Melcavuk
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Posts posted by Melcavuk
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4 minutes ago, Dead Scribe said:
That is my thoughts as well. I did not sign up to play narrative-guy's version of AOS or his version of balance. No house rules. No "narrative mode" where someone tries to tell me what rules that GW endorses are bad. No one goes to the store to pick up models that fit in with what narrative-guy thinks you should take, they buy models based off of what the rules allow.
I mean this isnt actually true with me as proven fact. I dont go to buy models based off of what the rules allow I actually go to buy what fits my narrative and theme and then shape the rules around them. You probably meant "Not everyone", absolutes such as "No one" are easy to refute by even one person, myself in this instance, not fitting your world view.
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I'd wager a Seraphon vs Bonesplittas box to come, with the reintroduction of Seraphon being storyline pivotal on the build up to the Assault on Excelsis possibly with some Ghur focus for a bit. Would be a nice refresh for them and get a new hero out for the Bonesplittas
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17 minutes ago, hughwyeth said:
GW include the points cost for everything - summoning and allegiance traits - in the points cost for models. No point in paying twice. If you split the allegiance costs, it makes things even more complex. AoS is great because of it's simplicity- any increased complexity in points costs should be very carefully considered.
This doesn't address the point of "internal balance", but remember these books aren't made exclusively for the 1,000 competitive players in the world. They're made for the 100,000 casual players. Example- I'm building Cities and will be playing Hallowheart for probably all tournaments, but I'm buying a load of models that won't fit in Hallowheart because I want to play all the cities in casual games. Variety in allegiances, including some that aren't as competitive as others, is great for most of the players.
This is an interesting point of view, if we use the much talked about Petrifex elite suballegience here as a standpoint.
Mortek guard cost 130
Mortek guard with permanent +1 save cost 130
The difference between the two being the fact that as petrifex the command trait and artifact are "set" if we are to assume here that the sub allegiance points cost is baked in to the original unit value it means GW would "point" the ability to choose an artifact or command trait at the exact same value they point +1 to save all game.
I genuinely believe the strive is for balance, but I cannot logic the formula that puts the above at equal footing in terms of points costs, it seems more a human error oversight than a concept of things going on behind the scenes.
To further compound this, if as you say the allegiance is baked into the cost then by that very virtue allies are overcosted. As they now no longer benefit from the allegiance abilities they have forfeited part of this own cost. Similarly units that can be used in multiple different allegiances must now invoke a different points value by allegiance as the cost of the allegiance must be baked into the unit. Which causes yet more headaches.
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3 minutes ago, Phasteon said:
But why do players that dont even play the army assume they know better and are making suggestions how to „balance“ the army.
I own the tome but dont play the army, however if you only allowed players who own the army rather than who play a variety of armies to balance it then you'd likely end up with the army becoming more broken.
Petrifex is claimed to be the only viable legion, because Petrifex exists, it is a fantastic example of truly terrible internal balance. The very fact that as you say, playing the army that players claim only Petrifex is viable highlights an issue with the internal balance, either by claiming the units are all pointed as though Petrifex and running anything else makes them over costed, or that the units are pointed without the Petrifex boost and running it makes them all under costed. Such huge boons introduced as subfactions, an unpointed mechanic, mess with points balance severely when they are lasting, undeniable, uncontestable and rely on no specific unit.
As such it is;
Free
Requires no Synergy
Cannot be prevented
Cannot be hampered
Game long.All of which means it should be pointed, as it invokes serious changes to the statistics of the faction, or come with a downside so that armies not petrifex are on the same level as those that are.
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I think balancing the individual subfactions would help more than point costing, for example Petrifex, all the time before they were released we were hearing that they were slow but resilient any yet nothing in them makes them slower than other allegiances. To me Ivory Host is an allegiance done right, it has its bonus to attack, but also has a drawback to save. That essense of give and take provides more flavour and balance than any straight boost can.
Petrifex downside should be no running and cant use the relentless discipline + movement ability, but maintain its save. Now we have slow, but resilient. It fits lore and it has a downside.
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Adding in the Cult of the Dragon. Beasthunters, merchants, traders and wisemen focused on the great drakes of the realms:
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11 minutes ago, JPjr said:
@Melcavuk oh yeah, looks it's a crude and blunt instrument and if you just inserted it right away would be janky as hell with a few odd anomalies.
BUT I think/hope/assume that these kind of sub-factions whether in battletomes or in White Dwarf or wherever are here to stay, and personally I think that's great and hope we not only see more of them but they build on them more, so not just giving factions various abilities and artefacts or whatever but also allowing for unique army compositions (sub-faction x allows you to include x number of units from a totally different faction etc etc which we're seeing with some of the more recent tomes and WD supplements).
It opens up loads of interesting ideas and options, is a really simple way of breathing new, competitive, life into factions and creating specific thematic options for those of us that love that kind of thing. But with that in mind and the obvious power gaps, and hence viability/visibility, of different sub-factions it seems to make sense, to me, that going forward they start pricing that in somehow and thinking about it when they design faction wide abilities.
Of course I see the problem we have with so many battletomes out there that unless they rolled it out at once you have a kind of reverse power creep situation where for a couple of years new books that have factored that in are paying a price others aren't but much cleverer minds than mine can solve that one.
Dont get me wrong I like the idea in theory, its only tripping point is the fact that there has been an inconsistent application of what exactly a subfaction functions as which is more a GW consistency thing than a slight on your concept. If every faction had allegiance and OPTIONAL sub allegiance then this would be a beauty of implementation on how to alter them for balance, it is the fact that for some the allegiance and suballegiance and intertwined that we struggle.
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1 minute ago, HollowHills said:
I didn't like the rules of WHFB or how impenetrable / toxic the community became.
A pitch to make models bought by AoS players worse because you dislike the age or aesthetic of those models does little to prevent your community becoming that which you disliked most about the old one.
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Its definately a thing, the risk here would be that Subfactions are optional for some Battletomes and the army can be fully functional and cool without it, in others you MUST select one and in this case would end up down on points compared to the army who gets the option not to (Cities and Slaanesh are the two that come to mind here but I'm sure there are others). This is further compounded by the fact that some subfactions are "locked" to relics and command traits, others can choose, and some have options for command traits at all outside of their subfaction (see the two factions mentioned above). Making a set battalion unlock the sub faction would fit the role of charging for the subfactions but again first you'd need to add in rules for a subfactionless city and host prior to doing so otherwise you're nerfing the factions who have no choice but to be a subfaction.
For factional terrain we're now at the point where we have active terrain (Ossiarchs can actively shoot enemies) rather than passive (you need to run into a wyldwood to get hurt), I'm heavily against active terrain roles within the game when it cannot be targetted or blocked by most armies and has a massive range, in this way it has toed its way into becoming a damage immune static unit, rather than a terrain feature.
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Your split based on the date a model was sculpted/released is insane, using Cities of Sigmar as an example they feature in far more lore and key events than the Idoneth, and are arguably far more setting relevant than reclusive sea aelves due to well... the reclusive element of the Idoneth. Your pitch here is anyone playing Cities of Sigmar, and Age of Sigmar lore driven faction that happens to have a pre-aos release date should be inately less competitive than your Aelf so you can win more games because in your opinion you are "Playing the game right" and they arent is gatekeeping which only ever harms to hobby.
Every released battletome has "Warhammer Age of Sigmar" on it, they are Age of Sigmar armies, and as always the strive should be for balance throughout rather than forced meta changes because one sculpt is 2 years older than another.
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Again your targetting pre-aos models as though they are not officially part of the setting. Those that survived the cull are Age of Sigmar models as much as any eel riding elf or walking tree, making them worse to suit some sort of agenda that new should always be better would likely form a toxic attitude within the setting, because one day your idoneth arent going to be "new", say we bump the date forward to the day after idoneth were released for equally arbitrary reasons (Let say we're only playing the siege of 8 points onwards, so now your army is "old") it'd suddenly be a much different suggestion because it would target your own perception of "proper armies"
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I started with Age of Sigmar, to that end every model I own is an Age of Sigmar army, what you're essentially proposing is a date cut off of design that should be good and everything before shouldnt. In that case when the new edition of AoS hits then by your current logic all current AoS armies should become bad so only the next iteration of models is "good".
GW have selected which models of the older ranges are "Age of Sigmar" and which are legacy, your proposed method is to resign any model produced prior to its launch as legacy and renegate tomes you dislike to the scrap heap. I maintain the strive should always be for a game that is balanced across the board not utilising an arbitrary cut off date as to models pre-cutoff must be bad and post cut off models should be far better because... reasons that have yet to be fleshed out.
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No.
Cities of Sigmar isnt "an old army" its an Age of Sigmar battletome, with just as much justified place within the game as any other tome.
In an ideal world all battletomed armies should be equal, not deliberately unbalanced to favour someones preferred army.-
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I’d be all over a Steampunk human faction.
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AoS at its core is a fantastic, engaging game with a lore able to be explored to create forces we'd never of concieved in Warhammer Fantasy, its loose definition of the map gives so many areas to explore, develop, enrich and combine in our gaming. At the base the rules are also really great and engaging with the warscroll and double turn system being the ones I enjoy most.
In terms of negatives.
- The communication in the studio seems to be light in terms of balance, we're often seeing two tomes releasing near simultaneously that must of been on the internal cloud together when being worked on with staggering power differences. This is simply a communication issue, we're getting two "trees" of battletomes, with the engaging, fun and narrative ones on one side, and the overly competitive on the other, if each tree plays against a branch of its own then the game is fine, if the two trees play against each other we see shocking imbalance.
- Points issues, compounded with allegiance and sub allegiance. If mortek guard at their base are worth X, then mortek guard all getting +1 save cannot by the same formula be worth X. I cannot see how the formula can account for both with radically different resiliences being worth the same amount.
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42 minutes ago, Arnied3 said:
Holy ****** thats class!!! What are the sprayed black models? I see Skitari in the mix for sure.
The currently primed ones are 20 Sisters of Silence with Escher heads to be my Daughters of Midnight (Greatsword Infantry)
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Midnight City, all conversion all the time:
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The focus of RAW2020 is also cogforts with players assembling them over the course of the weekend which will be awesome. My own Cogfort is a Steamforged Class (Its known as part of the Iron Third as it forms part of the outer ring of defensive Cogforts of the Midnight City) which means it is smaller but more mobile than the traditional Ilk, serving more as mobile Watchtower than full fortress.
And I have rules for fielding Cogforts but only as part of my Empires of Industry supplement, its in the allegiance rules section:
https://artisansofsigmarhome.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/empiresofindustry.pdf-
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Starting work on the paintjob
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Cheers guys, step one of painting is the basic wood across the torso and right arm, basic bone colours on the skulls and starting slowly on the leave (finished ones only on left forearm)
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Final tweaks to the build before priming, the right claw now added and dropped to two tusks on the lower jaw as I prefer the end result. Considering later versions mounting massive flowers on the midspine essentially as spore disperal carriers #Ageofsigmar
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Ricki's Midnight City - Clockwork Pegasus Knights June 2020
in Painting and Modelling
Posted