AoS Second Edition

aren't the casters they have fairly decent to use against our stuff? A weirdknob might not be the most reliable, but whenever he does go off he should dish out a significant chunk of damage. And the allied grot and orruk shaman or wurrgog prophet have decent spells as well. With a disturbing amount of AoE.

Also yeah, scrap launchers are good when faced with a horde of easily killable stuff like skinks. It's just that that's all they're good for

 

Meh, still feels like they shouldn't be that helpless, especially if you bring a back-up caster.

Having said that, the look out sir & endless spells will definitly help them a lot (much like they'l help us). And they could probably use some numbers tuning.

 

Perhaps it was a Seraphon player who wrote the new rules and wanted his army to be stronger - I call this the “Bruce Quarrie” syndrome after a Napoleonic Rules writer who made the Russian army super strong, even though they were pretty weak in actual history, because he played Russians and had an urge to play the strongest army. The rest of the rules were pretty balanced, but for this one mistake he was given quite a hard time by the wargaming community.

 

It might be that in their own internal meta it simply isn't "broken". Balancing across different meta's and levels of play is rather complicated. It's something you can see a lot in for example e-sports due to the massive differences in skill, but most importantly in playstyle across the various tiers that exist. A certain mechanic can be utterly broken in one tier of play while borderline useless in another. For example, a mechanic that can be countered simply by staying levelheaded and using teamwork and CC to stop the enemy in it's tracks tends to be very weak at the level of pro's, who have the required organisation, but horrificly and utterly overpowered in the lowest levels of play where all the idiots scatter in fear the moment an opponent uses the mechanic cuz they lack the organisation to execute the teamwork.

Similarly if we take Kroak and our game. If their playtesters prefer to use ward-save mechanics alongside fodder-units then Kroak wouldn't be particularly powerfull. If the people at the tournament mostly ignored ward-saves and only fielded small elite units that are easier to hit and "lose" more per wound then Kroak is suddenly a lot more powerfull in the tournament.

Same with summoning, if the playtesters were biased towards summoning big bad dinosaurs for 20+ points but the people at the tournament just bury their opponents under a Thousand skinks you'l get vastly different meta's and thus the mechanics will appear very different in terms of power.

And you can make similar arguments for the EoTG & rippers.

For all 4 of em it's the case that their effectiveness depends heavily on what you're up against, what's supporting them and what the circumstances are (e.g. near the bloat toad? is kroak screened by skinks so he doesn't get pummeled to dead immeadiatly afterwards? Does the EoTG have a slann helping it's rolls?). Much more so than say skinks do, those will perform nearly the same in any given situation. It wouldn't be surprising if the meta the playtesters operated in was vastly different from the meta those tournament players played in.

And lastly, tournament players, especially the "pro's", tend to abuse the hell out of any mechanic they can. Their results in my experience generally aren't the most representative for the actual state of balance in a game as their abuse tends to lead to very specific meta's where either you play along and abuse the exact same stuff or get utterly annihilated as other playstyles have been made all but impossible by the abuse. And whenever an alternative does pop up that happens to perform well against the reigning playstyle in those circles the pitchforks and torches come out.... Hence not the best group to balance around...

 

I agree with that GW should look at the various Obvious combo's and take into account how they should be abused. And the EoTG one is something that should be one that recieved quite some testing given the sheer amount of Obvious synergies we have with it. And needless to say if a Darren comes up with some abusive nonsense they should look into how to curb the abuse. However, that doesn't mean they should balance around what the Darren's of the world think is weak/powerfull. That tends to result in situations where the baby gets thrown out with the bathwater when a new mechanic is introduced that happens to be powerfull in the current meta but for whatever reasons displeases the Darren's. Or in situations where abusive mechanics are never retuned because "it's fine at the competitive level".

To be honest, I'm curious how they playtest, Kroak should be fine as far as I can tell (or at least not be exceptionally more powerfull than just general magic spam...). But especially the EoTG should have been tested extensivly given the amount of modifiers we can throw at it to gain the right result. Hell, it surprises me that the other abilities stayed the same, it's still rather an incoherent unit...

Meh, I think the EoTG just needs a full rework, and would benefit more from that than just becoming a unique hero. It needs to be more coherent. It'd also make it less problematic if the other abilities were of comparable power, or at least bit ib a scale from "do d3 damage" till "do double your attacks this turn" till "summon a free 100-140 points worth of stuff"

As for the rippers, they should just get worse stats… 75% of their bites will generate another attack thanks to the swooping dive rule and a 4+ base hit (ignoring potential other modifiers). That's just ridiculously effective… E.g. just change foracious appetite to be "on a succesfull wound" instead of on a succesfull hit. It then drops from 75% to 50% which is already far better, if still rather high. Or change it to be similar to a scar vet on cold ones warpick, roll a dice on a 4+ do another round of attacks, it'l drop off quicker as well... there's quite a lot of ways to fix the issue without breaking the spirit of the Original rule.

 

The 'Darren's' of the scene don't get displeased about anything, quite the reverse

 

Well I had to use someone's name for it, blame @Aginor for pointing me towards yours

And it wouldn't be the first time that the "hard-core" or "pro" part of the community manages to drive a game into the abyss by demanding certain things and shouting down any and all opposition. Which was the point. My apoligies if you do not identify as part of that particular group, again, blame Aginor for putting your name in my head when writing the post this

 

It isn't, the 'hard core' or the 'pro' part driving anything down into the abyss.. they are calling for balance, for the benefit of all

the only pissing and moaning I see anywhere is from people that by-on-large don't even play competitively at a high level any way.. Frankly it boggles my mind

 

I play hard, absolutely. But my list designs come from trying to either anticipate the meta or play in it once it's established. I try and use things people don't and make them work. I used Kroak pre GHB2 when he was 540 pts, not because he was broken (no one used him at the time, no one hardly used Seraphon) but because he could take on Kunnin Rukks and Tzeentch, even Skyfire Spam.. Anti-Meta

There are also plenty of competitive players that like to net list, claiming it's just them that are demanding changes to keep their lists competitive simply isn't true. a large part of the community like to be out spoken about lots of different aspects of the game. I think that should be encouraged to happen in a positive manner rather than demonising others hobby. Who does that benefit?

For future ref bracketing my name and using it as an example of whats wrong with the hobby wasn't cool and won't be in the future

 

I have put a lot of effort into writing reports on here because I enjoy the thought it may help someone improve their game of they may simply enjoy reading about Seraphon success or failures. If I wanted to be a super power gamer, I wouldn't share how to play and I'd just of used Tzeentch in the previous edition..

I was proper buzzing about 6 nations still and today was the first time I have read a thread on Lustria and been proper bummed out by it.

I was going to write up the experience, now I'm in 2 minds if it's just made me come across as one of 'power gamers' that don't care about anyone else

Thank you for the apology, I know you weren't targeting me specifically

 

I could well be being overly sensitive as I have been travelling up and down the country and mentally exhausted from the lead up to the weekend and the games themselves.. Appreciate your message buddy , thank you