activations for 4th Edition 40k, but the higher ups shut down any sort of attempts to make big changes to the rules system.

Not to excuse bad design or balancing attempts, but in a lot of cases in games like this, it is usually individual lists that are a problem rather than entire armies. I play AoS casually, but keep an eye on its competitive scene. Most of my actual GW wargaming, including competitive attention, is focused on 40k so forgive me for lacking a completely deep knowledge of factions here. But, like, are Seraphon capable of taking less powerful lists and leaning away from obvious power-moves, or is the book just so fundamentally brutal? Even if you don't take Kroak and his Skink world-class wrecking crew, will a random assortment of dinosaurs still just stomp a Khorne or BoC list? Oftentimes, in 40k at least, when people are talking about strong or OP armies it is very much an incredibly small handful of what the book actually is and so you have the option of avoiding that stuff should you so choose. Not that this is often a good thing, as you get situations like Eldar have often faced in the past few editions where they've had 5% gamebreaking exploitative units, 20% okay-ish models and 75% godawful trash. But of course that tournament reputation precedes them into casual games, where people would (in 8th at least) pre-emptively ****** and moan or assign descriptions of "imbalance" to Iyanden Wraith armies or Biel-Tan Aspect Hosts, despite both of those archetypes being perfectly reasonable armies for a casual game of beer and pretzelhammer. On the flipside you have had instances of books just being incredibly powerful throughout, to the point where it becomes harder to make a "bad" army. 8.5 Marines and arguably the new Drukhari Codex are sort of in this state (although the Drukhari feel less overwhelmingly unfair, and rather more remarkably strong throughout their book which displays a shockingly well-designed level of internal balance for GW)

I think it's a good idea to put this survey in other places as it's important to get viewpoints of potential Hedonite players (like me!) As someone who plays and collects LRL I also completely agree with Yukishiro. This isn't about power, but just about how much care and attention has been put into writing the rules of the recent books. I've said this is another thread but HoS, DoK and LRL seem like they've all been individually written for completely different game systems. LRL are drowning in fluff and flavourful rules and unique mechanics to the point where it feels excessive; DoK are supremely powerful while not really having much variety in how they operate and Hedonites are just... bland white bread milquetoast slop. Points costs only go so far with many of the Warscrolls in there; many of them are just straight up bland and uninteresting. I've brought it up before but comparing the Hurakan to the Blissbarb Seekers exemplifies this perfectly. The Hurakan manage to capture the idea of a fast, elusive horse archer style unit perfectly because of the way they manipulate and stretch the rules of movement. Seekers do not. They... move quick. That's it.

The design of LRL is very bizarre from a rules standpoint, to the degree where they honestly feel like they've been designed for a completely different game. In a lot of ways this is why I've been drawn to the army, because AoS is often lacking in a lot of mechnical complexity or depth in my opinion, and LRL's frankly absurd amount of mechanics, interactions and the way it echoes old WHFB in playstyle really appeals to me. But at the same time it makes the army stick out like a sore thumb and further highlights the inconsistent approach the AOS team has to designing battletomes. Just look at HoS, DoK and LRL; all came out within months of each other and all 3 books have completely different design ethos' and goals where there hasn't seemed to be any communication between the teams. HoS are lacking much flavour or raw power, DoK are raw power with little depth and LRL are drowning in fluffy rules to the point where it feels suffocating. (and while I don't think Hurakan models are OP or anything, I do feel bad for Slaanesh players seeing those rules and then seeing their own cavalry's completely bland warscrolls and army rules)

Just noticed a cool little detail in the short story in the Ballista's lore entry; the two female crew are lovers. Nice to see GW at least make some effort in LGBT representation that isn't just squirreled away in a Black Library book.