AoS Costs of battalions

Batallion Costs: Too High

Band-Aid Solution: cut costs for all of them, for all Armies, by some set percentage. Such as:

Multiply by 0.75 across the board.

Use the reduced values in actual practice for 12 months. Gauge results. Reduce again until proper values are found.

 

I'd suggest using a slightly more targetted solution. First check which armies rely on battalions. Only reduce the cost for those.

Measuring sticks for how much an army relies on it:

1) Does it (nearly) Always use a battalion, say at least half the time
2) Are the units comparable to similar units in another army. E.g. how does a unit of say saurus warriors stack up against other horde infantry such as skeleton warriors, orruks.
3 If it is Always the same battalion, check if this one battalion isn't horrificly overpowered or simply buffs everything the army has, in which case it's probably fine with a high cost.

If the anwsers are "yes", "others are way stronger" and "no" you probably should just lower the costs and then see again

 

I don't get why they can't just make first turn a roll off? Or maybe the concept of strategically choosing armies with lower drops is core to the game of aos and it would suck if it went to a roll off and cut out that strategy. Hmm

 

In 40k they changed it to a roll off where whoever finished deployment first gets +1 to their roll. It doesn’t give you an automatic advantage but still helps on occasion. They’ll likely introduce that mechanic to AoS if it works in 40k and then hopefully drop the cost of battalions.

 

If it's core it's a silly core as it doesn't make any real sense. Deploying one after another naturally encourages being the last to finish deploying cuz if the other guy has already finished putting his stuff down you can now put your remaining stuff in such a way that you can take full advantage of flaws in his set-up, or protect yourself from Obvious traps. Including who goes first in it is just odd.

Still not particularly sensible, but at least now you'd get somewhat of a trade-off as it's no longer guaranteed to give the other guy the decision. Makes for an actual trade-off, do I want to optimize my deployement or do I want to have a slghtly higher chance of choosing who goes first.

 

I actually think as a general rule that battalion costs are fine. The problem is that they did a blanket increase across the board when the obvious problem is that some battalions do a lot more than others. If you just increase something across the board you don't really strike at the heart of the issue which imo is battalion balance, but as balancing battalions would be a nightmare I assume they chose the easy way out by limiting them with high point costs.

If I was writing the rules (which I would likely be terrible at) I would limit the number of battalions allowed when building your list and do another pass over the points of each battalion based on the benefits that they offer.

As far as the first turn thing goes. I think that list planning is a huge part of this game, and choosing to have more drops is a very valid tactic vs going first and showing all of your cards in deployment. Again just my opinion, but the reason this feels bad atm is the increase in alphas and mobility creep that have become a reality in this game.

Just my 2 cents. Feel free to object. I'd love to hear some more thoughts.

 

The issue with battalion costs, and limits on the number of battalions is that it disproportionally affects armies that rely on synergies (and thus on battalions). Take our seraphon for example. If you bring a shadowstrike host you have a good battalion. But it is also increadibly specialized and can't stand on its own as a fullfledged army. Plus it's literally only 4 units. This makes using just a shadowstrike host as your entire army impossible. On top of that, the bonusses from a battalion are sometimes needed for units to actually be powerfull. Take our skinks, without those rerolls from a shadowstrike host they're not ever going to do anything more than merely annoy your opponent. Which has it's uses, but it's not exactly going to get you very far.

In contrast, there's battalions like the fangs of sotek that actually forms a full fledged army, or stuff like the stormforged who's models don't need a bonus to be a threat. Giving battalions a (high) cost, or a limit won't be a problem fwhen using those last two. But it is a (fairly severe) problem for those using the first two.

As for the first turn, the idea of giving players control over who goes first is decent. But using the size of the army for it is just a tad weird, and it isn't exactly logical or intuitive. The rule in 40K where it just gives you +1 to the diceroll to decide who goes first is much better as the tradeoff isn't as extreme. Alpha strike and mobility creep just makes it even worse.

 

I actually respectfully disagree with ALMOST everything you said there. I did say I would like to see another pass on the points for balance reason. I think we generally agree there.

The limiting battalions thing seems at least to me to be gw's design decision atm. What I was trying to say is to just limit that to a hard number. (1 battalion at 1k, 2-3 at 2k ect, those are rough numbers of course) instead of making some battalions in accessible.

On the point of turn order I think a smaller more organized force (lower drop) would logically be able to out maneuver a larger less organized force ( higher drop) and seize initiative. Is it perfect? No. Is it logical? Sure.

As always these are just my thoughts and thanks for your insights. I can understand a lot of where you are coming from just happen to slightly disagree. Cheers!

 

Well I disagree with that design decision cuz of the aforementioned reason of it disproportionally affecting certain types of armies. Generally speaking, I dislike hard limits on anything that just flat out says you can only bring X of Y as it tends to screw with certain play-styles. They often feel like bandaids trying to fight a symptom and don't actually solve the cause. E.g. the rule of one breaks most wizard-based armies, and stops arcane bolt spam, but doesn't actually fix the mortal wound spam if you take the right collection of wizards (take a skaven warlock engineer and arch-warlock and a random one and you still have 3 mortal wound spells with basicly the same range & casting values...)

Similarly limiting the battalions does stop people from abusing artifacts or in this case getting the first drop (though this seems to be an unintended side-effect). But it also stops armies that rely on synergies, like our own, to really get going as we simply can't afford to spend >20% of our points on battalions if the other guy only spends 5%. It'l put us at far too much of a disadvantage.. Similarly if you just say "x battalions per y points" then armies that rely on them are still kinda screwed since armies that don't rely on them just effectivly get a free battalion which they don't really need.

On a sidenote, battalions already have the limitation of requiring specific troops. I'd rather see them utilizing that to limit battalion abuse. Taking say 2 shadowstrike hosts shouldn't work well simply because it only gives you cannonfodder and some mildly effective assasins, that shouldn't form a particularly good army and should be defeated by most opponents. Now taking say a shadowstrike and bloodclaw starhost should already work better as a fullfledged army as they compliment eachother, but it's still has clear weaknesses. If you utilize that effect to balance it it'd feel much nicer I think. Admittadly, so far the only one for whom this'd really work would be seraphon as far as I've seen. It'l for example not work all that well on sylvaneth seeing as they have a mere 10 units so it'l be much more difficult to limit it. Clan pestilence would be even more ridiculous with 6 units, unless they'd get battalions that only include 1 unit type at a time....

Our slann literally just materialize our entire army at the snap of a finger, sometimes they even just materialize them by dropping the entire army from the sky on top of our enemy. I don't think that the size and organization of our opponent's army will do much to catch us off-guard and seize the initiative

As for the armies led by those less capable than slanns, it's still supposed to be an enemy army. Armies aren't generally capable of sneaking up on people seeing as they're huge and relativly slow compared to scouts & refugees running away to get out of its path... Also, army size won't really matter for getting the drop, organisation does though. And organisation works, regardless of having 10 battalions or 1. An organized army would for example already be travelling in a formation that allows fast deployment.

Not to mention, this'd imply that a greenskin army, who's main tactic is running at an enemy yelling "waaaaaaaaaaaaaagh" really loudly, can manage to get the drop on highly organized forces that employ scouts like the SCE, seraphon, various mortal armies etc. simply because there's less greenskin units or cause they're "organised".

 

Lol what a read! It was fun though.

Yeah my battalion system prolly wasn't perfect but an idea if GW wanted to stick to their current guns.

Rules for first turn have to be done game wide. Considering individual army fluff (like a slann summoning or a greenskin wagh) for a game wide rule would be a mess.

Personally I have never had any problems with our battalions as we have so much selection. I do also tend to build lists around a single battalion with support so that is prolly the reason why, but I never feel at a disadvantage doing so.

 

It's not a good post unless its over 500 words

True, my point was more that smaller forces being somehow able to gain the drop on a larger force doesn't really make much logical sense in-universe. Nor does it in reality really, at least not on the scale of an army.

The battalions themselfs usually aren't that bad yea, it's that certain stuff just doesn't work well outside of their battalion and that since most of our battalions are fairly specialised and we don't have a general purpose battalion we end up wanting to field multiple of em, at which point their costs become excessive rapidly.

This would be a good alternative solution as well, it'd make battalions less limited and less specialised allowing for at least some wiggle room. Especially if battalions are going to get costs and limitations that aren't just "this battalion requires X of unit Y" I'd feel like this kind of wiggle room is necesary.

What I'd personally would also like would be for certain battalions effects to take hold on stuff outside the battalion. E.g. the priest commanding a shadowstrike host gives rerolls to everyone, not just the starhost members. That way battalions can actually synergize nicely and the required backup that's needed isn't as severly hamstrung by not being it's own "proper" battalion.