AoS FAQ is out. Bastiladon is god

No, it replied to a question that about Scaly Skin interactions with Mortal wounds. It just said "No".

Adding the "This rule does not apply to damage caused by Mortal Wounds" would just make it crystal clear to never interact with them. It wouldn't change how the rest of the ability functions (which is pedantic and frustrating to explain to others, much like other rules in our tome), so therefore would just be an additional parameter to the rule.

 

Unless my math is wrong, if you have a Bastiladon at max health with mystic shield/reroll save rolls of 1s with a command ability, the enemy effectively has to deal 108 damage on average (assuming 1 damage attacks) before it brackets.

1/6 of the saves will fail = 18 damage goes through due to unmodified 1s.
You then reroll due to mystic shield/reroll save rolls of 1s = 1/6 of those will fail = 3 damage, which makes it bracket 2 and is now being effected by rend.

That is a lot of attacks, even for Plague Monks or Witch Aelves, if you can restrict the surface area around your Bastiladon.

 

yeah, at least if they just said "this rule doesn't apply to mortal wounds" we also wouldn't be having the discussion about what is and isn't an attack. It'd also be less stupid as the whole point of mortal wounds is that its super grievious wounds so it's relativly logical. Whereas distinguishing attacks from abilities is utterly arbitrary and leads to weird stuff where abilities & attacks that represent the exact same thing are treated differently based on semantics.

Though I'm also worried about what this rule will do for balance. The difference in damage reduction against specific armies is massive. And I don't see how they'l ever manage to fairly balance this. I wouldn't be surprised if it gets changed soon.

yup, dealing 3 damage requires a 108 failed saves as only 1 in 36 hits go unsaved with a re-rollable 2+ ignoring rend.

 

The answer is simple - they won't. As long as army doesn't take half out of top 10 places in GTs, GW woudn't pay attention to it.

 

well fortunatly Tzeentch is currently quite high ranked and we directly counter the flamer spam with our scaly skin, so maybe we'l get enough complaints going from tzeentch players to get it fixed

Are there any others that spam loads of multiple damage attacks? Aside from mawtribes?

 

Kharadron have quite a lot d3 or 2 damage shooting. Skaven shooting has enough multidamage (and can increase it too). I really wish, we had a thread about good and bad match-ups for Seraphon 2.0.

 

Ironjawz are generally 1 damage, but their Warchanter gives them +1 damage to all attacks, so it completely counters this.

These kind of rules really annoy me - They are borderline insane if you fight the "correct" army, but they do absolutely nothing if you fight a bunch of 1 damage attacks, like Plague Monks, Witch Aelves etc.

 

Yes, probably something like 5+ FNP would be better and more consistent. Against 2 damage, statistically, Scaly Skin is like 4+ FnP and against 3 damage it is like 5+ FNP (and these are more common), but completely useless again dmg 1. I'd like it to be 5+ fnp against damage 1-2-3 and 6+ against 4+.

 

also, a FNP wouldn't have the arbitrary distinction of attacks & abilities, allowing it to actually work consistently regardless of what is trying to kill you.

Imho, this rule is a giant confusing mess that's going to have to be fixed...

 

Yes, but there had still been a debate raging on despite this!

What I meant was that it should have been added to the scaly skin rules from the beginning. And rather than it being a Designer commentary, it should have been errata’d to “change the following phrase on page X” I find people feel that those kinds of changes have a touch more weight then a “can you do X?” “no.”

 

I feel they cleared it up pretty well. It’s still not “elegant” but now works as designed, apparently. Can’t think of any other ambiguous interpretations.

 

I think this is just the design team trying to make things different without completely rocking the boat. I would have preferred some MW protection as well, but I also do like armies with different mechanics that accomplish (somewhat) similar things.

It does create lopsided matchups, which is unfortunate, but I feel it was mainly designed for the big dinosaurs’ survivability in mind.

 

The issue is that it's soo different that it fundamently breaks certain armies. Oger armies face a blanket 30-50% damage reduction (depending on the exact list). DoK armies don't really care about scaly skin.

No ability should have that much variance in potential against various armies.

Don't get me wrong, the actual idea is neat. But unless every army is going to bring x% of 2 damage attacks and y% of 1 damage attacks it'l be impossible to balance since you'l be struggling with this large variance.

 

I hear you. I guess it’s the fundamental flaw with a narrative-driven tabletop game - how to make more than a dozen distinct armies actually distinct without causing major balance issues down the chain?

 

Well aside from the fact that some mechanics simply don't need to be distinct, here's an alternative:

- every 2nd point of damage suffered in a phase is negated.
-- A oger hits you for 2 damage with his clubs: it deals 1 damage cuz 1 damage got negated
-- Two witch aelves stab you for 1 damage each: it deals 1 damage cuz 1 damage got negated
-- First an oger hits you for 2 damage with his clubs, then a witch aelve stabs you for 1 damage: you suffer 2 cuz 1 damage got negated
-- Two ogers hit you for 2 damage each, it deals 2 damage cuz 2 damage got negated

problem solved. It's the basicly the same thing, but now it's opponent agnositic. Put in a caveat for mortal wounds if you want. Make it only work in the combat & shooting phase if needed. tweak some numbers etc. But at least this doesnt'have the inherent flawed variance.

or if you want to keep it a bit simpler just give our army extra wounds. Or bump up our save values by 1. Or give us a FNP. Or an army-wide -1 to hit/wound. Or have every unit heal/ressurect half of their wounds suffered during a phase at the end of that phase.

There's loads of ways to give us a bump in survivability that's thematic without immeadiatly creating such massive variance in performance depending on the opponent.

 

Agree. It is a fairly simple mechanic but it is not fair, and seeing some broken units/combos already, it sucks that we contribute to the problem.

I just meant that, holistically it is extremely difficult to balance vs so many variables whole making each army have a distinct flavour. And even if you do make each army relatively uniform, someone could still show up to a game with an army full of bad units (ie you also have to create internal balance within each battletome, which is also difficult/impossible. Scaly skin wins points for originality, and somewhat for internal battletome balance (cool way to differentiate coalesced vs starborne) but loses on external balance.