AoS Second Edition

[Aginor]

For me AoS is almost there concerning complexity, a tiny bit more would be the sweet spot IMO.
I think I don't want a very complex game like WHFB.
Perhaps I will try 40K after all. Seems to be about right in that regard.

 

[Canas]

For me AoS is almost there concerning complexity, a tiny bit more would be the sweet spot IMO.
I think I don't want a very complex game like WHFB.
Perhaps I will try 40K after all. Seems to be about right in that regard.

mwha, the complexity is fine-ish. The only thing I really miss is interactions between abilities. Even with synergy-heavy armies there's fairly few mechanics that set up the next mechanic to work better. There's very few, if any, things like say casting mystic shield and starlight on the same target gives it an additional + 1 to saves on top of their normal effects. Similarly interaction between units is rare. Kroxigor + skinks are one of the few units where carefull positioning of your troops actually achieves a bonus.

Also, the way that they choose to counteract spamming by using the rule of one rather limits strategies as well. Using mystic shield to protect an entire battalion of cannonfodder so they can hold the line against superiour troops would be interesting. But with the rule of one only 1 of the 3 units in your battalion is going to hold the line while the other 2 get smashed apart. Which removes a lot of strategies playing around that.

And lastly it's both too easy and too difficult to kill specific models/units. On the one hand ranged attacks, be they spells abilities or shooting, can easily pick out priority targets no matter what you do, making certain squishy support-units very easy to pick off, even with the look-out-sir rule and the fact that archers can no longer shoot properly when in melee . I'd love for this to be a tad more difficult, for example by using the rule the LoTR game (used to have?) has where obstacles that are in the line of fire have a 50% chance of blocking the shot. This'd be especially nice if you're fielding stuff like skryre acolytes, skaven weapon teams or minor heroes like skink priests that are fairly squishy support troops but which need to be relativly close to the frontline. But even on bigger and sturdier stuff it can be frustrating to play against a ranged army as you have no real way of protecting your important stuff till they get into range themselfs. It'd be lovely to have a way of ensuring your cannonfodder takes some of the incoming fire while approaching enemy lines. The only ones that currently have an ability like this would be the fish-elves, and they're kind of on the other end of the spectrum where ranged attacks can only hit the cannonfodder no matter what (provided they play well).

On the other hand targeting a specific model in a unit is impossible. This is rather a problem when the special weapon contains like 90% of the power of a unit and is on par with minor heroes in terms of power. To be honest the best solution here would be to just not put such a massive advantage on the special weapon compared to the other weapons in a squad and to make it so that a special weapon isn't on par with a lower or medium tier hero in terms of power. Right now due to the massive power of that special weapon you're sorta stuck having to wipe out the entire unit while all you really want is to kill the special weapon and then move on to higher priorities. Depending on how many of these sorta special weapons your opponent has, and if they're for example ranged weapons or not, this can make it feel like you are forced to take out each of these units as playing the objective is rather impossible when you get bombarded by that sorta nonsense.

If those things could be fixed it'd be quite briljant I think.

 

[ravagekitteh]

For me AoS is almost there concerning complexity, a tiny bit more would be the sweet spot IMO.
I think I don't want a very complex game like WHFB.
Perhaps I will try 40K after all. Seems to be about right in that regard.

Honestly I find it hard to get people into the game as it is, without it being more complex. For your average person, AoS is an incredibly complex game with hundreds of rules and stats to remember. Certainly everyone I've tried to introduce it to has said that they found it very difficult to understand. If AoS wants to be inclusive to new gamers that aren't already of the "1000 page rule book gamer" type, I personally think they shouldn't make it any more complex than it is

 

[Canas]

Honestly I find it hard to get people into the game as it is, without it being more complex. For your average person, AoS is an incredibly complex game with hundreds of rules and stats to remember. Certainly everyone I've tried to introduce it to has said that they found it very difficult to understand. If AoS wants to be inclusive to new gamers that aren't already of the "1000 page rule book gamer" type, I personally think they shouldn't make it any more complex than it is

To be honest that mostly seems to be due to the sheer amount of rules connected to a given unit combined with the amount of units and is not something you're ever going to get rid of in a wargame I guess.

If all they had to remember in their first game is the base rules and some basic concepts like "archers shoot", "guys with shields are for defense", "guys with giant warhammers are for offense" and "that wizard can cast either arcane bolt or mystic shield" it'd be straightforward enough to get a feeling for it, even if stuff like damage profiles would initially scare em. But this not the case. All those units have special nonsense.

For fun all the "special" unit rules in the first AoS box:
The SCE have:
Liberators: sigmarite shields, lay down the tyrants
Retributors: Blast to ashes
Prosecutors: Have a ranged attack (but no clear ranged weapon). Fly. Heralds of Righteousness, paired celestial hammers.
Lord relictor: 2 prayers
Lor celestant on dracoth: Inescapable vengeance, Intolerable damage, storm breath, lord of the host

Then the followers of khorne:
Bloodreavers: Icon bearer, Hornblower, Fenzied devotion, reaver blades
Blood warriors: No respite, gorefists
Khorgorath: Horiffic predator, taker of heads
Bloodstoker: whipped to fury
Bloodsecrator: Portal of skulls
Mighty lord of Khorne: Collar of khorne, reality splitting axe, Gorelord

Then there's also the fact that all captain models in a unit have a special bonus, which frequently is just +1 attack, but not Always so you have to keep track of that as well.

That's what, easily 20-30 special rules on top of the base-rules in a starter set. I don't think we're going to have to worry about some aditional base rules chasing people off in terms of complexity. The warscrolls will have already chased those people off looooong before they even read the baserules

 

[NIGHTBRINGER]

Looks like things are back to normal (and back on topic). Not to worry...

 

[Canas]

Looks like things are back to normal (and back on topic). Not to worry...

can we really call this "normal" or "on topic"?

 

[Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl]

Looks like things are back to normal (and back on topic). Not to worry...

Well played sir, although I hope you won’t be smashing a car through the window of this forum to return to this thread...

 

[NIGHTBRINGER]

can we really call this "normal" or "on topic"?

I wasn't including my post as part of being back on topic. I meant the posts that came before it!

Well played sir, although I hope you won’t be smashing a car through the window of this forum to return to this thread...

Thank you. I will try to keep the car/window smashing to a minimum... but no promises!

 

[Aginor]

Just to get back to a somewhat sane discussion:
Did anyone of you follow the Blackout event, on social media or so?

Seems like there was an almost healthy looking amount of armies from all grand alliances (except Destruction) winning games in that tournament.

Only three Seraphon players tried, a bit surprisingly, since I do think we can compete quite well right now, and only one of them reached the top50.
Probably some Seraphon players wanted to play Kroak and/or EotG spam, copying @darren watson 's list, but were caught by the Kroak nerf during preparation so they switched to something else.

Ironjawz (2x) and Bonesplitterz made it into the top50. At least something.

The top20 spots are a decent mix of Chaos (8), Order(8) and Death(4) though, with a lot more Death in the 20-40 places.
Nighthaunt won the tournament, the best Destruction player is an Ironjawz guy at #24.

 

[Aginor]

Here are the rest of the results:

 

[Canas]

Given the amount of talk about how we'd be OP with Kroak, summoning and our EoTG's this is rather dissapointing. Even if Kroak got nerfed during the preperation. Either we're not as OP as some people have been claiming or some other stuff is at least equally ridiculous..

Other than that, a depressing amount of new stuff in the top twenty; various Undeath, the fishelves, the daughters of khaine occupy about half the top 20 and top 10 while the fishelves and daughters barely appear at all outside of the top 20.

Overal the variation in armies is fairly decent though, expected worse in that regards at least.

 

[Aginor]

I think it is the melee alpha strike lists.
Those are huge right now and the armies that placed high do them well.
That's the reason why DoK, Sylvaneth, Khorne, and Deepkin are so far up.

And yeah: New stuff = good stuff. But it isn't only that.

Edit: and the winner list was surprisingly unorthodox btw. No bataillons for example.

 

[Canas]

I think it is the melee alpha strike lists.
Those are huge right now and the armies that placed high do them well.
That's the reason why DoK, Sylvaneth, Khorne, and Deepkin are so far up.

Well that's depressing to hear, I don't like that kinda playstyle

And yeah: New stuff = good stuff. But it isn't only that.

O I'm sure that it's not merely that they used OP stuff that caused the top players to be where they are. But given that we have somewhere around 30-ish major fully fleshed out armies (depending on how you count) I would've hoped for a more varied top 20. There's only 11 "different' allegiances in the top 20, and that includes 2 grand allegiances which might be rather similar to the corresponding minor allegiances and 3 undeath allegiances which are relativly similar as well. Depending on how Similar you view those one could argue there's only 8 different allegiances that made it to the top 20.

An the top 50 does even worse. Only 19 unique factions made it in there, 5 of which are the various undeath which are rather similar, and 4 of em are grande allegiance armies which may or may not differ a lot from specific faction armies. Which means that depending on how different those have been build as little as 11 unique factions made it into the top 50. Given that 27 factions entered, and some factions where even absent, I find that a fairly bad turnout.

Fun fact, all 4 major chaos gods and chaos grand allegiance made it into the top 20. That's a fairly decent turnout for chaos. Though the skaven are noticably absent.

Edit: and the winner list was surprisingly unorthodox btw. No bataillons for example.

Might have been the change to command points and he just bought a bunch of em instead of counting on battalions? Or maybe he used that character that can steal them, which also means he needs less artifacts since it's a named one? Or maybe the nighthaunt battalions are just kind of "meh"?

What else did he do that was strange?

 

[Xasto]

Edit: and the winner list was surprisingly unorthodox btw. No bataillons for example.

Do you have a link to the list?

 

[Aginor]

I had it...somewhere...
I only remember that teh had some chanirasp horde and _three_ named characters...
EDIT: No chainrasp horde but Grimghast Reapers. I keep mixing those two names up.

standby....

 

[Aginor]

Here it is. Source is TGA forums:

5/5 wins. Tabled all opponents too.

EDIT: And his army and terrain pieces look beautiful,too.

 

[Canas]

Here it is. Source is TGA forums:

5/5 wins. Tabled all opponents too.

EDIT: And his army and terrain pieces look beautiful,too.

mm that explains why no battalions, unless those characters have a private battalion he simply doesn't have much of a choice, nor does he need it for artifacts and the craven king can get him extra command points.

Also, I'm halfway curious if his non-named-character-units ended up being more crucial than simply provide bodies. It looks like rather a depressingly straightforward list where it doesn't matter much how much damage you do so long as the characters survive they'l probably win the game. Even if the common troops can pack a punch losing them doesn't seem like it'd really slow him down much.

Edit: minor sidenote, do we have no limitationso on named characters? Given that they can't take artifacts or command traits I halfway expected there to be limitations on the amount you can field as well.

 

[Aginor]

No, you can field as many as you want.

Of course all named characters are heroes, and some are behemoths, so the limits for those are still there of course.
But for most named characters their limit is that they are expensive. Those Nighthaunt heroes are not that expensive.
Fun fact: People were dismissing them as weak or mediocre at least. That player showed that you can pull it off.

I think he was using the horde units not only for keeping the enemy busy but do actually get them into melee, otherwise shooting armies might have killed his characters quickly.
There also was a lot of terrain around on the tables of that tournament, so the whole army being able to fly helped as well.

 

[Canas]

No, you can field as many as you want.

That is somwhat surprising.. feels like that can rapidly spin out of control if they happen to have decent synergy seeing as their special abilities tend to be rather powerfull.

Fun fact: People were dismissing them as weak or mediocre at least. That player showed that you can pull it off.

They're all immune to rend, giving them a guaranteed 4+ save.
They all have mortal wounds on 6+ attacks.
Even without special rules they have good melee profiles. Especially considering 2 of em are casters.
The craven king steals command points making him one of the few counters against armies that rely on that.
Lady olynder has a bunch of AoE effects, both supportive and offensive.
Reikenor has pretty much permanent +1 to casting which also deals bonus damage to enemies.

Those are all pretty major advantages and that's without going into potential synergy they can get from other heroes like a hero providing them with healing.

The only thing they seem to be lacking in is that their special spells aren't too impressive & they all only have 7 wounds, which isn't terrible especially for their points but isn't impressive either. But given the amount of healing available in undead armies that shouldn't be too big a deal. Plus, their immunity to rend makes it a lot more difficult to just delete em unless you have loads of mortal wounds.

Why would they be in any way shape or form be mediocre/weak?

I think he was using the horde units not only for keeping the enemy busy but do actually get them into melee, otherwise shooting armies might have killed his characters quickly.
There also was a lot of terrain around on the tables of that tournament, so the whole army being able to fly helped as well.

That's still merely using them as bodies though and still means the vast majority of his tactic relies on his 3 characters.

 

[Xasto]

Fun fact: People were dismissing them as weak or mediocre at least. That player showed that you can pull it off.

Where, on TGA? Everywhere i've looked, from podcasts to forums, the consensus was that each Nighthaunt named character was really powerful, so no surprise for me here. I've personally bought all 3, did not hesitate and I don't regret it, they perform very well.