AoS Second Edition

Those guys are scary as hell

 

GHB has relativly "big" changes, but so far none of it is properly massive.

Biggest changes so far:

- Point values
- Additional artifacts if your faction didn't have any yet (at the time)
- Maybe a battalion or 2
- Allegiance abilities if your faction didn't have any yet.

For the Game as a whle they're more impactfull than mere errata, but generally not a major overhaul of a mechanic. Magic now being the first "big" change in 3 GHB releases. For specific factions it's a way of giving some love to the small factions like say bretonnia so they don't fall behind as hopelessly cuz they can still get new allegiance abilities without needing a new armybook. So I'd say it's pretty much what you're looking for.

 

I'd like to see army customisation beefed up a bit - the points system should really be expanded to cover things like extra spells, drummers/sergeants/bannermen for units, artefacts, etc., give us things to play around with when building our armies.

Also have a little present since I felt like goofing around:

 

god those things are stupidly powerfull… Though the special spell for the evocators is neat, might the rule of one finally be removed now.

 

@Canas you are not lying! Hopefully their points are stupidly high to help balance them out!

 

That thing is going to be hilarious up close (or well close... 18" is not close...) a potential of 24 -2 rend hits. Add in some bonus to hit rolls 'to make it reliable and it'l wreck basicly anything…

The sequitors just seem like better liberators and the evocators have a weirdly high mortal wound output.

Also, why don't the stormcast ever get anything that's squishier than 4+....

 

It's expensive for ahobby

 

True, thought they would like it cause they play that bit of DnD. Well it's different but I thought they would like it. Or maybe they are just ignoring me haha

 

Is "ahobby" a typo or a crack against the name Aelves?

 

aboth?

 

I can live with that!

 

I think @Killer Angel has hit the nail on the head here. Probably the one thing AoS has over Fantasy is that the effect of powercreep on older armies is considerably less due to the living rule set. Nowhere is this greater seen than in Fyreslayers - they were one of the first brand new armies in AoS and were pretty strong when they first came out, but when the new army formula came in to introduce allegiance abilities, artefacts, army special rules and traits, such as in the Kharadron Battletome, the Fyreslayers became a bit weaker as they were being outclassed by these new armies with all their fancy new abilities. However, this then changed when the general’s handbook 2017 came out, which gave the Fyreslayers allegiance abilities, artefacts and command traits. This then pushed them back again to being on the competitive level of the newer armies. If the old system had still been in place, Fyreslayers would have probably been in the same place as a fantasy army like Tomb Kings - strong at the start but victims of powercreep.

As Killer Angel says Dispossessed is another case of this, although their case is a bit different because they are an old army that haven’t been even given a tome yet. Nevertheless, because they’ve been given their own allegiance abilities, command traits and relics, they are probably a middle-Tier army, whereas before they would have been probably Bretonnia-level.

Imagine if this had been the case in Fantasy - if it had been, I imagine GW might well have changed the Tomb Kings’ magic to be more like that of Vampire Counts once the VC book was released and they had found they had mastered the idea of Undead Magic, which may well have boosted the Tomb Kings quite a way forward, perhaps to the point of being stronger than VC in places due to cheaper Skeletons and tougher monsters.

But as @NIGHTBRINGER says, it is still a bit of a demand that you pay £20 a year for these updates - I think it would have been better for a balance to have been struck by making it only contain Amy updates and make it free to download, although the terms ‘Games Workshop’ and ‘Free’ aren’t often seen together...

We’ve found our Bruce Quarrie of Warhammer!

 

I tend to agree with this analysis with the caveat that some factions are still very badly underrepresented (due to a lack of models in the faction) while others get all the toys (SCE). AoS needs to either combine obsolete factions or remove them entirely. Imagine fielding the Aleguzzler Gargants faction vs. SCE.

I still feel that massive discrepancies exist between AoS factions BUT at least AoS has a built in system that can correct these discrepancies on the fly. It is very clear that GW have a completely new and improved attitude now under the new CEO leadership than did during the time of WFB.

That would have been great. I think the TK would have benefited greatly from a few very minor tweaks.

 

A lot of those obsolete factions only really seem to be mentioned as allies for other factions. E.g. bring some gargants with your grot army. I don't think GW intends on making them full-fledged factions. The reason they're still left as their own faction is probably due to the whole ally mechanic. They want several "proper" destruction factions to be able to bring the gargants, so they need to be their own "faction" to be able to say "these other destruction factions can ally with the gargant faction".

Having said that, there's several others where it's much less clear. E.g. the various human or aelve sub-factions based on the old armies could probably be rolled into 1-2 factions instead of 4-5 of em without conflicting with the whole allies thing.

 

Certainly Ironweld Arsenal should have their war machines returned to Dispossessed and Free Peoples respectively, as it hits them hard that they have to take what were their own war machines as allies if they want to use them.

 

I wonder if the endless spells will require you to "channel" them to keep them alive. There is a Nurgle spell that once cast it goes till you move or cast another spell. Totally worth it the enemy unit is -1 to hit,wound, and save. Or if it's one spell per wizard. If not we can hide behind the wall, set up the gears and still have 2 spells with the Slann. Any one hear of a price for it?