Bufkin

There is a mistake in your math, you have not calculated rend correctly. (Edit: never mind, I’m stupid, it’s correct). Anyway, Sword is better than claws since it’s easier to use destiny dice on.

That is exactly how I play,

I don’t really get this attitude, not because it’s wrong in general, but because AOS is such a bad game for it. For me, the hobby has to be a large part of the drive otherwise whats the point? That said, I play competitive and build competitive armies… but I as a lot of competitive players go for “good enough” and compete with that.

I really hope they buff flamers, flamers are awesome.

I like the double turn because it creates one of my favorite part of gaming, “risk management” and it creates for me a good environment for competition since it will help evaluate a skill I like to measure. But regardless of my preference, the double turn is extremely important part of the structure of the game and you would need a lot of changes if you removed it. With a traditional turn sequence you are basically choosing who would go first, every round, for the whole game. It would create a game that is more chesslike. Every turn would be like the setup, where you know exactly who can move and act next. Getting a double turn is not nearly as powerful as going first every single round… with rules we have now. If you will go first every round you can do A LOT more math, and you will have momentum that’s extremely valuable, and that would get exploited fast. That would for example change how scenarios can work, if you can do the math “I will always reach point X first” then the ones we have would basically not work. The price for all movement would need to change. Having a low move is a lot worse if the opponent is guaranteed to react to every move, and having a high move and rushing ahead involves a lot less risk if you know that you will not getting hit twice while the rest of the army catches up. Endless spells would need a complete rework. If you go first move restriction spells are A LOT better than if you go second and damage spells are A LOT better if you go second compared to first. You would also need to change how we decide who goes first… if it worked as today, going down to low drops to get the choice would mean an insane advantage. If it was just random you will basically do one roll that has a BOONKERS impact… so you would just change bad beat stories from “If I would not have lost the priority I would have”… too… actually the same “If I would not have lost the priority roll I would have”…. Can it be done, sure. Is it something that is done in a lot of games, yes it is. Could it be done and keeping the game we have, not really.

My first tournament I had issues but I have now made several changes and now I don’t have any real issues with time anymore. My last two tournaments I had no issues with my time, but since we used chess clocks one time my opponent timed out. This is what I do: I have a homemade cheat sheet. First page is setup reminders, movement rates, shooting profiles, and CC profiles. Second page are all spells structured so its really easy to read and see. I use counters for spells casted. I have several coins that I place next to a model when they succefully cast a spell, and another when they fail. That way its easy to see what have been done, and what is left and its also easy to count summoning points afterwards. I have a 2 dicepools of 10 dice each in different colors. So if I cast Infernal Gateway I just pick up all my red and then remove one dice. I don’t have to count 9 dice. I prepare my summoning pools. I have all my blue horrors on a magnetic tray, when my opponent kill say 5 pink horrors I immediately take 10 from the tray and place them somewhere where they are not in the way (usally a corner of the table). Sometimes I can have 5-6 groups of 10 blue horror already prepared for setup. I have all my endless spells on a tray, a spell is ALWAYS on the tray or summoned, that way I always within seconds now what spells are available to cast... Measuring sticks, several 3 and 9 and atleast one that is 12. I try to be organized at the table. I TRY to constantly clean up my play area, collect dice and put them in groups, remove measuring sticks. I do as much work as possible in my opponents turn, think about your next move, organize stuff... or even just drinking water. I write down the values for my summoning points on papper with numbers, not tally marks (or “lines”) so there is no risk for confusion and also I have a record of what has been going on. Use a separate dice pool, that has a different size and color, for destiny dice. I roll them into a box on the side of the table and I also take a photo of the dice pool if ANYTHING happens to it. When a game is completed I always collect my things and organize them in the same way. Summoning pool on one tray, spells and characters in one, battleline in a box. I also have a sorting tray with my dice, measuring sticks, counters, coins, objective markers, laser pointer and so on so its easy to find everything once I start. I also put all things like larger measuring sticks, pen and papper, rulers, cheat sheets and so on in the same pockets on my bag so I always find them fast. I always try to print out the scenarios, agendas, rules pack, whatever before the tournament so I have them handy. I try to find time to read them before the tournament and also between rounds. I make sure to set up “my battle” in the Warhammer app with the warscrolls im using. Even with a cheat sheet I will need to reference them sometime and I don’t want to clog the cheat sheet with to much info. My general advice otherwise would be: Use a chess clock when you play casual games. You should be able to finish a game in half of the game time, make sure that you only use half of the game time. Don’t panic if you use 30minutes for turn one, that is normal. Use a chess clock at the tournament if the tournament allows it. You don’t have any time to give away, you need your half of the game time. Its always nice to atleast be able to say with confidence to yourself that “It was not my fault that we could not finish”. Train with your army and resist to do to many changes between games, if you have an acceptable list only make small changes over time. A list that you know is always better than a list that is unknown. Think about your personal needs to stay sharp, because you don’t have any real time to give away by being confused J I prioritize taking a short walk outside alone very high, after that I can be social and go inside and check games, talk to people and so on, but first for me, reset my brain. Find the things you need to stay sharp.

Same. I bought my first Ipad to read comics, my plan was just to get stuff that was out of print... Im almost 100% digital today

I started with warhammer in the 80s, Ill choose digital any day over physical copy so its not just an "old guy" thing.

It has had same effect as every other time they have done this... nothing changed.

Thats correct.

That’s a tough list for a 1000 points but the weakness is that it just have two characters. Summoning have several rules that are important. For Tzeentch you need to summon 9 away from the enemy, wholy within 12 from a hero. So make sure that you block areas were you don’t want summons to happen and kill the Shaman as soon as possible. He needs to keep the Gaunt summoner back, otherwise just kill him too. Also if possible avoid killing Pink Horrors, if no spells are cast by you and no pink horros are killed the first possible summon will be on turn 4, now I assume that he has arcane sacrifice, but even with just that there will not be any summoning turn 1 and maximum 10 blue on turn 2.

They do alot of damage and are quite flexible too. Since a lot of support characters require “wholly within” you can usually get at least a larger unit and a character hit with most endless spells. But its also very common to get situations where you can hit 3-4 units or even more. I have cases were i hit maybe 5 units with Geminids, first in my turn and then again when all endless spells move between rounds, that’s 10d3 damage. Or you get a pendulum in the front of 2 characters. Since it can only move forwards it will now hit them again between rounds guaranteed, that’s 4d6. Spells like purple sun can make A LOT of damage if you hit say two 40man units, or lets say a units of around 10 multiwound models. I’ve also put down, for example, a ravenak and a gravetide in front of large blocks making it impossible for them to move forward. A lot of spells also have additional debuffs, besides the obvious Geminids there are several spells that hits bravery. So if you hit them with ravenak and gravetide they will take 2d3 moral wounds, so 4 on average AND then take a bravery with -2…. that adds upp. You also don’t really need to have good rolls, it helps of course, but even below par rolls will work. I would say that generally it’s the other way around, if you have bad damage rolls you will still do a lot of damage so its still fine, but if you get good rolls that will break a lot of armies. Its also very hard for you opponent to do real damage against you with endless spells. Usually you can place them so if they turn the spells on you they will just kill things that will generate summoning points, fine Ill take it J But one of the main reasons to play with endless spells in changehost is that you can attack yourself with them. I usually get 8-10 summoning points from spells, 10 is max so if even one spell gets dispelled nothing will be summoned. Just hit your own pink horrors with a d3 damage, generate 2-6 summoning points and then take a 1 on the destiny dice to create new pinks. Its quote common that I hit all three Pink horros with d3 each, they work just as fine with 7-9 models as with 10 even if I don’t get a one the bravery roll. Its not uncommon to get 10-20 blue horrors down turn 1, with more pink horrors on the board than you started with and have a couple of points saved for next turn.

I would say that you need: Pink Horror: Pink Horrors in list from start+10 Blue Horror: Pink Horror in list from start*2+Blue Horrors in list from start, + 10-20 extra Brimstone: Same as blue I guess since you get them anyway... but you wont use as many as the Blue. I dont have enough blue (only have 60) and it actually has happend that I could not summon since my models run out.

Changehost is such a focused build and the room to maneuver within it is so small that there is not really a best version of changehost and the optimal one will be tailored to the local meta, your personal playstyle/preferences and the tournament pack.

The main issue, beside the actual rules, is that everything around it is just to obfuscated. If GW actually had made an enormous spreadsheet, were they had all the scenarios, and all the faction terrain and then said “hey faction X will not be able to place its terrain in 16% and Y not in 50% of the battles that’s sounds about right for the balance we are after”… and they also published a design article were they outlined the big changes and the thinking behind them and said things like “we saw that faction terrain had become an issue, to many army lists were designed around them and some were just too good and reliable and we wanted to have more variety. So we wanted to make rules were it was not always certain that you could bring them. It’s the same design philosophy we had in malign sorcery realm rules with restrictions to shooting or that some battleplans force you to deploy everything on the board”.... then that would have been fine… now we know why, that there is an actual design philosophy and now we can argue about “is that a good idea” and are the rules correctly parametrized. But that’s not the case and now we need to argue along the lines of “what are they doing, why are drunk gerbils designing my favorite game by drawing random sentences out of a hat”….

Up to a 1000 points I play with everything painted. I usually have around 600-700 painted before I decides to actually play an army anyway so to get it to a 1000 is pretty easy. After a 1000 the jump to 2000 is pretty step and I’m not a big fan of painting the same thing over and over so all the characters will be painted and I will have minimum size of several units painted. Now I have to decide what I actually want to play and paint the same models I already painted AGAIN, maybe 20-30-40 or even 100 times, that’s just not going to happen without playtest. So Ill build them and spray them black and then play them. My biggest concern with contrast is actually that I might not spray everything black in the future and I vastly prefer black if its unpainted. But my goal is to always have more models painted between every game I play and I usually succeeds but I have a kid, a full-time job and other commitments so things comes in the way sometimes. I’ve also recently finally got a gaming table for my home so my personal “always have something new painted” includes building and painting new terrain and that has a higher priority since it has a bigger impact on the visuals of the game.

Different table size and battleplans made for a 1000 points are the most needed change. If table size goes down, summoning becomes harder for a lot of armies, not everyone of course, but for a lot of them.

This is a solution that happens sometimes in skirmish games, they add mercenaries. When its implemented well, its because they have a concept for a model that does not fit in a faction/team/org/whatever but is essential to the style of the game… Ronins in a oriental style games are an example for this. It can also be a question of cost, the skirmish game might have 5-6 factions, they all need to be a bit larger but they cant afford to make 15-20 models, so they make 5 models that everyone share. Neither of these cases will be true for AoS, so the question is then why? And even if the reason is good its almost never a good idea, at least for competitive play. There is an enormous risk that you will see less diversity on the field. If a mercenary unit is really good it will suddenly not just be used in one army but in most armies. Imagine if every army in AoS could use a gaunt summoner, or khinerai heartrenders, or skinks… they would be EVERYWHERE. Sure you can find a point cost or something else that will be balanced perfectly, but the problem with competitive games are that if you just slip a little from that perfectly balanced line you will end up in a “almost always” or “almost never” territory… and both are bad….. and even if they find a perfect implementation for matched play, with perfect points and units that make perfect sense, I would still prefer not to have it because its fundamentally such a shaky concept that every single release of a new unit that could be used as mercenary is a huge risk. So Im not hopefull at all, best case scenario is that is not part of matched play, second best is that it has no effect at all… but I would love to be proved wrong by GW.

They should kill of more factions

This is my favorite piece. The windmill from https://tabletop-world.com/ but then Ihave created a base, hills, and so on for it. .

I like the concept of external and internal balance but I really dont agree with your examples Kharadron was very competetive for a long time and have recently again performed well. Liberators are still a valid unit, AoS2 did not invalidate it BUT it changed its battlefield and listbuildning role.

Well its a mixed order list so its not just aelves and we also normaly don’t play with legacy models where I live… but this current list: Dragonlord, lance+shield, strategic genius, ethereal amulet Dragonlord, lance+shield Dragonlord, lance+shield Skink Starpriest 10 Arkanuats 10 Arkanuats 5 Reavers 20 White Lions 10 Skinks 10 Skinks 5 Khinerai Then if we play with realm spells I add another Skink starpriest otherwise I usally have 2 salamanders. The list started a lot more aelves in AoS 1, but things change over time but Ive tried to keep some aelven style for it by using small dragons for salamanders and using old aelven models as champs in the dwarven units. The champs have bags and chests of gold with them to remind the dwarfs what they are fighting for, the skinks are more trustworthy then dwarfs so they can be payed in advance so the Starpriest already have some loot on the bases and I use small baby dragon models for the salamanders.

Ive played a lot with mixed order with a healthy portion of aelves and my favorite units are: Reavers: amazing unit that snatch so many objectives. It’s the unit that probably singlehandedly won me the most games. I always tell my opponent how fast they are before the game, but they still quite often get surprised. White Lions: Undercosted 2hander with a 25mm base, one of the games best units. Dragonlords: They are not just for Order Draconis. Since I wont play for the alphastrike as you would with draconis I give them all shields, no horns, and just leverage reroll armor saves as much as possible. They are fairly flexible, really intimidating and if you bring more than one (I use three) even unreliable abilities like breath weapons becomes very usable.

What do we mean when we say that a game is balanced or unbalanced? I really think that the word balance is a pointless word for games like AoS. Games were both players build their own "gaming pieces" and then play each other can’t by definition really be unbalanced. Now if you have a board game and one side has to play with X and the other one has to play with Y and the player who has X always win, then the game is unbalanced but thats not the standard situation in games like AoS, in AoS there are thousands of X and Y and they interact diffrently with each other..... ...but if you have an umpire that build two AoS forces and design a scenario for them to recreate a battle and then one side always win, then that is unbalanced. That also means that if you have a AoS playgroup where you have 2-3 friends, and everyone buys one army, and one setup of models in that army, and everyone will stick by that… then it’s a fairly large chance that you have created an unbalanced game for your playgroup. That makes your playgroup unbalanced, not the game. So the concept of a balance in “build your own game” make no sense. Sure there are some cornercases for games like this if the choices available are so small that only one choice exist (a mirror is ofc still balanced, but as I said, cornercase) but AoS is not even close to that, so as a general rule, games like AoS cant really be balanced or unbalanced. Now this is of course a problem for a lot of reason, and one of the big ones are expectations. We have a built in expectation that when we play games they should be fair and balanced and that expectation is reasonable, but its also very important to realize that the game does not start at the table and if you think that of course the game is unbalanced. Its starts when you choose your army and you create your list. People can say that’s not the intent of miniature games, and sure it might not be, but that does not really matter, the intent of design choices does not change the facts about the consequences from them. So the game start at army choice and list building, that’s just a reality, you might have a preference that it should be otherwise, but it does not matter, that’s just how it is. This is for most people totally counterintuitive and it’s a great mental hurdle you just have to overcome if you are going to enjoy these kinds of games in “normal” play. AoS has in this regard a lot more in common with deckbuilding games like magic the gathering than with “normal” board games. Now if you don’t like this it might not be a big deal anyway. If you have a close group of friends who try to create your armies around each other armies, then you will just create your own balance or if you go hardcore narrative you are not even playing a game at all, you are instead having some sort of experience… and that is perfectly fine. But if you go to tournaments, or if you play with large playgroups, or if you play with small groups of friends that are not willing to create a fun experience for each other, or you just play matched play pick up games at stores and so on…. you need to learn to accept that the game start at list building and sometimes you will have bad match ups or you will have a bad time…. …..and if you cant, and you cant find people who like to play the way you prefer, then that is fine, but that does not make the game unbalanced, its just not what you would prefer and then you should really consider if this is the right game for you rather than if the games is flawed. And sure we can have different definitions of how we should use the word balance, but at the end of the day it usually comes down to a question of semantics, what kind of words should we use to describe what, but I think there is a problem when we describe preference of game design as balance since that will lead the discussions towards that there is something actually wrong with the game instead of helping people to think about how they could enjoy the game and then what they need to do to achive that. That’s my take on balance atleast, what are yours?

I like tournaments so I prefer to play 2000points. While building my armies I usally play smaller battles, usally 1000 or 1250, I really enjoy those games before Ive learned everything about my army. The big disadvantage with 1250 is that table size and sceanrio rules assumes 2000 and Im to lazy to scale it down.