AoS It's 4 years and still we don't get anything

[Canas]

With that out of the way, i both agree and disagree with a lot of what you said. Fundamentally, I don't have a problem with "you need to be smarter then your opponent during all the game to have a chance to win." In my opinion, that's not inherently a bad thing.

A faction (or unit, or whatever) designed around the notion that you need to play exceptionally well (for your skill level..) to be competive tends to create balance issues though. If you tune it so that a "weak" player can compete in his own league then it rapidly becomes overbearing in higher leagues. If you tune it so that a good player can compete in his own league it becomes useless, in lower leagues.

Don't get me wrong, it can work if for example you play somehting like the halfling team in bloodbowl. A team purposely designed to basicly suck. It can become its own challenge to achieve something with that team. However, if that team/unit/whatever is supposed to be competitive it should never be on the condition that the player using it is better than his opponent. After all if the player is better than his opponent he should win, not just be "competitive".

And as an aside; the condition "in order to be competitive with this army you need to be better than your opponent" is just a really stupid condition. I mean, of course being the better player helps with being competitive, and a good player can work wonders with a terrible army. That's what makes him a good player...

I mean hell, people thought terradons were terrible and a 21 double shadowstrike terradon list just went 4-1. A Gotrek based list when 4-1 a few weeks before that and a thunderquake list won adepitcon. For a four year old book that's pretty awesome actually, and i just want more people to be excited about the possibilities rather than bemoan what could be. We'll get a book when we get a book and hopefully it's awesome. But until then seraphon are still in a decentish spot with some okay options available to us.

In fairness, that terradon list heavily relied on gaming the meta by specificly being played in an enviroment where he knew the regular counters would be absent. Which makes his life a whole lot easier.

More in general though, the issue with these examples is that the only players who are going to pull that off are the exceptional players.Things like performances in tournaments, especially the high level tournaments, are overall fairly meaningless as far as balance and health of an army is concerned. The fact that someone managed to figure out how to use terradons effectivly says more about the skill of that individual player, and his ability to game the tournament-meta, than it does about the overal state of the faction.

Makes me curious though if GW has any data on what's played in lower level tournaments, like say in local GW stores. It would be interesting to see if we end up seeing similar performances there as we do at the high level tournaments.

 

[Putzfrau]

A faction (or unit, or whatever) designed around the notion that you need to play exceptionally well (for your skill level..) to be competive tends to create balance issues though. If you tune it so that a "weak" player can compete in his own league then it rapidly becomes overbearing in higher leagues. If you tune it so that a good player can compete in his own league it becomes useless, in lower leagues.


And as an aside; the condition "in order to be competitive with this army you need to be better than your opponent" is just a really stupid condition. I mean, of course being the better player helps with being competitive, and a good player can work wonders with a terrible army. That's what makes him a good player...

edit: i've adjusted a lot of what i said because it was coming across unnecessarily antagonistic IMO.

I dont think an army that requires you to be better than your opponent is a bad thing. I think an army like slaanesh or pre nerf FEC is way, WAY worse for the balance of the game.

Should seraphon have some of their power shifted from their allegiance abilities to their warscrolls? Yes, they probably should. But my argument was never that seraphon are 100% fine, it was that they are better than people think right now. And they are. They are an above average army that is capable of doing well with multiple lists.

That's a good thing. A new book will come, but for the time being embrace the fact that this army rewards your skill, it rewards being tactical, and it rewards understanding the intricacies of the game. If you're a competitive player you can play this army competitively and do well.

Granted, you could probably do better if you played slaanesh or skaven or whatever, but that's a matter of degrees.

 

[Erta Wanderer]

Sorry, i just don't understand the logic in that at all. Shouldn't "being better than your opponent" be the only criteria for winning?

yes if all was equal the best player would always win but at the moment bad players can beat us due to a poor army.

Again, i'm not trying to argue that the book is without faults, I just dont understand how literally being better than your opponent and winning because of it is somehow a bad thing.

It's an unforgiving army and is that bad for balance? I dunno, but an army like slaanesh or pre nerf FEC is way, WAY worse for the balance of the game.

agreed

I don't mean this in a mean way, but to put it bluntly a lot of this discussion is seeming to come across like "I dont want to be the better player to win with my army" which is just kind of crazy to me.

no its that i dont want to be the best player i can posably be to beat a bad player

That's a good thing. A new book will come, but for the time being embrace the fact that this army rewards your skill, it rewards being tactical, and it rewards understanding the intricacies of the game. If you're a competitive player you can play this army competitively and do well.

but it doesn't i play against 2 players of simuler skill to me who both play orks i can beat them if im lucky but most of the time they run 28" the first turn and just sit on the objectives and i can't shift them nothing i have can kill 60 ard boys no matter how well i play.

 

[Canas]

Sorry, i just don't understand the logic in that at all. Shouldn't "being better than your opponent" be the only criteria for winning?

I just dont understand how literally being better than your opponent and winning because of it is somehow a bad thing.

The issue lies in needing to be better than the average player in your league just to be competitive.
Simply put, if you need to play perfectly while your opponent can afford to make a couple of mistakes and he will still win that is an issue.

It's an unforgiving army and is that bad for balance?

Yes.

As this very easily creates issues where it becomes massivly overpowered at higher levels of play, where people can consistently play well. Or increadibly useless at lower levels where people consistently make mistakes. Depending on who you use as the yardstick to balance around.

Though most importantly, it can lead to some very very bad balancing decisions introducing some overpowered nonsense justified by "yeah, but it's difficult to use" or "yeah, but it's easy to negate". Which is the thing that I fear most when someone starts arguing in favour of armies (or units or whatever) like this

 

[Canas]

but it doesn't i play against 2 players of simuler skill to me who both play orks i can beat them if im lucky but most of the time they run 28" the first turn and just sit on the objectives and i can't shift them nothing i have can kill 60 ard boys no matter how well i play.

Also, this is an issue that you get when 1 ability is used as a massive crutch and your entire balance becomes dictated by it.

 

[Putzfrau]

*snip*

Argh you caught all my sass before i edited it out of my post :0

I think your last point is fair. You shouldn't need to be amazing just to compete at any level.

I agree our army is overly reliant on certain mechanics (namly summoning, teleporting, and skinks).

I think it's okay to have an army that is difficultish to use, but yeah, i can agree with a lot of the points being made. I think "i dont want to be the best player to beat a bad player" is a very, very fair criticism.

I've always been a little bit of a lizardmen apologist, so maybe that's my bad

 

[Erta Wanderer]

Argh you caught all my sass before i edited it out of my post :0

all is well. do you need me to edit it?

 

[Erta Wanderer]

I think it's okay to have an army that is difficultish to use, but yeah, i can agree with a lot of the points being made. I think "i dont want to be the best player to beat a bad player" is a very, very fair criticism.

I've always been a little bit of a lizardmen apologist, so maybe that's my bad

i also like the hard to master army it has made me one of the best players in my club. but thats not what are army is. it's not hard to play it's just finiky to play against it used to be you had to be very caushes against seraphon because we could drop in to any opening and stick or we could escape from any bad fight. but the scales have tiped so far away from us that you can play carelessly and then just live thrue it or kill us in 1 activation.

 

[Putzfrau]

all is well. do you need me to edit it?

Not at all, i appreciate the offer tho!

 

[Killer Angel]

yes if all was equal the best player would always win but at the moment bad players can beat us .

Pretty much.
You don't need to.be a good player to field a list with 4 caster that cast 8 spells with +5 to cast, 30 arquebuses 20 irondrakes and a couple of artillery.
You don't need to be a good player to field morathi and 90 witches.
But you need to be a perfect player to have a chance against those things.

 

[GreenyRepublic]

Pretty much.
You don't need to.be a good player to field a list with 4 caster that cast 8 spells with +5 to cast, 30 arquebuses 20 irondrakes and a couple of artillery.
You don't need to be a good player to field morathi and 90 witches.
But you need to be a perfect player to have a chance against those things.

That, and it requires using a very small subset of our units in a specific way. Meanwhile the Saurus arm of our army may as well not be there.

 

[NIGHTBRINGER]

Pretty much.
You don't need to.be a good player to field a list with 4 caster that cast 8 spells with +5 to cast, 30 arquebuses 20 irondrakes and a couple of artillery.
You don't need to be a good player to field morathi and 90 witches.
But you need to be a perfect player to have a chance against those things.

Is AoS this unbalanced?

 

[Killer Angel]

Is AoS this unbalanced?

to a certain point.
GW turned AoS into an arms race. The few armies that are left behind suffer the gap and wait for their moment to be gifted with a new battletome that will shift the power level.
An example is the old, neglected Empire; the new shiny Cities of Sigmar projected them (and their allies) toward the nonsense of human wizards that are miles above Slanns.
Now, for them it's fair game against Tzeentch or other top tier armies.

But supported armies are sufficiently balanced.

 

[LizardWizard]

Is AoS this unbalanced?

AoS is pretty damned balanced all things considered. Like we don't have a mile long ban list of units and heroes from tournaments. The main issue is that there are still a few first edition armies who haven't received an updated battletome. That being said, it is quite possible to go 4-1 or 5-o at large Masters Tournaments with lower powered armies due to the balance of the core rules and Battleplans.

 

[Putzfrau]

Is AoS this unbalanced?

Honestly, outside of slaanesh not really. Theres probably 8-10 armies that realistically have a chance of podiuming.

Some have an easier time than others and there are only a few that really suffer.

At mid-low table play there are some armies that are just drastically easier to play and have obviously powerful things about them.

Edit: i massively agree with the post above

 

[Killer Angel]

AoS is pretty damned balanced all things considered. Like we don't have a mile long ban list of units and heroes from tournaments.

That is possible tnx to the costant FAQ and updates.
Some solutions are reasonable (Rippers can potentially do infinite attacks? let's fix their scroll), while other ones are completely out of target (Morathi can cast any kind of spell at double range? then everything in the game cannot apply bonuses to range to endless spells!).
We don't have banned units / heroes only because there is some continous fixing, not because overpowered units / heroes don't exist.

 

[Womboski]

Part of the problem, for me, is an issue that is unavoidable in this day in age. The issue of 'netdecking'. A term from Magic the gathering or Hearthstone that means looking up online the best card build and tactics. This can be applied to just about any competitive game, but for me it killed Magic and also is a good example.

People find the "best" build and through crowd sourcing refine that build into a cheese build. Then the next thing you know people claim it's the only viable build. Going to my example of Magic the Gathering. When I first started playing we built decks out of what random cards we had collected and traded with friends and classmates. Once forums became more of a normal thing and computers readily available to the masses Netdecks were everywhere and it becomes hard to play with your fun random deck. Hearthstone is way worse with this imo so rare do you see a fresh or new build.

 

[LizardWizard]

Part of the problem, for me, is an issue that is unavoidable in this day in age. The issue of 'netdecking'. A term from Magic the gathering or Hearthstone that means looking up online the best card build and tactics. This can be applied to just about any competitive game, but for me it killed Magic and also is a good example.

People find the "best" build and through crowd sourcing refine that build into a cheese build. Then the next thing you know people claim it's the only viable build. Going to my example of Magic the Gathering. When I first started playing we built decks out of what random cards we had collected and traded with friends and classmates. Once forums became more of a normal thing and computers readily available to the masses Netdecks were everywhere and it becomes hard to play with your fun random deck. Hearthstone is way worse with this imo so rare do you see a fresh or new build.

I don't have an issue with Netlisting. I wouldn't post so many army list if did. In my experience people who netlist are generally less capable of wielding the army than those who create their own list. Especially within the tournament scene. A lot of the top list have very specific goals which are frequently not obvious to outsiders.

However, I can see how this would be a huge problem for casual play groups or the LGS scene.

 

[Womboski]

I don't have an issue with Netlisting. I wouldn't post so many army list if did. In my experience people who netlist are generally less capable of wielding the army than those who create their own list. Especially within the tournament scene. A lot of the top list have very specific goals which are frequently not obvious to outsiders.

However, I can see how this would be a huge problem for casual play groups or the LGS scene.

I guess I misspoke. I don't have a probelm with it. I love list building and looking at others ideas and sharing in discussion. In fact theorycrafting is my favorite part of the hobby.

However I do believe it fools some people into only believing in the cookie cutter builds. Meta worshipers.

 

[LizardWizard]

Meta worshipers.

In Tournaments we calls these players easy wins

It can lead to a less diverse field of play though.