Chikout

Just listening to honest Wargamer. He is saying that a unit can only receive one command per phase and you can only use each command ability once per phase. So that's something at least.

I hope today's model preview isn't just the scenery. I'm rather on the fence about the box set. Some more info about what's coming next would really help me decide what to do.

There are abilities shown so far that give +1 save, -1 shooting, a 6+ ward save and an ability to put models back into units. These will help against shooting.

There's lots of ways you could limit these abilities to make them impactful. These are rules that could be layered onto the core rules for matched play. Something like 'each unit may only receive one command ability per battle round'. Then if you use Morathi's command ability on some bloodstalkers you can't use unleash hell on them in the same turn. The fear is that gw won't do any of those things but they do have experience with the rules of one.

GW is not doing well enough. They just had by far their best year ever. This year should have been a massive kick in the teeth to the company as in their two biggest markets people couldn't even go round their friends house to play a game let alone enter a tournament. The only reason I can think of for GW's success this year is that the games aren't actually that important. I remember back in the 90s gw had 9 or 10 designers and 9 or 10 rules writers. Now they have 9 or 10 writers spread across more game systems and more than 30 designers so it's pretty easy to see where their priorities lie and it seems to have paid off. As for the restaurant analogy if you've been playing gw games for more than a couple of years, you've definitely been going back to that restaurant. The only game gw have ever designed from the ground up to be balanced is Underworlds. Now I personally would love to see a more balanced game. I am worried about the problems unleash hell might cause, but so far I've seen several good things, a couple of debatle things and one worrying thing. Finally we have Smorgan (I think) of listlab fame. Here is a player who plays hundreds of games a year and, unlike all of us, has read all the rules. As a regular Honest Guest he's not exactly a gw shill but he seems pretty happy with the rules.

This is just the latest stage in the eternal battle. I think that the majority of staff at GW don't want to make a competitive game. As far as I'm aware the only member of the AoS studio who self identifies as competitive is Ben Johnson. When GW makes a product the order of priority is minis>lore>art>theme>abilities>regular stats>points>balance. Do you feel like an arrogant elitist when you win with Lumineth- job done! Gw is like a chef who opens a pasta restaurant and is very proud of the pasta they make. Unfortunately all the customers really want ramen. So the chef grudgingly says "Ok. I'll make you some ramen but it's still going to taste an awful lot like pasta." Now it's perfectly valid to complain about this scenario but I think that's the way it is.

Presumably that's what the ghb is for and we haven't seen a single page of it yet.

I understand the concern but there is a thing that bothers me about all the rules news. When people see expensive new minis, there's always a flurry of comments about how people will change this or that aspect of the mini or kitbash it with another extremely expensive mini. People come with lore and original colour schemes and dozens of other unique and creative changes. When people see a rule that is potentially game breaking, everyone is like "I'll use that rule that no-one likes but I won't be happy about it", even though it just rules on page that can be changed for free. If you think a rule is broken don't use it. If you're a TO ban it from your event. If you're having a pick up game with a stranger, have a little friendly chat before the game. If you're running a tournament level Lumineth list against someone playing their first game with Sylvaneth try not using some of their stronger abilities. If you play a newbie and wipe the table with them, that's your fault and not the game's. If I played tennis against Federer and he played his best. I wouldn't win a single point. Does that mean tennis is a broken game? I'd like to think he'd lob a few soft balls at me so we could have an enjoyable game. When I was a kid playing chess against my dad, he always took four of his pieces off the board at the start and we had a lot of fun games because if it. Gw themselves have said many times that they view their rules not as a definitive gospel but as a toolkit which can be used in any way players see fit. This is probably a fight against human nature that I'm not going to win, but I think AoS is a cooperative game where the two players try to create a situation where a tense and exciting game is possible. If it turns out that unleash hell is broken I would be tempted to introduce a house rule that a unit that uses it can't shoot in the next shooting phase. On top of all that be aware of the nature of GW marketing. I would be extremely surprised if the marketing team consulted the rules team about what to include in the previews. They almost always focus on destructive abilities and almost never focus on limitations. We don't know anything about limitations on command abilities or second rank fighting or other ways to apply ward saves which we already seen a priest can do. In the rules as we've seen them it's possible to make a unit +1 save -1 to hit and with a 6+ ward save. We don't know anything about scenery rules yet. But ultimately if you don't think gw is making a good ruleset then just adapt it to fit your needs. It's your game.

Exciting times!

@Joseph Mackay Just porting this over from the other thread. Removing melee ranges would necessitate rewriting every warscroll. It's much easier just to adapt the current rule. "In order to attack with a melee weapon, a model must be in range of the target unit or within half an inch of a another model from the same unit which is in range." I'm no rules writer but that would probably work. I guess we'll just have to wait and see until they show us the combat section of the rules.

I don't think it's time to start panicking just yet. The coherency rule is an import from 40k. It wouldn't surprise me if this rule gets imported too. This would let a second rank of minis fight as well and might explain why the Soulblight lances are only range 1. As for the Stormcast there's no reason why Gavriel's warscroll won't change. Every other rule we've seen so far looks like it was quite carefully thought out. Hopefully that is maintained throughout the new core rules.

Its not irrelevant. There's no way to get digital 40k lore at all. For me it's a case of space in my small Japanese house and the environmental impact but there are many people who suffer from disabilities for whom a physical book simply isn't an option. There's a guy on Twitter who paints (amazingly) with his mouth. Turning a page on a physical book for someone with that kind of disability is a genuine issue. It is also the fact that gw is taking away something that worked perfectly well before. They may be worried about piracy but that hasn't been curbed by this change at all.

I'm deeply concerned about the digital books going away. It was a terrible decision when they changed it for 40k. As it it stands there is no way to get the art and lore from anything 40k in a digital format which is a baffling decision in 2021. One slight glimmer of hope is that the second edition announcement made no mention of digital either. https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/06/16/pre-order-the-new-edition-today/ If GW want to make it only possible to buy the books through the AoS app, that's fine so long as they are the complete books but the 40k app has been a total failure. I really hope GW see sense on this.

From a lore perspective there is no reason why the different styles of armour can't mix, it's just like the different marks of armour in the Horus Heresy. As for rules we have to wait until the battletome comes out. I hope we get another preview or leak before the box goes on pre order. I love the Stormcast minis and the majority of the Kruleboyz but I'm not sold on the Hobgrotz aesthetic. If it is only a couple of units in a bigger army that aren't vital, then I'll probably collect the army, but if more Hobgrotz in the current style end up being a large part of the army, I'll probably give it a miss.

You give the community too little credit. The vast majority of players just want to see a better game. Also an attempt to rig the system would be pretty obvious to whoever was compiling the data. It's not something I think gw will ever do as they don't seem to trust the community either.

I would love to see gw change how the approach points changes. If I was GW, I would do a monthly thread on Twitter or the community site. I would ask everyone to vote for their 3 most overpointed and underpointed warscrolls. After a week I would compile all the info. I would then increase the points of the 10 warscrolls most voted as underpointed by 5% and decrease the top 10 overpointed warscrolls. If a warscroll stays in the top 10 for six months it gets a rewrite. This would leave most warscrolls unchanged but gradually push the points towards the fat middle. If a gamer complained about a warscroll or some points, I (as gw) could just direct them to the thread.

With the rumoured increase of points, more monsters, smaller tables meaning combats happen earlier and the removal of horde discounts, there's a good chance 3rd edition games will actually go faster.

I do think GW is worthy of criticism, but the idea that big businesses don't work like this is nonsense. Look at Cyberpunk or Samsung's first attempt at a dual screen phone, or Toyota's break problems, on Sony's exploding laptop batteries, or Microsoft Windows game store or a hundred other examples of companies with revenue literally hundreds of times more than gw putting out rushed, poorly tested products. In a case like this I'm 90% sure that a lot of the errors we see are due to poor oversight and tight deadlines rather than the inability of any particular writer to produce goods rules.

Listlab who has been 100% about everything so far said that command points are reset at the end of each battleround, so that scenario won't occur. It's been an interesting week so far. Tuesday-minor tidbit, Wednesday- minor tidbit, Thusrday- overwhelming flood of info. Lots of potentially cool abilities but it will take wiser heads than mine to parse out how this will end up effecting the game.

I genuinely believe shooting isn't a problem. The lack of line of sight blocking terrain is the problem. The way to fix shooting is to force those units to move to find a better angle. If you want to protect your buffing heroes hide then behind a piece of terrain. Almost everyone I've heard talk about playing on tables with good scenery said it massively improved the game. The changes that were made to 40k significantly changed that game to the point that Tau are currently the worst faction. I'd love to see some aspect of those rules come over into AoS. This will also have the nice side benefit of toning down magic too, as a lot of spells need line of sight.

Unfortunately none of that means anything because we don't know how many kits GW produces. If you look at the Soulblight range, the wight king, arguably the worst warscroll in the book is out of stock, but the deadwalker zombies arguably the best warscroll in the book which competitive players are buying in bulk, are still on stock. Scenery rarely sells well and the desthshroud terminators are very nice models. In a year when hardly anyone was able to play competitively gw had by far their best results ever. All the supposedly broken Lumineth minis never sold out.

The single most effective way to deal with shooting is with improved scenery rules. I think it's important to wait until we see those before we panick. Also it's probably a full month until the box comes out. There is plenty of time to give us the info we need.

If they do a new human book it will probably be Devoted of Sigmar. In the RPG the order of Azyr are described as a subfaction of the Devoted of Sigmar. There are a couple of references to armies of Devoted marching out from the cities to purify the landscape with their blood. The Dawnbreaker crusades feel like an expansion of that.

This art is staggeringly good. Excitement for 3rd edition is rising!

Slaves to darkness got 19 (3 in the start collecting) new kits in second edition not counting the god specific stuff that can be used. I’d love a season 2 of Warcry to do something similar for Cities of Sigmar.