swarmofseals

Super stoked by the Chaos GHB preview for a couple of reasons. For one, all of the abilities previewed seem relatively fun and flavorful. I particularly like the Slaanesh ones -- very flavorful and should lead to some really interesting designs. I also really like the way the Skaven abilities were designed, with each getting the basic Strength in Numbers ability and then a second ability that fits with the clan. Honestly this would be a great design to use with Death and Destruction, too. Give each faction a toned down version of Rampaging Destroyers/Deathless Minions along with a secondary faction specific ability. I think what we saw with Soulblight probably rules this out, though. I also love that the StD ability includes wording about reinforcement points in the text, and it makes me hopeful that we will see more abilities like this. Transformation abilities (like the StD ones or the ability on the Coven Throne) are so flavorful and they have interesting gameplay implications, so seeing them given at least a small place in matched play is really nice.

I suppose that'll be one way to get a celestial hurricanum! I have such a feeling that Death is going to be even worse in GHB2017 ><

This is pretty much why I'm sour on Death at the moment. Basically either they keep their GA abilities and all the new sub-allegiance stuff will just be window dressing, or they take a nerf bat with the loss of their GA package. That said, this could be offset somewhat with point reductions and if other armies are getting some point increases in the problematic stuff it could wash out. That said, it's also very possible that Death will just continue to suck or suck even worse until they get a real battletome.

I'd be stunned if Destruction and Death didn't get changed. If they stay the same, they lose so much design space as it's quite improbably that they would make the sub-allegiance abilities powerful enough to justify taking them.

Would be an easy fix just adding the information in the relevant battletome by listing all of the factions that the new faction can take as allies and all the factions that can take it as an ally.

Passing a final judgment on the entire project and evaluating the information that we have now are not the same thing. Sorry if you can't see that.

Yeah, this is exactly why I said "I'm going to withhold judgment until I see everything." That said, I think there is legitimate cause for concern. Death currently has the most broadly powerful allegiance ability, and it's also by far the least competitive Grand Alliance. The new alliance system also stands to give the most benefit to allegiances that have strong allegiance packs but limited rosters. I don't think it's a stretch to say that Death doesn't really stand to benefit much from this at all given that there is basically no (competitive) reason to take a narrower allegiance than Death itself, so the ally system is pretty moot. Meanwhile, other factions stand to benefit. Similarly, because the GA Death allegiance pack is so strong now, the new allegiance packs will need to be just as strong in order to not be a de-facto nerf. It's certainly possible that nerfs to other factions, reductions in points costs for death, release of new units etc. will balance things out (hence why I'm withholding judgment). I'd also say that these new allegiance packs and the alliance system are a solid hit flavorwise. But from a competitive standpoint I really do think there is cause for concern. It's why I'm not really excited by what I saw today. What I saw today makes me nervous about Death falling further behind. Is it a guarantee that will happen? Absolutely not! But as far as building hype, for me it fell very flat. I'm still super stoked for GHB2, but that was tempered a bit today.

I'm going to withhold judgment until I see everything, but so far I'm not impressed. The mortarchs are still very inefficient at that points cost, and morghasts are slightly better but still not good. The allegiance abilities and artefacts are exciting, but keep in mind that taking one of those ability packs means not taking the generic death one. Death are already not very competitive right now with likely the best allegiance ability. Shaving a few points off mediocre warscrolls is just not going to make up for the loss of a 5+ or 6+ ward save army wide. While it's possible that Deathless Minions and Ruler of the Night will stay, I think it's very unlikely as it's very hard for any of the new packs to compete with that. Basically, if they get rid of Deathless Minions/Ruler of the Night, the entire GA needs something like a 20% cost decrease just to tread water.

The lack of Deathrattle, Nurgle and a Highborn aligned faction seems telling, but maybe it's wishful thinking to project that this might mean battletomes coming soonish.

IMO the key problem with this logic is that it's classic short-term focused business thinking. It sacrifices long term growth for short term profit. At any given point in time, it will always be the most profitable choice to put out something new for the most popular faction. The problem is that this tends to build ill-will in the community and inhibit growth. If a new player is investigating the hobby, they may be turned off when players tell them that one or two factions get far more content than the others. They may not like the favored factions, or they ma be turned off by the idea of favoritism to begin with. In the end, the new players that are most likely to be fine with the situation will be those that like the favored faction, and the existing players that are most likely to quit are those who see release after release for the same faction while theirs sits untouched. This causes a vicious cycle where over time more and more of the playerbase skews toward the favored factions, which in turn makes it harder for GW to justify releases for other factions. Thus stagnation sets in, and the more extreme the imbalance gets the more growth gets inhibited by the loss of existing players and the losses in opportunities to recruit new players. Unfortunately it's hard to quantify these later factors while it's easy to quote sales numbers.

Ugh, yet another loose design decision by GW. I just don't see how this makes sense. Both models increased by 60 points, a 27% increase for Vandus and a 43% increase for Korghos. Vandus' warscroll is substantially better than the generic Lord Celestant on Dracoth. His weapon damage is 3 instead of d3, his mount gets an extra attack, and most importantly his old command ability is now an extra special ability and he has a new command ability that is VERY powerful. As to whether he is worth 280 points is debatable, but at least those extra 60 points reflect a substantial buff to the warscroll. Korghos, on the other hand, has the exact same warscroll except he gets the powerful Bane of Aqshy ability. The problem is that Korghos' battalion already gives him that ability. So when you run Korghos in his Goretide battalion, he now costs 60 points more but gains no benefit whatsoever. Furthermore, you are required to take him in the Goretide battalion instead of a regular Mighty Lord of Khorne, which basically just means that the battalion costs 60 more points than it used to AND you can no longer give your Mighty Lord an artefact or command trait. So Korghos is strictly worse than his old warscroll when you run him in his own battalion. He's better than a regular Mighty Lord of Khorne outside of that battalion, but I'm not sure if the Bane of Aqshy rule alone justifies the 60 point increase, particularly given that it's a 43% increase rather than the 27% increase for Vandus. Then, to make matters worse, he has an incredibly awkward rule stating that "if [Korghos Khul] is taken as a part of another battalion, all of the other Khorne Mortal models in the battalion should also come from the Goretide." What does this even mean? You can't fit a Goretide battalion in any other battalion as far as I know, so is this just telling you that you have to paint your models in a certain way? It seems like it's rules text but it has no functional rules meaning as far as I can see. I'm certainly not saying that these pointings or warscrolls are imbalanced, just that it really seems like they put effort into one of these warscrolls and totally mailed it in on the other. I can abide questionable balance decisions, but I really hate laziness (particularly when it's the flagship faction that gets the effort and the rest get second tier treatment).

Definitely a fair point, but I personally disagree a bit as really small games of AoS feel pretty boring and stripped down. Some supplementary optional rules for a more advanced small game experience would be really welcome. I've spoken to some local organizers who told me exactly this when I asked them what GW could do to help improve community development. They said that Kill Team was a great seller for 40k in part because it was an easy entry point while still being appealing to more advanced gamers. AoS currently lacks that pull. It has small scale covered, but not the ability to keep veteran gamers interested for more than a game or two (at least when playing small scale).

It's funny because I had the complete opposite reaction. Khorne has so many great buffers, and Death has no way to target them effectively. It seems like a bad matchup already, and these new rules provide a panoply of bonuses that didn't exist before (not just blood tithe but better artefacts, battalion bonuses, straight up buffed warscrolls, priest abilities, etc.)

Yeah, these abilities look extremely powerful. That Council of Blood battalion is crazy good too (point cost depending, of course). Factoring in the buffed warscrolls too, Khorne is going to be terrifying. The priest abilities pretty much remove the disadvantage of not having access to spells either!

The problem is that this argument cuts both ways. One could argue that nobody bought TK before because they were under-updated. TK were split off from VC in 5th edition and didn't get their own book until four years after VC did, and then they didn't get another update for 8 years! I'm not really sure how competitive they were in 6th edition when they got their first real army book, but I'm pretty confident they were considered bottom tier if not the literal worst in 8th edition even after their 8th edition book. This is the fundamental flaw in the way GW designs and releases products -- it creates a vicious cycle for less popular factions that is very hard to overcome. Imagine if Wizards of the Coast used GW's release strategy with Magic. For much of Magic's early existence, Blue had a substantial advantage in frequency of use. Meanwhile, Green was heavily underplayed. This imbalance was largely due to structural factors in the game design. Under GW's approach, Wizards would have identified the popularity of Blue and then decided to print more Blue cards in each set to give the players more of what they want. This would likely result in Blue becoming even more heavily played over time and so on. Instead, Wizards tried to identify and address the structural factors that gave Blue so many advantages and disadvantaged Green. If anything, things have now tipped a bit too far in the other direction but the game increased its health dramatically in that time span. It's the difference between a company tending to the short term interest vs. the long term.

That's certainly a fair point. The newer tomes are very different from the old ones and I will readily admit that SCE did need to get an update relatively sooner because of that.

I'm not particularly concerned about rules bloat (in fact, I think there are a few more rules that should be added to the base rules or at very least matched play rules), and I love the new gryphs. That said, I think that this is a really bad decision by GW. As most of you surely know, GW has a long history of providing heavier support for factions that are more popular (sometimes to an egregious extent). While this no doubt makes good business sense in the short term, in the long run I think there is a real risk that it will be very bad for the game. I think there are two main reasons for this: Seeing other factions get multiple releases before your faction gets updates really pisses players off. I know I shouldn't speak for others here, but this is why I quit WHFB just before 8th edition. I was a Wood Elf player, and I knew I wasn't going to get a lot of support. I fully expected my army book to be among the last to get redone. When 8th edition was announced though, it became clear that I wasn't going to get an update for 7th at all, and in fact many armies that had already been updated in 7th were getting 8th edition books soon after release. I felt this was such a slap in the face and it really turned me off the game. Dwarf, Aelf, and to a lesser extent Death players are no doubt looking at this announcement and slumping in their chairs a bit. These sorts of releases strongly encourage power creep. If a faction is well fleshed out in the current system, then current players probably already have fully functional armies built. In order to sell the new models, they have to either look amazing or function better than existing options (preferably both). This impetus is less prevalent for unupdated factions because those factions are already likely to be underperforming (and thus they don't need to be pushed beyond the current level of "competitive") and they are dealing with older sculpts. Players are much more likely to replace old sculpts for purely aesthetic rather than power reasons. As many people other than me have noted, this strategy very quickly becomes a vicious cycle. If only popular factions get updated regularly, then of course those factions are going to get an increasingly large share of the playerbase. People cite the predominance of space marines in 40k all the time, and frankly it's a terrible look for that game. How much of a turnoff is it for new players to come in to a game and see one faction at nearly every table, getting so much attention? This appearance sends so many bad messages.