Overused Rules in AoS - Warhammer Weekly 05172023
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 พ.ค. 2024
- Join us for another week of news, rumors and all things Warhammering! This week, we are breaking down types of rules in AoS that are overused and why that is a problem. What are the different types of overused rules? What does it do to the game when they are overused? Tune in and find out!
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0:00 News
9:25 Pick of the Week
14:25 Hobby Time
17:50 Overused Rules
1:13:36 4-up Rally
1:34:10 CPs
1:55:20 -1 Damage
2:13:50 Foot Heroes
2:22:30 Command Abilities
2:36:10 Ward Removal
2:49:42 Limiting Saves
2:57:00 Watch List
3:02:40 3rd Rails
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While thinking about it here before zzz, another topic we probably should’ve hit: ranged mortal wound spam. Of course Kroak + Slann + Troglodon + Astrolith Bearer in Starborne is a recent, intense example.
Yeah, that damage output is ROUGH.
Yes! And you cannot interact with that just watch your models die.
DoT, LRL, KO, Seraphon are a problem. Ranged MW damage has increased SO MUCH over the years. I feel like GW makes these rallys and healing to keep up with all the magic damage/mw spam going on in the game atm.
And people thought 1/game double tapping 6 raptor squads were bad
I think some of the other examples mentioned in this thread are worse
A lot of what you hit on in this video remind me of the defense/offense power creep arms race that plagued 40k 9th Ed. Just, perhaps, not happening at the same accelerated pace.
The AoS team have generally seemed more restrained in handing out powerful abilities that accelerate this arms race. In comparison, 40k has 5+ units with Morathi-like wound caps - and at least as many units with abilities to ignore it.
Another thing AoS has done well compared to 40k is to make faction abilities actual abilities (eg. Fire and Fade) rather than just statistical improvements. This also helps dampen the arms race.
Conversely, Nurgle seems to be suffering from having a very 40k-like faction ability. Which makes it very vulnerable to power creep.
The top 5 armies based on winrate currently are all books from the last 90 days and are all above the 55% threshold. In order from 1st: SBGL, BoK, KO, OBR, HoS. Gitz is in 6th at 55%. I think the idea of power creep has come about more recently because of that. Hopefully they come down soon
All that suggests is that recent books have been strong, not that structurally they have a problem with each book (roughly) over powering the last one.
9th Ed 40k is a good example of what power creep looks like. Throughout the whole edition, new books were almost always just better than their predecessors. You could look away for a few months and the books that used to be winning at tourneys would now be entirely outclassed.
I don't think they'll come down significantly, I'd expect more point decreases for old army. The oppressive builds that are obvious like thunderers will get hit, but I'm not expecting battle trait mechanics to get touched. These books will probably be close to the baseline or a little below that we'll see for 4e tomes, much like SBGL was for 3e.
Perhaps Death should be limited to getting models back to units, not healing wounds. Healing limited to another Grand Alliance, like Order. Destruction can bring units back at reduced strength and Chaos can summon new units...
I'd love it if they just canned the whole "must be topped off to restore a model" mechanic for SBGL, OBR & NH. It feels so cumbersome and a feel bad when your big heal tops off a kavalos with one wound or something. Just make it so you get three wounds to allocate and any combination of which can be restored to a model (including a dead one), but you can't partially restore a model. For whatever reason they're fine with 4+ rally and multiwound models but they still write the rule like this, I'd love to know why.
I've noticed that regenerative mechanics like powerful healing or 4+ rally are consistently problematic, whether in AoS or 40K. As a Necrons player, this is something I've come up against throughout my play experience. Like gargants, powerful regeneration mechanics on units act as damage gatekeepers: you commit a huge amount of models and either to have enough damage to get past the gate and wipe the unit to prevent the mechanic happening at all, or you don't pass the gate and your high commitment of models is made useless. The former feels particularly bad for the opponent if their army identity is based on that mechanic, like Necrons, since that mechanic just... doesn't happen for them at all, and the latter is clearly awful as well.
Once-per-game regens tend to have fewer problems in this regard, since they are by their nature limited. Even if the regen is a guaranteed, uncounterable mechanic, your opponent knows you can't do it again, and can plan around triggering the regen as part of their strategy, so as long as the amount that gets regen'd isn't too excessive and isn't applied to a unit that's already highly durable.
On a side note regarding 4+ Rally, there's a reason the Necron's "return a model" roll has been a 5+ since their second codex, and I'm bloody frustrated that the "fix" to 4+ rally wasn't to simply change the existing versions to 5+, but to add a whole additional rule on top of it.
Also my god were we dragging cohosts today, I went after tyler you all piled in on Tom. Woof.
Love you Tyler, nurgle salt and all your insights are awesome.
Thanks man - all part of it. :) And let’s face it…I am a little salty. :)
@@TylerEmerson also nurgle salt sounds like THE WORST seasoning
@@TylerEmerson use milk for those khorne flakes instead my dude!
Your points while nurgle salted are great as always and insights appreciated :)
You know what I love? Every single new book having a different way to just passively stop my flesh eater courts from doing their only thing, of fight twice. And on top of that just hoping that monster doesn't roll a 3+.
Wonderful episode with great discussion, thank you!
If Tyler is frustrated at no wards and being slow, he should practice with Kruleboyz 😂
-1 damage is tough for me. I main Slaves and all my units are damage 2. But having played vs old Thunder Lizards and new NH I’d say the rule is a lot less atrocious to face when I’m not getting best up in the hero phase. And the shooting phase. And the charge phase. And the combat phase. So it might’ve been the compounded effect from TL that made it feel so insurmountable.
The rule can still get in the sea in my mind, but it can be managable.
I only can speak as a Skaven player, but the discussion between healing, model regen, 4+ rally and shutting off Inspiring Presence really puts things in perspective. AOS is my first wargame and I starting right before launch. As the years went by, it was my understanding that this wargame is about understanding that models will die but its possible to be in control of where and when they do. Particularly with the rats or other armies that have gamble mechanics or really just any player that has a playstyle of swinging big or being clever with positioning and ambushing, you would hope that when you succeed it pulls you ahead. In 3.0, it is rough, for all of things you folks talked about. Its also an ever mounting challenge to explain to new players why some players end games with nearly 1500pts left after finally tabling an opponent after round 5. And that's with good coaching and list building guidance and what-not.
I agreed with one of you who said that these mechanics could be applied to an army as "their thing" and that's how they survive/win. But right now any knucklehead off the street can 4+ rally.
What a great episode. Vince, Tyler you guys where amazing as always. David was a fantastic guest to have on the show. It was a real pleasure listening to the discussions between the three of you. Thank you, and keep up the good work ✌️
I think besides overusing rules GW is leaning way too hard into rock paper scisors and Neferata is the perfect example. If your army can't stop the spell and relies on hitting things like destruction you will have a terrible play expirience. But if you play a magic heavy list like Teclas you basicly turn Neferate into a 400 points waste model. And imo this is happening more and more with recent tomes.
Edit: Also I think one of the most annoying thing that I noticed is that every new book keeps getting tools to invalidate or make life really hard for fair armies. In this case fair armies beeing armies that just go into melee and rely on hits, rend and high damage profiles to do work wihtout any tricks (so no deepstrike, teleport etc)
You used a 700pts unit to counter a 400 though. Also you compare it to a god units, that's the problem with gods being too efficient or not efficient enough.
It's fine to have certain pieces that play into a niche because they're just one part of your army. When it comes to the battle traits like something like IDK's anti shooting, it skews hard into certain matchups. If Teclis becomes omnipresent then it might be better to spend those 400 points into something else.
Vince, Tyler, David - you all killed it! Awesome discussions, really touched on almost everything except mortal wound spam/splash.
A big thing to me is that the new Sinister Six have multiple dimensions to their presence on the game. It is not just points, it isn't just a problem unit(s) and/or problem build, it is several interwoven layers that are more than the sum of their parts. I hope Cities of Sigmar and Flesh Eater Courts got some more attention from the studio before the books got sent to print - let the streak end with Lizardmen!
Fantastic discussion this week. Vince's insight about exception games scratched an itch I have had for many years re: MTG. I've always referred to it as a "lawyer game", where you have very few set rules and then endless caveats in the form of new card abilities. Anyway, it was great to have you lay this mechanic out and explain how it applies to many other games I enjoy.
Speaking of multiplying CPs:
- Abilities that increase the cost of CP's are also universally annoying
Super interesting conversation. During the healing conversation I really appreciated the guest bringing up Sylvaneth as a counter example of an army that has powerful healing not being too much because of the greater context of the army.
2:18:00 Vampires are impressive or not impressive based on the context of the setting they live in. A vampire in our (largely low power, mundane) world is basically unstoppable. A vampire in the DCU is a nobody (vs the likes of Wonder Woman or The Flash). Vampires were hot shit back in the old world. Big fish in a small pond. In the AofS setting everyone has a magic weapon, orc shamans routinely cook up poisons that can destroy ghosts or daemons and an 8ft tall armoured angel is seen as a basic foot soldier. Welcome to the big leagues, Vamps. You're no weaker than you were-But you're not in that small pond anymore ;)
I think what we are touching on all throughout this discussion - "the baseline has changed" - is that there seems to have been a deliberate change in design philosophy or perhaps at a minimum, the team writing the books swapped since... gitz. The first half of 3rd ed books are simply not written the same as the last 8 or so.
The phenomenon of power creep is better explained by confirmation bias than any other theory.
One of my biggest gripes is pluses to magic. I think it should be more granular and one sided. + To cast but not plus to unbinding. You become more consistent at doing your cool thing but don't improve at denying your opponent their cool thing
... did vince just make a football reference?!
Good discussion! I feel like in the first half of 3.0, the designers were aware that most of the mechanics you talked about were problematic. So they used those only very sparingly. But recently, they went "Hey, this cool ability did not cause any real problems in the past, so let's use it more often!" without realizing that it only did not cause real problems because it was used sparingly and limited in the past.
Also, I absolutey HATE the 6" pile in ability for units that are not already in combat. Feels like such a cheater move that disregards a core concept of the game.
I have always had a problem with rules that pile in and attack twice. That's because a turn is representing an incrimate of time. Of someone could literally do twice the amount of movement and axe swings as someone else you should just auto hit and wound. It just is unseemly...
To your point about hero profiles, for some reason they brought the Arch-Revenant down to 1 damage. He’s now worse in combat than most of your unit champions, not to mention he’s outclassed by some goblin with a moon hat.
Late to the party, but a lot of this discussion (very good discussion, greatly enjoyed) stems from the design concept that every warscroll has to have some special ability on it and eventually you run of good, appropriate ideas. Maybe basic infantry and cavalry should be just that? Nothing special about them - no mortal wounds, exploding dice, run and charge, retreat and charge, ad nauseam.
And maybe one of the design concepts they should use is that your rules affect your army - not the other guy's army. You want to affect the other guy, cast a spell, fight him, build up an effect that could be countered (e.g. disease), but not allow anything that's automatic.
Those would seem to be simple, early steps to rectify some of this.
I believe things like -1 damage or ethereal (not Neffy's spell though) are good for the game, and that's coming from a Sylvaneth player (playing Scythes that are rend -3 and damage 2).
The reason for that is it forces you to have diversity in your lists if you don't want to be hard countered by such debuffs: for instance in my Sylvaneth list I'm bringing Spiterider Lancers so I don't completely bounce off -1 damage.
Ultimately the game will always be rock/paper/scissor but in a singles tournament format where you can face anyone you need to make sure in list building you are not completely countered by one single debuff.
For what it's worth guilds by artisans guild has "color" identity and it's fairly fun and simple. I'm teaching my 2 boys how to play now. It's a great mini war game to introduce to kids.
Sorry to have taken the show on such a negative note at the end there, Vince. I don't tend to do social media, and was hoping his absence was for a more positive reason.
Speaking again with a Fec bias, I hate the turning off ward thing. Usually it's a no brainer or very easy to use option, they're not spending anything to get it, it's just a cheap add on or obvious artifact. My saves across the board are awful, and oftentimes getting on the 5+ ward spell is huge. I don't like when something like a boomthirster or just some random thing turns off my ward, and invalidates my spell, just because .
I'm glad you touched on the absurdity of some unit stats.
It's completely immersion breaking and nonsensical that boing grot bounderz are doing more damage then Chaos Knights on average, and can sometimes even be tankier if they get a 5+ ward.
Why are stabbas able to be tougher then Gutrippaz with the amount of buffs they can have, and of course model and unit regen.
It really ruins the game.
Why are Ogors mostly 5+ armor with no other layers of protection besides their wounds (which lets be honest) is not as high as it should be.
The list goes on and on and on and it's BS.
RE final 3rd rails discussion
Is a very limited 3" deploy like the Masque OK?
I think that's fine, again, it's the single special character thing, that is fine.
Multipliying CP to me is a problem when it's paired with Multiple ways to Generate CPs, in ironjawz, you still only get the normal amount so you still have choices to make, but in Slaanesh, on top of it you get enough CP to do everything
Power creep in AoS is definitely a thing. I'd like to see a baseline unit for each in-game role that actually functions throughout the lifecycle of the game at a reasonable points level without having its stats creeped.
Like with everything in life moderation is the key! haha. ^^ Cool show though guys. :)
On the note of the new books rocketing into the higher win rates I think there's an element of that which is just people need time to learn to counter the new books/shake up the meta to counter whatever is hot at the time and that is something stats won't show until x amount of time has passed. So although things appear really strong on first pass. You just need to think of a new way to beat said strongness.
I always go back to when Nighthaunt first got a tome and mass ethereal was the bane of everything it seemed... Then people just started bringing more volume of attacks and MW to bypass it. But for the first few weeks before people started adding that into their lists it seemed way stronger than it is. Now you see Nighthaunt you know what to expect and you just deal with it.
I really hate Rally on a 4+. However, if it is used on a unit that is super squishy and not too deadly then maybe it would be alright. I would like to see some sort of gate to get access to the ability. Perhaps a hero that allows for plus 1 to Rally roles for units wholly within 12 inches. And the base rally for that subfaction is a 5 instead of a 6. With some guard rails like that in place it seems more managed and gives the opponent a chance to adapt to it.
Some Ossiarch related thoughts.
- Seems like before the new book especially the loss of unique special-ness exception to how things work would be the Ossiarchs. Their RDP tactical decision identity practically evaporated into everyone getting the general newer command point options.
Do you think that where they are currently has brought back some identity for them through exceptions?
-Thinking about the -1 on damage: Not sure on a route to properly balance the effect. Though seems like Petrifex could go the defensive route instead of the offensive -1. Maybe as something like an armor up sub faction command order. That way it integrates with the theme of different sub-factions having different main tactics.
Any thoughts?
Well, the -1 damage went away with the FAQ, but I think it was handled pretty well, and I think they did capture the command control function with just a lot of CP and unique CPs
If we ever get AoS equivalent decks to what 40k got in Magic. I think Seraphon should be Temur. They are very connected to their habitat for green, especially coalesced. The Slaan and Skink mages are very much blue mages. Then Red but also just the Gruul pairing in general for your Saurus, Carnos, and Krox.
do u think last swat of books seeming a different beast can be related to Jervis Johnson leaving? or was that too long ago..?
It definitely would have been some of the first books after he left we're seeing just thinking about their production time.
My poor KB vulture is by far the worst at multiplying CP since you need to pay for both commands, I've maybe used the ability twice in all my games since KB feel super starved for CP
My main issue with 4+ rally (and rally as a concept) is that resurrection should be exclusive to a select few armies. (Mainly death armies)
More like it should be exclusive to melee armies, not from death, because they are the one where rallying things to keep fighting makes sense. Death already has resurrection abilities, why even give them something called rally when they are supposed to "resurrect" things. Shooting armies are supposed to fight from far enough that they don't die this much and aren't the type of units that get to rally things but more force the enemy units to have to rally before going in melee half dead.
I think the problem with the term "power creep" is that it doesn't imply that some new books are strong, but that every iteration of books is consistently stronger than the previous. For that to be true, it would have to be the case that old books, if updated to current terminology etc, would be incredibly weak in the current system. I don't think that's true at all. We've seen IDK be a top performer all the way through 2nd edition and even into 3rd with a 1st edition book. I think there are other examples like this to be found.
What I think is really happening is that when new books are released, some are too strong, and some are too weak, with the former being more common, because they try not to make their shiny new things suck. But because the production cycle is quite slow, it takes quite a while for these strong armies to be brought back into line, at which point they already have high winrates. That does mean you end up with more new armies at the top of the leaderboards at any given moment, but that's not the same as power creep, because they generally don't stay there.
I can't believe that Tyler made a mistake. the first two battletome was stormcast and orruck warclans. not stormcast and nurgle lol
Oh $&@! Oops…that salty Nurgle bias rearing its ugly head, once again. 😊
Generally agere with all of it but ESPECIALLY on the foot hero stats! I need my character distinctions, darnit!
I remember when there was no hero phase healing..... remember that heroic actions are 3.0
Tyler, Tyler, Tyler.
The 1 thing you are missing on why the last books are good against you is....time.
First 18 months of 3.0. What was averege time between books....2 months. Max 2 book at a time.
That gave every player time to focus and change strategy to adapt to the new book.
Fyre slayers and deepkin come out.
Every other army player played them and adjusted accordingly. Together, the community could discuss their strengths and weaknesses.
Also. Those were not highly played armies. Still to this day.
Now, in 90 days, we see 6 plus books drop.
The last books. Also, some of the more popular armies.
There are too many to figure out all their weaknesses and strategies in a short
You are right, goblin heroes and vampire lords should not have the same profile. Clearly Goblin heroes need a buff to be better than them
Omg. LIKED for Sliders!
On powercreep: I dont think looking at winrates is a good measure of power creep. everything can be "Balanced" but there can still be power creep. i think a better measure of powercreep is to look at the output/utility/defense of units now and 3 years ago. how much more dmg are you getting per point, how much more effective wounds are you getting. The main problem with power creep isnt that there is an imbalance in the overall ecosystem, its that it is pushing the overall ecosystem to an edge, where once it falls off you get 40K situations where everyone gets invulns, and now everyone gets stuff that ignores invulns, and now you get "Super invulns" that is totally not an invuln but rly it just works like an invuln with a different name, AKA daemon saves. For the current health of the game power creep doesnt matter, but it matters A LOT for the longevity of the game.
In video games this is also a real issue, where the longer a game lasts, the more designers understand the rules of the game and see whats possible, the more broken the ecosystem gets and teh more quickly the ecosystem gets broken. in League of Legends, they recently did a giant balance update to the entire game, making everything more durrable because damage had gotten so out of hand. Champions that were once seen as mega busted are now trash tier because of the newer stuff getting what they already had and more. in Hearthstone, some cards are nerfed at the start of their lifecycle, and before their normal lifecycle is even over (which is 2 years) the unnerfed versions of the cards are no longer good.
In Warhammer, i think a lot of this could be avoided by having all books designed at the same time, under the same conditions. we know this is not the case at GW. a famous quote from the last year from 40K was about tyranids. i think they shot up to almost a 70% winrate with their new 9th ed book, and the designers were like "In playtesting this was fine, we tested this against 2 or 3 other armies and it was fine" and those 3 other armies were also new books that were setting on 60%+ winrates (i think it was Tau, Harlequins and something else).
If everything was designed and tested at the same time, this would save so much headache where everyone starts on a leveled playing field from a design knowledge perspective.
What your describing in your examples fits Feature Creep a whole lot better than Power Creep
Great show
I don't think of power creep in terms of faction balancing, it's more about mechanical design creep. Like how mortal wounds used to be rare in 1st edition AoS, and now, not so much--that's power creep to me. It's completely separated from the "power level" between factions. In fact, it can be healthy for the game to amplify certain aspects that were waning previously. We can't deny that 3rd edition units would kick the arses of their previous iterations. The mirage is strongest when newer edition books are battling old ones. But that's not power creep--that's just inevitable.
1:41:19 Really? What do you mean by qualify? you guys play more games than I do, but that's not how I interpreted Dhom-Hain Subfaction rule. from the Deepkin FAQ:
If you take the second turn in the current battle round, friendly Dhom-hain Heroes can issue the Redeploy command up to 3 times in the same phase. If a friendly Dhom-hain Hero does so, each command must be received by a friendly Dhom-hain Namarti unit. No command point is spent the second and third times this unit issues that command in that phase.
it doesn't say anything about changing redeploy so the receiving unit doesn't have to qualify. in fact, from the Core Rules FAQ:
Q: If an ability allows me to use the same command more than once in the same phase, can I issue the ‘Redeploy’ command to multiple eligible units immediately after 1 enemy unit has moved?
A: Yes.
...the keyword being "eligible", but it's an iffy one, I'll grant you. and I think it's worded strongly enough to disallow using multiple different heroes. Am I missing something? Finding rulings is a slog, and I'd not be surprised if I missed something. I've always wanted to play more with the Dhom-Hain stuff, and this'd be good to know.
That is correct, they would still have to qualify, but that is what we were saying, you can repeat multiple times at later points in the round.
@@VinceVenturella Yeaaaaaahhhh.... seems obvious now, since you were talking about triggered abilities. IDK why I thought you guys were giving a pass to Redeploy. I did listen to the next part. It was pretty late when I was listening back, I guess. Thank you guys for your insights!
Since my actual first name is C.W., it’s really disconcerting to hear you talk to the dude called C.W. in the chat. I’ve never heard anyone else called by my name before
Also, this was an awesome show
I am a SBG player so my opinion is probably out the window but I do think your being a tad bit harsh to SBG and not hard enough legion of blood and Nefy on it self
I don't think that's unfair at all, I think it's dead on, it's really LoB and Vurkos that are the bog offenders (though the army as a whole is pushed, those are the bent things).
As someone whose still collecting their army, and has not played a single game yet: Are these concerns the type that mainly effect the competitive scene, or do they greatly effect the casual experience as well?
As a n00b it's honestly hard to figure out if AOS is a trash game or not.
It's a great game, this is just examining some trends we see with the books and some challenges. They are minor overall, they can effect both competitives and casuals. We are always focused more on how the rules will effect casual people.
overused rules checked. Forgotten good rules now ! Give the Stormcast dragon cohesion rules to pusgoyles goddamit ! The renforcement rules for DoK would interest skaven too !
Most of the time I agree with you Vince, but I think in this instance, you're misusing the term "power creep". Every army is a combination of three things: Speed, toughness, and power. Where an army excels in one of these aspects over the others is where more of their units excel in one aspect over the others. For example, KO excels in speed, but lacks in toughness and power. On the other hand, OBR lacks speed, but excels in toughness, and is middle of the road in power. What mechanics the armies use to achieve these characteristics is irrelevant, and I'm not even sure how you would empirically measure these characteristics. And yet, players have a feel for where their armies are strong and where they're weak in these characteristics. For the game to be balanced, there HAS to be a paper/rock/scissors relationship between these three characteristics, and one army CANNOT excel in all three areas and not have any weaknesses. Otherwise, the game would be broken. Power creep is the act of each new battletome increasing the overall characteristics of the related army, without providing any offsetting weaknesses. Take for example the archers in various armies.
Deepkin have the Reavers, 10 wounds, 8" move, 5+ save, 2 shots at 18", hit on 3+ and wound on 3+ for 170 points. Released March 12, 2022
Daughters have Blood stalkers, 10 wounds, 8" move, 5+ save, 2 shots at 24", hit on 3+ and wound on 3+ for 180 and do mortals on hits of 6. Released May 21, 2022
Lumineth have Sentinels, 10 wounds, 6" move, 5+ save, 1 shot at 18" or 24" (+ 6" extender), hit on 3+ and wound on 4+, do mortals on hits of 6 (or 5 with easy spell) for 160 points. Released October 10, 2022
Slaanesh have Blissbarbs, 11 wounds, 6" move, 6+ save, 2 shots at 18", hit on 3+ and wound on 4+ (3+ if you have unit leader, which is easy), and can run and shoot for 150 points. Released April 4, 2023.
Slaanesh are objectively better than Lumineth, Daughter, or Deepkin archers. But there's a progression in the archers getting better and being pointed lower over time. And let's not get started with the fact that Slaanesh have mechanics that multiply all three aspects (speed, toughness, and power). Speed - their archers can run and still shoot. Toughness - at 12 depravity points it's a -1 to hit for your enemy. Power - With a pretenders general you can issue the same command 3 times in the same phase, all battle. So multiple units of archers could all receive All-out-attack in same phase.
Where are these power multipliers for other factions?
The answer is simple - each new battletome comes up with ways to slightly improve the speed, toughness, and power of the faction in comparison to the battletomes released before. That's power creep. We've all gotten used to it, though, which is why everyone says "Oh, my faction needs a new battletome." We all want to be the beneficiary of the next power creep.
Goblins have a better stat line than Ogor Hunters….
It's utter BS that this is the case. Totally immersion breaking.
Hey man, Soul Blight players only get to eat lobster thermidor 5 nights a week so spare them a thought.
Vince, I largely agree with you that power creep is a mirage but I think you guys missed one huge point regarding GWs development which leads to what I believe is unintentional power creep.
The books in development are tested against other books in development, which means if one of those books is pushed or bent then it’s very likely that either other books will be brought up to compete with whatever’s strong or that GW will have a harder time noticing that something is too strong. To use 40k as an example we know that this happened with the Votann release because GW said as much when they apologized for Votann being so OP.
Quoted from the warcom article- “In this instance, the army was tested against other recent books like Aeldari and Tyranids - many of which have seen their own increases in points and rules adjustments since their release to align with the wider game.”
So with regards to the most recent books I think it’s not out of the question that they felt fine in testing because they were being tested against other strong books. Or had their power increased to keep up without considering their place in the game as a whole.
It's a good point, but that just points at the underlying issue I was discussing. Proper development should mean that doesn't matter, because you are testing against a baseline, not against a moving target. In addition, the playtesters that are of course working through the book should also be putting it through the paces against all books, not just the current books as they might do internally.
No arguments from me there. Why GW doesn’t have something like WotC’s Future League or Future Future League is beyond me.
Couldn’t agree more about battleshock.
Nothing is worse than clutching a role for a unit to survive with one valiant guy remaining and then realise you have battleshock and no command points
The three moons stays aligned
Vampires healing, I see no issue here, move along everybody, nothing to see here, my updated army is just fine thank you :P
I Just think Screw 4+ Rally and healing d6. Stop giving every Body a 6 Ward. And Just make the allegiance ability like nighthaunt model specific and not the whole army.
Picking up again after some sleep and I want to 100% support Vince's statement on Bravery, it feels like an antiquated mechanic in the game and isn't fun. One of the big reasons I got turned off to Conquest was how hard it leaned into Bravery to remove models.
Why ARENT there sandbags in AOS? They have cloth and dirt dont they? And in a world of magicical artillery......
This is a really good point.
I’m kind of confused about this video? Is this a list of abilities that are overused? Or just abilities you want to discuss balance on, because like 90% of these abilities are used by a few armies, most of your examples are repeats, the only 2 I would agree are overused or close too it are foot heroes profiles and turning off command abilities, everything else is a small percentage of armies that you probably encounter more often than not because the mechanics are useful or people just like that army more.
Overused in that they are not being careful enough with them. As I said with the targets and the discussion around somethings like Morathi, the amount something can be overused really depends on what it is. You can drink a lot of water, but there is a point where it becomes problematic, you have to be much more careful with overusing a medication. That sort of thing.
Vince's goblin bigotry is out in full force today
👍👍
I have a hunch that WH armies' classic (box art) colour schemes will correlate heavily with their hypothetical MTG colour pie position.
Why do they even call them heroes?
As a (below average) SBGL player I think The Hunger feels good on the foot Vampires, since they aren't insanely tough or killy, but still really vital. But it feels insane on the Zombie Dragons and other big Heroes. It's just way too impactful on something that big, especially in an army like this. I think the old Hunger felt a little bit too weak, but I think this new one is too strong. Maybe cap it at 3 wounds or something? Still good, but not quite as bonkers.
And yeah, the Foot Hero stats are one of my biggest gripes about the game. It makes everything samey. In WHFB Vampires were immensely powerful, both wizards and fighters. Now they are just there for Crimson Feast, and that's it. Their stats don't reflect any amount of power at all. I honestly kinda hate it. I think this is a big restriction with the system itself. Since we have fewer stats, and less numbers to play around with it's harder to make their statlines different enough to represent their lore.
A lot of this is because we lost the huge amount of customization you could do with heroes in fantasy. All of the different magic items, bloodline/gifts of chaos type abilities. You took the base statline for that hero, and there were so many routes you could go. He could be a super tank, a guy with a ton of mid strength attacks, or a guy with fewer, but reliable really high strength attacks. Now every foot hero gets the same nothing statline, with nonsense like a vampire lord hitting as hard as a loonboss
@@deerspirit7560 It's too bad, really. I miss my super vampires from back in the day,
I have so much to say about warhammer rules.
They're a massive pile of steaming rubbish. I play a lot more board games now and comparatively warhammer is so bad at so many things, like consistency, balance, rules writing, rules bloat, it's just objectively bad. I love it though because of the miniatures, and the setting and because it _can_ be a fun game. I can't stand the jank and WAAC attitudes though. In a perfect world I'd like to pick the units I like and build a list around those, and not have to chase the meta to even stand a chance.
The name of what is happening is semantics. As Tyler noted the top 6 are 6 of the most recent battletomes. The worst faring armies are often the oldest ones. Yes of course there's always some specific build with some old books that can still manage using some jank (how many units of castigators?) but you can't just pick anything in the book because most of the book is trash (2 units of 10 liberators is a bad start to any Stormcast list, but it shouldn't be really)
So is it on purpose? Well, yes. Again this is a fact. It's counting. We're in AoSv3, WH40kV10, WarcryV2, UnderworldsV8? etc. New editions mean new stories, new players, new armies (new factions, refreshed ranges, etc) and of course new money. GW have to keep players on the hype train.
What bothers me most is what I call the "Bretonnian archer stakes" problem. When the Bretonnian book was released, Archers could start behind defensive stakes, giving the not very good unit a bit of a buff when being charged....New book, new rules....But how did the Elves and the Dwarfs and all the other ancient factions never think of that? Funnily enough in the following books the other armies started getting similar things. Now that's creep. They could call it exploring design space...But it is rules creep into the game where the next army might have an amazing new rule (chaos knights) but then the next book might not have that rule despite having the same kind of unit that could use that very same design space (OBR, Slaanesh, Khorne). It's as if the people that write the army books don't even talk to each other let alone plan things in advance. We even know that they're working at breakneck speed. New releases are obviously rushed. Just look at the last few pages of the Khorne book: almost no changes to the previous edition...Surely because it was perfect the first time lol.
Still no Slaughterbrute, no special rules to better integrate Khorne marked StD. (same thing for Slaanesh really) It's like they concentrated on one thing, and then rushed the rest to get it to print in time.
I get the impression that "difference is what makes a faction cool" is very wrong. Chess is still popular today and yet the only difference between the factions is the colour of the pieces. One of the greatest things about Horus Heresy (before it went plastic) was that all the factions were the same, with the same stuff, baring maybe one or two special units. Bolt action is also pretty balanced thanks to this because a German Heer with a rifle is pretty much the same as British Tommy with a rifle.
Different for difference sake is a bad idea in wargames because it upsets balance, especially when it is added on the fly and not proofed against what has come before or what will come in the future.
One of the most balanced games GW has ever made was the very first edition of warcry. All the warbands were created at the same time, and yet all those warbands are very characterful. So saying that new things need new unique rules is just plain wrong.
This is what GW could do. Index all the factions. Set what each grand alliance / faction can do. Plan it out from the start and if there's some awesome idea in the middle of an edition - keep it for the next edition !!
Another very simple thing to do would be make the first faction the best faction. Use it as the bar that cannot be surpassed. That would of course be Stormcast so all the haters could hate away. But in the mean time the poster boy beginner army would be beginner friendly and any player would know in advance that they were facing the most powerful faction.
But this isn't the world we live in. GW has only a passing care for balance. They want and need their perfect imbalance, where the system steadily runs itself into the ground so they can start the cycle afresh with new stuff to sell. It keeps the wheel churning, it keeps the churn wheeling.
Oh yes, also: I really enjoy warhammer weekly, Tyler is right this time (best co-host) (@Tyler Emerson : You might have a point about brown rims) and I enjoy Vince's opinionated opinions too :D
You were right that you have a lot to say and I disagree with some of it, but you are honestly dead on with many things. I've discussed how at the start of the edition, I wish they would do a vision plan for each army and put it in a box of mechanics to explore so they aren't discovering it later in the edition. Glad you enjoy the show! :)
sill vahn eth