Ahh yes - I hadn't thought of arcane scenery and curse of fates, I was just thinking +1's to cast, lateral thinking is clearly somewhere I need to improve on!
One of the first AoS games I played was against Tzeentch Daemons. My opponent summoned 3x his starting force in the first player turn, only stopping when he ran out of models in his collection and it left a bad taste in my mouth. My group has a house-rule that an army can only Summon 1 unit per turn. The unit is Summoned at its minimum unit size (unless specified otherwise) with any upgrades it has available to it. This change seems to be working out very well as everyone likes it and it has led to very balanced games. For context: we play SDK.
Azyr comp system put a limit on the number of summoned units a wizard can control at the same time. For example, a Slann can summon "only" three units, and he can summon a fourth only when one of the previous has been wiped away.
I havent got a slann, so ignore anything I say if you disagree, but wouldnt it just be easiest to discuss for a few minutes what the rules for summoning are when setting up a slann? All the suggestions above are useful and certainly sound playable, but a good warhammer game is useful and fun for both players, not just the one who set up 5 slann and summoned many carnosaurs to the field.
That's a godawful tactic. People have been using it as an example for how the game is supposedly broken due to a lack of any innate balancing system, but doing stuff like setting up five Slann and trying to summon carnosaurs is a very weak tactic, if overspecialises in one area and leaves the five slann player wide open to having their slann assassinated.
And if the opponent is a good monster hunter they loose by 800% : 95% casualties... But @Otzi'mandias your right if you play with people you don't know or if you don't have a certain system your group has agreed on just have a chat with them before the game and then go for it!
A friend of mine, made some custom rules for AOS - I will post it soon. He added points like in OLDHAMMER. For summonig you pay 50% of unit in points. For me it's not working, tbh all these custom rules are pointless. I put this on same side like adding aditional rules for chess Of this is my opinion. The other way I played with summon was Wound system with limit of 3 summons per battle. So rooster was for 5 unit and you were able to summon 3 of your choice... kinda not working as well tbh.
If he insists on rules to "balance" summoning, try suggesting that he starts the game with more units so he has an early game advantage but so that you can bloom into a late game advantage through summoning unless he stops you.
For me this is clear, I just dont understand all improvement or changes to original rules. "SUDDEN DEATH VICTORIES Sometimes a player may attempt to achieve a sudden death victory. If one army has a third more models than the other, the outnumbered player can choose one objective from the sudden death table a er generals are nominated. A major victory can be claimed immediately when the objective is achieved by the outnumbered player." This is counter for summoning, so where is the problem? I don't want to make any flamewar or shitstorm, just saying. I started "warhammer" in 1994. And only one thing for me was problematic - quasi balance. Let's improve the game, ban everything and just make it unplayable
There is no problem. Personally I beat summoning armies in my sleep when I use my non-summoner like my Stormcast. High summoning armies tend to have solid weaknesses too. Their mass summon units (zombies, skeletons, Saurus Warriors) tend to be weaker than unsummonable soldiers or troops who summon too slow like Temple Guard. Daemons have really solid units for their mass summons, but there are also a host of rules and abilities in the game which tear Chaos Daemons to shreds (such as half of our arsenal, especially the Solar Engine) so they get that power as a tradeoff. Finally summoning doesn't impact objective games, which we are encouraged to play seeing as how we get a tonne of new objective games in every book (I really want to play the one in Balance of Power that takes place in a blizzard and where all wizards get a tonne of ice magic to use.) If you don't want to restrict summoning, try saying all that.
Summoning is quite OP. But it can't be core of each battle. I'm always ready for some summons but not focusing on it, but the fact is that people are affraid of spam - btw. spam is great sorry I love this hehehe
To be fair, it really depends on what you summon. A bastiladon is a single model, and it's very effective. A trio of sallies (maybe summoned with increased range) can suddenly kill a primary target. I can see why many players fear summon... but summoning is just a powerful tool, not an ability that breaks AoS.
Now that I'm thinking on it, I just realized that many of the systems that try to balance AoS, using points value and the WHFB reasoning, in the end they worsen the "problem" of summoning. If you say "you can field an army with x points cost, and only 25% of those points may be heroes and 20% monsters / warmachines", at that point you're giving a decisive boost to summon. Why? Because if my heroes / monsters point, are already filled by a Slann and an EotG, and my slann, in the first turn, summons a starseer, a bastiladon and an eternity warden, at that point I have gained the edge in those elite fields that the system was trying to limit. Using only wounds as the way to balance the armies, this wouldn't happen.
I just count him as 7 wounds, same as a Starmaster and dealing 7 wounds to him is what puts him on a 50/50 chance of dying. And nobody's saying that the wounds system is perfect, no system is. But it is the least flawed system.