8th Ed. LIZARD-Hammer (building on 8TH-hammer)

[The Sauric Ace]

I made some errors in my list. I'll fix them later or tomorrow. My mention of jungle swarm in core is hilarious though haha

Late night list making is a dangerous business, my friend

 

[serbianwolf]

@Pinktaco

I think you summed it up nice, just on the order of cannons, perhaps they should have the d6 on the spot where they hit, not when the cannon ball rols.

why, well for most armies your solution is quite nice, but i think it would weaken the dwarfs quite a lot since they dont have magic, and are heavily warmachine dependant, the other solution could be to propose that dwarf cannons have the d6 multiple wounds as a racial ability (which would make a lot of sense), or to maybe suggest that as a low cost purchasable upgrade for them...

 

[ASSASSIN_NR_1]

why, well for most armies your solution is quite nice, but i think it would weaken the dwarfs quite a lot since they dont have magic, and are heavily warmachine dependant, the other solution could be to propose that dwarf cannons have the d6 multiple wounds as a racial ability (which would make a lot of sense), or to maybe suggest that as a low cost purchasable upgrade for them...

Isn't it just a matter of the price of their cannons, as it is seen as a part of the army and should be priced thereafter?

Dwellers bellow can at most do 2D6 (or 3D6?) hits (change casting value accordingly).
Purple sun can at most do 2D6 hits for every unit fully or partially hit (change casting value accordingly).
Look out Sir can be taken against both, ward saves can be taken as normally.
Additionally a vortex may never be cast in combat or into combat.

If ward saves and look out sirs are allowed, are the these spells really that powerful?

Oldblood needs a price increase somehow.
He's too powerful for the price paid.

This I don't understand at all, generally I find Lords to be priced way too high compared to their Hero counterpart, I mean what are we really paying for? +1 WS, +1 Wound, +1 Attack, +1 AS. Is that really worth 60 points?(with Lizardmen the +1 WS is pretty much useless, if the Oldblood had had WS 7 it would have been a much bigger deal) And all the weapons and armor are more expensive too.
Or is there just something I am not seeing?

 

[Scalenex]

BRB
Focus on combined arms and reduced efficiency of deathstars, magic and cannons.

I agree with this in principle but not in implementation.

Maximum amount of point per unit are 450pts not including characters. There can only ever be two characters in one unit (most deathstars just died).

I have been tabled by enough MSU armies that I don't believe Deathstars are a problem. Very specific Deathstars are the problem. Such as Banner of the World Dragon. I think 450 points is a too tight of a limit. I think max of two characters is too tight of a limit. I am dubious if Deathstars need any formal limits at all, but if they do, I would suggest this for a lighter restriction. "At least three models of the rank and file models need to be in the front ranks at all times." This will blunt the worst excesses of Deathstar use without forcing everyone to play MSU.

Magic resistance work on all magical damage from spells, however their price is now: 20/40/60 and do not stack with a ward save.

I can vaguely understand that MR price would go up if MR became better. Note that is more complicated than changing the price of the BRB items with MR. There are lots of army book units with built in MR, they would all need some kind of price adjustment. I am neither supportive or opposed to not letting it stack with ward saves. First I want to know the rationale behind this.

Also, note that you would need to address more than Dwellers and Purple Sun. While they are the two worst culprits for OP spells, you would need to give all the army book lores a hard look and nerf almost every nuke spell. But I would think with the expanded magic resistance, the nuke spells do not need to addressed directly. A small implementation of magic resistance rules being changed would be a lot less trouble than adjusting every spell.

Magic miscast table to be changed so spending a low amount of dice doesn't result in dimensional cascade.
@hdctambien mentioned (modified by me) the following:

Roll 1d6 + X where X is the number of dice you used to cast the spell:

2 wizard can't cast any more.
3-4 casting wizard takes s6 hit.
5 -6 s6 small template. d6 dice are lost.
7-8 all wizards take S6 hit. d6 dice are lost.
9 - 10 Wizard loses d3 levels and can't cast any more.
11-12 Dimension cascade.

Note if you six dice something, you know have a 1 on in 3 chance of dimensional cascading. That's huge. Especially since one of the biggest complaints about 8th edition was that magic casting had a "Hail Mary" go for broke feel. This exacerbates it. I'm not sure many people will like it.

Also, the Soul of Stone and everything that adjusts miscasts would need a rewrite. Also, this biases the whole system towards spamming cheap spells which means Lore Mastery should go up in points across all armies. Things like Wandering Deliberations should go up in points across all armies, things that allow additional spells should go up in points across all armies. That's a lot of minor changes to debate over from one change.

The system also weakens L1 and L2 caster because they might be stuck with high value casting spells. It might be easier to rewrite all the lore description, make most spells light and easy to cast but give more spells high casting value variants (think Fireball on a grand scale)

It might be better to change all spell lists. That level of change is more for a true 9th edition as opposed to a patch job on 8th which is what I think we are going for.

Change cannons to do D3 +1 wounds. Lone character can very easily die, but monsters will on average take 3 wounds and cannot be one-shotted. Shooting a character on monster is randomized (1-4 = monster, 5-6 = character).

This is too extreme. Looks fine here because we are on the cannon magnet side, but players with cannon using armies will not accept this. If 1d3+1 cannons goes through they will negotiate for cheaper cannons. Then cannons will STILL be broken because of cannon spam. Better to make adjust the points of cannons and leave it at that.

The BSB reroll can only ever be taken in the unit the BSB is positioned in.
Fear grants a -1Ld modifier to the enemy. Should the test fail WS is reduced to WS1.
Terror grants a -2Ld modifier to the enemy and only work in close combat. Should the test fail WS is reduced to WS1 and ASL is gained. Units with ASL reroll successful to hit rolls.

I disagree. This weakens BSBs too much which is a fundamental part of the game. Modifying Fear and Terror to this extant will only require every Fear and Terror causing unit and every immune to psychology unit to have to be reevaluated. This level of change will freak people out and cause them lash out at all our of proposed changes. Also it looks self serving considering our dinosaurs.

Like with cannons it's much easier to just adjust the points cost of Fear and Terror causing creatures. AND it makes selling our concept to other groups easier. "40 points cheaper? How about 30 points cheaper?" You can't negotiate that easily when you are changing core rules.

Lords:
Slightly reduce price of Slann.
Change price on disciplines.
We need to increase the incentive to pick the more obscure dicsiplines.

The disciplines definitely need price modifications but very few non-LM players will stomach Slann becoming cheaper, especially since your proposed magic phase changes would only make them stronger.

Skrox (should be an actual unit entry!):

Agreed.

For every kroxigor you add you also add 10 additional skinks.

Agreed in principle, 10 Skinks to one Kroxigor seems better than 8 to 1 but I'm not sure Kroxigor should come in bundles. I think it'd be more user friendly to decide how many Skinks and then decide how many Kroxigor.

Skinks can be both musician and banner while a kroxigor can be a champion.
-1 To Hit against a the kroxigors.
You can only hit a kroxigor if you're in B2B contact with a skink that's in B2B contact with a kroxigor.
At 450pts you can at most have 4 kroxigors and full command.

I don't have a problem with any of these rules individually, but when put together it gets wonky.

-1 to hit against Kroxigors because icky when a Kroxigor is the unit champion. Especially if challenges are involved.

Combine the 450 limit with -1 to hit Kroxigor and you are spoonfeeding your enemy how to kill Skroxigor. The Skinks are killed in droves, lose Steadfast and break.


I am on the fence about making Swarms core and making Saurus character more expensive, but I agree with the most of the rest of your army list suggestions.

 

[hdctambien]

Ultimately, you can't balance 1 list at a time (or 1 list and cannons). That is how GW got itself into the mess that is Tomb Kings vs Elves. You have to balance everything all that the same time or else by the time you get to balancing the last army, it just won't fit into the puzzle. Every adjustment in every army will cause a butterfly effect in every other army.

Either someone needs to come up with a formula (what is 1 WS worth, what is 1 wound worth.. how do those values change if a model has ASF? etc...) and then apply that to everything (kind of like what people are trying to do with AoS ...) or every model from every army should be ordered in power level. Set the weakest model to 1 point and then value everything in terms of how powerful they are in regards to that unit.

I think the formula method is a futile exercise.

Ranking each model would be really time consuming, and I expect you'll run into a lot of scenarios of "Is unit X stronger than unit Y? It depends..." which will make it hard to price things... do you price the Temple Guard expecting the Slann to be in the unit or not? Do you price the Slann expecting it to be in a unit of Temple Guard?

Heck, even if you correctly balance every unit against every other unit ... how to you take into account combinations of units? How do you price in synergy?

Swedish comp uses dynamic point costs to push towards combined arms and MSU (by charging more for taking duplicate units and charging more for taking large units). It also costs extra if certain combinations of things are in the army. A truly balanced dynamic pricing structure would likely be fairly complicated though...

Magic items also mess up the balance (BRB magic items are really a bad idea all around) because 1 point of Ward Save should cost more for models with more wounds. +1 attack should cost more for models with high WS, etc...

And ultimately, you have to decide (and agree) on what type of games it should be balanced for. Combined Arms? MSU? Hordes? Should magic be powerful or just for support. Should characters be powerful or just for support?

Should 100 points of Unit X win 50% of the time against 100 points of Unit Y? Or should certain types of units have an advantage against other types of units? (Hordes beat characters, cannons beat characters, ambushers beat cannons, fast cav beats ambushers, etc...)

8th Edition has *a lot* of balance issues. It needed to be rewritten. Just changing point values will just change which armies are more balanced than others, but it won't really balance anything. And trying to balance just one army at a time (or several difference groups all balancing a different army simultaneously) isn't going to end up with anything balanced (you'll likely end up with a Mars Climate Orbiter situation...)

I'm not saying that it shouldn't be tried... but there needs to be some sort of strategy or metric. What does it mean to "be balanced" and is a proposed change moving the game towards that definition of balanced or not? Are we just using our gut to decide if something is "balanced" or is there some calculation/simulation that can be run to show that it is balanced? (How many play tests of how many permutations of armies played by how many player skill levels will it take?!)

Sheesh.... maybe GW had it right and we should just forget about a balanced point system...

... I think I've lost it.

What is the sound of one Warhammer clapping?

If a War hammers in the woods and nobody is there to hear it, does it block line of sight?

 

[Scalenex]

We don't need a formula, we need guidelines.

I have a vague strategy to go through various handbooks and dock the purples and some of the blues and boost the reds and some of the yellows.

Plus the broad guideline that BS shooting should be cheaper, Monstrous Cavarly more expensive, and the general idea that people shouldn't be pushed into taking the same Core choices every stinking game.

 

[ASSASSIN_NR_1]

Plus the broad guideline that BS shooting should be cheaper, Monstrous Cavarly more expensive, and the general idea that people shouldn't be pushed into taking the same Core choices every stinking game.

So more Core options will make for a greater variation of armies? That makes sense, but which units should move to Core? Or maybe new units should be made.
On the other hand, isn't some of the beauty of the game that the armies are different? Making more units would be to make the armies more alike and making the different races less unique.
What I think I am trying to say is that if anything, I think some units should move to Core.

This might be completely irrelevant as some additions to the armies doesn't make them less unique, so maybe just ignore this?

I should probably just go to bed

Anyway, how are we going to give our suggestions to the Swedish Comp, and how are we choosing which suggestions to send? If we are doing that at all.

 

[Caprasauridae]

Ultimately, you can't balance 1 list at a time (or 1 list and cannons). That is how GW got itself into the mess that is Tomb Kings vs Elves

What is this mess you refer to?

 

[Pinktaco]

@Scalenex I'm on the phone so you'll get a rough reply:

I can agree to your deathstar suggestion. I'm no Wizard and just suggest based on my own experience. Arguably I don't have the most so getting all perspectives on the matter will be good.

The reason magic res items should go up in price is so you can't take a "magic res caddy" and add 4+ ward on an expensive unit with a hero character.

How about changing miscast to 1D6 + D3 if you spend 1-4 dice and 2D6 if you spend 6 dice? That'll still punish people for 6 dicing the big spells and not so much for people being unlucky. It's unreasonable that people who want to play it safe is being punished because they get unlucky. It's even worse when your army is based around that one mage.

If we'll see low casting value spam wouldn't that actually cause people to have MORE lvl 1/2 mages? Isn't the current crutch that by having a lvl 4 mage you can somewhat safely get your uber spell and thus chuck 6 dice after it and hope not to be eaten by a hole?
I'm honestly not sure how to balance THAT, but I'd like to see more people go for lower leveled mages. Currently it comes off as a necessity, but maybe the issue is that I want to see magic as supporting the army and not single-handedly win the game. It's important that we're clear on what we personally would like to see. Some people consider uber spells a must have and I want them gone.

Remove kroxigor champion from skrox unit and remove 450pts limit. I'd rather see skrox units be worth while than us not agreeing at all haha.
The question is: is the current skrox uni on pair with saurus and skink skirmishers? If not then what should be done?

The reasoning by cheapening the slann is that he got nerfed threefold last update:
1) higher base price.
2) no more free discipline.
3) worse (but still good) disciplines.

People perceive our slann way different than us. We could bring him naked and get off a lucky spell and they'd consider him powerful. It's not that I have s burning need for this change, but I'm not seeing it being complete unreasonable. At 300pts we still just have a lvl 4. The slann is can very easily cost 400-450pts and barely get any more spells off than s normal lvl 4 mage. And while changing MR and miscast table make our Slann more powerful it also makes other armies more powerful as well. With that said I'm capable of letting it fly, but I still think there's reason behind what I'm saying.

A price change on cannons won't do anything. Either we price cannons so high that we'll see an actual reduction of cannons or nothing happens to the overall meta. People can math away all they want, but getting your monster one-shot isn't the freak case scenario people make it out to be. It happens and for any naive monster user you'll see it more than people care to admit. Of cannons don't change you can forget all about characters on monsters and monsters in general.

There are two armies who have troubles with monsters: empire and dwarfs. Dwarfs can field plenty of S6 stunties on top of all their artillery and very good characters and empire have demigryphs and a steamtank ("monster"). One could argue that greatswords should be S6. They certainly do need a buff.

I'm not saying I have answers to everything and if everything I propose is considered "bad" it's fine. As long as we have reasonable discussions. We can't all agree to everything, but we can discuss everything and get as perspectives on the matter as possible.

**Edit**while I might been too extreme on the BSB/monster matter there's no denying that the BSB is currently way too powerful. Fear and terror is absolutely useless as is. Everything is Ld9-10 with a reroll. There's nothing to it. A middle ground should be found.

Also the Swedish comp guys are looking at doing a full "9th edition update". We will see changes to the core rules whether we like it or not, for the BRB that is. The army book update I think is further out.

Also my Engrish is horrible in this post. I hope it's understandable

 

[Pinktaco]

Ultimately, you can't balance 1 list at a time (or 1 list and cannons). That is how GW got itself into the mess that is Tomb Kings vs Elves. You have to balance everything all that the same time or else by the time you get to balancing the last army, it just won't fit into the puzzle. Every adjustment in every army will cause a butterfly effect in every other army.

Either someone needs to come up with a formula (what is 1 WS worth, what is 1 wound worth.. how do those values change if a model has ASF? etc...) and then apply that to everything (kind of like what people are trying to do with AoS ...) or every model from every army should be ordered in power level. Set the weakest model to 1 point and then value everything in terms of how powerful they are in regards to that unit.

I think the formula method is a futile exercise.

Ranking each model would be really time consuming, and I expect you'll run into a lot of scenarios of "Is unit X stronger than unit Y? It depends..." which will make it hard to price things... do you price the Temple Guard expecting the Slann to be in the unit or not? Do you price the Slann expecting it to be in a unit of Temple Guard?

Heck, even if you correctly balance every unit against every other unit ... how to you take into account combinations of units? How do you price in synergy?

Swedish comp uses dynamic point costs to push towards combined arms and MSU (by charging more for taking duplicate units and charging more for taking large units). It also costs extra if certain combinations of things are in the army. A truly balanced dynamic pricing structure would likely be fairly complicated though...

Magic items also mess up the balance (BRB magic items are really a bad idea all around) because 1 point of Ward Save should cost more for models with more wounds. +1 attack should cost more for models with high WS, etc...

And ultimately, you have to decide (and agree) on what type of games it should be balanced for. Combined Arms? MSU? Hordes? Should magic be powerful or just for support. Should characters be powerful or just for support?

Should 100 points of Unit X win 50% of the time against 100 points of Unit Y? Or should certain types of units have an advantage against other types of units? (Hordes beat characters, cannons beat characters, ambushers beat cannons, fast cav beats ambushers, etc...)

8th Edition has *a lot* of balance issues. It needed to be rewritten. Just changing point values will just change which armies are more balanced than others, but it won't really balance anything. And trying to balance just one army at a time (or several difference groups all balancing a different army simultaneously) isn't going to end up with anything balanced (you'll likely end up with a Mars Climate Orbiter situation...)

I'm not saying that it shouldn't be tried... but there needs to be some sort of strategy or metric. What does it mean to "be balanced" and is a proposed change moving the game towards that definition of balanced or not? Are we just using our gut to decide if something is "balanced" or is there some calculation/simulation that can be run to show that it is balanced? (How many play tests of how many permutations of armies played by how many player skill levels will it take?!)

Sheesh.... maybe GW had it right and we should just forget about a balanced point system...

... I think I've lost it.

What is the sound of one Warhammer clapping?

If a War hammers in the woods and nobody is there to hear it, does it block line of sight?

You're over thinking the balance issues. It's true some armies are downright bad, but in broad terms the game is fairly balanced. We need to address the monstrous cavalry meta among some other things, but a complete overhaul is excessive.

 

[ASSASSIN_NR_1]

If we'll see low casting value spam wouldn't that actually cause people to have MORE lvl 1/2 mages? Isn't the current crutch that by having a lvl 4 mage you can somewhat safely get your uber spell and thus chuck 6 dice after it and hope not to be eaten by a hole?
I'm honestly not sure how to balance THAT, but I'd like to see more people go for lower leveled mages.

Maybe bring back the thing where the mage cannot cast any spells if you roll double one.
The more dice are rolled, the bigger the chance of getting double 6, but also double 1.
Came to think of it: Then most would probably wait casting the big spell till the very end of the magic phase.

Maybe double 6 could instead add D3 (or D6) to the casting, making it harder to beat, but not impossible, and you could still use a dispell scroll.
This would probably mean that the miscast table should be more forgiving though.

 

[NIGHTBRINGER]

How about changing miscast to 1D6 + D3 if you spend 1-4 dice and 2D6 if you spend 6 dice? That'll still punish people for 6 dicing the big spells and not so much for people being unlucky. It's unreasonable that people who want to play it safe is being punished because they get unlucky.

Personally I like your original miscast system better. I like the fact that each and every extra power dice you expend increases your risk of getting a really bad miscast result.

The reasoning by cheapening the slann is that he got nerfed threefold last update:
1) higher base price.
2) no more free discipline.
3) worse (but still good) disciplines.

The Slann from last edition needed to get nerfed under the 8th edition system. That one model was single handily putting Lizardmen into the top tier category.

At 300pts we still just have a lvl 4.

I wouldn't classify the Slann as "just a level 4". For 300 points our Slann has....

• toughness 4 (most wizards are toughness 3)
• 4+ ward save (without having to touch our magic item allowance)
• 5 wounds!
• access to amazing disciplines
• leadership 9 cold blooded
• access to a diverse set of magic lores
  
• ability to be a BSB... and the ability to take a magic standard AND magic items

A price change on cannons won't do anything. Either we price cannons so high that we'll see an actual reduction of cannons or nothing happens to the overall meta. People can math away all they want, but getting your monster one-shot isn't the freak case scenario people make it out to be. It happens and for any naive monster user you'll see it more than people care to admit. Of cannons don't change you can forget all about characters on monsters and monsters in general.

I agree that cannons need to be changed a bit rules-wise as opposed to just a points increase. It is absolutely no fun having a monster killed with one shot on turn one. Outside of a few monsters (HPA, Frostheart, etc), monsters are pretty much absent from competitive lists. I think that the reason for this is the relative ease in which cannons deal with monsters.

 

[hdctambien]

I agree that cannons need to be changed a bit rules-wise as opposed to just a points increase. It is absolutely no fun having a monster killed with one shot on turn one

And if it's not one shotted it'll probably be killed by the 2nd cannon...

 

[pendrake]

... monsters are pretty much absent from competitive lists. I think that the reason for this is the relative ease in which cannons deal with monsters.

A cannonball is to a giant (or a carnosaur) what a musket ball is to a man.

On the one hand the cannonball should be able to kill the giant (as much as I love fielding giants) in one shot but it ought to be harder to aim at and hit a moving target with a cannon (as much as I love using cannon).

More thought required...
(edits)

 

[Pinktaco]

@NIGHTBRINGER it's true we get all kinds of "neat " stuff for the price we pay, you don't have to remind me, it's also true that while we have all that it doesn't actually make our Slann a better caster. Adding disciplines only add to the price.
A slann who may potentially get an extra dice is 345pts, add high magic and a BSB and you've crossed 400pts and you still cast spells just as good at that lvl 4 empire mage.

With that said I'm willing to drop it. I'd love for when the time come for a proper update of our book that the first priority would be a lvl 3/4 skink high priest.

 

[ASSASSIN_NR_1]

With that said I'm willing to drop it. I'd love for when the time come for a proper update of our book that the first priority would be a lvl 3/4 skink high priest.

Not sure I like the idea of a lv 4 Skink, it just feels wrong to me, a lv 3 maybe, so he is not rivalling the Slann.

 

[Pinktaco]

He wouldnt actually "rival". He'd have beast, heaven and high magic lores to choose from and no disciplines. He'd be T2 and cost 200pts. In other words he'd be much more restricted and weak than say a high elf/empire mage.

He would, however, allow players to have a lvl 4 mage without spending a minimum of 300pts. The difference would be that with a Slann you'd be able to go "all out" and with the skink high priest you'd still have a lvl 4 mage albeit a bit weak and somewhat expensive for what you get.

I'd say it would make good sense and offer some real con/pro you'd have to consider.

 

[ASSASSIN_NR_1]

He wouldnt actually "rival". He'd have beast, heaven and high magic lores to choose from and no disciplines. He'd be T2 and cost 200pts. In other words he'd be much more restricted and weak than say a high elf/empire mage.

He would, however, allow players to have a lvl 4 mage without spending a minimum of 300pts. The difference would be that with a Slann you'd be able to go "all out" and with the skink high priest you'd still have a lvl 4 mage albeit a bit weak and somewhat expensive for what you get.

I'd say it would make good sense and offer some real con/pro you'd have to consider.

All right I can follow you. Maybe it would be all right to have a lv 4 skink, but honestly I think Slann should be lv 5.

And why is it that we can't change the price of the Carnosaur, what is the difference between that and say the Troglodon? (Other that the Troglodon is a worse choice)
I'd say a 20 points cheaper so it comes in at 200 points, that is still not exactly cheap, and the upgrades aren't either.

 

[Pinktaco]

A lvl 5 slann is even better than my proposale of slight price reduction and likely wouldn't get a pass haha

The troglodon cannot be mounted by one of the best characters in the game

 

[hdctambien]

At 300 points, the Slann is pretty comparable (but I think still better) than a Level 4 Elf Mage with a 4+ ward save (50 points that doesn't take up a magic item slot)