AoS The General's Handbook II Wishlist

It is that time where players look on into the future with hopes held tightly in their little hearts that their favourite model will be buffed and for their foes to be hit with the nerf-hammer. It looks to me that every year there will be a new General's Handbook with each one bringing gameplay balances that will promise to keep the meta fresh. I can whole heartedly would approve of this as we do not want our games becoming stale with one army list being dominant all the time especially all the different models available to us.

So with the second book well in the works I thought it would be fun for us to talk about what we would wish to change in terms of points and balance. I doubt that Games Workshop will be changing the rules dramatically, individual unit stats would most likely not change. I would also be curious what you guys would nerf as it is easier to know what you want to make stronger but more challenging to think what needs to be put down a peg.

I personally would nominate the mighty Carnosaur for a much needed buff, at the moment he is just too expensive and I never see him in any list. He is meant to be a centrepiece model just like the Slann, something that would stand proud in the centre. I would say making him 20-40 points cheaper will surely do a lot to help.

While I am tempted to nerf the Bastiladon as it is incredibly powerful due to its armour, I would actually suggest that the Skink Priest needs to be made a little more expensive as he is a force multiplier with his ability to gift re-rolls. Making him 20-40 points more expansive might be needed.

Lastly, I would imagine all us Seraphon generals would love to see some faction specific magical items but I imagine that that those won't be coming soon.

Edit: I neglected to throw you guys some interesting articles from the Warhammer Community site talking about the up and coming General's Handbook II. Below are the two links:

The General's Handbook II WIP Points Sneak Peek
General's Handbook II: Behind the Scenes

 

Less expensive Slann because they can no longer summon endless additional troops?

I would like to see generic magic items (usable by any army) designed to use up those last 10/20/30 points.

 

I would like some changes to be made to summoning to replace the "slapdash" fix that was added to stop the complaints. It's still the only part that I feel takes away my enjoyment of the game.

Failing that perhaps some kind of change to model rules that make certain armies more efficient at summoning. I believe I read somewhere here the idea that summoning armies could have a summoning based "resurrection" system where a killed unity could be brought back close to a summoner.

 

In general:

• Fix summoning and/or replace the mechanic.. at the very least for stuff like the seraphon fro whom it is supposed to be a major mechanic.
• Fix magic as a whole (the new stuff like tzeentch already has much more viable magic & wizards)
• Reduce mortal wound spam and/or give alternative protection to it. E.g. Make a armour save for regular wounds and a magic save for mortal wounds for everyone, thus resulting in units that are good against one or the other.

Specificly for seraphon:

• Give us more acces to our behemoths, our big dinosaurs are some our most interesting and powerfull stuff, but they're limited in the amount we can field, both in cost and just a hard cap. Give us some "cheap" options and a way to field a bunch of them.
• Give saurus warriors some use when you field them in smaller units. Saurus warriors nearly need to be a 40 man block to amount to anything significant
  • Alternativly give us 2 variations, a horde-unit and one for smaller units.
• Idem for skinks, though those are in a bit of a better place thanks to their mobility and range.
• Give saurus guard some more wounds & general survivablity. Yes they have a great save & yes in an eternal starhost they can be nigh on immortal in the right conditions but at 1 wound per model and 5 models in a unit they drop like flies whenever an attack does get through. 1 bad save roll, or a mortal wound attack can decimate a unit.
• Idem for chameleon skinks, again, a single attack not being saved can decimate them at 1 wound and 5 models.
• Warband & allegiance stuff.

That's it I think.

 

I've heard that every army that doesn't have special artefacts/allegiance abilities/command traits will be getting them in GHII, but it might have just been a rumour.

 

Honestly, I would be a bit annoyed if they didn't update the other armies XD If they didn't, I would be worried about armies going the way of the tomb kings :L

 

I doubt it'd be every army, given that that some "armies" are like 4 units (collegiate arcana) if you look at what GW sells. But I would expect them to at least update it for the ones that have a battletome, but not warband/allegiance etc. and I would expect them to give say a general " high aelf" one for the various high aelf factions and a general human one for the various free people and their corresponding institutions etc.

 

Fix the points.
Generic artefacts, mount traits and prayers by grand alliance.
More Scenarios.
Discard the third rule of one or update the warscrolls it affects.

 

I had forgotten about the third one. But I think the first one is even worse, it effectivly guts a proper wizard army.. I get where they are coming from with it, but it's just so flawed :S

 

A spell lore for Slann (or a generic Order spell lore)

Carnosaur bite attack Rend-2 instead of Rend-1

Cheaper battalions (all Seraphon battalions are overpriced)

Ripperdactyls down to 120 points from 140

Kroxigors down to 160 or improve the Rend of all their weapon attacks by 1

Skink Handlers down to 20 points

 

I see a lot of suggestions for major rules changes from reworking the summoning mechanics to changing rules for the majority of warscrolls. While I can see where many of you are coming from (summoning is something that needs more development) I doubt that Games Workshop will be making any major changes to the rules at the moment and focusing more on points but I would be happy to see myself proven wrong.

Goodness, Ripperdactyls shouldn't be cheaper in my eyes. They decimate everyone on that charge with their re-rolls and I have seen them confidently kill heroes.

Yes, poor Carnosaur and Kroxigors, now them I do agree with you right there!

 

Summoning and

The current fix to summoning and magic is merely a band-aid though. I woud expect changes to it sooner than later...

Also, I want our shields to feel more meaningfull, rend protection isn't awefull by any means but rend is rare enough to feel fairly useless and the other shield effects that we've seen so far provide similar bonusses against rend while being overall better. Also it's just weird that it only provides protection against a certain level of rend, if nothing else it should be that it reduces rend by x. Right now the shields suddenly become useless if the attack has more rend than it protects again. Though this seems much more like a thing that would be in a new seraphon tome, not in a generals handbook

 

Yes, so true about those shields, I always felt they were a little lacklustre compared to other race's shields. I do think you are right that something like that would be in the next edition of the Seraphon army book and not the General's Handbook II. It is a shame, the whole use of warscrolls to me feels like an opportunity to patch in these changes whenever the opportunity arises.

 

Saurus Knights cause mortal wounds on a six to hit instead of a six to wound.
Saurus Guard get two wounds and perhaps a slight points increase to make up for it.
Saurus Warriors need to be more useful in smaller numbers. Either a 4+ save to reflect their role as heavy infantry from earlier fantasy editions or maybe clubs and spears both wound on threes but clubs have rend.

Not sure if any of those would be overpowered but I would rather our units get more powerful and more expensive than just get a drop in price and slowly turn into another horde army.

 

A small fix for the Engine of the Gods would be nice! They should change it so that you can either pick a lower result on cosmic engine rolls or at the very least let you pick a lower result when you get the 14-17 summon effect--which is useless to people who don't plan on summoning, and super unreliable to those who are. As it is, you have a 1/3 (~33%) chance of the engine not doing anything good unless summoning is part of your strategy and 2/3 of that "fail chance" comes from the summon effect, the other portion being from the recoil effect.

With that fix, you could field it more reliably without a Slann to add dice and it could fill a better role in more armies.

 

Warriors being cheaper only really helps for the horde-aspect. Small units would still be weirdly weak.

Guards being cheaper wouldnt' really solve any of the issues. You'd still have this unit that has an amazing save, but gets decimated the moment an attack does get through. Too much of a difference between succes an failure. They just need to have 2 (or more) wounds. In return the eternal starhost can be made a tad less effective as they only get truly ridiculous in formation.

Skinks being cheaper would actually be quite nice.

Meh, summoning isn't even the biggest issue of the engine. It's just that in any given situation half its abilities do nothing. The only abilities that are actually reliable to take effect when they trigger are the single target attac & the double turn. The others all have fairly limited range & conditions making it quite easy for them to happen at a useless moment. It needs to get some general reliable power besides the engine. Make it give every ally near it +1 to save and to hit rolls or something... just something that's Always there and always usefull.

 

Yeah, you're right. The range on the heal ridiculously short (not to mention it only helps big units) and the starfire whirlpool is really unreliable... Maybe they could turn Steadfast Majesty into a better buff as you suggest, unless they feel generous enough to just add an effect.

One other thing that I REALLY want to see either in GHB2 or a new battletome is the addition of multi-faction battalions for Seraphon and/or an extra incentive to field other order units--not to mention getting our allegiance traits/artefacts already...

 

Aren't Seraphon the next in line, to having a revamp of their Battletome? So they might be building a little hype around it then.

Also, Clan pestilens and Ironjaws fight the Seraphon in their books.

 

I don't know...we might not have enough Stormcast books yet. hehe