AoS Advice requested on a 1250 MPP against Tzeentch

That has more to do with the obscene range of some units in 40K than it has to do with anything else. Deployment interacting with who goes first has little to do with that.

Placing all your junk in 1 move does the exact opposite of trying to convince your opponent of deploying badly though. I like the alternating deployement AoS has. And battalions deploying (potentially) at once is in this phase indeed something that can be interesting. However, who goes first has nothing to do with trying to hide information to gain a favorable position as it's just a matter of "I finished first". Even the potential for bluffing is increadibly limited as competitive lists don't have that much variation & gauging how many points the opponent has already put down shouldn't be too difficult either giving you a halfway decent chance of guessing what's not yet on the table anyway. And that's ignoring relativly common situations where you just get told their list before starting...

Deployement itself I'm fine with. It's just the whole "who goes first" bit that I dislike. And that bit I'd argue takes away from the tactical depth as it encourages you to dump as much as possible on the table at once. Giving a bonus to who finishes first I wouldn't even mind. Or better yet, give both players a bonus (and mallus), that way you'l have to think about which one fits better with your army, being first or second, and if you should allow the opponent to get his preference. Now everyone just aims to be first cuz there's no real disadvantage and the advantage is rather massive.

Personally I think battalions should just be (almost) free. The "cost" of a battalion should be that you're forced into fielding a certain force composition which limits your options, certain tax-units that don't necesarly pull their weight, & limiting the synergy between battalions both by having overlapping units (of which you don't necesarly want multiple) or by having 2 battalions with wildly different focus that won't necesarly work well together.

As for max units; there's horde bonusses, buffs affecting an as large as possible unit, max unit cost & the potential of tarpitting. Units that don't really benefit from any of those already don't have much of a reason of building a maximum unit anyway so that wouldn't change much imho.

 

Which is due to the obscene ranges some units have, not due to deployement itself being a flawed mechanic. Hence you won't solve it by giving bonusses to the person who finishes first. It should be solved by not having units with guns that cover 90% of the battlefield.

This takes out the entire tactical depth of the deployement phase where it considers who gets the priority advantage. I already know what stuff you have left and if I can put my stuff down quicker than yours. So there's nothing to play around with here. Once you've seen eachothers list it's already been decided who gets the priority anyway.

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My point is that the price is fairly insignificant compared to the potential advantage, as well as that you pay for the price in a completly unintersting and often barely relevant way while list-building and not during the actual game. It is essentially a form of meta-gaming and picking a hard-counter (as in I happenend to pick the 1-drop list and you a 2-drop list so I win) during the setup of the game which is something I vehemently dislike. It limits competitive lists in a fairly significant way pushing them all towards low drop lists, preferably in combination with destructive alpha strikes or counters to a potential opponents alpha strike so you can pick to go first/second depending on what your list is good at.

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The super battalions I consider to be some of the better examples of how battalions should work in terms of costs and limitations. Though they obviously push it a lil bit by being so costly you can barely use them in smaller games. Another limitation/cost you could introduce is demanding that if battalion X is fielded you flat out can't field unit Y or battalion Z, with the fluff explenation being that there's rivalry between the troops or something.

I keep forgetting about the command abilities that stop battleshock which essentialy negate the biggest downside of a big blob for holding an objective. I wish those were made less reliable or more costly so you can't just dump say a max unit of liberators on an objective safe in the knowledge they'l fight to the last man...
Also I left out drops on purpose as I don't think that should count.

Mwha, it's still in the vein of advice, so slightly on topic?

 

I was refering specificly to how it interacts with who gets the choice. You cannot do anything clever to change that at this point. There are no unknowns to bluff with or to be afraid off. The moment you've read your opponents list it is a given who will get to choose the priority. This in itself can of course then affect other aspects of the game, and if you know your opponent has the choice then you can, say, try and bluff your way into getting the option you want. However, those interactions have nothing to do with the concept of lower-drop lists gaining the choice, and could similarly be achieved in other ways, like giving whoever finishes last the decision, or just rolling off for the decision.

Anyways long story short, I just really dislike having the decision being tied to the low drop as it's very gamey, not very interesting, encourages specific types of builds and armies, is a form of meta-gaming & basicly any positive effect it might have could be achieved in other, better, ways as well (e.g. roll-off for who gets to decide before placing your first model)

 

Fair enough, I just think list building's effects should be limited to just what you field.

Building a good list should be about including the tools necesary to deal with the possible objectives & threats you'l face in a game. Not about gaining a random disconnected advantage cuz your list happens to follow a certain arbitrary predetermined structure that has no connection to how effective your list may or may not be.