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  1. #71

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    Okay, so the rule might not be balanced... So what?

    The new faction they introduced has a pair of formations that you can double up to, on the first turn, drop in the first formation 9" away from the enemy, then use them as "homing beacons" to drop the second formation 5" from the enemy, having most of your army in charge range on Turn 1. As an added bonus, it completely ignores the "balancing" rule that models that come in from reserves and don't start on the table don't count as part of your army. There's nothing "balanced" about that formation.

    The game's rules and armies aren't balanced. We've already established that. How many times have we heard, "Well, the gamers should talk and balance it themselves, unless you're anti-social losers!"? So that's what you do. Do you think being able to summon as many models as you have in your collection isn't fair? Well, agree to change the rules with your opponent, or to a limit (which is still technically a rules change).

    We also hear all the time that balance isn't necessary because AoS is all about telling stores and playing narrative battles, and it's entirely narrative to come to a battlefield, raise your army there, and keep raising new stuff as the battle goes on, whittling down your opponent as time goes on. Or a Chaos sorceror begging the gods for aid and getting daemons to come support him (or perhaps just pleasing the gods enough to get them to send him some help when he asks). Those are narrative. Balanced? No. Narrative? Yes. Which matches what we're told the theme of AoS is.

    It's strange now to see the argument reversed, to move away from narrative over balance to balance over narrative.

    And hey, my primary army is Orcs and Goblins, with Ogre allies. The army I'm building for AoS is Dwarfs. Do either of those come with summoning? Nope. So I'm not exactly arguing in favor of something that benefits me here. (Sure, I also have a massive Undead army, but they're all set up for massed units and would feel weird in AoS.)

  2. #72
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mr Mystery View Post
    I think I've put my finger on what's not sitting right with me about that take....

    I shall now attempt to articulate.

    In essence, both takes under discussion result from the same lack of specific wording.

    I just feel that the 'space saving' take isn't in line with what I understand the spirit of the game to be, as it quickly becomes a back-door way to horrifically outnumber your opponent, and leaves many armies wide open to such things (for instance my beloved Ogres have no internal summoning option)

    But, that's just my take on things - but I do look forward to the inevitable FAQ so we can at least put it to bed, one way or another.
    My reading of the design philosophy for the Age of Sigmar is that the "Rule of Cool" takes precedence above all else.

    Age of Sigmar isn't meant to be balanced in the rules- it is meant to be balanced by players deciding to play nice (we've debated that enough already). So the fact that some forces have access to awesome tricks that others don't seems perfectly in line to me.

    And seeing a daemon horde pop up out of nowhere is pretty cool, and totally fluffy.

    Sure, not every force can do it... except that every force can take every model from every 'faction' and therefore can totally do it.

    www.GardenNinja.com

  3. #73

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    There is that.

    However, rule of cool can only carry someone so far.

    Now, this is a worst case scenario, so please excuse some out of character negativity.....but.....

    The whole set up of the game, including how one deploys their army is about rule of cool - and not just the look or feel of cool, but being a cool opponent.

    The 'all spells all the time' approach doesn't gel with that.

    Undead players in particular tend to be dedicated, long term meddlers in The Dark Arts, and as such tend (very generally speaking!) to have extensive collections of models.

    Currently, the onus is 'stop deploying units well before you look like you're being a dick'. And that's very, very cool with me. I've got a large collection comprised of various armies. Now I can drop into my local GW, Club or mate's house with whatever, and by act of mutual respect deploy into a relatively fair game.

    But with summoning, an opponent can 'one up' whatever I choose to deploy at any point, just by dipping into their case for whichever unit is best placed to counter whatever I'm up to tactically. Going for a big monster breakthrough? Bugger. He's summoned a poo load of Zombies to just sort of get in the way, and stop me flattening his summoners. If I've got lots of infantry bearing down? FFS. Two Zombie Dragons just appeared...

    The game is now about player cooperation to arrange things to mutual agreement - as PW has mentioned elsewhere on the board, the old 'don't blame me, the rules allow me to do this' excuse of the hardcore WAAC Wanker is gone - it's now clear from the outset if your opponent has placed their win over your enjoyment of the game.

    So I just don't see 'all spells all the time' fitting with what I perceive the spirit of the game to be.

    But hey, as I said above Age of Sigmar is clearly intended to be a collaborative effort. If my opponent asks, rather than insists, I may be game for that take. But if they insist on it, and refuse to make any concession to their starting force for such a colossal advantage, and indeed spam dozens of casters, I'll refuse the game, or use my own insistence on 'raw' to piss on their chips and show them how little fun the game can be when one of the players has no respect for the other.

    Might have come off a bit high and mighty there...apologies!
    Fed up for Scalpers? https://www.facebook.com/groups/1710575492567307/?ref=bookmarks

  4. #74

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    If "player collaboration" works for setup, why wouldn't it work for summoning during the game? If summoning really is broken (or has the potential to be that broken), and you can't trust your opponent not to take advantage of that, then how can you trust them not to be a jerk during game setup?

  5. #75

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    Kind of my point.

    'All spells, all the time' opens one up to the stealth jerk.

    As I said, I am look at 'worst case scenario' here, but one could go from 'yep, that looks about right' on setup, to 'wow, what a ****' by the third turn.
    Fed up for Scalpers? https://www.facebook.com/groups/1710575492567307/?ref=bookmarks

  6. #76

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    And...? So you change the rules of the game because you can't trust the game's rules to avoid those situations?

    I was talking about this with some guys at the latest GW store, and pretty much everyone agreed on how summoning spells work, and were baffled that anyone would think it's different. But it sounds like you don't think they work different, you're just arguing to change how the rules work to prevent douchebaggery... which has been something people have been doing the last month. And really, people should just stop. Don't try it. Have a bad game? Well, don't play that person again. But just stop bothering with all these attempts to balance the rules, because the game isn't meant to have checks and balances, and we were told from the start how that's really just the best part of it.

    On a side note, I saw another wonderful 2v2 AoS match on Saturday, which only managed to get through two turns (MAYBE they squeezed out a third), despite going the entire time the store was open Saturday. Dwarfs and Sigmarines vs. Chaos and Chaos (pretty much all Khorne). It wasn't quite the number of models that Warhammer Fantasy games had, but even then, the Sigmarine army would cost someone about $500 to build, and one of the Khorne armies had four Bloodthirsters (started with three), while the other was based around models from four starter boxes with some add-ons. Did an amazing job of showing how people completely miss that AoS was set up so people could play smaller matches that don't cost hundreds of dollars per force (well, Sigmarines still do), and also that the rules can make for longer games than larger model-count games of WFB.

  7. #77
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    Honestly, I totally understand the desire for a rules set that prevents douchery. I just don't think that's what we got with Age of Sigmar. I think that razor's edge balance in games is what prevents douchery.

    I think it would be interesting to see what happens if Games Workshop soon released some sort of optional rules that added at least attempted balance to the game- while leaving the core rules free from point values or limitations. Like a competition rules set.

    There'd be a segment of the audience that would really embrace balance, and never play without the 'competition rules,' but if the default setting for the game is still "Throw anything you own on the table" then maybe they'll have a strong segment of their audience that keeps playing that way.

    www.GardenNinja.com

  8. #78

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    Quote Originally Posted by odinsgrandson View Post
    Honestly, I totally understand the desire for a rules set that prevents douchery. I just don't think that's what we got with Age of Sigmar.
    Considering the rules literally say "bring what you want," we certainly didn't get that with AoS. I've seen more cases of douchery with AoS than I have with Unbound matches of 40K since Unbound became a thing.

  9. #79

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    Quote Originally Posted by Erik Setzer View Post
    Considering the rules literally say "bring what you want," we certainly didn't get that with AoS. I've seen more cases of douchery with AoS than I have with Unbound matches of 40K since Unbound became a thing.
    I've seen only the opposite, depends on your club and the people honestly.

    In 40k my club has pages and pages and pages of forum posts about comping lords of war, d weapons, formations, allies, what other tourneys are doing for comp.

    For AoS it's been much less and there are a lot more happy people.

    There has never been a GW system which prevents douchery and it is up to the players to take responsibility for their opponent's enjoyment. I've seen people cheat in tournaments, I've seen people have lots of fun in tournaments with "casual" lists. People are to blame for bad behavior, not some rulebook for playing with toy soldiers.

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