Match Play: Hopes and Dreams

[grimmas]

Offended really 😏

I'm offended that people think playing with points is silly I've been doing it for years and I'm deeply offended others don't like it. (I'm not really )

Actually never had a problem or heard of anyone having a problem with DBAD. "But they were being a d**k about me being a d**k!!" Sounds a little strawman and quite frankly like all concerned should pack up their models and try something else for a bit.

I don't mind people not liking the game it's the tiresome, deeply offended, my life has been ruined by the release of AoS rubbish. There's 8 official editons of WFB 1 unofficial (and really rather good) Edition if there's this great big crowd of people who are dying to keep playing then they will. Bloodbowl managed for years without GW support WFB can as well. In fact I believe 9th Age is getting miniature support from elsewhere.

[Erik Setzer]

(like Artillery no longer dominating big Monsters to the point that if you knew you were playing Dwarfs or Empire, Scaly Dave the Black Dragon might stay in his cave)

Whereas now, pretty much everything can and will kill you, so if you're facing Tomb Kings still, you can count on a unit of 30 Archers firing 60 shots at Dave and peppering him in a way that wouldn't have been possible before. Dave can be easily killed in so many new and creative ways! See Dave get turned into a shish-ke-bob! See Dave become a pincushion! See Dave buried beneath bodies! See Dave die to a really weird special rule!

It helps if you picture that last bit as an infomercial.

Basically, everything counters everything. Whether that's good or bad is up to the player. I suppose it does mean there's less chance of the occasional rock-paper-scissors type match where you didn't bring the right stuff to deal with what your opponent has (like bringing an Ork army to fight a Space Wolves army).

[Mr Mystery]

I favour it, because 'hard counters' are now a thing of the past. Again, won't be to everyone's taste as you say, and fair enough on that.

I enjoy it because I really need to work with every part of my army. Before, although I was bloody good as getting the position, once my Chariots had punched your centre and Scaly Dave was on your flank, it was pretty much curtains.

AoS is much more of an infantry game - it's just the fixed hit/wound rules, but also Battleshock. Readers may have noticed that I effing love Battleshock. You've got to plan how to wallop your opponent without taking a pasting in return, because all parties in a given punch up take Battleshock. For my Ogres, it's a right arse. Yes we're tough with multiple wounds, multiple attacks and perfectly reasonable attack rolls, but we also have Damage 2! Except...our bravery is fairly laughable. If you can take down a couple of Ogres in combat, I can easily lose more to Battleshock - especially if you've planned ahead and done something to lower my already fairly paltry Bravery. So with my Ogres, I need to pick my fights with great care, taking care not to over extend or over commit. LOVE IT!

I really could waffle on all day about how much I enjoy the new challenges AoS has brought - but this isn't the thread for that

[Auticus]

As a player that detests the concept of hard countering paper/rock/scissors play, I also enjoy that everything can kill everything. I don't want a game where one or two unit entries are difficult to kill AND pump out a lot of damage, because those are the things you will see over and over and over. I want to see variation. I want to see a mixture of tactics and army lists. I don't want to see a hall filled with the same three or four tired builds spammed repeatedly, so in that I am a fan of AOS currently.

As I noted before, my fear of points is not that points are bad (i love points) but that the GW points will be bad and encourage paper/rock/scissors and everyone going back to the same three or four builds and BOLS articles about the unbeatable X Tournament list that everyone goes off to copy. I know, this fear is akin to whizzing in the wind and there's nothing that can be done about the culture that produces this, but its my fear none the less.

[Mr Mystery]

Even if the points are a wee bit bodged, the system itself limits just how hard stuff can be.

Consider 7th Ed Dark Elves. Highborn on Black Dragon, Lance, Heavy Armour, Sea Dragon Cloak, Shield of Spite (enemies at -1S in combat one. May have name wrong!), Black Gem.

Aaaaaaaaaand come at me Bro. Even I was using it, because it was just that damned good. Though my Dark Elf was from the previous book - it just got well hard later!

AoS? I'm yet to see such an absolute must-have. I've not seen a great many cookie cutter armies yet.

And that's down to the base rules set. There's far fewer irresistible force/immovable objects. Points could mess with that to some degree, but not to the excesses Warhammer used to have

[Erik Setzer]

Nagash is a must-have in Death armies (though it'll probably change with points)... Dude's Command Ability is disgusting. Someone thought it'd be a good idea to get a guy's Nagash out of the case at the GW store and have me use him for the AoS Apoc match (made me doubly nervous because I don't know whose model it was), and it just got bad. The rerolling 1's for hits and saves is bad enough, but not having to take Battleshock tests? Sure, they already have Bravery 10, so it's not like you were going to get wrecked with it, but I'd actually lost two or three Skeletons to Battleshock before that.

Couple it with most unit standards bringing models back from the dead, and the Skeleton formation bringing guys back, and the army just kept recycling itself. Throw out wizards and cast the +1 save on Hexwraiths, now you have 3+ save that ignores Rend and rerolls 1's. I was actually using them as "tanks" (and seeing a unit of 10 take on 5+ Sigmarines - might have been more - and something like 30 Longbeards, and just soak in the damage with minimal losses, that was nasty).

Anyway...

I think in Warhammer the only super nasty thing I saw was the Banner of the World Dragon, an item that was way too underpriced (and I respect the guy who admitted that it was underpriced but he was still going to have it in every army). I think the nastiest thing I saw was actually a unit with characters in it. Can't remember what made the bulk of them, I think Phoenix Guard. Then throw as many characters as possible into the unit, give it Banner of the World Dragon, buff the characters, let them buff the unit. Then you've got a block of death walking around with a lot of resilience. You could try to maneuver around it, sure, but if you were trying to win based on VPs, it was hard to do that when you couldn't touch this huge block of points. Granted, it should also be noted that it was usually used in tournament practice games by a guy who competed in more national-level tournaments.

Still, I think you could buff a unit up like that in AoS, but you have to be careful about character placement, because they can be picked out (but infantry can hide behind infantry, so there's that). I'm pretty sure if you wanted to create an uber-unit, you could find a way. Only reason I haven't yet is because I find it more fun to throw a thematic army on the table with units I enjoy using and try to win with that.

[Auticus]

There are must haves right now if you are powergaming. Erik mentions nagash. Thats one. Stormcast have the formation where they don't deploy anything and just land on the table wherever they want and charge. Thats another. Throw in the new cav and celestial prime and the flying hero sniper. I always see all of those. Those are to me "must haves". Now the points may limit that a little but only if done properly.

[Erik Setzer]

The limiting factor on the Sigmarine cavalry is the box price... $33 a model isn't going to make it easy to field many of them, just like the Varanguard, even if the rules encourage you heavily to take 6-10 cavalry per unit.

[grimmas]

There are must haves right now if you are powergaming. Erik mentions nagash. Thats one. Stormcast have the formation where they don't deploy anything and just land on the table wherever they want and charge. Thats another. Throw in the new cav and celestial prime and the flying hero sniper. I always see all of those. Those are to me "must haves". Now the points may limit that a little but only if done properly.

Have you listened to the Heelanhammer podcast? They do good coverage of both Adepticon in the US and the SGCT in the UK which might give a clue how it will play out and how the Tournament scene is at the moment

[Auticus]

The cost isn't going to stop the powergaming though. The sigmarine cavalry is grotesquely good and the handful of stormcast players I know bought two or three boxes of them because they are *that* good.

I'm waiting on the book to drop and see what happens in regards to the points. Really none of us knows what to expect so lamenting it so heavily is not logical until after we've seen it and how easy of a system it is to game.

It is possible I will be pleasantly surprised. Right now my campaign was put on hold because our community is waiting for the points and with the "official" campaign system coming are wanting to do that as opposed to someone's homebrew non official material, so as someone with a lot of emotional investment in my 20+ year collection I'm hoping it reigns in the show stoppers for me like chain summoning and that the point system is not grotesquely busted like 40ks is today and like whfb of the past was.