It's strange because since Warhammer Fantasy's death, 40K was always known to be GW's flagship game, but it makes you wonder if they've forgotten that sometimes the way they treat 40K fans and the way they're currently working with the setting. I certainly think 40K is fast becoming as stagnant as Warhammer Fantasy was, if not more so due to the army list bloat in most factions, certainly it will so long as GW refuse to add any more properly new factions to it. AoS by contrast has fared a lot better in that department as we have seen, and it has allowed the game to grow and develop its fanbase further and further. Say what you like about new factions, but they are what keeps a game evolving and grabbing more players as more people's aesthetic, lore and model-based preferences are satisfied. Fantasy didn't do this for two whole editions and GW killed it because it 'wasn't selling' (not knowing the reason why it didn't sell), and 40K has also done this now and may well head the same way if GW aren't careful.
I mean, that'll always be the case, even if GW were saints. These are simply the people that spend the most money, period. To be honest I never understood the artificial scarcity. It's their game, they don't really need to fear any competition anyway since those don't produce the same stuff. And outside of special limited-timed runs, like say an anniversary model or something it doesn't make much sense. Like something like cursed city. Given what I've seen online they would've sold significantly more boxes if they just, you know, offered more boxes for sale. It's a mystery why they bother with artificial scarcity for those. Same with the Eldricht omens and such. It mostly just seems a fairly stupid attempt to appear as a high-class popular product, despite it just being mass-produced plastic toy soldiers and there being more than enough demand to warrant producing more boxes. So the artificial scarcity just seems pointless. The price-hikes are kinda stupid, but imho, not inherently predatory. At least, not when it concerns a luxury good like toy soldiers (it's not like say landlords increasing continuously increasing rent knowing their tenants have no real choice but to accept it...). GW can ask whatever they want. If they push it too far, people will simply go elsewhere, buy less models, or just quit entirely. They'll burn goodwill of course, but ultimatly frequent price-increases are not inherently predatory (or well... not more predatory than late-stage capitalism inherently is, so you know still pretty predatory .) O yeah, the XAAS business model needs to go die in a fire already. As for GW's attempts at XAAS, the seasons are definitly questionable. Though I doubt it'll get off the ground to the same extend videogames (and some other industries) managed. The "serious" scene for tabletop wargames isn't big enough to sustain a XAAS model. If GW starts demanding you pay every year for a small update most people will just stick with whatever edition they happen to have the rulebooks for and ignore the GHB most years. Meh, AoS risks becoming a confusing mess that's impossible to keep up with at this rate. 2-3 new factions per year is a bit much. Also, since they seem to forget to update certain factions, there is still plenty of stagnation. It's that there are some spin-off games like underworlds which allows them to occasionally introduce some new sculpts for everyone. But most factions have not had any major releases in a while. Hell, we have had what, 2 releases in entirety of AoS? Kroak, which turned out to be a fairly underwhelming unit even if it's a beautifull sculpt and a underworlds warband. That's not exactly a whole lot of updates. So I wouldn't say it's a better long-term strategy.
Khorne WD update leaks are making their rounds and... its not good haha. Especially coming right on the heels of BoC, its an extreme difference. basically a handful of small changes that are positive in the purest technical sense but will do absolutely nothing to help the army in the long run. No reactions for thirsters, grand strategy is offensively bad, but the tweak to the terrain and battle tactics are fine.
Nope, not a thing. it includes: 1) some genuinely decent battle tactics 2) an absolutely horrible grand strategy (as most of them are) 3) a rule that lets khorne units ignore spells and endless spells on a 6 and gain a blood tithe which is fine 4) a new skull altar scroll. Lost the -1 to cast to wizards within 18 or whatever it was and gained a rule that makes it so if a wizard miscasts anywhere on the board, the caster suffers d6 instead of d3 wounds. It also allows any hero that's inside it to summon invocations as if it was a priest. Also totally fine.
yep, 40K would greatly benefit from a couple of new races / armies. But i wouldn't want the neverending flow of new releases that is AoS.
AoS seems like it's getting more love from GW right now because the constant output of new factions is most likely driving sales up by a lot. But that's kind of a short-term strategy. When they run out of entirely new factions to pump out they're going to lose a lot of that momentum. But the nice thing is that there are so many armies with either very few models or really old models that they might be able to keep bumping sales up by refreshing ranges and releasing new models for armies that don't have many models to begin with. I don't know how long it's been since a full new army got released for 40k, but there are definitely some things they could do. For one, I think people would go crazy if Squats were to come back. They could also give Tau more auxiliary models, there are so many to choose from it could literally double the size of the current army. Lots of Imperial Guard regiments that could get official support, and of course more Primaris Lieutenants I think the problem with adding new factions to 40k is that the lore is more or less already "established" to the point where adding an entirely new faction would be a massive lore shake-up. Not that that would be a bad thing, mind you. But really the only big advancement in the lore in a long time has been Guilliman's return and the advent of the Primaris Marines, and that was just done so GW could redo Space Marines. I can't see them adding an entirely new race or faction, because it would require them having a big lore event based around them. That's a big different between 40k and AoS. In AoS, it doesn't matter if a faction is small, they can still have an impact on the story just by doing something in their own region. In 40k, a new faction would have to be able to compete against all the other pre-established factions on a galaxy-spanning level. Which is why I don't think they'll ever make Exodite Eldar. They don't really travel around in space, they just sit on their planets and get stomped by the Imperium whenever they get discovered.
Well, yes and no. Blood Pact, Squats, Tau Auxiliaries (Codex: Gue'vesa when?), Kroot, Exodite Eldar... there's quite frankly a lot of factions and species galaxy-wide that GW can GSC into their own Codexes and/or supplements just by elaborating on pre-existing units and/or lore, which is more than can be said for the many Space Marine Codex Supplements that may as well be bundled into one book like the Legions are for Horus Heresy.
Well, so it was the introduction of Primaris. They could've argued that Space Marines would be getting a new Armor type and the mini scale would be increasing because their holy ba--- allowed them to do and nobody would still be crying about Primaris and lore shake-ups three or four years after that.
https://www.warhammer-community.com...-warhammer-age-of-sigmar-battlescroll-update/ new balance update oO enemies can score additional victory points if they kill a Basti or a salamander
https://www.warhammer-community.com...-warhammer-age-of-sigmar-battlescroll-update/ New balance update. Definitely an interesting direction. Feels a little unfinished but a unique way to let people play with their toys while still punishing certain units.
Eeeeh... having a Salamander be worth equally as much victory point as a Maw-Krusha seems like a bad idea no matter the circumstances. I get what they're going for, but this looks really unfinished. I'm curious if it'll survive till the next GHB or turn out to be a complete disaster and quickly be dumped again.
I mean you just get 1 extra victory point for most of the priority targets. I know each point counts, but am I missing something? Poor Death Faction; No priority targets?
Good death faction. Priority targets give up extra VP, so not having then is a good thing. Does seem weird fec didn't make the prime hunters club Could you elaborate on why that's always a bad decision? Mawkrushas are also giving up a monster point and can be the target of several battle tactics which sallies can not. Salamanders are max giving up 2 vp (per unit) and you're not usually winning games by less than two VP so I doubt it even matters at the end of the day. Think you just start seeing more krox and/or chamos if anyone even ends up caring.
a single salamander unit is 7 wounds. It's easy enought to kill them with shooting, so it is punishing. I see it on the Bastiladon That said, going from negatives to positives 1 - it's clearly a patch. It's basically GW that admits that they screwed heavily a lot of warscrolls and even battletomes 2 - it's debatable. No targets for Soulblight? 3 - it's a further element in a game that is already becoming bloated 4 - points increases / decreases are worthless. if a unit is good you play it nonetheless, if a unit is bad you don't lay it nontheless (razordons / salamanders). In this way, you can effectively think on it. 2x2 sallies are good, but you are placing 4 potential VPs on the table. It's more of a choice. 5 - finally i will be effectively rewarded if i play a currently underdog army (Nighthaunts...) 6 - it will hopefully put a limit to boring spammy lists.
@Killer Angel just covered most of it. But to add some other points: It's the same stupid balancing approach Riot uses in LoL. Random marginal chances that technically impact win-rate, but do nothing whatsoever to impact the actual problematic aspect of a unit/item/mechanic/thing and don't really make a whole lot of sense outside of the "we need to fix the winrate somehow"-frame. In this case, a Salamander is just as powerfull as it was before, but now occasionally the Seraphon player will lose a match by a one or two points due to a few Salamander deaths. Nothing's really changed, but the winrate for Seraphon will probably drop slightly. The Salamander is a easy to kill unit. It's also summonable, and it isn't super expensive. The Maw-Krusha is the opposite of that.Giving both the same VP-bonus is weird to say the least. It is such an obvious band-aid solution that it makes me worry, why in the world didn't they just wait till the next GHB, or even next battletome for some of these units, to introduce an actually decent fix? What's happened to convince them they need to do this? Is this just an experiment? Is this a permanent part of their new seasonal approach to things? Another example of this new rule being weird, and not really thought out, is the Pink Horrors being in there. They've created a situation where you can get extra VPs by: Killing a big scary monster. Which is fine, monsters are powerfull, getting points for killing monsters makes some inherent sense. And as you can see, most of the units in this list are big scary monsters (or fancy godlike heroes). Killing a fairly squishy but high damage ranged unit. Which is weird, though at least it can be argued that Salamanders are really good and thus "deserve" the same treatment as the big scary monsters. At least there's also 2 other similar-ish ranged units (Vanguard-raptors & blood stalkers). Killing a basic battleline unit who are used for screening as well as some ranged combat. Which does not make any sense no matter how I look at it. Even if Pink Horrors are super good, this directly conflicts with one of their main purposes. What exactly is a tzeentch player supposed to do here? Not field pink horrors? Have his one reasonably effective tar-pit unit avoid combat? And why is this the only basic battleline unit subject to this rule? And yeah, 1-2 VP probably isn't going to matter to much in most games. Like I said, it's a marginal chance that will only technically impact win-rate for most players and maybe diversify some lists slightly. The only one who's really impacted is the SoB army which can lose an extra 6-9 points. And honestly, for them I'd say it's even a reasonably interesting mechanic as it's essentially faction-wide. O, and it impacts the dragon-guard spam lists, as again, those lists will be giving away an extra 6-9 points and it's basicly army-wide for them to. But for the others it's just kinda weird and mostly marginal nonsense, and stuff like the horrors & Salamanders are out of place in that list, which accentuates the band-aid nature of this fix.
To the point of having a battleline unit, could Zombies show up on the list? I guess that would be just as harsh as Pink Horrors...
I mean, Its definitely easier to give up the point on some units over others. No argument there. I just don't think the vp your potentially giving up is supposed to be dependent on how hard or not hard it is to kill something. I mean monsters are the same thing. All monsters aren't the same but they all give up a VP just the same. It's about comparing options in a book to one another, not against other priority targets. It's fulms vs concussors. Not necessarily fulms vs mawkrushas or what have you. I think the system probably needs a lot of testing but I dont hate it in theory. Points adjustments often just give good armies less cool stuff and shitty armies more shitty stuff. I like added vps being a potential balance lever they feel comfortable using as just another tool in the toolbox... because they need to try something. I don't know if an extra VP per reinforcement is too punishing but I also dont think it's really going to even matter. Either way, being able to score extra VPs on other top armies just makes seraphon better. We can replace salamanders easy and 1 basti can stay without issue. Edit: elaborated a bit.
Unfortunately, this seems to be exactly GWs intent. They know that certain units are getting played "too much," whether because they're just too good or because they're the only things worth taking, so this is a new idea on how to try and convince people to stop playing those units without just increasing point costs more and more.