AoS NEW *rumor*

[Togetic]

It seems like they’re a pretty decent addition to the roster all considering, I don’t know if chameleons were ever really meta but it seems like you’d want to upgrade to Hunters unless your list was super tight, all the bonuses they get seems worth the 20pts.

Almost makes me want to string together a silly list than runs these guys, the Starblood Stalkers, and use the deepstrike shenanigans to throw a bunch of units around first turn. Not a good list, but fun to think about throwing a dozen skinks, a priest, and an old blood behind the enemy on turn 1.

 

[Jason839]

My suspicion is that Chameleons are going away since they are finecast and Hunters will take their place.

 

[Just A Skink]

My suspicion is that Chameleons are going away since they are finecast and Hunters will take their place.

I was wondering the same thing. After seeing the warscrolls, I was trying to think if the two unit types (old chamos and new hunters) were different enough to keep both. I'm not so sure they are, and I agree that the hunters might edge out old chamos with their alpha and updated stealth.

 

[cyberhawk94]

I was wondering the same thing. After seeing the warscrolls, I was trying to think if the two unit types (old chamos and new hunters) were different enough to keep both. I'm not so sure they are, and I agree that the hunters might edge out old chamos with their alpha and updated stealth.

This might be pure hopium, but I haven't seen warcry boxes with as much spare bits / customization as the Hunters. What if the model refresh we have coming had enough units that they felt the need to spread it out by giving us the camo models early? And the hunters are repackaged individually later as a stand-alone box

 

[Togetic]

This might be pure hopium, but I haven't seen warcry boxes with as much spare bits / customization as the Hunters. What if the model refresh we have coming had enough units that they felt the need to spread it out by giving us the camo models early? And the hunters are repackaged individually later as a stand-alone box

Im not sure about a range refresh, though there are some clearly Seraphon rumor engines still unsolved.

The hunters are honestly just really bad as a Warcry warband, though. You have no unique model leader (they’re just called an alpha, and a variant sculpt of the basic troop) and only really have four model types outside the terrawing, even in the game itself they have a lot of problems because the blowpipes absolute suck and a viable list wants to pack it full of the guys with the bone hats (that you only get one of per box, despite being a basic unit).

If they weren’t on the same sprue as the terrawings I’d also suspect they were made first and foremost as an AoS unit, but even still they’re the Warcry warband that’s most ground-up built to be a base unit in aos rather than a niche pick

 

[VikingRage]

This might be pure hopium, but I haven't seen warcry boxes with as much spare bits / customization as the Hunters. What if the model refresh we have coming had enough units that they felt the need to spread it out by giving us the camo models early? And the hunters are repackaged individually later as a stand-alone box

We are getting a slow-rolled range refresh. I think that they are using Warcry to help fund/justify the creation of new plates for production. They have been introducing new models to 40k through Kill Team and other sub-IPs for awhile.

Im not sure about a range refresh, though there are some clearly Seraphon rumor engines still unsolved.

The hunters are honestly just really bad as a Warcry warband, though. You have no unique model leader (they’re just called an alpha, and a variant sculpt of the basic troop) and only really have four model types outside the terrawing, even in the game itself they have a lot of problems because the blowpipes absolute suck and a viable list wants to pack it full of the guys with the bone hats (that you only get one of per box, despite being a basic unit).

If they weren’t on the same sprue as the terrawings I’d also suspect they were made first and foremost as an AoS unit, but even still they’re the Warcry warband that’s most ground-up built to be a base unit in aos rather than a niche pick

I think terrorwings were made to go hand in hand with hunters design-wise, so I think you might still be right.

 

[Just A Skink]

Vince Venturella talked about the AoS roadmap. His last segment was about Seraphon, which they assume will be the big summer battletome. He and Tyler both feel like Seraphon could be up for a model refresh (along with every Seraphon player) and they both want a pretty serious overhaul to the army/battletome. They seemed to kind of falter about what to do with Seraphon, but definitely feel like there's too much buff stacking and too many warscrolls. They echoed making Saurus tougher and limiting Skink keyword buffs. I guess we'll see.

 

[Killer Angel]

Vince Venturella talked about the AoS roadmap. His last segment was about Seraphon, which they assume will be the big summer battletome. He and Tyler both feel like Seraphon could be up for a model refresh (along with every Seraphon player) and they both want a pretty serious overhaul to the army/battletome. They seemed to kind of falter about what to do with Seraphon, but definitely feel like there's too much buff stacking and too many warscrolls. They echoed making Saurus tougher and limiting Skink keyword buffs. I guess we'll see.

Ah, interesting.
We'll see...

 

[Jason839]

Vince Venturella talked about the AoS roadmap. His last segment was about Seraphon, which they assume will be the big summer battletome. He and Tyler both feel like Seraphon could be up for a model refresh (along with every Seraphon player) and they both want a pretty serious overhaul to the army/battletome. They seemed to kind of falter about what to do with Seraphon, but definitely feel like there's too much buff stacking and too many warscrolls. They echoed making Saurus tougher and limiting Skink keyword buffs. I guess we'll see.

Its a buff faction, we take cheap crappy warscrolls and stack buffs until they are godlike. Always been seraphon's design, even in the first book. The constant outcry about our stuff being too cheap, or our buffs being too good is annoying. After the last update we spend almost half our pts to make the other pts playable.

 

[Just A Skink]

Its a buff faction, we take cheap crappy warscrolls and stack buffs until they are godlike. Always been seraphon's design, even in the first book. The constant outcry about our stuff being too cheap, or our buffs being too good is annoying. After the last update we spend almost half our pts to make the other pts playable.

I don't really remember how Lizardmen played back in WHFB, but that does seem to be how Seraphon operates in AoS. I guess that makes our army "unfun" to play against? Personally, there are mechanics in every army that can be "unfun." As a rather mediocre player, Seraphon is a more challenging army to "get right." But, I've started to get better with how to make our standard units strong with the right buffs, and in the right situations.

That said, based on our books versatility (which I confess I didn't recognize when it came out) and our constant ranking near the top of tournaments, I could see GW altering Seraphon playstyle. As others have mentioned, GW might remove some of our tricks to simplify our mechanics, give us a few better warscrolls, and raise our points. But this is just speculation, of course.

 

[Canas]

I don't really remember how Lizardmen played back in WHFB, but that does seem to be how Seraphon operates in AoS. I guess that makes our army "unfun" to play against? Personally, there are mechanics in every army that can be "unfun."

Buff-focused playstyles are difficult to make "fun" for everyone involved because they have several potential issues that other playstyles don't really struggle with.

Aside from the obvious issues like buffs being too strong/weak, too easy/hard to apply, and base units being too weak/strong, which will obviously frustrate one of the two players, and potential design flaws that result in annoying units because they are only usefull within the larger framework of buffs (e.g. Saurus guard and Skink footheroes are purely vehicles of buffs, but mostly useless on their own, or skinks only being usefull offensivly with buffs stacked to the heavens but useless independently). There is one very weird issue; namely the fact that if you somehow did get the balance perfect buff-armies are inherently kind of frustrating to deal with in a PvP game.

The basic issue is that, in theory, as long as your buffs hold, you should be at a significant advantage.
While if you lose your buffs you should immediately be at a major disadvantage.
Essentially, you are never actually on equal footing with a non-buff playstyle.

This means that any game with an army with this playstyle immeadiatly forces both players to constantly play (nearly) perfectly, because a lucky roll at the wrong moment, or a slight mistake, can have great consequences, which quickly devolves into a loss (or win depending on your point of view).
This is especially problematic at lower levels of play, where players need, and expect, some freedom to make mistakes because they simply aren't perfect. If they don't get that freedom, players end up frustrated, and often feeling like the match was unfair, or that a particular unit/ability/faction/whatever is OP.

This inherently makes buff-heavy playstyles a bit of a problem.

Also, if you're wondering why this is an issue specificly for PvP games; in PvE you don't have to worry about the enjoyment of the AI, so problems like the buffs being "too easy" to apply for the player don't necesarly matter as much .

 

[Kilvakar]

Its a buff faction, we take cheap crappy warscrolls and stack buffs until they are godlike. Always been seraphon's design, even in the first book. The constant outcry about our stuff being too cheap, or our buffs being too good is annoying. After the last update we spend almost half our pts to make the other pts playable.

Agreed. This has always been my issue with how much Vince and others go "Seraphon OP, pls nerf." And then basically talk about nerfing our buffs to the ground, which they don't quite seem to realize wouldn't make us play on par with other armies, it would make us much, much weaker.

Your point about spending half our points to make the other half playable is spot on. Almost nothing in the army stands on it's own warscroll. Most of our lists other than Thunder Lizards in the previous season have a couple dangerous units and then lots and lots of units to buff, screen, and support those units.

Buff-focused playstyles are difficult to make "fun" for everyone involved because they have several potential issues that other playstyles don't really struggle with.

Exactly. This is why I hope that in our new book we still keep some good buffing options but we get better warscrolls all-around. Our army is hard to balance when basically every unit is mediocre to bad without 2-3 buffs stacked on it, but with those buffs can become crazy powerful. I do firmly believe that it would be possible to make our next book less reliant on buff-stacking while still keeping the general theme and playstyle of our current army.

 

[VikingRage]

Buff-focused playstyles are difficult to make "fun" for everyone involved because they have several potential issues that other playstyles don't really struggle with.

Aside from the obvious issues like buffs being too strong/weak, too easy/hard to apply, and base units being too weak/strong, which will obviously frustrate one of the two players, and potential design flaws that result in annoying units because they are only usefull within the larger framework of buffs (e.g. Saurus guard and Skink footheroes are purely vehicles of buffs, but mostly useless on their own, or skinks only being usefull offensivly with buffs stacked to the heavens but useless independently). There is one very weird issue; namely the fact that if you somehow did get the balance perfect buff-armies are inherently kind of frustrating to deal with in a PvP game.

The basic issue is that, in theory, as long as your buffs hold, you should be at a significant advantage.
While if you lose your buffs you should immediately be at a major disadvantage.
Essentially, you are never actually on equal footing with a non-buff playstyle.

This means that any game with an army with this playstyle immeadiatly forces both players to constantly play (nearly) perfectly, because a lucky roll at the wrong moment, or a slight mistake, can have great consequences, which quickly devolves into a loss (or win depending on your point of view).
This is especially problematic at lower levels of play, where players need, and expect, some freedom to make mistakes because they simply aren't perfect. If they don't get that freedom, players end up frustrated, and often feeling like the match was unfair, or that a particular unit/ability/faction/whatever is OP.

This inherently makes buff-heavy playstyles a bit of a problem.

Also, if you're wondering why this is an issue specificly for PvP games; in PvE you don't have to worry about the enjoyment of the AI, so problems like the buffs being "too easy" to apply for the player don't necesarly matter as much .

You mention a lot of things I don't disagree with, and I think the shear volume of buffs we run with will probably need to be reduced and/or consolidated.

That said, I will freely admit that what I love the most about our faction (gameplay-wise) is the high entry cost to get it right with the synergies, and the completely unforgiving playstyle we employ when the game is balanced right (which is hard to do with an army like ours). I think that each system should have at least one army that requires care to every play. 40k has Harlequins, Malifaux had Leviticus, and AoS has Seraphon.

I like playing armies that run along the razor's edge, and between AoS's double turns and our paper cannons, Seraphon scratches that itch for me.

 

[Jason839]

My biggest fear is that we get a new book and instead of being written by the people who do a good job, we get the B team and they make us garbage again. I don't want to go back to the days where my only winning strategy is to get tabled slowly over 5 turns and hopefully stalled long enough to win by 1 vp

 

[Togetic]

The sundered fate book has some fun lore in it, the Eye of Chotec and the Hunters of Huanchi are a cool mix of older WHF lizardmen stylings (these kind of beligered native people, under siege by those who don't understand their cosmic mission and just greedily hunger for the artifacts and precious resources they barely value themselves) with the newer seraphon elements of celestial space alien stuff. Their slann didn't actually die in the crash itself, he just did a Mazdamundi (and a Kroak, i guess) and his body gave out under the sheer arcane strain of all the spells and wards he had to sustain to ensure some of his constellation and some of the ship survived the apocalyptic crash that utterly annihilated everything else for miles. His final desperate command was to activate the spawning pools and allow the spawning of the Hunters of Huanchi, who awoke in their shattered spawning pools with nothing but the final order of their Slann in their mind and the overriding will to defend the Eye of Chotec's ruins within until Seraphon allies could come and aid them. They kill anyone aligned with chaos or who desecrates the ruins, but prefer to scare off or misdirect everyone else (unfortunately for the forces of order in the gnarlwood, looting their artifacts does count as desecration)

The few skink priests left after the crash (and the even smaller handful spawned solely to help and maintain the Hunters of Huanchi's operations) put the scraps of the Slann left after the crash into the center of a giant golden idol made in his image (that shoots lasers from its gemstone eyes at intruders) that they now zealously worship as an extension of the slann himself, and that may or may not give them supernatural guidence and reasurrance. The hunters have a total-war oxyotl style hidden lair beneath the statue that they operate out of, and they bathe in scrying pools infused with starlight that sit below his gaze to recover from wounds and fend off the influence of ghur on their psyche so they can remain closer to the Starborne mindset, and keep their mission in central focus. They still offer up the skulls of those they hunt at the statue's feet, though, as an extension of the ghurish influence on them.

It also mentions that while the Eye of Chotec's Hunters of Huanchi are a specific faction relevant to the gnarlwood narrative, Hunters of Huanchi are also just a type of skink that spawns in other constellations too. The wording straddles the line between saying *all* chameleon skinks are hunters of huanchi, and that they're just a type of chameleon skink in the same way a terradon rider is a type of basic skink, which I think further adds to the speculation they'll replace the basic chameleon skink unit in the next book.

 

[Canas]

I think that each system should have at least one army that requires care to every play.

The issue with introducing factions/mechanics/abilities/etc. that are difficult & unforgiving, but have a high pay-off when played "correctly". Is that everyone still has to deal with them even if they don't use that playstyle themselves, at least to some capacity. Because it will affect balance & design decisions. Especially if you start to "reward" the difficult playstyle for being difficult it will quickly start setting standards.

So as a general rule I'd say you shouldn't do that. Every faction should be in more or less the same weight class where difficulty & payoffs are concerned.

 

[VikingRage]

The issue with introducing factions/mechanics/abilities/etc. that are difficult & unforgiving, but have a high pay-off when played "correctly". Is that everyone still has to deal with them even if they don't use that playstyle themselves, at least to some capacity. Because it will affect balance & design decisions. Especially if you start to "reward" the difficult playstyle for being difficult it will quickly start setting standards.

So as a general rule I'd say you shouldn't do that. Every faction should be in more or less the same weight class where difficulty & payoffs are concerned.

I think we have to agree to disagree on that

I think coalesced does a pretty good job of offering that style of gameplay to the faction, and Ghur set a pretty overwhelming precedent for a "simplified" stompy list. It wasn't my cup of tea to be honest, but I still had fun with it. I think there is room to make Saurus shoulder that playstyle if it is needed. It makes sense that the relatively fragile magical hunter keyword that is skinks would require more of a coy playstyle to the frontline warriors and guardians that describes saurus and our monster models.

 

[Canas]

I think coalesced does a pretty good job of offering that style of gameplay to the faction, and Ghur set a pretty overwhelming precedent for a "simplified" stompy list. It wasn't my cup of tea to be honest, but I still had fun with it. I think there is room to make Saurus shoulder that playstyle if it is needed. It makes sense that the relatively fragile magical hunter keyword that is skinks would require more of a coy playstyle to the frontline warriors and guardians that describes saurus and our monster models.

The issue isn't a saurus v.s. skink kinda thing. Or even a different playstyle kinda thing.
It's fine to have different playstyles. However, they need to fall within the same general limits.
The moment one of them becomes too much of an outlier it'll impact the balance & design decisions you need to make for all of them, because suddenly you need to deal with this nonsense.

For example; introducing a fully ranged army into a game where everyone was heavily melee focused will create problems that need to be fixed.

The same goes for other aspects of play. An army that's massively more difficult, will cause issues, especially if that difficulty is "rewarded" with significant advantages when played well. An army that has significantly better peak-performance than others when played perfectly, will cause issues. An army like the giants, with 3 models in total compared to the usual 50 or so people tend to field, will cause issues (which still haven't been solved), a magic heavy army creates issues (and a bandaid fix like the rule of one, creates a whole new set of issues). Units suddenly going invisible will create issues (which is probably why the new skink chameleons have such a restrictive range on their attacks if they want to stay invisible. To try and preemptivly deal with potential issues.) etc.

Some of those issues can be fixed by good designers. But as a general rule, the design of a game benefits from having some clearly designed limits and staying within those limits. Where exactly you put those limits is of course up for debate, and will depend on things like your target audience. But for example, something like a buff-heavy playstyle, will always be problematic for weaker or less competitive minded players due to the natural issues the playstyle creates. Which is fine in itself. But you do need to be aware of things like that, and determine if it's something that fits with the rest of your game & your target audience.

 

[VikingRage]

The issue isn't a saurus v.s. skink kinda thing. Or even a different playstyle kinda thing.
It's fine to have different playstyles. However, they need to fall within the same general limits.
The moment one of them becomes too much of an outlier it'll impact the balance & design decisions you need to make for all of them, because suddenly you need to deal with this nonsense.

For example; introducing a fully ranged army into a game where everyone was heavily melee focused will create problems that need to be fixed.

The same goes for other aspects of play. An army that's massively more difficult, will cause issues, especially if that difficulty is "rewarded" with significant advantages when played well. An army that has significantly better peak-performance than others when played perfectly, will cause issues. An army like the giants, with 3 models in total compared to the usual 50 or so people tend to field, will cause issues (which still haven't been solved), a magic heavy army creates issues (and a bandaid fix like the rule of one, creates a whole new set of issues). Units suddenly going invisible will create issues (which is probably why the new skink chameleons have such a restrictive range on their attacks if they want to stay invisible. To try and preemptivly deal with potential issues.) etc.

Some of those issues can be fixed by good designers. But as a general rule, the design of a game benefits from having some clearly designed limits and staying within those limits. Where exactly you put those limits is of course up for debate, and will depend on things like your target audience. But for example, something like a buff-heavy playstyle, will always be problematic for weaker or less competitive minded players due to the natural issues the playstyle creates. Which is fine in itself. But you do need to be aware of things like that, and determine if it's something that fits with the rest of your game & your target audience.

Which is why I do think the sheer volume of buffs we employ need to be reduced/consolidated. We have a lot, we probably need scaled down a touch (I believe I said as much in an earlier post).

I think our disagreement is what scale of scaling back is best for the game. I don't think every army should be scaled to the same outer parameters, but I do agree what outer limits are appropriate to match the game design and health should be defined. There should be limits to how much is okay in the game system, but having every army expressing the exact same limits leads to boring game design as well.

On a side note, our model diversity is high, but there are much worse offenders of this that probably need attention first (SCE, Cities), and I do hope that the two new hunter warscrolls replace the existing chamo warscroll to help keep us at what is probably the upper limit of what is a reasonable number of warscrolls to balance. I hate to lose models, but every time they add new warscrolls to an army, I do worry about GW's ability to internally balance each battletome.

 

[Canas]

There should be limits to how much is okay in the game system, but having every army expressing the exact same limits leads to boring game design as well.

O yeah, I don't mean they all need to function the exact same way, just that they all respect certain limits. Fall within certain bandwiths basicly.
The most basic, and generally agreed upon, limits are those that are broken whenever powercreep is introduced via a new army/unit/whatever.
But it also holds for more abstract things like how much shooting can an army bring, how many models are in an army, how many buffs can be stacked, how difficult/easy should armies be too play? etc. Very simply put, too much variance in any aspect makes it impossible to design things properly because you need to take all that variance into account, plus it'll end up dominating the meta game, especially with how easy paratext spreads nowadays.

And what personally always annoys me in these discussions is that a lot of players tend to ignore it when bad design breaks certain limits, as long as it's in a way that they happen to like. Especially a certain type of hardcore competitive minmax player has the tendency to ignore bad game design, so long as it helps them boost their ego by claiming all these scrubs should just learn how to play better