whispersofblood

1. Well the intent is very important to devising if a solution is even desirable. Some blood bowl teams are harder to play than others this is by design. If some Faction's ability to move up and down the power scale by the selection of a specific sub-faction is by design, adding points is moot because the intent will be retained. My Kraith example was kind of a trap example. It's benefit is essentially nothing, but it is one of the only competitive 2 drop DoK builds available, and the only one that can take some of DoK's very powerful command traits. Meaning there are powerful abilities not listed on the page. It's only the obviousness of the other Temples that clouds this. 2. I understand the desire for equality. But if we are talking about measurable impact. The impact will be almost zero on competitive gaming. Adding a point cost is just another factor of evaluation, there will be a best option and that option will be spammed. Because it's not about what the subfaction specifically does it's about what the subfaction does in relation to the game in relation to what it's negatives are. Cost is just another kind of negative. How often are you convinced to spend nothing and get nothing? But actually as in the Kraith example you can actually get quite a lot if it's not the thing everyone else is paying for. Hopefully that makes sense, and you can see why I think looking at Sub-factions similarly to different BB teams, as opposed to a Warscroll battalion makes more sense.

Tbh the method explained is the most tame version available.

I would 100% push back against this. If you are at LVO to compete a choice doesn't need to be so much better than another that it could be considered "broken" it only needs to be better given the total world of forseeable negatives. That could be anywhere from 1% to infinitly better. Look at Ard Boyz vs Brutes in IJ faction specifically. The difference in totally effeciency is like less than 1%, but that still means Ard Boyz are better, part of that has to do with the economics of tabletop wargames, because Ard Boyz are strategicaly significantly better than Brutes in Big Waagh. But the price on Brutes is fair, and the price on Ard Boyz is probably fair given that we only round to the tens. We are left in a situation that the only way to internally equalize the two would be to rewrite Here we go, and how Waagh points are generated for units. But, then I'm fairly certain BS based Big Waagh would be pretty meh over all. Its very delicate. I think part of the issue with PE is how rend is distributed across armies, and not neccesarily their own rules. For instance for KO the difference between Petrefex Elite and any other OBR faction is small. For DoK a Petrifex Elite match up is almost a certain loss if you don't build with the match up specifcially in mind.

Is there satisfactory evidence to suggest that sub-factions are intended to be equivilent or roughly balanced against each other. Rather than simply being different personalities for which the Faction can represent itself on the table top? For example while Petrefix elite is apparently inarguably the strongest subfaction statisticlly, it does emphasis a specific philosphy which also happens to synergize strongly with mirrored objective based scenerios. But, the same can be said about sub-factions that provide extreme mobility, or large increases in hitting power like Ironsunz or Invaders respectively. The weakest sub-factions are always the ones that represent a philosphy that has limited roots in the mechanics of the game so something like Ionrach for IDK, or The Kraith where the ability is so niche as to be non-existent. And, if start pointing subfactions what do you do with factions like Everchosen, which don't really provide very much of anything without Archaon? Perhaps sub-factions are simply another form of 3 ways to play? As the competitive element evolves I'm surprised that people are expecting to see any real divesity at the cutting edge. While more would be better, what we have is actually pretty healthy, given the very small mechanical window of victory available.

He doesn't heal, he gains wounds important distinction.

There isn't much particularly special about a Chaos Warrior in AoS. They are basically the human version of an Ard Boy. Ard Boyz are the biggest, meanest, most gifted, orruks in their tribe. Sound familiar? A Brawl isn't a joke, it's a paramilitary force of naturally gifted killers who get stronger the more they do what they are already great at. The whfb fluff is pretty much gone, where chaos armour was the first gift from the gods and bonded to the warrior, etc, etc. Basically the new fluff is that the legions are so vast, large and wide spread that the middling warrior is the equal to an elite in any other human force. That isn't to say that a CW shouldn't have better stats than the warscroll. Like a greatsword has better kill potential. But, that other factions can and probably should have comparable or possibly better troops.

I never understood the perspective that things need to be good compared to X, rather than good in their own right. A chaos warrior isn't bad because an ardboy is good. It's bad because it doesn't do any dmg. At least Liberators can take a grand weapon.

I must say @Dead Scribe's honesty is refreshing at times. TBH Daemonfire Rift is much more worse than bloated blessings. I demonstrated this locally with a simple experiment, there were two outs, put something with a low number of attacks with high dmg stats. Like a Rogue Idol, or something with full re-rolls to hit like Hagg Narr, and you basically completely bypass the dmg. Hell one of the best factions at getting around bloated blessings was S2D.

Yeah Khorne is actually a huge winner with the S2D book, mostly because they can import basically straight up better command abilities and auras. But they are one of the only factions who actually have Mortal + [Insert God] abilities. But, this is inversely true of the other gods. Slaanesh for example gets almost all the upgrades from the Aura, better artefacts, better support abilities, and depravity. Host of Ssyl'esske for instance can literally transpose almost an identical list and only gain from being Hedonites, and retain double pile-in with the chaos lord. I addressed this point already. But also, its not a good strategy. You can peruse all the faction forums, people build their army with the idea of removing 4+ save models from the board, and the potency of factions keeps going up! See; Nurgle's winrate @Bloodmoon That's an interesting battle, thanks for sharing I'm sure seeing it live would have been more informative but such is life. His list a variation of the old reverse tide list. I'm surprised he bothered engaging you at all, given the extreme difference in mobility. Do you remember the result of the Dark Prophecy? How did it jive with the new faq? I suppose my question really given the lack of knowledge of your army your opponent seemed to have do you think it would be replicated? Some of this just looks like bad play, not that I want to be talk down to anyone, least of all someone I've never met about a game I didn't play or see. This may seem like pointless complaining, but the purpose is to actually find a way to address what I see as fundamental obstacles to overcome in a list. I'm not lobbying for changes, or faqs, or merely complaining. The idea is to actually come up with concrete building blocks to use to build an army.

As an IDK and a long time Chaos player I would be very interested in hearing more about this match. Batteplan, general army lists etc? I agree Be'lakor is very good, he was one of my first picks in dispoilers build before becoming frustrated with the lack of synergy with battalions, marks, and heroes. Unless you are supposing that it is better to just play undivided mark which I haven't fully considered I will admit.

The immediate issue is that those "new mechanics" don't synergize with the game at all. That is the ultimate measuring stick not what the author set out to emphasize. Think about it, if Apple decided new iphones should emphasis streaming and they sacrificed text and voice messaging to get it done. Is the phone a success or a failure, at being well a phone? I've played these games for a long time, many besides, and primarily professionally spend my time taking apart legislation, and doing data analysis. There are certain things you can't help but see, the first was the lack of damage. And swarmofseals early on confirmed the lack of upgrade in regards to doing wounds throughout the book. The next was a general lack of agency, which was partially addressed by Dark Prophecy, though that has changed. With limited range dmg, and a general lack of mobility, the ability of the army to dictate the direction of a game is severally lacking. If you go through this thread and read the reports from the field, or on the facebook pages people experience the same issue repeatedly. Its just that not everyone sees it for what it is, that they are constantly fighting on their opponent's terms, even when the S2D player is successful in a combat it is because their opponent charged when they need not have, or chose a unit that was an improper tool. AoS at a reasonable level of game play is generally decided at the top of turn 3. A great player can usually minimize a lose, or two players playing very cagey can drag it out, but generally most games are decided at that point. Mostly because mechanically the good armies can put out about 80 unsaved wounds by that point, most factions secondary economy (CP, Waagh points, Tides, etc) are fully functional by that point, certain missions require a turn 3 victory, but also because concentration levels drop after about an hour. So it is imperative that you have agency early in the game because AoS2 is mostly a race against time. S2D has to drag around a point heavy, or foot speed hero, doesn't have a secondary economy, and doesn't really generate addition cp. Think about it this way, in reality it would be better to just take 5 more warriors than to take a sorcerer to buff them, but we can't because without the hero we might as well play Grand Allegiance Chaos. Which means in an objective game since your allegiance forces you to take fewer models you have to push to either kill or models or lose so few models that you can grind out your opponent. But, since you are a foot speed faction and you only have 3 turns at best in which to decide the game, don't really have the time to grind. So you really have to find ways to kill models, which if you look at the lists most people are trying to do. The question is how successful is the tome at letting players do this? I'm saying it isn't at all. You suggest that it is I'm curious to see your analysis.

If I'm being completely fair there are only two things that I found surprising or disappointing. No mixing weapons, it was unique and thematic imo And Dark Prophecy, which to me was the most characterful ability the Grand Marshal had access to. The rest of the rule re-writes are pretty consistent with how the rest of the times in AoS were written, and the general bell curve in the S2D tome. And sometimes you reconstruct a sentence to say what you want rather than just saying a new sentence to clarify. Most of the rage is probably in reality general disappointment with the quality of the S2D book and no a small amount of desperation for the book to have something in it. It's funny because the general personality of the author really comes through in this tome. Once you fully implement the FAQ and errata. And, it's clear the author wrote this tome from a deeply conservative, and defensive perspective. Rather than the aggressive go win the game types that are generally drawn to chaos factions imo.

The real test of a book is how it functions in the midtables. This book clearly isn't up to scratch competitively that is obvious. But I very seriously doubt it is even fun to play at the midtable level. The key to being a good hobby book is the amount of expression available. The book fails at this as trying to play the most basic concept. Ie; a mortal army dedicated to a single god. Or the high level the person army of the grand marshal of chaos. The basic rules straight jacket you on the board into doing things that you otherwise wouldn't do. It's not just that all the buffs and synergies produce similar material buffs. It's that all these buffs are built into the faction and you can't escape them. I said at launch the best army in the book is probably khorne. That is because it can pull in heroes that provide unique buffs and still proc the auras. Otherwise the book is going to get chopped up and the useful parts imported into the god armies, like a car with a faulty transmission.

So here is my problem with the book, its neither tanky and doesn't do much damage. Mixed weapons barely made Chaos Warriors worth mentioning, barely. The buffs in the book are heavily repeated, how many sources ofsome variation of rr hit/wound does one faction need? Given that the quality of attacks available are so paltry. The book gives you two strategic options specialize or generalize. IF you specialize you are swamped by similarish buffs and auras, the aura should be free without needing a hero no by and the general buffing the aura. The army would still be mid tier but it wouldn't feel like I was being straight jacketed the whole game. So you get stuck between your army having an allegiance ability or you know, having a movement phase. Ironically Big Waagh probably play more like a Slaves to Darkness army then S2D, a force of nature, the units are elite and decentralized, heroes push the units to heights beyond their base impressive abilities *in melee*. Secondly plague touched and bloated blessing, were so easy to bypass it was actually sad watching people holding on to it. The real problem is... this will be the basis of every S2D tome in the future. The individual rules may change but the design space has basically been defined... and its legitimately a terrible play experience, and not intuitive.

It's funny. All the posters that got on my back when I said the book was poor are gone. And, I'm still sitting here with a pile of warscroll cards and notes on allegiance abilities trying to figure it out. The tome is so disjointed, they even significantly nerfed the most unique subfaction in the game (Everchosen) into 3rd quartile mediocrity. I think we can safely call Slaves to Darkness a failure.

You model equipment for wound allocation, it's very unlikely that the last 3 models in a unit will be command given things like coherency and snipe spells. Glue a horn on the back of your model.

Tbh you are probably making the right choice. Morathi as a piece has far less utility than she did at the launch of the DoK. She is basically a highly mobile tarpit, but the number of endless spells, retreat charge and the durability of many armies has a huge affect on if you are taking her or not.

I haven't played with my HoS, but I've watched a few games. Nothing special jumps out, I think the player base is going to have to have a serious rethink about what we look for in units.

So... How do we think new Tzeentch and KO shooting will affect the win % of today's top performing factions?

Hysterical Frenzy is a significantly worse spell, having to be wholly within is a serious limitation. I think I'd rather have Born from Damnation.

Ah I get the disagreement. I don't disagree with the reasoning of your position. I don't actually think it is a mechanics issue, the best I can construct it as is a perception issue. I'm arguing from a mechanics pov it's neither bad or good, it just is a design choice. If you zoom in on any single mechanism at the application stage they are generally not interactive. But, at the process stage the Double turn mechanic is a very interesting stategic problem to engage with, and like most strategic problems it is both a sift and aggrevating for people with a high need for order. Which makes it a perception problem, not a mechanical problem.

I'm talking about being in control of the game, not being the player with an active toggle above thier head. Perhaps a lingustic issue? You say control, maybe I should hear something else? But again casualty removal, and pile-ins are hugelly important part of the game. Mainly I want to push back on the idea that in your opponent's turn that you should not be busy planning things to do with your models in your opponents turn, and considering the impliations of your opponents choices. I also don't view the "game" as touching my models, and moving them about. To me the game is (infact most activities are) mostly intellectual, so even if hypothetically I couldn't do any actions at all in my opponent's turn, I would still be playing the game and "having fun".

Honestly not going to run the math. But, if you are curious you can just google score effects there is a large body of work done in Hockey and Football(European), about this topic.

I know this, my perseption of balance contains elements outside of the rules of the game though. In sports there is a phenomenon known as score effects. In any sport or activity with scoring typically scoring first, especially in low scoring games has hugely biases the outcome. In chess especially series chess which is really just scoring to 7 first. Winning the first game gives you an advantage in every game afterwords and white going first, is therefore not balance neutral since it either provides a benefit or detriment to one player.

But that is just it isn't it, it's just a feeling. Feeling like you have lost control is not the factual result of a double turn. It's the result of never actually being in control. In your turn it is up to you to limit the things your opponent can do in their turn. But also, you create points of failure in their ability to impact the game. In your turn almost all activities you can get up to can fail. But your buffs once up last until your hero phase generally, and a great many CMD abilities can be used in either players turn. As DoK I would frequently set my opponent up for the double turn because I had been forced to sacrifice a hag and wanted the buff for another turn. Most of the time I would say my games are double turn neutral though. Which is obviously anecdotal.