stratigo

KO wouldn't be a viable army without fly high. And man, they already spent a year living in the trash like goblins, let them sooooar now, in a time when almost no one can actually play them regularly before they get nerfed to dwell in the trash with goblins once more. Changing fly high is something for a new book. I'm not entirely sure how you could change it and make the army playable though. It'd have to be a rewrite from all levels. Honestly I think if you took the knees out from under the primary abusive tools in the KO list (Out of sequence teleport and the bottle), the army would go down to good, but not the top. There really is a lack of damage that the WLV easily compensates for, and without the out of sequence port, you can't put your biggest guns in a position to maximize their firepower first turn. You have to play a much cagier list than the current all in alpha strike allows for. Your entire post is pretty much "I just don't like shooting" in so many words. I mean, where do you think the shooting came from? I can tell you, on a pure DPP level, the last KO book was VASTLY stronger than the current one. Like double shooting skyhooks and double attacking riggers dramatically out damage anything the KO can do now. And they were STILL in the trash. Because they had no way to deliver damage without dying or failing on objectives. If you, in some big brain move, removed all the guns from KO, but gave them back double attacking riggers (and allowed a max squad to teleport), you better believe KO would still be stomping people's gonads in in almost the same way as now (albeit the only viable list would be the zilfin drop period, like it was before the zilfin drop was nerfed to poop in the last battletome). It isn't raw damage that's the problem, nerfing the damage numbers just makes far more units nonviable. Which is a terrible idea. Shooting units are not remotely more dangerous than melee units as some sort of rule. Indeed, you do a dpp of KO units with buffs and compare it to most melee hammers with buffs, and you'll see which comes out ahead (hint, it's dramatically a melee hammer. Like triple to four times the damage). The problem is not shooting. People just don't like losing and so want a big ol' overarching easy nerf to make those armies wot they lose to go away. The problem is GW made shooting units overtuned with ways to deliver a bunch of mortal wounds (LRL and seraphon) or concentrate their armies easily at any point on the battlefield(KO). Also, how do all these shooting nerfs matter, if the some of the primary source of shooting damage is crit fishing or from spells (LRL and seraphon)? And the funny thing is, IDK is, right now, probably the strongest army. Without much shooting. Yes, there are several overtuned shooting units. That said, even the overtuned shooting units generate less damage than melee hammers usually do. the answer is that there are too many support heroes. Honestly, I'd actually like support heroes to be dramatically scaled back. Heck make em more vulnerable. GW keeps pooping them out cause they easy and profitable and it breaks the game when you can take your 6 different skink heroes and buff your 80 skinks to the moon. Less support characters GW, please.

Sure, you can nerf shooting to irrelevance and every army that relied on it will be trash. There's no gotchya here that you're trying, so stop being silly. There's no army that relies on melee alone either. Melee and shooting are how an army can deliver damage. But none of that matters if they can't actually get to a position to roll them dice. KO isn't at the top because it shoots good. CoS can make an army that napkin maths way better DPP for shooting. KO is at the top because it can teleport. The most important phase will always be the movement phase for 90 percent of armies. And that won't ever change. Like, there has been no changes in the AoS base rules between now and since the strongest armies were melee based. And this game saw no dominance like Hedonites dominance, and army that had no shooting at all. And DoK had a top reign for a long butt time too. Both melee. The problem isn't shooting. The problem is that currently the OP armies are shooting armies. The answer isn't to go "Well I guess we should nerf all shooting for all time so only melee armies can sit at a 70 percent winrate". The answer is to fix the OP armies. Without ****** over literally every other army that isn't OP but so happens to use a little shooting.

Actually they were trash right before the book dropped and it looked like the handful of good units they did have got nerfed (and they did, neither arkanauts or rigger are near as strong as they used to be), but some people did warn about the terror that is a WLV on turn one from anywhere. Legit a WLV spews out like 15 mortal wounds. Spell in a bottle was a mistake, it's too hard to balance eh? Table size never really mattered for shooting or melee in AoS. Everything just teleports or moves 30 inches in a turn these days. What top table army isn't jamming their face in turn 1? Actually what top table army isn't using teleports everywhere? IDK maybe? IDK is really the only strong army that isn't hyper focused on ruining people turn 1 and instead prefers to do it turn 3.

There is not a single army that has just shooting as it’s only thing. Indeed such an army would be pretty bad. I suppose LRL are the closest, but you still have to be spicy with movement and screening to capitalize on firepower

Almost every nerf to shooting people are suggesting is essentially "We want shooting to suck and go away". Like, yeah, if you can nerf shooting so that it pretty much goes away. It's not gonna balance the game, it will just get rid of shooting. Whatever the new hot melee OP thing is will drag the game through the mud. Over arching nerfs to a playstyle are bad unless you legit are looking for an excuse to get rid of that playstyle in its entirety. You can actually achieve balance by... balancing units and not just going "Get rid of shooting"

they already pooped the bed, but the answer isn't to shrug and go "Well I guess since we did it once this bed we sleep in is now also our toilet"

They hardcore toned up one of Slaanesh's primary gimicks. 40k codexes have always been more sweeping and expansive in their changes than AoS battletomes. 40k has more moving parts by a fair margin Don't you watch the Honest Wargamer? IS cause they didn't have enough data, obviously.

I mean, yes, it is. Less mortal wounds would be really nice in AoS.

I guarantee someone is gonna figure out a way to abuse the summoning and hedonites will be rocking the top tables for a time. Maybe by abusing this. and tossing a burning head through their 10 min sized units.

those are hard nerfs, that only ever hit mundane shooting, and so much of the game is magical artillery. A double turn is bad, and doesn't help a slow army, because a slow army is a bad one and they are gonna lose against a good army even with a double turn.

SCE are a dated book in a poor position. I'd be happier if every army in the game got a slash to its movement and offensive output, but that's not gonna happen in any reality. It'd require either them pulling a 40k 8th (or raging hordes) and doing away with the battletomes available to start at 0, or deliberately cycling down the power of new releases, crushing a lot of the hype of getting a new release and taking YEARS to finish anyways. So what we will get is SCE buffed to competitive awesomeness whenever their next book releases. But if your complaint is "Ugh, my bad melee army can't chase down a competitive shooting army, so we have to nerf all shooting super hard" I have no sympathy. It isn't the inability to catch them that makes shooting strong. Indeed most shooting armies focus on going hard in the enemy's face in an alpha strike, because if they don't, then by turn three the entire shooting army has been run down and is dead. LRL kinda fudge this because they have 30 inch range and teclis. So do Seraphon with cast anywhere kroak (and let's make no mistake, seraphon lean hard on the magical artillery of kroak). But KO can't afford to let the enemy army charge them without having already delivered a crippling blow.

It is far more common for long range to be the only penalty. And in AoS, if you are playing a melee army that cant go from 18 inches to a charge, you're playing a bad army. Sorry. Khorne can EASILY push 18 inches. The vast majority of AoS melee armies have bonuses to move, extra moves, bonuses to charge, run and charge, or just high movement. If you can't make that charge, play a better army, or learn the rules of the army you are playing better. You can screen out KO for a turn. But you can't for two,

They don't work fine for melee either, a double turn allows you to pick and choose all the fights you want. If you are throwing units away in fights they can't win, then something has gone wrong for you. The game's not so dense that players can afford a more than a couple of very strong units, either through their own stat blocks or by buffing them to the moon. With a double you get to decide what to annihilate in combat two turns in a row without actually having to risk your hammer units, and it is extremely rare for your opponent to have enough tools left to respond.

This sounds like someone who has played neither AoS or WHFB. 18 inches is guarenteed charge range for the majority of armies in AoS Hitting on 5s was by far the most common hit roll for shooting in WHFB, and that would be because most armies were BS 3

What depth. Please explain it Because turns alternate. I'd be over the moon if they adopted SBG like rules. it's be amazing. Which is why it will never happen

A lot of KO players can miss this, but they don't have to pull the alpha turn one The teleport wars! XD.

If you could reliably get it into a position where you are stacking minus 3 to hit on a unit of thunderers in a place where they have targets and are on an objective, I can see it having some play But it also is still unbindable, so you likely can't get actually do this stack in a realistic game.

The most important determinant of victory in AoS is the list you run. A tourney list won't be beaten by a casual list. There's a reason you see the same lists in tournaments over and over.

I enjoy the hype. I don't enjoy them obfuscating their plans to prevent people from making informed purchasing decisions

"Ugh people, stop talking about business ethics, I'm completely happy buying without considering them" Using an information advantage in an attempt (even one that backfires) to get people to make purchases they would not if they had the information being withheld is a violation of business ethics. Indeed in serious cases it is actively illegal even here in America. It is not something we should blithely scoot past as "who cares, pretty models". It is a big deal. If you believe in the free market, you should be mad about this. The free market is no longer free if one side of a transaction holds a decisive information advantage over the other. People are regularly being bludgeoned with the idea that it's their fault if don't they take hours researching products before purchase after they finish their 60 hour workweek. But the second a business actively withholds information for advantage, well now it's just fine? Come on people. I know having a consistent ethical framework is hard, but unless you watched the wolf of wall street and went "yeah, that's how markets SHOULD work", then business strategies like this SHOULD NOT be acceptable. Ethics matter, and egoism is a pretty atrocious ethical framework that will backfire on you unless you have the wealth of Bezos.

Eg, GW makes a lot of money off of being unethical.

Yes. You are correct. But consumers might be able to make informed purchasing decisions with more information, and we can't have that. The less information they have the more power the business has.

As the wise sage krillen said, “I feel like a man dying of thirst watching another man drown”

making a copy of a book you own isn't actually illegal. Making a copy and then giving that copy to someone else is. Making a copy of a book you don't own is obviously also illegal.

it probably isn't piracy because you aren't receiving a copy. But it IS almost certainly a violation of GW's copyrights. GW doesn't care so much. They get the best of both worlds. Free rules, but also bilking people not in the know or who have some strange moral attachment to corporate bottom lines. The rules aren't the IP GW is desperate to protect. It's the models.