NEW FAQs, Compendium, Forgeworld

[Burf]

1 hour ago, decker_cky said:

GW didn't add battalions to a number of factions in the grand alliance books because they were well-served by the compendium battalions. If for example, clans Verminus, warherd, greenskinz, gutbusters, moonclan grots, etc..

They would have gone up 100pts each even if they hadn't of been removed. One way or the other the vast majority of battalions are dead, compendium or not.

[Tidings]

Wanderers lost a huge chunk of their Warscrolls due to the culling of keywords on compendium models/units. I can't even field 2000 points anymore, since this is the second time my army has been reduced. I guess my best bet is go Sylvaneth and use Wanderers as allies? Would have liked to try the new Wanderer abilities.

[Jamopower]

I guess not much has changed for your army. You'll just have to stick to the good old generic order abilites just as before, although the 'good' part in that can of course be debatable.

I wouldn't say that an army got "unplayable" just because it was added some bonuses if you stick to certain units. You could think it as similar thing to a batallion. Of course there might be some stuff where the old units had some keyword affecting bonuses, which changes things, but I still don't see why the army would be unplayable.

[Siegfried VII]

I must say I love this whole update. The game will be MUCH better and balanced. 

Paired with the information about the new General's Handbook and I feel they fixed 95% of all the things that needed fixing, whether it was clarification of rules, preventing ridiculous stacking abilities, removing the dead and gone special characters of the old world that had no place in the mortal realms, the changing of extremely powerful abilities and warscrolls such as the Stonehorn and the Mournghoul and finally a fix across the board to the point costs fixing further balance issues...

I wet my pants from the excitment!! Kudos to GW for giving me this last year more joy for the gameplay part of warhammer than I had in all the 17 years of my wargamer life.

[Rubencm81]

This will make old players to abandon the game or move to alternatives like Kings of War, ninth Age and so where they can use their models properly.

Telling old players to buy a brand new army and sell the old one for peanuts is not clever .

 

I play dark elves (20k points), chaos dwarves, and a mix of pestilens and nurgle daemons. So basically half of my armies are unusable till a new release

[Jamopower]

Again, I fail to see how the things have changed from before. The dark elves had to use generic order abilities before and weren't too competitive and now they have to use generic order abilities and aren't too competitive?

[Kramer]

Im going to miss bugman (his rule now only allows him to set up himself ?)

[Kamose]

I'm quite happy with the new FAQ's and updates.  I think they did a good job of identifying loopholes, rules abuses, and overpowered models and of brought those into line with the rest of the game.  Removing the stacking of buffs and clarifying that "a roll of 6" is synonymous with "a roll of 6+" are real biggies for me.  I'm also very happy that the Squig Gobba was improved and I don't even play Moonclan.  I painted one for my friend's army and I love the model!  All of this speaks to GW's desire to ensure that AoS is fun and enjoyable first and foremost.

My only sadness is that my Skink Chief lost his Command Ability.  Oh well, he'll make it through.  He's Marked for Greatness after all!  Needless to say I'm very excited for all the new Seraphon goodies and if I really want to run my Skink Chief and Jungle Swarms, I still can.   I'll just run an Order army instead of a Seraphon army.  I know I'll be giving up the shiny new Seraphon goodies for one game but that's fine. 

Tomb Kings are my second army and I have to say I'm quite pleased with how they updated the Compendium Warscrolls.  They've distanced them from the current armies while still updating their rules to match the game as it has grown over these two years.  The update basically removes any synergies between the Compendium and the supported Warscrolls as well as matching keywords.  My Tomb Kings lost "Deathrattle" but gained their own keyword "Desert Legions".  They have synergy within themselves but not with the other Death factions unless the synergies target units with the Death keyword.  Like with my Seraphon if I want to run my Tomb Kings with other Death units, I'll just run a Death army, not a Tomb Kings army.  

Everyone knew GW should and would move in this direction with the Compendium Warscrolls and its been two years.  No one can honestly claim that this was a surprising move or was unnecessary.  At this point GW has been losing sales to eBay for 2 years because they provide rules for models they do not sell.  The fact that they've updated the Compendium one more time (assuming this is the final time) is a real sign of GW's respect for the games and models they've produced and the player base.

As for the notion that this makes the Compendium units 'unplayable', let me quote a famous Spaniard.  "You keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it means." - Inigo Montoya.  None of the Compendium Warscrolls are unplayable.  "Unplayable" means that the rules and their interactions in game are nonsensical or irrelevant.  Every Compendium Warscroll is perfectly playable in the game.  Even moreso now they been updated to match the current wording of the game.  Twice now I've even stated how; run a Grand Alliance (Order, Death, Destruction, Chaos) army, and not a faction specific army.  In fact the one thing that GW could have done to make the Compendium Warscrolls nearly unplayable would have been to remove the Grand Alliance keywords from the Warscrolls, but they didn't.  

Please don't forget that not every person plays AoS like you and please don't assume that Matched Play is all there is.  There are lots of us Narrative and Open players out there, who will happily use our Skink Chiefs without issue.  If you're are unhappy with the changes to the Warscrolls then, "These are less than optimal choices in the army that I choose to play for tournaments and matched play games", would be the words that you're looking for. 

TLDR; Love the changes & bandying about hyperbole like 'unplayable' is a bit disrespectful to the rest of the AoS community; think before you post.

[Burf]

43 minutes ago, Rubencm81 said:

This will make old players to abandon the game or move to alternatives like Kings of War, ninth Age and so where they can use their models properly.

Telling old players to buy a brand new army and sell the old one for peanuts is not clever .

 

I play dark elves (20k points), chaos dwarves, and a mix of pestilens and nurgle daemons. So basically half of my armies are unusable till a new release

Wait...dark elves? Dude, you army lost keyword support in GA:O. None of the compendium units were very good and most of them can still be used. Literally nothing changed for you; you wouldn't of been able to use darkling covens or daughters of khaine allegiance abilities anyway.

[Criti]

1 hour ago, Rubencm81 said:

This will make old players to abandon the game or move to alternatives like Kings of War, ninth Age and so where they can use their models properly.

Telling old players to buy a brand new army and sell the old one for peanuts is not clever .

To play Devil's advocate, there's very little benefit to GW to cater to people who AREN'T  buying new armies.

The painful reality is that someone who is playing exclusively "complete" army,  or an Army out of production does them no good.

Some might argue the intangibles of losing players,  but there is no way to put a number on the value of old players. Maybe they are losing a valuable ally who could have brought new people into the hobby.  But I would venture a guess that there are far fewer people with old armies inviting new players into the hobby than those who don't.   And GW obviously assumes that as well.

Really, this is no different than any other industry.

Nintendo doesn't want to focus on the guy who waves his SNES around, telling everyone how great it is.  People buying SNES products doesn't help them.  They want people talking about the Switch.

In fact,  if I comb through my own life, I can count on maybe 1 hand how many companies DON'T do this.

We as gamers tend to just take it more personally and respond to it by jumping to another system because we think a certain company is "more friendly." 

It's not.  You mentioned KoW.  If you are an event goer, you have another few years, tops, of using your Warhammer minis.  The big Mantic run events are already starting to implement Mantic-only requirements for a certain percentage of your army.  Give them time to actuslly finish their range and they'll go to a 90%+ standard. And when they do,  most of the independent scene will follow suit, just like it did for Warhammer while GW was still running events.

The game is moving forward.  Some things are going to get left behind.  It sucks, yes.  I have plenty that is falling off myself.  But it is what it is. 

[Ollie Grimwood]

I'm an old player and I don't care in the slightest (got a seriously venerable Wood Elves army knocking about). People can feel what they like about the changes but I'd rather they didn't try and speak for me.

I like the changes, old units brought in line with the new setting and the worst offenders for ill applied rules sorted out. I will miss the "silly" rules though they did make me chuckle every time.


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[TheOtherJosh]

I am slightly disappointed that Mistweaver and the Shard have no ally potential with other Aelf factions without defaulting to generic Grand Alliance Order. It feels like a seriously lost opportunity. Unless we are going to see an Aelf battle tome...

[Burf]

Sidebar, has anyone actually been able to purchase the GHB on the app? All the compendium stuff is on their now and the UI got updated but I still can't actually buy the book.

[Kaleb Daark]

I still can't help but feel that tomb kings aren't done yet.  I bet in the future we'll see the desert legion resurrected in a new story arc.

[Ollie Grimwood]

Sidebar, has anyone actually been able to purchase the GHB on the app? All the compendium stuff is on their now and the UI got updated but I still can't actually buy the book.

Yep got mine 1000 GMT on the App. Took I short while to find it buried in all the compendiums.


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[James McPherson]

I don't get the new changes to Tamurkhans Horde. The released pdf only contains 3 units, Sayl, Trolls and Plague Ogres, but there are matched play points for the whole range, so one would assume they only published the warscrolls that had been updated in the PDF right? Except from what I can see, Plague Ogres and Trolls haven't changed at all. Add to that , they no longer have battle line or allies. I just bought the whole range recently, including like 15 plague toads which I thought were going to stay as battle line in future! So are they meant to be mixed in with general Nurgle/Slaves to Darkness units now? Anyone able to explain it to me what to do with them? Because I'm confused =/

[Melcavuk]

My assumption is with the new nurgle allegiance coming in Blightwater you'll have access to everything Nurgle marked the same way Blades of Khorne do for khorne. Which would move Tamurkhans Horde into a fancy part of Nurgle Allegiance or Chaos grand alliance.

[tupavko]

14 minutes ago, Auticus said:

I am a bit confused with some of the changes.  Mainly like said above the FW releases appear to only have a handful of their old warscrolls but points for everything, and there were no chnages on most of the warscrolls present anyway.

However, in perusing forums and facebook groups today the rage seems off the chart and I am also confused as to why that is.  I'm not seeing the monstrous big deal about tomb kings, for example.  You can still play them.  Or Dark Elves.  I own both full armies of these and can still play them.  Could someone shed some light for me why we're a few notches shy of seeing people burning armies on youtube again from this release? 

For example on the italian Tilea forum the main issue about the new updates turns around 2 aspects:

- 50-60% of Warscroll Battalions got squatted and a huge amount of playstyles with them. Most people playing armies that are still not adapted to AoS (Skaven, Elves, Slaves to Darkness, Nurgle, Slaanesh, Beastmen,  Gobbos, Ogres, etc)relied on those for fluff and in game purposes.

Talking about something I know: look at the Warherds, they were a weaker faction before, without the Warscroll battallion Bullgor Stampede they are pure rubbish, and there was nothing OP about the warscroll, it was actually trully themed since big mostruous cows got MW on charge that's it...

Think about Skaven: I can play monks, or even more monks, or Cyber rat Ogors, but what if I play a horde army?This is not about Tomb Kings or Bretonnians beign thrown out, this is about models GW is still selling, and presenting as factions that with this update turned into a B-class armies.

There is a lot of "panic" about people dropping the game (I don't think it will happen it's a fear that comes up everytime GW changes something) or that there is going to be a lot less variety on the table: batallions forced people to take certain units, or made some other ones great, so players picked various battalions and you could feel this variety in most matched plays. Now with a lot less battalions (read none for most factions) the good units will always be good units and the bad ones will always stay bad.

- the second isse is about "trust". What is the point about making a Beastlord on Chariot not part of Breyherds? Or Wood Elves part of wanderers? Most people agree that GW should erase compendiums at a certain point, but since 75% of factions i still lacking not only a book, but any kind of sign of presence, maybe this wasn't the best moment/way to do it.

It's basically like telling a poker player: "Sure you can sit at the table pay and play... But you get 3 cards instead of 5"!

[firebat]

It seems a lot of people don't understand the concept of allegiance abilities. They are a reward for limiting yourself to a certain faction while many people think they should be a given regardless. If you want to play a horde rat army then you do the same as you did before and play them as pure chaos allegiance and take whatever you want. This is why I find it hard to get annoyed about the Elf changes. The Wanderers faction is the Wanderers faction, NOT the Wood Elf faction. The Wood elves don't exist any more and if you want to play them as you could before you still can, you just have to use the basic Order allegiance. 

If a small limited faction needs a battalion to perform in any way then that is a failure but it's probably not the case. People always overreact when something is lost and claim it's useless now but I find it's rarely actually the case. Is losing my Slaanesh battalion going to hurt? sure a bit I guess but it wasn't actually fluffy in any way, just a way of getting extra stuff and i'll just learn to go without. The problem is people are conservative naturally and don't react well to changes combined with an inflated belief in their ability to judge how something will actually play out. 

Some of it seems to be misinformation too. Many of the complaints on reddit I saw are people that seem to think they flat out lost entire units and when you look at the pdf it's just unit renames and characters becoming generic. It is a shame Korhil is now a Dragon noble and can only buff Order Draconis units but in the grand scheme of things it's probably not going to make a massive difference. And if it was making such a massive difference then it was clearly OP and it's good it got removed. See the complaints about battalion costs. Everyone I saw talking about it before was saying all the battalions got boosted by 100 points, yet all the Tzeentch battalions i'm interested in taking increased in cost by less than half of that and i'm still going to include them.

[Tidings]

This is why I find it hard to get annoyed about the Elf changes. The Wanderers faction is the Wanderers faction, NOT the Wood Elf faction. The Wood elves don't exist any more and if you want to play them as you could before you still can, you just have to use the basic Order allegiance. 

The reason it makes sense to be upset at it is it has been the same faction for a while, you spent money and time on the models understanding they were the same faction, and then just as you are finally getting extremely basic support (a few allegiance rules for playing that faction instead of just generic order), half the models you own are suddenly no longer that faction! Sure they WERE,, sure they LOOK like they are, but the keyword was dropped arbitrarily. Now I can't even play a 2000 point game. Wood elves already lost Sylvaneth so at this point the remaining Wanderers have an extremely limited unit selection.

 

The other hugely frustrating aspect is a lot of Wanderer abilities and spells relied on the keyword Wanderer. Now I can't revive warhawks, shadow dancer can only fling himself, nomad prince doesn't buff waywatchers, etc. They are the same army yet they don't play together anymore.

 

It's not a fluff-driven change. It's a business decision that reeks of indifference to the quality of the game. Yes they need to phase old models out, but butchering old armies before properly supporting them is not a good way to do it.

 

[Arkiham]

I feel everyone needs to give it a week and read the rules and faq and forgeworld scrolls good and proper before throwing your toys out the pram.

Things change, we ask for that, people moan when things stay stagnant for too long.

But, when they do typically the same people are moaning that things are stagnant are moaning about the changes 

[Tidings]

I feel everyone needs to give it a week and read the rules and faq and forgeworld scrolls good and proper before throwing your toys out the pram.
Things change, we ask for that, people moan when things stay stagnant for too long.
But, when they do typically the same people are moaning that things are stagnant are moaning about the changes 

I never moaned things were stagnant, it obviously takes time to change and update so many armies and rules. The new allegiance abilities were super exciting for me, except I can't even use them. I can keep playing mixed order but my units still have less synergy than before. How is that not legitimately frustrating?

On the other hand, I have lots of reasons to pull my death army out of retirement so I'm excited for that.


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[Captain Marius]

4 minutes ago, Tidings said:

The reason it makes sense to be upset at it is it has been the same faction for a while, you spent money and time on the models understanding they were the same faction, and then just as you are finally getting extremely basic support (a few allegiance rules for playing that faction instead of just generic order), half the models you own are suddenly no longer that faction! Sure they were, sure they LOOK like they are, but the keyword was dropped arbitrarily.

This interests me - what has made players think these compendium units were ever going to stick around?

I thought the GA books (released before the first GHB) gave a comprehensive list of all the units that were valid for each faction and would stay in the game (only swifthawk agents got a few units ressurrected when island of blood was rereleased). No compendium units appeared in these books.

Is it the app that is misleading people? The thing has been a mess for months with compendium units mixed in with proper factions, i can see how this would be confusing.

[VBS]

30 minutes ago, firebat said:

It seems a lot of people don't understand the concept of allegiance abilities. They are a reward for limiting yourself to a certain faction while many people think they should be a given regardless. If you want to play a horde rat army then you do the same as you did before and play them as pure chaos allegiance and take whatever you want. This is why I find it hard to get annoyed about the Elf changes. The Wanderers faction is the Wanderers faction, NOT the Wood Elf faction. The Wood elves don't exist any more and if you want to play them as you could before you still can, you just have to use the basic Order allegiance. 

Sorry but Wanderers are Wood Elves. The only difference is that they splitted both based on what models are being currently sold. It is not thematic/fluff/army/whatever based decision (as current range factions are). From a faction point of view (since there is no battletome or fluff), why would a glade guard be a wanderer but a waywatcher not? If WE are no more and got transformed into Wanderers, just change the full range game-wise, compendium or not.

I understand it is a purely business driven decision, as it is logical for a company like GW. And I don't even mind (considering how little I play this game).

But there is a serious lack of coherence, so when someone points that out, it is not moaning or lack of understanding. It's simply logic.

[Tidings]

This interests me - what has made players think these compendium units were ever going to stick around?
I thought the GA books (released before the first GHB) gave a comprehensive list of all the units that were valid for each faction and would stay in the game (only swifthawk agents got a few units ressurrected when island of blood was rereleased). No compendium units appeared in these books.
Is it the app that is misleading people? The thing has been a mess for months with compendium units mixed in with proper factions, i can see how this would be confusing.

What made you think they were going away? I understand that's a common assumption but why? They were rules for models that are oop but nothing is stopping anyone from converting or buying second hand. They had all the keywords and filled vital roles in the armies. Until GW replaces their roles with new models, why not at least allow them to be played as part of that army? As of now Wanderers for example just have massive gaps in their army that the now NOT Wanderers used to fill, not to mention the gaps that Sylvaneth used to fill.

I had many compendium models already at the launch of AOS and I bought Witch Elves to convert to more Wardancers, among some others. If they just let the keywords be until they released NEW models there would be zero issue.


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