stratigo

Tell me a campaign since nemesis crown (which was dwarf driven) that had dwarves as the primary faction making a move? To be fair, nemesis crown did end up being the last of the old style of GW campaigns and came with a few years of no narrative whatsoever, but, like, you can't tell me the dwarves weren't done the dirtiest in the end time of all the good guy factions. And early AoS was all about the stormcast, guest starring some of their friends in GW's attempt to create a faction that had the same core draw that the space marines do in 40k. This didn't work out (thankfully, stormcast are fine for what they are nowadays, but if they had the same over exposure as space marines, it would be a huge bummer). Stormcast are still a prominent faction but now GW is willing to do narratives pretty much not involving them at all. But now it's a huge elf blitz and, well, elf fatigue is setting in. I just want them to give the dwarf factions the same love, and, well, I don't think they ever will I would be ecstatic if GW slammed a Broken Realms: Grugni (or even Grimner, lord knows the fyreslayers could use some love, especially in models), but I don't see it.

This is a bunch of dwarves being the bridesmaids, acting entirely in support of someone else's narrative, stormcast or human. None of this is narratives driven by dwarves, maybe supported by the other races. It is almost always the other way around, while the elves very often get to have their own self driven story, and this has been a common theme in warhammer fantasy. The elves have always gotten more focus as their own race, the dwarves tend to be there to support human narratives and characters.

Which did quite surprise me, but for narrative influence the dwarves have had... none? One of the reasons I was so excited for the lamentations series was that it was putting grungi as sort of the driving force behind it and involved a cast with dwarves as prominent members. And Reynolds is a great author. But this kinda got sunk. What, exactly, did the dwarves do in those five years? The elves are pretty much THE narrative now, driving it. I can't remember the last time the dwarves were a prime driver of the narrative. Nemesis Crown? I think it was Nemesis crown.

Do what 40k did, all terrain of a certain size blocks all LoS unless the unit being targeted is arbitrarily large (X number of wounds. Does not allow the larger unit to target back through terrain) Yes. Again, like 40k GW doubled the price of the new vanari blademasters compared to wardens and sentinels. The models are no larger nor more detailed, but are half the model size for the price. GW is hitting all their games with dramatic price hikes. The issue is that LotR is a model by model game and not a unit by unit game that relies heavily on the ability to manipulate priorities through hero resources. It's take a lot of patching to push that into AoS. LotR as a system doesn't work half as well without the might point and hero focus of the system, which isn't an easy graft. I'd actually adapt apocalypse's rules to AoS (and 40k) with both alternating activations, unit actions (move and shoot. Move and fight. Move and Move. etc, depending on activations) and removing casualties in the end phase of a turn. I did do this quite well for 40k, but the juggernaut that is official rules eventually killed the effort.

Alright, here we go! So, GW has historically favored elves in both their major settings, in both rules and fluff. As a non elf player (and, for fantasy a dwarf player) I have always been kind of sick of it, but with Phil kelly at the head, this isn't going to change. I hope that the elfapolooza has enough room to squeeze something satisfying for my faction (KO) out of it, but, honestly it is looking like kharadrons are gonna get a big ol' skip for a minimum of three elf focused books plus bel'akor (which could have a surprise elf focus). I do find this disappointing, but not unexpected as a dwarf player in the face of the elves. But at least they aren't space marines. Death faction characters can always get super murdered and pop back up a day later (hyperbole) none the worse for wear. It's a strength of the faction that can become a narrative weakness as being beaten hard repeatedly drains a narrative of tension when your antag's history is that of failing and dying Nagash was always skeletor though. I mean I can almost here him shouting "I'LL GET YOU NEXT TIME SIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGMAAAAAR!" after reading the third time of legends book. This is the long history of nagash and why, as a long time fan, I couldn't take him serious as the antagonist even in the AoS 2.0. Cause, I mean, it's nagash guys. He's just Nagash. He's been the whiny self entitled cartoon villain since his inception. It's not intimidating, no matter how hard you try and wite the bony boys as scary. Vlad always impressed me more as death daddy. Heck MANNFRED used to impress me more before he became the memetic traitor, always there to backstab at the worst time that he is now. I'd rather not have manny or neffy succeed in regions that are primarily the focus of other factions with them not getting play in the narrative. I mean... GW sometimes makes some really bone headed descisions God I wish. I am rather more interested in how the narrative for death shapes up without Nagash ruling them with an iron temper tantrum I mean, I remember the way dwarves were treated in the end times verse the prominence of elves (even if a lot of elf players would have rather GW didn't). And I can see where GW's focus on the current narrative is (elves, elves, chaos, what is probably more elves). And, like, LRL probably are going to overtake the seraphon now (that one wind spell is a right kick to the nards of a lot of seraphon tricks) as the best faction in the game with this release, and some flavor of eldar has been the dominant faction in 40k for like seventy percent of that game's history. Nah, Harleys are probably the best or second best faction in the game right now. So craftworlds are out, murder clowns are in. Eldar never go away. KO can't reliably shoot an army that has most of their models sitting at minus 1 to hit off the table. KO vs LRL is a super binary game in my estimation, and if you aren't playing pure cutting best of faction lists, I think LRL trounce KO pretty solidly in the casual competitive level, and the hard edge competition relies on the KO getting their alpha strike through on teclis. And, like, you take away the WLV (and GW should) KO probably just lose most of the time, KO damage output on a point per unit basis is not that good, especially compared to, say, something like LRL or seraphon, and the new units plug the mobility hole that LRL had. Boy I wish my faction got more play in its home realm than one admiral to play supporting character to the elves. It's flashbacks of the end times dwarf treatment all over again. Always the bridesmaid, never the bride. Man I wish they did this to nagash. The cartoon villain plans to conquer the universe (and inevitably failing because, duh, the game doesn't exist if he wins) just robs him of all narrative tension for me. Like, he can't do anything BUT lose in the end, because his goals are never anything short of "AND THIS TIME! THIIIS TIME I WILL SUCK ALL OF REALITY INTO MY DEATH HOLE!" I would not be shocked to see nagash get rules nerfed, but also get a big points drop. He has always been really hard to swing into an army, so using his defeat here to depower him ruleswise so he fits into a smaller points package would, IMHO, be a boon for death players in the game, if a stinging blow to them narratively.

They also have minus 1 to hit The problem being in one cult is a problem for the whole army because cults are free I can't take your argument with a straight face when you go "AoS is balanced" Like, lul, no. No it isn't. AoS balance is a mess. Seraphon are too good. LRL look to be approaching that level, especially with a new wave of releases. IDK are too good. Based on actual winrates and top finishes. If your answer to balance is "Actually you should play nothing but meta armies", mate, you don't know what balance is. And yes, interactivity is extremely important to a wargame. Not just for fun, but for actual competition. Any idiot can net list. But if that same idiot can do that and go 4-1 or even 5-0 at a tournament, this is a big ol' problem. LRL have the issue of being able to delete combo pieces (which I think GW has vastly overpushed because of profits), while utterly dominating the magic phase in a way no other army can, and having actual extremely strong, on the spot defensive tools in aetherquartz with army wide defensive tools in shining company making an attempt to counter them before they kill you a challenging prospect for even an alpha strike based army. I can tell you how much a straight minus one to hit army wide messes up the math of trying to eliminate key units. It's a lot. Then you combine that with an inability to stop their tools. You can't hide, or play with the rangebands of either their sentinels or spells. You can't really stop their magic from casting. The other two power armies win mostly off the back of messing with fundamental mechanics with IDK or just endless buff stacking in seraphon from vastly underpriced units. Otherwise, it's actually a problem. In that you cannot interact with what LRL is doing to your army, but they trivially negate or nerf a lot of what you can do with yours. It's almost the tau problem. The tau, being the worst army in 9th edition, remain also the least fun to play against because their mechanics render the best way to play against them to simply ignore that they exist and score points. An inability to meaningfully effect an opponent's models or disrupt their strategy is bad for the game no matter the quality of the army. LRL are difficult to do anything to for most armies in the game. I'm sure they hate playing against you too.

Or, and hear me out because this might be crazy, you nerf Kroak and sentinels

If AoS shooting became as strong as 40k shooting, then it would have to be balanced more. AoS shooting is not, despite complaints, near as deadly as 40k shooting 40k is also more even cheeses stratagems than AoS is with cheesy command abilities (as hard as that is to think about, spreading the cheese makes for better balance than concentrated cheddar) and has more reactive defensive tools baked into those stratagems then AoS does (indeed I can’t think of a single reactive defensive stratagem. They are all proactive defensive buffs)

Sure, but buff stacking has to go first. Legit, I am worried because GW could go "Hmmm, let's nerf an entire phase" and ruin the majority of shooting in the game, while I don't ever see GW making buff stacking go away though. Small characters are just too much a RoI for them to make them less good.

A minus one to hit is a significant decrease in expected damage. And the combos in the game are so fundementally warping that it's better to have at least some tools to take the combo pieces off than it is to not have those tools and protect support characters. Like, they'd have to redo every army with ridiculous combos to tone that stuff way down before you can make the combo pieces untargetable (and GW would probly to something dumb like making cauldrons and bells untargetable too like they already have). Seraphon would jump from 65 winrate to 70 if you removed the ability to target their combo pieces. Double turns are bad. There really isn't an army that doesn't want to double turn you. Shooting into combat is a necessity because the game's too damn fast, you don't even get a turn before you're being charged. Shooting already generally does less damage, you can't then go "and you won't be using it anyways, lol" because your army is in combat from turn 2 onwards (presuming you brought a screen) and locked in your own deployment zone. AoS would have to change movement tricks before this is a viable change for shooting armies (legit the most of the top shooting armies all don't even GAF about it, they teleport out of combat. All the other armies with shooting cry) I agree that more cover should be a thing. I believe always in more cover. This isn't WHFB, 2 hills and 2 copses of trees don't cut it. Get creative! Almost none of the changes proposed would make a better, or more fun game. Unless your fun comes from going to your local KO player and telling them to suck a fat one. And you can't start stacking further negatives to hit because, well, negatives are already pretty common. DoK can all be minus 1 or more for their supports. LRL will have the majority of their army minus one to hit at the start. All characters are already minus one. There's a lot of artifacts or command traits that give out minuses to hit in shooting. Start stacking that stuff and shooting becomes worthless against some of the best armies in the game,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JKtSI_AUwY I just want to highlight this game as, well, the real problem with the game. Shooting did fairly little, but even in combat all the 'shooting' units of the seraphon dominated hard in combat. The problem isn't shooting, it's buffapalooza. You can't beat skinks and sallies by being a combat army and getting to them, they can still outfight you if they get all those buffs up. It's insanity.

The head of an arkanaut company is technically a ship captain

When I buy, I usually buy from the shop I game at. I occasionally check ebay for amazing deals, but I absolutely, categorically, hate stripping models and skip over anything that looks like I'd need to.

"I could have an even more bougie hobby that the poors are less able to afford" isn't a grand defense of GW price hikes

As balanced as its ever been. Or, damning with faint praise because AoS is not and has never been actually a balanced game. There's always been an army stomping in the meta. Once upon a time it was even BCR, who don't even exist separate from other ogors now :D. AoS has never had great balance. Indeed it can't until the double turn is ejected. There's a lot of things AoS could do after that for balance. Overarching shooting nerfs would NOT be one of them. And wouldn't make Seraphon, or tzeentch, or even LRL care at all. Seraphon are an army that does everything, the nerf cycle will have to go hard to reign them in. Skinks aren't even their worst offender, that's Kroak. But istused to be sallies. Nerf skinks, it'll probably be something else (indeed the stats I linked didn't have the skink teleport specialist faction at the top, it was I think more monster rumbly one). While LRL are literally just crit fishing. Sentinel rules largely override any suggested shooting nerf. Tzeentch is a magic army, any time you nerf their shooting phase shooters, they just lean harder on the magic. And, like, how BS horror splitting is. The only boogeyman that would be dumpstered is KO. Who don't look like they need to be that much any more. Competitive KO have been pretty one dimensional, and have some easy hard counters (Like, you can't even with a shooting war against Khalibron, and this is what people essentially want all shooting to face all the time. Khalibron and the IDK anti shooting rules are giant mistakes of their own) And when challenged people shout NPE! NPE! like there isn't literally a game that has shooting at all levels that is deadlier and more popular than AoS. The NPE is people with a grudge bitching about it. I mean, you ever play a game and there's the guy on the sidelines rolling his eyes every time you roll the dice that you just want to go away? This is the NPE. Make it unpleasant enough to talk about or think about shooting in a not entirely negative manner and drive out anyone who disagrees. Luckily there's an entire video where what these stats mean is explained. The range focus of in every seraphon army is magical (and ignores IDK and every suggested shooting nerf to far. I mean, I never see anyone suggest a n overall magic nerf). Skinks are just one (and not the favored in this dataset) to build the rest of the army competitively. Reign in movement shenanigans (for everyone), and shooting will have less an impact for almost every annoying shooting army, and the two big outliers just need their own nerfs. You really don't need to ****** handgunners and kurnouths to get at sentinels and kroak. But people want to do it because they aren't sure what interactive means and have been psyching themselves up to hate shooting for all sorts of silly reasons. I mean, shooting didn't exactly emerge from the ether in the last year when the armies doing good had it, but man to hear people talk now you'd think there was an oppressive grip on the meta for all time. When shooting dominates, it's always for the same reason melee does. GW made some units too damn strong with too many special abilities.

I'd say 30 arkanauts as just a core you can reliably have to build around and are fairly future proof. It's not a hard investment to make. after that, well, the ironclad has always featured in competitive KO metas, and is sort of the army centerpiece model. From there, uh... you'll need heroes. You can skip the admiral and footdrinmaster (though if you grab a start collecting you get him too) in the current meta, but the other three characters are all useful in their own way. From there you either build to balloons or thunderers. Even if you go thunderers, I'd still suggest 6 balloon guys, they'll be your screen when your ship jumps. Now the issue here is that this is not future proof. What's goodd to equip your balloon guys with is up to change edition to edition, so I can't really help you here. I own like 28 riggers myself though. So... yeah, I like the balloon guys. Thunderers I would magnetize because their best built doesn't just change on editions, but changes on context of the list you are playing them in. with this settled, gunhaulers are good point fillers. Frigates are probably the weakest choice (outside characters), but that could always change.

I have one small criticism that the strength of the classes in the new book seem.... quite a bit over comparative classes in the base book

Honestly, I just think it's people like you shouting in other's faces about how unfun shooting is that makes people think it isn't fun. There's no real why here. It's just groupthink. Do you have fun losing to any army? Be honest.

So wrong that the game is almost as balanced as it has ever been. So wrong that the armies that broke 70 percent winrates were all melee, and the so called shooting meta doesn't. The stats just have never backed this stuff up. The most super OP stuff just got nerfed hard and fell out of the meta. And you know, of the two top armies in the game, one of them can be, but is not always, shooting, and one can't be. Shooooting isn't the prooooblem. I mean... look upon these stats ye mighty and despair in the shooting meta. Deeeespaaaaair (hint, there's no shooting dominance) https://thehonestwargamer.com/age-of-sigmar-tts-stats-15-2-21/

It... is not at all. Tau weren't a problem because they shoot good. You could trivially make a marine or guard or eldar army that shot as good. Or better! Tau were a problem because, unlike how people actually use the term, competitive tau WERE non interactive. Attack them? They shunted the damage off. Charge them? They shoot you, shunt the damage, and then fly away and shoot you next turn. There wasn't anything at all you could do to hurt their primary units because you had to grind through endless ablative wounds, and melee army just gave them another shooting phase, and they could leave combat without penalty. So it was just a grind to try and kill their footsloggers and sit on objectives before riptides killed your army, cause there's no way to effectively kill one at all. You were best to just ignore it existed. And, the joke is, there were two changes that kicked the tau from the top into the trash. They lost the ability to leave for free, but FAR more importantly, holding objectives was made the most important metric, and a riptide, still as near immortal as ever, just isn't strong enough to dominate 4 to 6 objectives before the tau are hopefully outscored, and having to go TO the objectives make them vulnerable to lock down (note, they CAN shoot into their own combat still, being biggies). So, now tau just suck. But any rework of the tau book, which they desperately need, is NOT gonna make them, like, a melee army. They will, and should, remain a shooting army. It was never being good at shooting that made tau unfun to play.

I wonder how 40k is the most popular GW game if shooting is really the least fun mechanic then? And I can tell you, 40k doesn't have LESS interactivity to AoS by any measure. I think terrain should always be a bigger deal though. But the idea that shooting is less interactive than melee is... just... false. It always has been. You can do plenty of things to maneuver to zone out 90 percent of shooting (kroak and the sentinels are the major outlier) from your supports or more important units, and, like, melee armies are fast enough to catch any shooting army in a single turn, and a good melee unit blenders shooting. And like, none of the suggested 'fixes' to shooting as a mechanic would fix sentinels or kroak. And ultimately, the game is won on points and shooting struggles taking them. Even if you kill a unit on a point... you haven't taken that point. You need a further turn to start scoring it. There's a reason LRL aren't tearing up the tournament racket. And, at a certain point, you can only cater to less good players so much before you start alienating other players. There's an entire army that is unplayable under a lot of these shooting suggestions. I mean, I hate watching an army sprint across the board in a turn and kill my entire army. But that happens plenty if I'm not building cheese lists. AoS is the NPE game. You want to fix that? Look in the movement phase (and out of phase movement), not the shooting or combat phase.

Hope they don't double you turn two or you lose.

Lol, I did read what you wrote, but you been banging on about how shooting, not sentinels, really should be nerfed. And then largely just use sentinels as your example of why shooting, the mechanic, should be nerfed. Maybe, iunno, shooting is fine and sentinels should be nerfed? I agree. GW should start consolidating support character profiles. But this is less likely than them nerfing the shooting phase, cause GW makes bank off charging 40 bucks for a single model. Reducing the support characters going into the future is just not in the cards for the game. Which sucks. There's never gonna be a good answer for this from GW. So, if you intend to compete, you better have a plan to nuke support heroes. Which is almost always going to involve shooting or magical shooting. And I find support character proliferation way more annoying than strong shooting and much harder to address through simple balancing. The funny thing is, KO, not doing so hot overall as an army according to the latest stats (Like, I'm literally watching statscenter right now) and, like, Lumineth NEVER has. And KO doesn't have builds that aren't shooting based. So why are lists not taking advantage of the alpha doing so much worse? They're just as shooting reliant. It's cause the problem isn't shooting, it's movement. Honestly, this becomes a case of propaganda, where people on the internet saying "it's shooting that's the worst" self proliferates until the actual issues with the game are drowned out. And then GW listens to them and I get to spend another 2 years not playing AoS because GW decided my army should be in the trash. I just gotta hope inertia keeps GW from nerfing an entire phase into uselessness and they go with less sweeping changes that will actually be better for the game. And nerfing the shooting phase of course doesn't touch on a model like kroak that pulses out all the mortal wounds in the hero phase. Stormcast are also one of the worst armies in the game right now, and are not a target for balancing units towards. Because people aren't very good a metric for anything. They are barely a good metric for basing a government on really. Statistics and gameplay are a better tool, and, like, people who actually know how to read them and not go "Oh, I see KO are this month's top faction. Time to nerf every army's shooting". That would be just as nuts as a year going "Ah, Hedonites are the best faction. Time to nerf all melee" Be really neat to have dedicated assassins. But they'd also have to get there before the support characters go off and the hammer unit has won the game for your opponent. Or you, because AoS is that kind of arms race. that's cause 40k support heroes tend to be tankier MEQs then AoS support heroes. He reliably snipe out guard heroes Okay, what are, in your estimation based on whomever, the top armies in the meta?

It takes 280 points of sentinels to kill a 5 wound support hero. I am hoping that hero isn't 280 points themselves really. I mean the issue is if you don't kill that support hero, then that unit of skinks is gonna teleport/run and shoot, get 80 attacks, be more defensice than most big dinos, do mortal wounds, and get hit buffs. Support heroes remain over represented and too many makes the game worse. It is, again, why skinks are so strong. The game should not revolve around dumping 3 to 6 different buffs on a unit and watching it then win the game. It's too damn much. You are here complaining about literally one shooting unit in the entire game and using that as the justification to nerf the entire mechanic. Can you not see how ridiculous this is? "Sentinels are uninteractive and OP. So we should nerf all shooting". Like, wot? What? You can in fact screen out most shooting in the game. Most shooting in the game has range limits and movement limits. You can keep you units out of range, pressure them with melee, use LoS blocking. It's as interactive as properly screening out melee (I mean, I guess a lot of people don't use pile in tricks the game fully supports to make the most of melee moves). I honestly don't know what game you play where every single combat phase has meaningful interactions. Interactive is not "I just get to throw dice". That is not what the word means.

I did address your points, you just seem to wanna whine. Shooting's advantage is more freedom in targeting. Its disadvantage is lower DPP. It's not really comparable for most shooting units. The one where it is are candidates for nerfing, because shooting shouldn't have the dpp of melee. Which, again, it largely doesn't. But just like when the best armies (and again, hedonites were THE BEST ARMY the game has ever had) were melee based, the problem was not that melee was too strong and we needed a nerf to melee mechanics. These overarching hammers to entire mechanics are almost always a bad idea. A 40k look out sir would make a worse game. Heck, it made a far worse game in 8th edition with all the stacking of auras. They've trimmed back a lot of the aura nonsense, but, man, support characters are still t0o darn meta warping in 40k. Stack a FNP, stack a reroll, stack another reroll, this guy lets you do mortal wounds. It's this nonsense that hurts the game more than shooting ever could. How the heck do you balance a combo that is 4 moving parts and turns a mediocre unit into a nearly unstoppable one? Just make the models involved unviable outside the combo with point nerfs? Or do you take away the combo (hint, do the second. This would fix KO) This talk of interactivity makes me want to post a princess bride meme. Like it's hard to talk about it because I'm not sure you know what the word means. What make a melee alpha strike more interactive than a shooting one? You can, in fact, screen both. What other interactions are you looking for? No really? Is it literally just alternating combats?