stratigo

They aren't wizards. So, no

If you ever build a KO list, I can tell you, It's all give or take. You do not choose lists for the battle line.

I mean, also, narrative games are just harder to do. You have to have someone, or someones, writing a narrative, and that takes effort. They have to be passionate and infuse that passion into others, and that's difficult. GW doesn't always supply the tools. And even when they do, that doesn't mean someone is going to use them in a compelling way. Like, I enjoy the new crusade campaign tools they created for 40k (and hope that will become part of AoS in time too), but my interest in it will go no where if there's no one to write a compelling story behind the system, a reason to do the fighting. Just running the campaign with no hook, and I may as well just play an escalation league.

Why an admiral?

I had my first session a couple weeks ago. I found it quite fun. It's relatively rules light, which was a nice refresher since I had been playing shadowrun 5e before that. And like... oh boy shadowrun you guys. I'm playing out of 7 different books! But Soulbound, it just all worked easy, understandable. I liked it. Also, deadlier than I thought it would be. I give the system a thumbs up

I wish GW found a way to make named characters worthwhile as generals. It always hurts my SoD to see morathi not leading the army she's in. Like, Morathi of all the people in the setting, would not let anyone one else take command of a force she's present in.

Playing KO.... you get bummed that no one's modeled most of your army into TTS. I still haven't actually played any games through it, but I have done some prep

The right thing to do rarely, if ever, factors into the business strategy of any large corporation. What is the profitable thing to do is what the decision making process is based on, and so, if relying on laziness is profitable, then they have no incentive to change anything. Companies are also, usually, rather conservative in changes they make and if they are sure of less profit, they will usually take that over the possibility of maybe more profit with a bit of risk.

A programmer calling GW out on poor programming is entirely valid. I have no restraint calling out badly researched or revised history, heck badly enough researched history is actively dangerous.

Gave it a read, good stuff.

GW is making more money than ever in spite of the CV. There is no actual excuse for poor service.

Many of the top table armies are built around winning the game in their first move. A double turn doesn't matter if your army was crippled turn one, and the rest is stuck fighting a tarpit in your own deployment zone. A few top table armies (*cough* OBR *cough*) are based around being unkillable in an actual fight. But that's all kind of a mess of battle tome power. There's just a lot of hardcore alpha potential in... HoS, DoT, KO, Seraphon, Dok... et cetera. And this isn't really a great thing. It isn't fun to have your army smashed off the board in one turn (usually the first one). But if you aren't building for this, you are putting yourself at the mercy of the double turn.

I don't play Lumineth. I'm just noting it's a kerfluffle in the rules. And it's never entirely certain GW is gonna fix it. 1+ bastillidons are a thing after all. GW confirmed that is was totally intentional that a bastilladon is immune to rend. They could also confirm this is also intentional.

Why people still play? They own an army. They like the community. They have fun with the game even when parts annoy people. And literally every battletome that comes out has narrative scenarios. This is something unique to AoS. 40k doesn't do this. A good chunk of AoS books are given over to path to glory. Something 40k also doesn't do. Every GHB contains narrative scenarios. Every campaign or special release had a narrative part of it. GW has never neglected narrative. In either of their main systems really. But you know what you can still do in a narrative game? Win. You can still win. So even narrative players aren't ignoring list building and optimum choices.

I mean, right now you take teclis because they borked one of his rules and he can put up a cog or lifeswarm and then bounce mortal wounds onto the enemy. Cluster an MSU army around him, put up a cog or lifeswarm, and suddenly you are putting out like 5d3 mortal wounds.

Most people also play matched play. Like, unquestionably. Matched play is what you play pick up. Not a grand narrative or a campaign or something. When you've got three hours to spare and want to throw down, you matched play. Which is why GW spends time on it. But they hardly ignore all narrative gaming. They're continually putting out campaigns, narrative scenarios, et cetera. But not many people pay attention to them. I think you're letting a bias color your perception of the content GW puts out. I can tell you that a lot of tournament players, flatly, just don't like a lot of AoS rules. They're not balanced. They're not even exploitable for those players that get off on winning by any means.

Very few AoS tourny players think any of the rules cater to them or to tournament play in the least.

Witch elves carry all the buffs of their faction more than they're incredible in isolation.

The answer is... probably.

Gunhaulers are just okay, especially in the context of a list where they are battleline. If you're relying on Gunhaulers to be your battleline, you're probly gonna lose because you can't hold objectives.

If it were possible, I'd run an entire KO army under Tempest eye rules

I mean, there's been a basic list paradigm that has plagued AoS ever since it got points. Stacking up one super unit, slamming it into the enemy, absolutely annihilating what it can get to and then going "Right, now try and fight through it". The Change host was this, par excellence. But pistoleer bombs would be quite effective at it. Even if you aren't immediately trashed by the unit, you're now playing from behind as the opponent scores behind the units it just slammed into your face that is taking you several turns to clear out. Alpha strike armies are kind of crummy to play against. And AoS pushes them quite hard since they are one of the few paradigms that controls effectively for a double turn. But how many of the best armies in AoS have been doing just this? I don't want CoS to be another army where you just hurl a couple stacked units into the enemy lines turn one and win, even if you don't completely demolish the enemy.

A lot of AoS ends up won on turn 1 by an army dumping a huge amount of CP into a decisive knock out. And it's not a particularly fun way of interacting with the game. And a bunch of those buffs are CP less.

My version of the list went full 20 thunderers in the iron clad with supporting characters and then frigates with arkanauts in a squadron. The issue is that I can't choose between the spell in a bottle khemist or the special flair navigator. I think WLV gets over valued a lot. Most of the top armies don't really struggle dispelling things, so you're spending 80 points on something that may only trigger once. I considered the geminids on top of like a fumigator and khemist to have a bubble of minus 3 to hit, but I'm not sure 3 inches is really enough space for that to work and fumigators are truly awful to try and magnetize. Only arm that's in two parts.

There's a limit. I absolutely do think giving fast CoS units access to all the buffs on demand would be OP. CoS already has, barring no faction, the absolutely best gunline in the game. It just lacks in ways to translate that onto getting onto objectives for points and can struggle pointing their static guns at the enemy. But if you could stack, say, all the buffs on a unit of pistoleers so that they're rocking 2 plus hit and wound with rend of 2, extra charge and move, run and shoot and charge, and the ability to do their shooting twice, it'd be kinda nutbars. You'd be launching stacked units of pistoleers like homing missiles out of your deployment zone and into the enemy's. But CoS clearly does need some way to translate their already existing and quite solid buffing line into more mobility, which is, in my estimation, what holds CoS back from competing at the top.