amysrevenge

I'm shocked that more people don't just proxy these warbands AS marauders. If I were to purchase any WarCry warbands, (unlikely as I'm a chump/idiot who never puts together the best builds available for his armies) they would slot straight into my list as Marauders.

I've been part of two different communities that have thrived in smaller markets. The main factor that was common to both was one incredibly dedicated, endlessly enthusiastic, loud, charismatic leader to keep the hype-train running. If you want to grow a community but aren't this person, it might be very difficult to get anything going. I know that certainly I'm not that person - I'm the person that can back up that person with solid advice and regular support and meticulous planning, but I don't have the mental/social energy to keep up a hype-train indefinitely. The secondary factor in common with both successful groups is a consistent observable public presence. In the lean times post-End Times/pre-points in AoS, the community I was in was down to 3-5 regular players, but those 3-5 of us were at the local store every Thursday having an obvious good time. Over time the group got bigger and bigger.

I guess I should add here that I don't really ever read the WC site, and get pretty much all my news from here at TGA. I am decidedly NOT the target for the WC site, and if GW made any huge effort to change their marketing to win over the "Big Mike" demographic they would catastrophically fail as a business. I'm a terrible customer, with my tolerance for conversions, proxies, second-hand and third-party models, and with my almost zero hobby budget (time and money) these days, and with my already completed 7-10 full armies (almost none of which were purchased new from GW or partner stores). ETA: If I'm keenly interested in what they are doing at any given moment, they are in BIG TROUBLE. eg. a thing I would buy is a conversion kit to turn push-fit Sequitors from Soul Wars into various heroes (in fact, I've used my bitx box to do just that, more than once). What a terrible idea for them to actually do, but it's typical of the sort of thing that would be required to pivot in my direction.

Looks like it's time to reinstall my imaginary browser plug-in that automatically replaces "greedy" with "capitalist".

Ultimately it comes down to the attack sequence, and two factors therein: 1) how many steps are there and 2) whether the steps are opposed or unopposed. Currently in a typical attack sequence there are 4 basic steps, three unopposed and one opposed (unopposed - only relies on one warscroll; opposed - relies on both warscrolls). To Hit - an unopposed roll based on the attacker's To Hit stat To Wound - an unopposed roll based on the attacker's To Wound stat Save - an opposed roll, based on the defender's Save stat and the attacker's Rend stat "Ignore Unsaved Wounds" roll formerly known as "Ward Save", colloquially referred to in some communities as "Shrug" or "Invul Save" - an unopposed roll based on the defender's special abilities. So as it stands now, the only place where the matchup matters at all is the Save step - otherwise who is battling whom never comes in to it. For context, in the latest versions of WFB, the first three of those were opposed - WS/WS, S/T, armour piercing/armour save - and only the last one was unopposed. 4 rolls gives a fairly good granularity of results for D6s (don't get me started, I'd love a D8 or D10), but I think you could make the argument that one more insertion of an opposed roll could work. Opposed rolls for either the To Hit or the To Wound step could account for the effects the OP is looking for. I think going for both would be overkill of the "oh boy let's consult the table again" variety, but one could be effective - even throwing 2s and 6s for doubled stats out the window and making it lower/3+, equal/4+, higher/5+.

I don't see "delve into them in greater detail" and hear "take things in a new direction". I hear the opposite of that. Lean in to what's already there, hard.

Don't get me wrong, I estimate less than 5% chance I'll ever play the new game even once. I've still never played Warcry (although I did buy Gloomspite cards), I haven't played underworlds since April 2018, I haven't played Blood Bowl since the twentieth century, and I don't play any of the 40k family of games. I also have completely flipped on bases since 2015 and am now extremely anti-square. But I'm excited to find out what they are planning, and if any of the models are sweet I'm pretty likely to pick some up. See above regarding Underworlds and my playing thereof - I currently have 7 painted and 2 WIP Underworlds teams, and will probably be picking up another one this very evening. $40CDN is a very sweet spot for me for a small fun hobby project, and the psychological barrier of $50CDN (which is where unit boxes for AoS start) is a big one to cross for me, between impulse purchase and planned purchase.

Well, they don't want to give that to you for money you were going to spend anyway. They want to convince you to spend money you weren't intending to spend.

Keeping in mind that I was already surprised that they even went there in the first place, and I was already surprised at how early they talked about it, and I was already surprised at how early they hyped their first design bits with Kislev, I'd be surprised to see too much more in the next year even.

There is less to support Vampirates now than there was to support "Slaves to Darkness will be replaced by Darkoath" a couple years ago.

Oh good pull. Yeah, he's a million miles away from where I feel like he should be. I'd love it if he was 600 points AND actually worth 600 points.

I'm going to interpret "disappointing" as "farthest away from what I think they should be" and not "worst" or even "worst points value" or anything like that. Chaos Warriors/Knights. They aren't exactly bad, but they don't behave the way I want them to. I don't want durable light hitters with rerolls. I don't want to have to jokingly tell my opponent at the start of the match "I hope you're ready to roll a ton of rend 'dash' saves my friend!". Even just the addition of Rend -1 to Warriors would go a long way, but mortals on a 6 could also help.

Boo I had a thing all typed out and then the Mod notice showed up so I'll leave it. Hurts to delete, it was a really good representation of my own thoughts.

A wargame in 1950 could reasonably start off with a gender split based on the 1950 understanding of real-world gender breakdowns in historical armies (keeping in mind that the reporting from ancient times is not necessarily always photographical in detail, and researchers motivated by ideology, either deliberate or subconscious, can interpret dodgy data in dodgy ways), ie. 99% male. And then you would have to justify any deviation from that initial starting place. Which you could easily do. But it means the default is all-dudes. A wargame in 2020 could reasonably start off with a gender split based on the general population breakdown, ie. 50/50 for humans. And then you would have to justify any deviation from that initial starting place. Which you could do. But it means the default is half and half. I don't insist that all armies have a 50/50 gender split. I'm happy enough with Daughters of Khaine being mono-gendered, and I'm happy enough with Orruks being mono-gendered. But I'd like the default to be 50/50.

Lore restrictions can be fun, and oftentimes bumping up against boundaries is where interesting creativity can happen. But when lore restrictions actually prevent you from doing what you really want to do, at the end of the day you can change whatever you need to.

I think the underlying issue here is deeper, and while obvious, isn't at the front of everyone's mind. It speaks highly to the quality of the IP and our level of engagement to it. And it sounds stupid to say it out loud, but sometimes we need to say it out loud just to refresh it in our minds. WARHAMMER ISN'T REAL. What our lore books are doing isn't converting a real existing society into tabletop gaming terms. They are creating from zero a tabletop game and going back from there to making a setting that supports the game . So the question ends up often going backwards, because we are so immersed in the lore that it feels like a real thing, and we are handcuffed to representing only what the real setting dictates. The question doesn't have to be "what would females in those societies do?", it can and should be "if we want the tabletop gaming outcome to be X, how should the societies be structured in the lore to support that?" Throwing up our hands and saying "we'd love to have lady Orruks, but there just aren't any lady Orruks in the lore" is not the answer. The answer is to put lady Orruks in the lore- the lore is there to support the outcomes we want, not to prevent them.

I wish there was a reasonable way to package models so that for armies where there could be two genders, you could do an all-female, or all-male, or 50/50, or any other deliberate ratio for your army. But I can't really think of one, within the current scheme of multi-part models on multi-model sprues. I have a hilarious picture in my mind of an add-on kit, with.... girl bits you could glue on to male models. But it takes more for a female model than just.... girl bits. Also, I came in here hot, ready to breathe fire, but everyone is having a grown-up discussion!

I basically agree that the Grand Alliance system is mostly just a lingering remainder of the early AoS days, and now that every extant faction has a battletome, it could be eliminated entirely (a handful of forgeworld beasties would either be dropped, or need new keywords). Chaos units could still have the Chaos keyword without requiring a parallel opposing keyword for all units everywhere. Skaven could be dropped out of Chaos without needing to find them a better faction to be shoehorned into. Other factions could have just their faction keyword, or larger alliance keywords, or whatever. (eg. There could be a shared keyword between Cities of Sigmar and Stormcast Eternals - maybe they get to keep Order. There already is a shared keyword between Kharadron and Fyreslayers [Duardin]. The Aelves all share their keyword. And so on.) The benefit of the GAs is tradition, as well as a very loose tie to the narrative. The cost of the GAs is that it prevents some lore-allowed allegiances (upthread Fyreslayers were mentioned as occasionally fighting alongside non-Order factions in the lore, but not in the game), allows some questionable allegiances (Nagash and Flesheaters is a bit... difficult), and also that it gives casual (and even not-so-casual) players a distorted view of the allegiances and enmities within the Mortal Realms. Ultimately the GAs were a creation for game mechanics, with only a VERY loose link to the setting and lore. But people continually are performing verbal gymnastics to justify lore-reasons for the positioning of various factions within various GAs.

"These are the rules for my army" - public. Save everyone some time and share that stuff when asked, or volunteer it at the start of the match. "This is how I will use them" - private. Spring that on them without warning. Seems obvious to me, but I guess not to everyone.

I second Destiny Dice from WHQ. What a nice, simple mechanic.

Most of what I have to say has been said upthread, but here it is in my own words (I keep doing this....) Narrative play works best when it's a group of buds/pals/mates (choose your regional lingo) playing together regularly. The one thing those guys/gals don't really need to get their game on is TGA, at least not extensively, and more from a hobby/lore angle than from a gameplay angle. Matched play is the best way to have quick pickup games with strangers or casual pals. In order to facilitate a more uniform standard for Matched play, a forum like TGA is a very useful tool to talk about the Matched play experience, since uniformity is one of the main things you need for casual pickup games to go smoothly. The closer everyone's expectations are at the start, the fewer game-breaking surprises pop up later.

Three things for me. Each of these has been mentioned at least once upthread, but here they are in my words. 1) A complete re-do of the combat sequence language, most especially looking at the words "damage" and "wound". The WFB hangover of carrying on with the name of the "To Wound" characteristic has got to go, or else they need to totally change how other things are described. The sequence itself is fine, it's just the overlap of the words "wound" and "damage" that makes it complicated and causes so many casual, or even veteran, players (especially ones who come over from big brother 40k) to get it completely wrong. 2) Minor re-think of determining first turn priority. I would like to see a random element in there, not just a list-building element (I know, if you happen to have the exact same number of drops the roll for first deployment is by default a roll for first turn priority, but that's the only time there is a random element, otherwise it's exclusively a list-building exercise). 3) Major re-think of the battleshock phase, or what we used to think of as Psychology, in general. I don't have a solution, but I'm not the big fancy game designer. The current battleshock phase is just not good. It needs to simultaneously be a bigger risk for the armies that are immune(-ish) to battleshock, and a smaller risk for the armies that are crippled by battleshock. It ends up dipping into Command Points, and unit point costs, and gets complicated. No idea how to crack that nut.

Haha OT but related to cuss filters, I play a mobile game with a team chat, and told the group "I usually play while watching **** and **** off" because for some reason the chat filtered out "Netflix" and "goofing".

The message from me is "This whole year is f'ed, and nothing is going that well. Hunker down and put what free money you have toward the things you like, in hopes that they can keep going long term." In 2019 I might have dropped the app (well, to be honest I'm lazy enough and the monthly rate is small enough that I'd probably keep paying it for a long time and just grumble about it here rather than figure out how to cancel). In 2020 I'm keeping it.

Honestly, I haven't played a game since March, and I haven't built a list in almost as long, but I'm happy to keep forking over my buck thirty-five a month until things are a bit more normal.