AoS Tabling your Opponent

[Canas]

By RAW, when playing scenarios in pitched battles you have to look only at objective points, so to wipe out the opponents means nothing. In absence of different decisions, this should be the correct answer to keep in mind when playing official tournaments

By common thinking, if I slay your army and you cannot continue the game, you should lose.

Both things have something that support the logic and the the reasoning behind them, and we have plenty of examples (historical and fictional) where you "win" even if you have been wiped out (Alamo, Thermopylae, SW Rogue One).
So, a loss in the field may be a victory in the long run... but it still remains a loss on the field in that particular battle.

It all boils down to "Do we wanna assign more importance to VPs or not being tabled out, because frankly if you cannot play you lose?"

In the first case, if you win a major victory by VPs but are wiped out, it's only a minor victory.
In the second one, if I wipe out the enemy but I'm not able to win also by VPs, it's only a minor victory.

Major victories should be gained only by victory points AND by still having something on the battlefield.


Fluff example:
Death Allegiance and SCE are battling over the city of Doomygloom, the objectives represent arks of souls that both Sigmar and Nagash want to claim.
Death Allegiance wipes out SCE, but SCE wins by points (they gave freedom to souls before succumbing to undead force).
Grand Moff Vlad the Cruel reports to Nagash: "A great victory, my Lord. The city of Doomygloom is in our hands!"
Nagash: "Good job Vlad. Where are my souls?"

This basicly, especially in matched play as the VP and time limit there are completly arbitrary and being wiped out is in the most literal sense of the game being defeated. Plus it'd prevent people from locking down a game halfway in by getting Lucky and controlling the VP for the first 2-3 turns. If they still have to fear being wiped out they still have to pay attention and it stops certain types of cheese strategies from ever surfacing (e.g. get a shadowstrike host and a slann and a bastillidon. Teleport the bastillidon to objective 1, summon a second bastillidon on objective 2 (or summon then teleport) and drop a max sized unit of rippers/terradons on objective 3. Tada you hold all 3 objectives, and it's probably going to take a turn or 3 before you get pushed off em unless your opponent is extremely fast and does ridiculous amounts of damage. You've basicly won by default...)

In a narrative based campaign this limitation isn't as important as you can add in story that explains the time limits or why stealing the souls is far more important than actually winning the battle.. but in matched play it's just a very gamey rule to go like "yeah but I had more points so I win despite being completly wiped out"

 

[Killer Angel]

Yep, tabling your opponent should grant a Minor Victory (if the opponent got more VPs than you).
"only" minor, because at least is an acknowledgment to the fact that the opponent played for the objectives, so its defeat is somehow less severe.

 

[Aginor]

This basicly, especially in matched play as the VP and time limit there are completly arbitrary and being wiped out is in the most literal sense of the game being defeated. Plus it'd prevent people from locking down a game halfway in by getting Lucky and controlling the VP for the first 2-3 turns. If they still have to fear being wiped out they still have to pay attention and it stops certain types of cheese strategies from ever surfacing (e.g. get a shadowstrike host and a slann and a bastillidon. Teleport the bastillidon to objective 1, summon a second bastillidon on objective 2 (or summon then teleport) and drop a max sized unit of rippers/terradons on objective 3. Tada you hold all 3 objectives, and it's probably going to take a turn or 3 before you get pushed off em unless your opponent is extremely fast and does ridiculous amounts of damage. You've basicly won by default...)

In a narrative based campaign this limitation isn't as important as you can add in story that explains the time limits or why stealing the souls is far more important than actually winning the battle.. but in matched play it's just a very gamey rule to go like "yeah but I had more points so I win despite being completly wiped out"

I can totally imagine such a weird situation in a game and my friend @Mesandres and I once had a similar one. First the imaginative one:

@Mesandres (playing Ironjawz) could get lucky with the placement of the mission goals (in the meteor scenario) and using his allegiance (or bataillion I don't remember) ability well to move a bit. He could then hold both objectives for round 1 just putting his forces on top of them. My (Deathrattle, so very slow) army would charge, maybe killing most of his units in round two. But not enough so he would still hold both objectives. The rest of his forces would die in round 3, except his Maw-Krusha who is highly unlikely to die in one round so I wouldn't get points for one objective in round 3. Then the MK just runs away. With a 14" fly move my Skeletons are never going to catch him and nothing else in my army can do enough wounds to kill him in one or two rounds.
That might be enough so he wins the battle. Which would be... somewhat clever play but still a bit anti-climatic... I am torn between saying that's OK or not. There are battleplans favouring "mighty glacier" armies and some favoring fast ones... You can't win all of them.


A similar thing happened to us once. It was a battleplan that required to move into the center of the map, grab an artefact and whoever holds that artefact (the model drops it when it dies) at the end of round 5 wins the game.
@Mesandres didn't do it (because he is a good sportsman and we are friends who play to have fun), but due to his movement ability he could have grabbed it in the first round with the MK (I wasn't even going to reach it until round 2) and then just always retreat with the MK and chaff me a bit with the rest of his army.

Again that was a not so balanced battle plan from the open play cards (Which contain some pretty nice ideas btw) but still...
IMO such battleplans should probably at least contain some rule saying "if you lose more than x% of your points/wounds you lose". But thats not perfect either. Some armies would never play the objective but just try to wipe out (or almost wipe out) the enemy because that's way easier, and some have units that are so strong (Stardrake, Alarielle, Nagash, Gordrakk and so on) that if only that model still lives they would easily fulfill such a "25% of points" condition.
Hmmm.... a bit unsatisfactory for me but I honestly don't know how it could be fixed. It is like asking a chess player why the game is over when the King dies.

 

[Canas]

I can totally imagine such a weird situation in a game and my friend @Mesandres and I once had a similar one. First the imaginative one:

@Mesandres (playing Ironjawz) could get lucky with the placement of the mission goals (in the meteor scenario) and using his allegiance (or bataillion I don't remember) ability well to move a bit. He could then hold both objectives for round 1 just putting his forces on top of them. My (Deathrattle, so very slow) army would charge, maybe killing most of his units in round two. But not enough so he would still hold both objectives. The rest of his forces would die in round 3, except his Maw-Krusha who is highly unlikely to die in one round so I wouldn't get points for one objective in round 3. Then the MK just runs away. With a 14" fly move my Skeletons are never going to catch him and nothing else in my army can do enough wounds to kill him in one or two rounds.
That might be enough so he wins the battle. Which would be... somewhat clever play but still a bit anti-climatic... I am torn between saying that's OK or not. There are battleplans favouring "mighty glacier" armies and some favoring fast ones... You can't win all of them.


A similar thing happened to us once. It was a battleplan that required to move into the center of the map, grab an artefact and whoever holds that artefact (the model drops it when it dies) at the end of round 5 wins the game.
@Mesandres didn't do it (because he is a good sportsman and we are friends who play to have fun), but due to his movement ability he could have grabbed it in the first round with the MK (I wasn't even going to reach it until round 2) and then just always retreat with the MK and chaff me a bit with the rest of his army.

Again that was a not so balanced battle plan from the open play cards (Which contain some pretty nice ideas btw) but still...
IMO such battleplans should probably at least contain some rule saying "if you lose more than x% of your points/wounds you lose". But thats not perfect either. Some armies would never play the objective but just try to wipe out (or almost wipe out) the enemy because that's way easier, and some have units that are so strong (Stardrake, Alarielle, Nagash, Gordrakk and so on) that if only that model still lives they would easily fulfill such a "25% of points" condition.
Hmmm.... a bit unsatisfactory for me but I honestly don't know how it could be fixed. It is like asking a chess player why the game is over when the King dies.

I think the best approach in general is to just avoid abritrary time limits and instead tailor the time limit to the specific objective, or better yet to the two opposing armies. To be honest I've never understood the 5 turn limit. That ironjawz fleeing with 1 remaining maw krusha only works cuz of the rather low turn limit. If the turn limit would be only 1 or 2 higher the tactic immeadiatly falls apart. So tailoring it a bit more towards the specific goal might help. But since the turn limit is the same regardless of the objective certain objectives immeadiatly become far more difficult to achieve depending on the army. Which is weird..

Similarly, I would say that a lot of objectives should be played with assymetrical armies, again preferably tailored to the factions in question. Certain objectives will give the defender an easier time by default, in which case say giving the attacker 20% more points in return should even things out and prevent the sillier of fights. Again, the fact that the rules are the same for every objective immeadiatly gives certain armies preferred objectives. Making the armies assymetrical should help bring outliers in line.

For tournaments/matched play i'd suggest using only 1 (type of) objective. If it's announced beforehand that the entire tournament revolves around "race to the objective" matches and you then bring say deathrattle instead of something tailored towards the objective you only have yourself to blame. You can then just use several leagues so that every type of army still sees some use in one league or another. Plus, it might make tournaments more interesting as it encourages some novel specialised strategies as opposed to just general purpose list.

 

[Tokek]

Yep, tabling your opponent should grant a Minor Victory (if the opponent got more VPs than you).
"only" minor, because at least is an acknowledgment to the fact that the opponent played for the objectives, so its defeat is somehow less severe.

It is very much a matter of taste. Outside of one flawed scenario in GHB17 it is usually quite hard to table your opponent yet lose on objectives. For that to happen you generally have to totally disregard the objectives in favour of a killing frenzy.

I am quite comfortable with the concept that the general who totally disregards why they are there risks losing even though they are left in control of the battlefield at the end. The scale of AoS is much more one of elite raiding parties rather than a full commitment of all the force available to a faction. Ignoring the whole point of an engagement to focus on killing a commando force after they succeeded in their mission feels far more like how we should narrate this than a crushing defeat of the main army in the field. Perhaps I am just more comfortable that a "win at all costs" is still a win.

 

[Canas]

It is very much a matter of taste. Outside of one flawed scenario in GHB17 it is usually quite hard to table your opponent yet lose on objectives. For that to happen you generally have to totally disregard the objectives in favour of a killing frenzy.

I am quite comfortable with the concept that the general who totally disregards why they are there risks losing even though they are left in control of the battlefield at the end. The scale of AoS is much more one of elite raiding parties rather than a full commitment of all the force available to a faction. Ignoring the whole point of an engagement to focus on killing a commando force after they succeeded in their mission feels far more like how we should narrate this than a crushing defeat of the main army in the field. Perhaps I am just more comfortable that a "win at all costs" is still a win.

I'd agree with that for specific scenario's but not in general. The main issue I think is the arbitrary time limit that comes with it all. In the case of those "hold the objective and gain points/turn" there's no reason why you wouldn't be able to continue holding the objective after defeating the enemy. Similarly in the case of a "steal the artifact" kind of objective, wiping out the entire guard and then taking your sweet time walking out should be just as valid a rushing in getting the thing and rushing out again, there's no reason why you'd need to complete it in 5 turns. There should still be plenty of time left to finish the objective afterwards.On top of that, 5 is just generally kind of short in general. It's too easy to come up with abusive cases like the Ironjawz example @Aginor mentioned or the shadowstrike one I mentioned where you can sacrifice (nearly) everything in the first 2-3 turns to get a lead and since the entire match is now more than half done the enemy no longer has any hope of catching up regardless of what he does. There's simply not enough time left to do much if you only have 2 turns left... Even without any enemies left your army might just flat out be too slow to actually take all objectives in 2 turns...

Also, it's just weird that all that matters is the objective. Losing your commanders? Who cares, even if kroak or nagash gets killed we don't care. Losing your elite difficult to train and supply warriors of which there's only like a 100 left in existance cuz they use special ancestral weapons? Who cares. Being completly wiped out? Who cares we have more men/skaven/elves/seraphon/demons/etc. at home. As long as we hold the magic stone for longer than they do we win.... There should at least be some punishment for being decimated or losing key-units.

 

[Killer Angel]

There should at least be some punishment for being decimated or losing key-units.

This sums it perfectly

After a sufficiently large number of phyrric victories, you lose the war.

 

[Canas]

This sums it perfectly

After a sufficiently large number of phyrric victories, you lose the war.

Wasn't the whole point of the phyrric victory that that 1 victory was so horrificly costly that he lost the war? Not just that he did it say 10 times in a row but literally just the one time?

 

[Killer Angel]

Wasn't the whole point of the phyrric victory that that 1 victory was so horrificly costly that he lost the war? Not just that he did it say 10 times in a row but literally just the one time?

Almost .
Phyrrus won TWO battles... And those were enough to cripple the army of his reign.

In AoS armies are more numerous than the ones of a reign during roman empire... but the ending would be similar

 

[Canas]

Almost .
Phyrric won TWO battles... And those were enough to cripple the army of his reign.

Right, thought it was the one specific battle with sparta (spartan slaves even? Something ridiculous making it doubly hard to swallow) that crippled it regardless of what else he did

 

[Killer Angel]

Right, thought it was the one specific battle with sparta (spartan slaves even? Something ridiculous making it doubly hard to swallow) that crippled it regardless of what else he did

Don't remember the details, i just know he went against Rome

 

[Canas]

Don't remember the details, i just know he went against Rome

meh might be confusing some battles, ah well.

 

[Tokek]

This sums it perfectly

After a sufficiently large number of phyrric victories, you lose the war.

The thing is that my Seraphon just come back again, they can be reborn any number of times. For an army made out of magical beings it makes sense that the only thing that really matters is achieving the objectives. Losing magical power could lose the war so those are the objectives; losing replaceable dudes is a minor inconvenience. My personal head-canon is that my seraphon accept an almost infinite cycle of rebirth as part of their natural state of being in pursuit of their cosmic cause.

Like I said, this is purely a matter of taste and if people prefer to play the game in a slightly different way then go for it and enjoy yourselves.

 

[Killer Angel]

The thing is that my Seraphon just come back again, they can be reborn any number of times.

It's dangerous to go that route.
Because i could say that if you lose a Slann that is not replaceable at all, you lose even if you won by objectives...

 

[Tokek]

It's dangerous to go that route.
Because i could say that if you lose a Slann that is not replaceable at all, you lose even if you won by objectives...

Bringing a Slann back is less convenient, it requires an Engine of the Gods.

However we have clearly answered the rules question and I think we can agree to disagree on a slight matter of preference in the game.

 

[Killer Angel]

However we have clearly answered the rules question and I think we can agree to disagree on a slight matter of preference in the game.

Sure!
The raw debate was closed in the previous page, now is just a discussion on tastes

 

[Seraphage]

As they intended to have AoS to be a strategic game the rule is :

Scenario ALWAYS wins. Blind charge and wipe means nothing if your opponent has an advantage to VPs that you cannot recover from.

However : If you wipe him turn 3 for example, you still get to play alone the 2 remaining rounds of yours. If they suffice to get more VPs than him, then you do win a Major.

All other scenarios with him having more VPs means a Major Loss for ya !

 

[Canas]

It's dangerous to go that route.
Because i could say that if you lose a Slann that is not replaceable at all, you lose even if you won by objectives...

Meh, not just slanns are a problem, the vast majority of races (and units) are a problem when you go this route. Very few can consistently take losses. Really only the seraphon, chaos deamons and SCE have the infinite resses, not even skaven can outbreed being constantly wiped out.

As they intended to have AoS to be a strategic game the rule is :

Scenario ALWAYS wins. Blind charge and wipe means nothing if your opponent has an advantage to VPs that you cannot recover from.

However : If you wipe him turn 3 for example, you still get to play alone the 2 remaining rounds of yours. If they suffice to get more VPs than him, then you do win a Major.

All other scenarios with him having more VPs means a Major Loss for ya !

I'd strongly disagree with that making it strategic. Winning at all costs is stupid, and by creating such rules you encourage "idiotic" and selfdestructive playstyles that usually rely on 1trick being executed perfectly, but should the trick fail the entire playstyle falls apart. Which although often fancy to see, and cool to pull off once, tend to be absolutly horrific to play against as they ignore everything that doesn't directly help wih the objective. You need to add in secondary objectives, or limitations to playstyles, like a rule stating you can't be wiped out, to ensure that these abusive playstyles remain unviable (or illegal). It's the lack of these secondary objectives that make these selfdestructive playstyles viable as they aren't punished for the very very very Obvious flaws in them while at the same time the main objective rewards their one advantage excessivly.

That does still mean the objectives should remain the most important, just that those secondary ones are relevant.

 

[Seraphage]

Meh, not just slanns are a problem, the vast majority of races (and units) are a problem when you go this route. Very few can consistently take losses. Really only the seraphon, chaos deamons and SCE have the infinite resses, not even skaven can outbreed being constantly wiped out.


I'd strongly disagree with that making it strategic. Winning at all costs is stupid, and by creating such rules you encourage "idiotic" and selfdestructive playstyles that usually rely on 1trick being executed perfectly, but should the trick fail the entire playstyle falls apart. Which although often fancy to see, and cool to pull off once, tend to be absolutly horrific to play against as they ignore everything that doesn't directly help wih the objective. You need to add in secondary objectives, or limitations to playstyles, like a rule stating you can't be wiped out, to ensure that these abusive playstyles remain unviable (or illegal). It's the lack of these secondary objectives that make these selfdestructive playstyles viable as they aren't punished for the very very very Obvious flaws in them while at the same time the main objective rewards their one advantage excessivly.

That does still mean the objectives should remain the most important, just that those secondary ones are relevant.

I 've only lost once against such player and my dices just loved rolling 1s. This is why it is great the way it is in my opinion. If you are a person that does not want to think, you are going down

 

[Killer Angel]

As they intended to have AoS to be a strategic game the rule is :

Scenario ALWAYS wins. Blind charge and wipe means nothing if your opponent has an advantage to VPs that you cannot recover from.

Scenario almost always win (usually with a wipe out you win because there's no opposition on objectives)
BUT if you see that you are falling behind with points and you cannot recover from it (possible, with scenarios as "three places of power"), at least you should have the possibility to win by wiping out the opponent.