Just thought it would be fun to start a discussion separate from the rumor thread on how AoS 3.0 is going for everybody? Have you gotten to play many games with the new rules? If so, are you enjoying them? Are you not liking them as much as 2nd edition? How are you faring playing Seraphon in the new edition? Do you prefer 3rd edition or are you trying to stick with 2nd? Let's get this conversation going!
I played my first 3.0 game this weekend. 1000 pts. I played KC; Hold the line Scar-vet on Carno (general, eviscerating blade, forgot to pick mount trait) Starseer (hand of glory, amulet of destiny) Skink priest (heal) 10 knights 5 knights 20 skinks 10 skinks My buddy played Soulblight Gravelords Kastelai; Hold the line (I think) Price Vhordrai Necromancer 10 skeletons 10 dire wolves 5 blood knights We had to stop before we could truly finish. I was winning by victory points with some advice from my friend, but I it would have been close. He had all of his army left, except the unit of skeletons. I did do a couple faux rolls after we called it and I might have pulled out a win; I made a good run with my Carno, to claim an objective, and then a charge into his wolves with my Carno. I think our knights could use rend at least on the charge, for either their weapons or the cold ones. Prince Vhordrai is hard to damage with "all out defense" (a 2+/6++). I wounded him with an insane amount of attacks and did 3-4 damage total. But, everyone else seems to perform better with knights, so it's likely just me trying to lobby for extra Seraphon love. Regardless, the 10 knights held up Vhordrai for a couple combats, so they sort of did their job (a 5-man would have been wiped in 1 combat). In general, there is much more to remember in 3.0. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it gives 3.0 a bit more of a learning curve for me. The smaller table made it easier for me to "alpha charge" on turn 1. But it's hard to avoid units, especially if they have even a decent move. Despite being Seraphon, I rarely felt like I had quite enough command points to respond to everything. I understand you probably shouldn't be able to do everything, and therefore must be judicious with your command points, but one of the features of 3.0 is that you're not left just waiting for your opponent to finish their turn. Both of us typically held our command points for the usual "all outs" or "don't break", which felt like AoS 2. We both tried a "redeploy" and I could have tried an "unleash hell", but with skinks at a 6+ it didn't feel worth it. I've always gotten too wrapped up in trying to destroy units than trying to gain points, so you have to remember to play your strategies and the battle requirements. Picking out which strategy to use each round was kind of neat, because you must pick a different one each round. It encourages you look at the table to figure out something to achieve, and often makes you do something to win other than "I kill my opponent". Plus, better players will likely be able to use strategies to plan ahead more than I did. Anyway, it was pretty fun. It generally felt like AoS 2, except for the Strategies.
This is kind of how I feel as well. Despite GW trying to act like the rules are simpler, it still feels like there's more to keep track of in 3rd edition than in 2nd. I find myself struggling to remember heroic and monstrous actions and the battle tactics each turn. Would you mind elaborating? I'm interested to hear what you like about the game that 3rd edition doesn't.
Yes @Kilvakar, we forgot those too. Agreed. I'd like to hear what part is causing issues @Erta Wanderer. Also, I did want to add that my friend and I tried to adhere to the new coherency rules, but we sort let it go eventually. I know they're not as hard to understand/follow as I'm making out. Basically, we just didn't daisy chain anything but 25mm based units, or pile in with everything. But we didn't worry too hard after we got into the battle. Partially it's because it's yet another thing to keep up with, and (connected to that) I think they're unnecessary.
The coherency rules are definitely unnecessary, GW just wanted to shift the focus from hordes to smaller but tougher units or big centerpiece models. The smaller unit caps are more than enough, they didn't need to make it impossible to get hordes into combat on top of that. And it doesn't affect shooting hordes, which were the bigger problem most of the time.
I joined too late to play with 2.0 rules. For what its worth I'm having lots of fun with 3.0. Its pretty rules heavy but I think it gets way easier the more you play. When 3.0 first dropped my group was making loads of errors. But playing average 2 games a week and feel like everyone has a pretty good handle on it now. I'd agree that the coherency rules unfortunately really limits usefulness of some units forcing you to take many of them MSU. If you play with same units often you'll start to learn the basic formations for the different base sizes to keep them coherent and games will go quicker.
I really hate how the game favours 3+ and 2+ monsters and especially heroes with mounts. Amulet of Destiny in basically every list, infinite stacking of saves, rendering low rend (no pun intended) close to useless, unleash hell, miscasts, new CA system and espeically coherency - lots of things feels uneceessary and try either to solve problems, that didn't exist, or break other stuff by solving it. To be honest, I miss 2.0. Despite many improvements, the game feels now way more random and favor specific units/builds way too much.
I'm still trying to figure out how to play my Koatl's Claw army. Previously I went with two big units of Saurus Warriors that I heaped buffs onto, with some knights, a Slaan and a monster or two to help out. But the new reinforced units rule has completely thrown me. I have 120 fully painted Saurus Warriors and I just don't know how to use them anymore. Small units of Warriors seem dreadful and at best I can run two units of 30 at the cost of everything else being MSU. My army's background doesn't support going Skink heavy and besides, I like the Saurus playstyle, but 3.0 seems to actively hate them.
we play once a week and have a tournament once a month. so ive gotten a good amount of 3.0 games in. its an ok rules set but its a 40k edition in aos clothing. I dont like that they keep pushing it in that direction.
think the rules are the best they've ever been. meta is a bit rough at the moment. I love most of the battleplans and think the move towards hold one, two, and more + battle tactics is genius. Hopefully they swap out battle tactics every year to keep things a little interesting. The save stacking/mortal wound arm race is bound to reach a tipping point at some point in the edition and i'm interested to see what happens then.
I've played about a dozen games so far, and been enjoying it. It feels like games are generally closer this edition then in 2.0 in my area, which is a big plus as far as I'm concerned.
i like the idea of armies fighting armies not small squad tactics. i like big blocks of infantry i like the grand scale. i like melee ground pounders grinding it out in combat. i like complex machines of support buffs and abilities that make someone incredible. all of this is no longer the main focus of AoS, what we have now is solid but it just isn't what i love about wargames.
It would be nice if they could support both types. I'm probably a minority of one in this, but I envision a fantasy game like this as Godzilla vs Ghidorah, with the troops choices being the hapless grunts who get wiped out in Act One to show how awesome your chosen kaiju is. Even painting up some 10-blocks of Saurus for EotG summoning seems like a bit of a pain, because I'd like each model to be an individual that I take my time with. This is crazy, but I wonder if they have ever thought of doing the Old World stuff in 6mm? Bow and cannon ranges could make some actual sense in that scale. In 28/32mm a longbow should probably shoot about 10 feet if we're going with scale! Whereas in 6mm having it shoot 24" seems about spot on, etc. Man you could have some splendid armies on the table at that scale too.
Ok so I haven't really played in any tournaments outside one a few friends and I did. So in a sense we did play a lot. It was really enjoyable for me because my dread saurian had the Totem keyword and roar of ruin. Currently I am having a so so time it's enjoyable mostly but it has extremely frustrating moments
OK, let's try to put some order in my thoughts. First, I'm not saying that with 3.0 GW did a step up and two steps back, but one step back certainly yes. First, the rules are more complicated than 2.0, and you need to keep track of more things. Yes, with more games you become more used to it, but this doesn't negate the fact that 3.0 is less friendly than 2.0 some innovations are good. for example, you can issue only 1 command and you can receive only 1 command per phase is good, it stops the excesses of piling in too many c.a. This, combined with the fact that the stacking bonuses are topped at +1/-1, takes the game toward a more balanced setting, which is good. Except is not totally true. If your army got access to rend -1, in 2.0 that was good. Now, with the easy access to things as all out defense, that advantage is heavily nerfed. All new warscrolls tend to have abilities that trigger with nat. 6+... except GW is already introducing elves with MWs for 5+, thus bypassing that tendency to self-balance. Look out Sir is now basically worthless. a -1 to hit is easily negated by All out Attacks, and if the opponent can have another source of +1 to hit... well, your support hero is good as dead. ATM if you face a shooting army or something with good magic, heroes sniping is a thing, even more than in 2.0. There's a reason why look out sir in 40k shields the heroes from harm: a -1 is not enough, can be overcome too easily. These changes broke many armies, and yes... we are talking about battletomes not written for 3.0, but the fact is still that, as long as battletomes are not updated, certain armies are just out of play, and i don't care if GW will update them eventually, if i have to wait 2 or 3 yrs. Let's just make an example with undead. Nighthaunts save at 4+, unmodifiable. Some of the new c.a. as All out Defense for them are completely worthless, while the change to mystic shield from "reroll 1s" to "+1 to save" actively hampers them. Their heroes are weak and are made only for support, but against some shooting they are toast. Soulbligh have access to heroes on monsters with multiwounds that start from 3+ saves, can ignore negative modifers and still enjoy the bonuses granted by Mystic Shield and All out Defense. Both are undead armies, but they are playing in different leagues. Now, let's make a more general example of "one step up and one step back". Realms artefacts were unbalanced and, for the sake of the game, it was the right thing to get rid of them, despite the loss of options. But now we have the Amulet of Destiny, which is basically the cornerstone for like 9 armies on 10. In 2.0 FNP 6+ was pure gold, now you can give a FNP 5+ to your hero on monster. Tell me why i should not take it? There are other things that were potentially very good, but have been developed in a bad way. It's good the limit to oversized units: the cap to reinforce a unit is a brilliant rule. But the additional burden of coherency is too much, it cripples hordes. If you consider the big bonuses given to monsters, it's clear that the decision making process was not aimed to create balance by removing big deathstars, but was simply aimed to sell more monsters because hordes were already sold. SO... is 3.0 better than 2.0? I'd say they are different, and for certain things 3.0 is without doubt an improvement. But the difference is not that great.
Thanks to everyone for the replies! Now to add my own experience so far.... It's not much experience, lol! I've only gotten in 2 games of AoS 3rd edition and in both games things went more or less as normal (since the majority of the core gameplay rules are the same), but neither myself nor the people I was playing with were good at remembering all the new things to do in each phase. We basically forgot about Heroic Actions and Monstrous Rampages the entire game. We only remembered to pick Battle Tactics once or twice, but we at least remembered the Grand Strategy Smaller unit sizes are fine, unit coherency is not. It's a terrible rule and it should go die in the Warp I 100% agree with the sentiment that the monster-focused rules were just made to push sales of a new model type since hordes were the way to go in 2e and monsters didn't stand a chance against 40 units shooting them to pieces or shredding them in melee through sheer weight of attacks. I personally think this change was almost entirely due to three factors: 1: Sons of Behemat weren't good when released in 2e, and GW really wanted to sell those big, $200 single models. 2: They also wanted to push sales of their "god models" like Teclis, Alarielle, Archaon, Kragnos, etc. (except, of course, Kroak, who had to be nerfed despite getting a new model since he was the single most complained about unit at the end of 2e). And 3: They wanted to create an illusion of a lower bar of entry by pushing the idea that you now had to buy fewer models to get a competitive army. But this doesn't really seem to be actually the case, as now you have to buy more of the expensive mega heroes or elite units like Varanguard, Dracothian Guard, Stegadons, etc. to get a competitive army, and the cost of those models is going up. This is speculation, but what I don't like the sound of going forward is this "Seasons of War" idea, or whatever it's called, where they focus on a new Realm of Battle each year. Presumably, this will mean a shift in the meta around what unit types and armies are going to have an advantage each year, in the hopes of getting the super-fans and meta-chasers to change up their army, if not just buy an entirely new army, every year. I would much rather them at least try to balance their game. But instead, they seem to be leaning toward the League of Legends approach of "let's just change the game constantly to force people to use different characters" This practice is rather scummy even for video games based on microtransactions, I think it's downright nasty for a game that requires physical toys that can cost $50-$100+ for a single model and also have to be assembled and painted by hand. But on the good side, monster buffs were needed and are much appreciated. While I agree with @Erta Wanderer that I like the feel of larger armies duking it out, they really needed to find a way to make monsters more usable. I would have preferred simply bigger monster buffs rather than kneecapping hordes, but like @Killer Angel said the new edition feels like a "one step forward, one step back" approach most of the time. I will say I actually like the addition of things like secondary objectives and more reactive command abilities. These are a step in the right direction and they make the game a lot more interesting since they keep both players engaged during each other's turns. They do take some extra work to remember, though. While I personally hate the fact that battalions don't give very good bonuses anymore, I can agree with why they were removed. There were a few factions with battalions that were so broken it wasn't even funny (Tzeentch), and many with battalions that weren't even worth taking. Same with Realm artifacts, although in practice all they did was take away the Aetherquartz Broach and replace it with Amulet of Destiny, lol! I hope that they introduce some better artifacts when the battletomes start coming out. The power creep for new units is real, though. Most good units are starting out with a 4+ save, and most heroes or tougher units are on a 3+ or even a 2+ save to begin with. So unless you have rend 3 or higher, you're often dealing with enemies that only take damage if they roll 1s. Not fun. All in all, I don't hate it, but don't like it. Perhaps after I play more 3e games I'll get used to it as I get a better understanding of how the new gameplay works. But one thing I can say is I still love playing Thunder Lizards, and that hasn't changed with the new edition! Just give Saurus some love this time around, will you GW?
Just curious, has everybody moved to the smaller tables? The escalation league at my FLGS hasn't, which means that staying on the 4x6 tablee size is the norm here.