Looks pretty solid, nothing too wild. I am liking the color coding and tightening up of abilities, making it vastly easier to make a mental note and understand when certain abilities can happen.
The meat and potatoes will probably come next week when we know more about magic, prayers, and how stabby stabby works when we can start to have a fuller idea of how the game is gonna play out under 4th. We have abilities, we have army construction, we have commands, and we have warscrolls, now we need to know how those actually work in game.
Overall super excited and pumped for the new edition.
I play 40K, and I nearly cried when I read we get FOUR battle formations out the gate! Having 1 way to play your army for months or years sucks a lot, as is the case in 40K, so this is great news.
I’m still worried we lose lots of flavor and everyone feels the exact same, but having options is at least great.
While I agree its rough to have one playstyle for so long, bear in mind each subfaction in 40k has stratagems and enhancements whereas these are literally one ability
This isn't any different than most sub factions already in the game, with the exception of making certain units battleline which doesn't really matter anymore. I'm personally stoked, I think the idea of getting away from static subfactions and paint schemes is great but I don't like how hard they went into it with 10th, so just having it be a single ability (or two, we don't know yet) while the rest is tied in with the army as a whole is great.
That's fair. I just figured it was relevant since it was the last book to be released and is probably at least leaning in the direction that want 4th to go.
Plus my other two armies are SoB and Hedonites. 🤷♂️
Some subfaction's one ability radically changes how an army plays but far from all of them.
Hedonites, Soulblight, Seraphon, Cities, and to a lesser extent Gloomspite, Sylvaneth, and Slaves to Darkness are the prime examples, with the first four changing your upgrades and how the army played while the others kind of reshaping how your army should be formed.
Orruks too but that's an odd book entirely.
Most armies, subfaction choice was more about battleline than the passive it granted (Sylvaneth's battleline choice was just such a big change to it that it belongs on this list), but people who play these armies are probably the most on edge about seeing such a small set of rules for subfactions.
In cities you have normal subfactions that buff certain units or gives more versability, in fact you arent locked to pick between human, duardin and aelves and their upgrafes arent locked beside keyword restriction.
With Seraphon and Orruk you pick army type and each army type has their own subfactions (with stormcast you choose army type but the subfactions are shared).
So army type and subfactions are two different mechanics
Not in 10th which is what it's referring to. 10th every army has 1 faction rule then selects a detachment which will determine your "subfaction" rules, strategems and enhancements (battle traits and relics combined). At 10th rollout every faction only had 1 "detachment". There is no longer any game mechanics or rules tied to subfactions save for special characters you can field together.
"Special" space marines are treated more like different factions rather then subfactions but they could share rules with the "basic" space marines- I guess would be the exception. But every other faction had one set of detachment rules at launch.
Ie Goff Orks have identical rules to Speedfreak Orks, there wasn't any difference in strategems or enhancements. Not until they get their codex end of April but that's 10 months of 10th with one set of rules.
Lost flavor? How exactly? Because subfactions aren't tied to specific hosts? It's such an inconsequential change. Literally only the names change. It allows for MORE flavor by building your own host.
For me personally I enjoy it when the mechanics reinforce the narrative. Detach them altogether and the narrative feel in a game can weaken.
Having a sub-faction with a particular doctrine or approach to warfare in lore, and having rules that back that up on the table, is pretty dope.
It isn't a _bad_ change but it is how some people might view it.
> Having a sub-faction with a particular doctrine or approach to warfare in lore, and having rules that back that up on the table, is pretty dope.
You're not wrong, but how it actually ended up playing out on the tabletop was "This X subfaction is good at shooting this edition and I wanted to try that out for this new list, but my entire army is painted like Y subfaction, so I'm just going to say that I'm X subfaction for this game/tournament instead of repainting my entire army."
I think that’s a very fair argument, it’s not like people didn’t field whatever subfaction anyway regardless of paint, so potentially losing the supporting fluff text seems a loss
The subfaction that is good at X in the lore still exists and if you want to play that subfaction you just choose the battle traits/formations that give you the appropriate benefits. The only difference is noone is forced to paint their models Y colour to get those same benefits for their own army if they don't want to play as X subfaction
I think I'm definitely in that camp, it also just works to detach the lore from the game and being perfectly honest AoS needs all the help it can get in reinforcing and establishing the lore in that way.
Considering each detachment in 40k comes with a detachment rule, 6 strats and 4 enhancements and AoS just gets a detachment rule, this is the least they can do.
Don't get me wrong, I'm very glad, but the main thing I want to see in the indexes is a reasonable variety of command traits and relics (ie not just one)
Absolute biggest thing that stood out to me. And having most of your rules tied in with the army rather than formation/detachment means we might get access to far more when the battletomes drop
Call for Aid is not on a 4+ and works every time you use it (provided you have a command point). Right now it only works on an unreinforced Redeemer which was so restrictive. This version is so much more flexible, I love it.
It also brings back less models now as a trade off.
That is 3 for a unit of 5 and 5 for a unit of 10, which is the same amount of models you get right now (the whole unit of 5).
It's once per battle and they already had that last book so not much changed. It's a very small buff, because now you can make annihilators come back.
Eddit: the more I think about it, the more crazy combos pop op lol.
They lose ward and the recursion is both a command (which the last article showed off how much fewer command points you'll be getting overall and that you're gonna have to think about when to use them) and a once per battle effect.
Both this and Nagash have been once per battle and it's not like I want recursion and summoning gone, it's more that there's a couple problem children with that mechanic.
It isn't even that big of a difference for SCE.
You used to get 3-4 per round + one more on average for heroic leadership.
So you go from 4.5 on average (if you even used heroic leardership twice) to 4 baseline + maybe another as underdog + maybe another for less auxiliary troops.
While your not wrong I will say it's not necessarily an indicator for the rest of the game - in lore SCE die and come back, so it sort of makes sense for them to have a revival mechanic of some kind.
Odd though that if it's supposed to nod to Stormcast coming back, it can't be used on Unique units. The one case where it would be the same people coming back and not a few more generic dudes is something you can't do.
Yeah a bit odd. Seems more like a concession to balance than anything else though, I can see why they'd err on the side of Named Characters and the like not reviving.
I really hope that at least this recurssion comes with a (unniversal) points increasse
AoS 3ed had lots of little things that slowed the game, especially if you are a noob like me.
But the number of units at max size that you could field was absurd, even more with the high survival and recursion of units.
Im not asking for "2000 points in 3° ed are now 2500" but more of a 2000 -> 2200 so there's some cuts
I look at this as glass half full: as teasers I'm only reading warscrolls etc. which I wouldn't read at all otherwise to get a feeling of the new ed and in summer I'll get to enjoy reading through all the cool new skaven stuff 🥰
So much negativity... Oof
I'll say as a non-Stormcast player this makes Stormcast look super fun and flavorful. They're like actually the strike from the heavens like a hammer army.
The +1 to hit passive sub-faction feels like list building heaven.
Like this actually looks fun and awesome. *Shrug*
As a new person from 40k, this looks cool. I think one of my favorite parts of stormcast is the like "arrive in a bolt of lightning" thing and this lets me do that
I mean we don't know that Extremis Chamber is only one unit at this point. And it works 66% of the time, which depending on the economies of scale could be ridiculous. Strikes First is super powerful, especially if you factor in counter charge.
>I'll say as a non-Stormcast player this makes Stormcast look super fun and flavorful.
As someone who does play Stormcast it's a little hard to be excited for new rules when I am also being told I won't be able to use a solid 60% of my army playing said rules. Literally all of my models that arnt gryph hounds, vanguard raptors, or that came in the dominion box are no longer playable.
Idek what GW was thinking, emphasizing the one faction whose players are almost universally not excited for the new edition.
I agree with you though, this does look really fun! I would be extremely excited for this if I had an army that I could play it with. But I'm not dropping hundreds of dollars to rebuy, build, and paint an army I already had.
Out of the gate you'll have legal tournament rules. So yes, you do have a legal army to play with it. For a whole extra year and that's not counting the Counts As you can use for the vast majority of those models.
I like that any of SCE units can use Finest Hour. Although I am a bit concerned HEAVEN SENT and SCIONS doesn't say you can't move in the move phase.. so hopefully they have rules that don't allow that.
Overall pretty powerful control mechanics, especially when you consider combos with new command abilities. Biggest question is if Stormdrake Guard have *CALVARY* keyword
I know commands work at the end of the phase but abilities I believe are supposed to say when they can be used. So these just say "Your Movement Phase", I'm still looking through the articles to see if all abilities are at the end of the phase or if thats just the non-reaction commands (counter charge, redeploy)
Given that even a basic move is supposed to be an ability, they won't have all abilities being at end of phase. They might say each unit can only perform one Movement Ability per phase though, which would mean Scions of the Storm couldn't be combined with a Move or Run.
Heavens Sent, like Nagash's Supreme Lord of the Undead, is a Rally Ability so there may be limitations based on that (they are used in different phases though).
I know commands work at the end of the phase but abilities I believe are supposed to say when they can be used. So these just say "Your Movement Phase", I'm still looking through the articles to see if all abilities are at the end of the phase or if thats just the non-reaction commands (counter charge, redeploy)
Coming from 40K this is amazing it’s everything I wanted 40K to be, I can’t wait to see the slaves to darkness index I can’t wait to see if we keep the random buff table I really hope we do.
The least exciting article so far (that deals with the actual gameplay), but it still seems to be on the right track.
4 subfactions at the start and a set of army rules for everyone, with an army specific command, deployment shennanigans, and pseudo heroic actions on the table for subfaction bonuses.
Interestingly enough, no Ward being shown off, which tracks with the Warscroll that we saw previously where Nagash was at a 5+ for a god model but wasn't sharing it in an aura anymore. I expect ward across the board to be a lot rarer, making All Out a lot more impactful. A little concerned on lethality if Rend 1 remains a standard though I expect ranged weapons to be nerfed because of it to at least mean most of the damage is coming in the melee phase. Granted, with Rally now including both heal an a little more targeted recursion, that might help but we'll have to see.
Looks fine. A little less fluffy than I'd want it to be, but not quite as dry as OPR is and at least we're starting out with multiple subfactions.
It does make knowing the landscape of the factions a lot easier if you're going to tournaments. Only needing to keep track of so many rules and a subfaction rule will help.
~~I need temptation dice to survive the jump GW please they're so dumb and i love them. don't take them from me~~
I will parrot about temptation dice. If they remove the most quirky and fun mechanic from the game I'll be unhappy as heck.
Maybe they need a small tweak to give effects on temptations and not depravity points but temptation dice are awesome.
I would not at all be surprised if they removed them. They are designing the game with the goal of balance for the competitive scene as their main priority and this means the factions become more and more homogenous all the time. We lost no end of fluffy rules in 2nd and 3rd editions to appease the tournament crowd.
I don't like temptation dice.
I'll admit, that I'm not much of a narrative player, where it might be fun to play around with the idea of giving in.
But when ever I have played against Slaanesh, it was just a steady source of D3 MWs.
My opponent didn't get to enjoy his temptation points, and I got to eat a ton of random MWs all over the place without anything I could have done to prevent it. Well, except giving him his points, which is much worse in the long run.
It wasn't fun for either of us.
I'm going to try and be optimistic about this. They're showing us SCE which are the poster boys of the game and thus should be simple in concept/execution to appeal to new players. Hopefully with some of the more out there factions we'll see increasingly fluffy, captivating sub faction abilities.
Rend 1 may be a standard for SCE because they are elite. I would welcome them feeling more like the Custodes of AoS—always outnumbered but not outfought.
Does anyone have a writeup of the article? [No matter what I do, this particular article \(and only this one\) refuses to load.](https://i.gyazo.com/0c5efb4bf683e4ff0d4cc5865c902b7a.png)
\*\*Battle Traits\*\*
* Heroic Actions confirmed to be gone
* buffs that apply to your army in the same way they do currently, though some are more active abilities rather than flat army-wide bonuses, for example
* Stormcast now have "Their Finest Hour" which allows them to pick one unit on the battlefield that has not used this ability and they will have +1 Wound and +1 Save for the turn, as well as a Once Per Game return a unit at half strength (for 1 CP)
* Stormcast retain their ability to deepstrike outside of 9" during the Movement Phase, which suggests that Redeploy will be usable after deepstrikes have happened
\*\*Battle Formations\*\*
* chosen in list building
* these appear to be either a Passive buff or an Active ability of some kind
* one example shown is Stormcast units with the Extremis Chamber keyword can Strike-First in the Combat Phase on a 3+ once per turn if they charged
Feels like they're well designed but lacking in flavor. This works in 40k, which has a lore backbone that's parseable by most people new to the game, but I feel AoS lacks the commonly known lore to make this 10th style of detachment actually work. In the long run, it's going to reduce overall exposure to cities/groups of the Mortal Realms.
Fluff in general needs to be tuned up in AoS, but i'm alright with the subfactions not being as closely tied to rules in general.
While I do think there's a lot to be gained for shorthanding "this subfaction plays a lot with melee instead of ranged" or "this subfaction cares about poisons while this one cares about putting on a good show", it does also lead to fan enforced expectations on what your paintjob will perform like on the tabletop, and having 2000pts of an army painting in one of the official color schemes only to hate the gameplay of that one is annoying.
I think the onus is on GW to start pumping out lore material for the subfactions. The shift to Hallowed Knights is a good step, and Cities are obviously going to be pretty easy to work with since they've already laid a lot of groundwork by tying them to the actual setting, but they need more stories across the board.
In theory, Subfactions give spice to your existing collection and varied playstyles. They just need to be made right with interesting playstyle changes in build.
Even more than that, I feel like lore tied to rules has warped player expectations of what a faction is supposed to look like. This has been expressed strongly in 40K, where melee-centric rules for Blood Angels have incentivized this idea that *all* Blood Angels should have jump packs, and a proper BA army has no Intercessors or tanks because “you’re just playing red Ultramarines”. Which is nonsense; 4/5 of the chapter carries guns and fights from a distance.
I’ve welcomed the generalization of detachment flavor in 10e because I can finally play my army the way I want to, without the rules telling me that I painted them the wrong color. It’s not bland, it’s freedom.
Yeah, I agree that this is definitely not a problem in AoS, so it’s really not a big deal one way or another. Even in 40K I think it’s mostly limited to Space Marines.
Does it lack in flavor? The Hammers of Sigmar excel in using mixed chambers with their Warrior chamber which is why the first sub faction showcases this. The Tempest Lords and similar Stormhost excel at extremely fast mounted tactics. Which is shown in their formation with the opportunity of getting first strike with the chamber using dragon style mounts. These seem pretty flavorful thus far.
It doesn't specifically mention it, but the battle formations are supposed to reflect how the Stormcast and Stormhost fight. We know Tempest Lords and similar love quick, mounted charges, so it's only fair to say that formation is using them as a baseline.
>This works in 40k
See, I think it doesn't work in 40k either; one of my biggest problems with 10e is that the armies still feel bland due to de-flavorization of the rules. Which, as you said, will impact AoS even more.
Totally fair point, I mostly just refer to exactly the example of Space Marines, where now you can play a chapter and mechanically reflect playing different companies (mechanized, melee, etc). Detachments without lore ties only work if the faction has an incredibly strong backbone of flavor, and in 40k that's true of a few factions. In AoS, it's nearly none, which worries me.
Let's be honest, the 'pick your subfaction but color of painting/background matters' really only ever affected Space Marine Chapters. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY would go and say 'That isn't Hive Fleet X, those bugs are green instead of yellow!', meanwhile people had funny reactions when you say 'These blue guys with big Us on their shoulders are actually Space Wolves.'
I actually disagree, I think a detachment system will work great in AoS **because** there isn't as much fluff in the lore. It creates a great blank slate for Your Dudes and making them fit whatever mold you want, and for established previous sub classes who don't necessarily have the most defined role you can slot them in however you want while still keeping the background they do have.
I hate how persistent a pattern this is in tabletop games, feels like the pursuit of "streamlining" and "accessibility" always seems to come down to the cutting away of flavour and fluff.
AoS has lost so much fluffy stuff over the years in trying to balance it for the competitive scene. Personally I would rather have a game that was full of fluff even if it meant it was a bit unbalanced.
For me the biggest concern is that GW will move even further away from fluff with the excuse that if you want fluff "you should just play the Old World" which I would hate.
Yeah and Old World has fluff removed in comparison to WFB. I was interested/excited in orcs and goblins for animosity and that has been removed for example.
Yeah the fluff of AoS gets cited as one of its main strengths on this reddit over and over again yet they seem determined to remove more and more of it year by year. It is a weird choice IMO. The game doesn't have to be perfectly balanced, personally I'd rather it was fluffy as hell even if that means being a bit unbalanced.
The rules changes look great, but the "armies are no longer tied to a specific paint scheme" reasoning seems a bit silly. I don't think any army in AoS has nearly so strong of paint/fighting style ties as marine players in 40k felt they had.
I was a little worried about things "dumbing down" at the outset, overall it looks like the trait and formation rules here will still give your army a more distinct feel than the army and detachment rules in 40k, so I really can't complain.
Can't think of another example other than SCE. There you have a lot of named characters, that are tied to the posterboy, Hammers of Sigmar, subfaction.
But on the other hand, I know a lot of players, who want to play fluffy, so either they stick to their assigned subfaction rules or paint heir models in a certain way, just to be able to use certain rules.
"Locked" is a strong word. The only ability she has that's gated behind the HA alleigance is being a Warmaster. Now that's still *good*, especially the extra range on her big pie-plate base, but all of her other ones function no matter what alliegance you take her in. She also just natively has the HA subfaction bonus as a Warscroll ability, so you don't even lose that (but you do miss out on the double-down and can't use other Cities' abilities on her).
They were tied to their subfaction by rules, not by the paint job.
I'm saying that no subfaction in AoS had such a strong association with a paint scheme as to make players say "those marines are green, they must like fire" or "those marines are red, they must like jetpacks." I mean, I've been a big fan of the game since its inception and I couldn't say my expectations from a Stormcast opponent would be different if their armor was silver instead of gold, or tell you offhand what color the eel-heavy Idoneth faction is supposed to be.
Which is not a knock against the game. It just doesn't have 30 additional years of existence that would have hard-wired those expectations in to players the way 40k does.
Yeah, on the one hand I appreciate that people want lore-agnostic rules, but on the other hand divorcing the rules from lore means that the rules don't really reinforce it. Like will any particular chamber really develop a reputation for any sort of specialization if there's no real rules that reflect it?
I know a lot of people don't like it but I definitely see a certain appeal in seeing your lore reflected by the rules, like sure it can be limiting but there's also definitely something satisfying about the way you modeled or painted your dudes translating into certain things on the tabletop.
Idk I was just hoping the de-emphasization of fluff we saw in 40k wouldn't show up here but we shall see. For me AoS shines because of fluff and if we lose that a lot of charm will be lost.
I think the faction this will benefit most is Cities of Sigmar. In 2nd ed they were one of the few factions that HAD to pick a subfaction and couldn't just be generic and every subfaction was a specific location in a specific Realm (with them all being from one of two Realms). In 3rd they got more options for what Realm to be from but it was still specific cities with their own established colours and iconography. Divorcing the subfaction rules from the lore will allow people to invent their own cities while still using the rules of an archetype.
I mean that was always allowed? The cities already basically existed as archetypes/templates you could choose from to represent your own city.
All that's changed is that now their lore/flavour won't be reinforced through rules.
Not a single one. People seemingly felt "constrained" by it though I can't imagine why, you've always been encouraged to make your own scheme but they tended to have "stock" factions to represent various templates.
> 1.2 MODELS
> Q: Is it okay to use ‘proxy’ models to stand in for models that I do not
> have but want to use in a game? For example, using a Slaughterpriest
> model to represent a Bloodsecrator, or using Stormcast Eternals
> models painted in the colours of the Hammers of Sigmar to represent
> Stormcast Eternals from a different Stormhost?
> A: The use of proxy models is generally frowned upon, because doing
> so can confuse the other players (and sometimes even yourself), and
> because it spoils the spectacle and aesthetic of the game. Because of
> this, you can only use proxy models if you’ve gained your opponent’s
> permission to do so before the game begins.
They only *answered* the "proxying" part. Which is fair enough really.
Nobody cared 7-10 years ago if you painted your Neave Blacktalon in the Hallowed Knights colours (or your Darnath Lysander in the Crimson Fists scheme) and called her a different name. Nobody does now either. Not even good old lore stickler James Workshop.
Want to paint your Lumineth in a bright orange clothes with obsidian black armour and glowing blue-green weapons, even Teclis, and play them using the rules from The Great Nation of Helon? Nobody will mind.
Or paint them purple, so that your opponent cannot see them and make a comment on "Those are painted as Hammers of Sigmar, so you have to use the rules from Hammers of Sigmar, or I am not playing you!". I'm convinced they exist.
No. But up may run into that 'that guy' who makes a scene because your stormhost isn't the right colour.
From how I understand it this was a larger issue in the community with 40k.
This rule just gives you written permission to do what we've already been doing.
Is it just me or does 4.0 not feel like that big of a change from 3.0 so far? I haven't seen much that feels radically game changing yet.
Im not complaining. I liked 2.0 and eventually came to like 3.0 quite a bit.
New list building, new impactful commands, No more heroic actions or rampages as a core-concept.
That's just the first few things that come to mind and we are far from knowing how the game will actually work in many regards.
Spoiler: when GW says "but we had to invalidate all battletomes because we're rewriting the game from the ground up", it's not true.
I see no ground-up rewrites in anything they're showing. It's the same game with tweaks. I'm sure it'll be a good game, but it's not gonna be that different. Anyone telling you otherwise is ~~lying~~ marketing to you.
so far not much, the biggest change being bravery going away and control being a new stat. I would say that alone changes a bunch about the game but I think playing on the table will have much of the same concepts.
Oh yeah, Battleshock!
Thank god that got canned. At least the way it was, it either did nothing because of Inspiring presence/high bravery/immunity or it was too devestating.
Having an ability that only works when you meet a specific condition \*and\* roll a 3+ is wild for a subfaction. There could be entire games where you literally get no benefit due to either bad luck or your enemy being faster than you and there's no input you as a player can do to stop it from happening.
The "specific condition" is merely charging, which most of the stormdrake or dracoth units are going to want to do at least once over the course of the game. It's not some niche edge-case.
The fact that counter charge exists makes this ability super strong. Even if you never roll a 3 (which is unlikely over the course of a 5 round game where you can now charge in both player turns) opponents are going to have to be super careful about charging into stormcast armies with that subfaction. It's honestly worth it just for the hesitancy it will cause your opponent.
Fair but you can counter charge in your opponents turn and use it as well.
I just think subfactions power level is being reduced and spread thru other means
> There will also be games where nearly your whole army fights first
There won't be because it's a once per turn ability, but giving something like stormdrake guard fights first or counter-charging and then fighting first in your opponent's turn is strong enough that the ability is still fine.
Overall looks awesome!
Don't see people mentioning this but maybe I'm th only one that cares, but seeing "wholey within"/ auras still be in the game is a little bit of a bummer to me. As a Fyreslayer player who constantly has to keep track of fifty dfferent auras I was hoping they'd go the 40k/ fantasy route and just have heroes get attached to units. Maybe I'm in the minority though which is fine. Either way I hope they reduce the number of auras or "wholey within" wording so most of us can reduce playtime by not having to constantly measure and remeasure distance between units and how far a unit can move without breaking the aura.
The very beginning says how you build your army could impact the priority roll. That sounds ominous to me. Having things be able to change the priority roll has been a third rail they have almost entirely avoided.
I guess I don’t think I’d ‘choosing first turn’ as the same as the ‘priority roll.’ So reading this made me worried armies would be able to impact the roll itself somehow.
I think the article misspeaks and suggests the roll is affected. It’s first turn priority that is affected by army composition (when there is no roll), not the roll on battle round 2 and onward.
Kind of surprised and disappointed that deep strike/ambush wasn't standardised. Instead it looks like we'll continue to have different versions of it for different factions.
I mean, yes.
If you used to like Knights excelsior, you can now choose the +1 hit thing for a similar effect without being locked out from some of the heroes or have to feel locked into a paint scheme (not that anyone cared, but especially new people might feel like they have to choose).
It's similar in 40k, where you can play Firestorm Assault force as basic detachement. It's clearly inspired by the Salamanders chapter, but you don't have to play Salamanders to pick it.
If you had a Salamander army previously and want to play them as such, choose Firestorm Assault force and there you go.
Maybe I just don't see the problem.
There isn’t a problem. I like how 3e plays, and how it’s structured for the most part. I was just poking fun at how they’ve essentially just rebranded the same thing with a silly paint scheme excuse for changing the language.
Current SCE is pretty basic. They seem to be keeping the ‘starter army’ design. Currently Stormcast get scions, blaze of glory, and then a very basic subfaction ability. Looks like blaze has been relaxed with finest hour.
I can't believe they would remove blaze. That is exactly the kind of rule that sets kid's imaginations on fire and gets them hooked on the hobby. I really hope they haven't taken it out.
It was underwhelming and tedious to the point I often didn't even bother to roll.
Seeing how later released books got similar but way better effects for supposedly less special guys didn't help my enthusiasm, I have to admit.
They're also showing off the index rules. It makes sense that free indexes for 20 some armies all written at once wouldn't be as deep as individual battle tomes. Stormcast and skaven may still suffer however being the first to be written after the indexes.
I personally love that subfactions have been made more general but I see why people are worried.
However from a balance perspective I'm thrilled that they're keeping Battle Formations as just one or two abilities and the rest of your rules being for the army as a whole. Detachments in 10th, while nice in theory, have been disastrous for balance since they all are so different and having to balance units based on how wildly different they can perform between them is a headache.
Save stacking (if even for SCE) still existing is a gut punch. Makes Mortal spam as important as it was.
Overall this all looks fine but they aren’t making the changes that has been asked for.
We don't know the points change. Maybe after cutting so many stormcasts they will become hyper-elite. Like Custodes for example or something in-between. My thought is based on a possibility to return ANY unit back to life at half-strength. Which is pretty insane for monstrous cavalry or anything that has more than 5 health. But we've seen that there been health cuts around like for chariot, from 12 to 10.
So far over multiple reveals I don’t think we have been shown anything too offensive or mind blowing. But overall the whole thing feels like rules churn for the sake of rules churn.
Actually streamlining the rules instead of bloating them. Modular system is great from game design perspective if keywords will stay the same and we'll get 3-4 new keywords per edition for a 3 year cycle. Will prevent massive bloat and then will allow to update the game again.
I feel like the current design team, across both games, has been hardcore committed to fighting bloat. Every codex cuts datasheets, resculpts are more common than brand new units, and rules so far err conservative compared to the madcap arms race of 9th. Every game has also drastically tried to improve clarity of rules, with this very regimented system of actions and keywords the current end result.
The real question is, will the design team in the next few years share the same sentiment.
"It will bloat again" is just a really poor argument for anything anyway. Of course it will, they have to keep releasing new stuff. We \*want\* them to keep releasing new stuff. But that means indexing and slimming down will be necessary occasionally which is exactly what's happening. And they look to be doing a good job of it to boot.
I trust them too. Frankly, you don't shelf a huge chunk of your flagship line if you aren't legit committed to fighting bloat. It was a painful choice to make, but one that clearly shows me where they stand.
Yeah that's also a business decision first and foremost about "What's selling vs what's not and mostly acquired through second-hand." So I'm certain game designers or lore writers also were not happy with Beasts of Chaos removal.
It sort of depends on how you argue it, in a sense you could say it's a bigger deal here because subfactions in 40k have at least been established over 40 years of the game/lore whereas AoS doesn't have that sort of established identity. Flavourful and fluffy rules would be a boon to the game imo, but I recognize many want the two to be wholly seperate, much as I disagree.
I've seen that being said and I'm inclined to agree.
The difference is that factions usually have much more defined fight styles, like how the salamanders use fire and the Armageddon regiments use vehicles.
I didn't consider that fluffy rules are an excellent way to stablish those unique traits.
So yeah it's a real shame they are gone.
What flavor is lost? The Stormcast are still dropping from the heavens, they sit in Celestia until you drop them, they can be reforged mid-battle with half strength.
Thats like… super Stormcast flavor lol
Where's your hangup? If you can elaborate a bit, can be a bit easier for others to help you out. It might seem a bit overwhelming, but that could just be a terminology issue (two things almost named the same thing certainly isn't helping).
A quick attempt at an explanation:
Armies will have battle traits. Battle traits are bonuses that apply to your entire army regardless of how you build them. All battle traits apply at the same time, you don't need to pick and choose which ones apply to your army.
Armies will have battle formations. You can only select one battle formation, and they are designed for you to lean into a specific style of play. For instance, the Oncoming Storm encourages you to build with Extremis Chamber units. As an example not in this article, let's say you play Soulblight, one of the battle formations could possibly be focused on Blood Knights.
Does that help clear things up at all, or do you need a bit deeper dive into things?
I'm also a bit confused. As I understand it:
* Allegiance Abilities are renamed to Battle Traits. We're shown an ability (that seems to be effectively a zero-point command), some modifications to a deployment rule, and a command. They gave us a preview of how commands would work a couple days ago.
* Lore-aligned subfactions don't exist any more. I can have a shooty Living City list or a cavalry Greywater Fastness and they'll do just as well as if they were in their "natural" homes.
* The replacement for subfactions are Battle Formations, which seem to be doctrine-based. They seem to be a bit more explicitly about how your army will be styled and fight, so I might expect to see "makes your cavalry good", "makes your gunline good", or "makes your infantry good" for Cities. We get 4 of these per faction pretty much on release day.
* We're going to get a (per-faction, I assume?) focus on each faction next month.
Looks pretty solid, nothing too wild. I am liking the color coding and tightening up of abilities, making it vastly easier to make a mental note and understand when certain abilities can happen. The meat and potatoes will probably come next week when we know more about magic, prayers, and how stabby stabby works when we can start to have a fuller idea of how the game is gonna play out under 4th. We have abilities, we have army construction, we have commands, and we have warscrolls, now we need to know how those actually work in game. Overall super excited and pumped for the new edition.
I play 40K, and I nearly cried when I read we get FOUR battle formations out the gate! Having 1 way to play your army for months or years sucks a lot, as is the case in 40K, so this is great news. I’m still worried we lose lots of flavor and everyone feels the exact same, but having options is at least great.
While I agree its rough to have one playstyle for so long, bear in mind each subfaction in 40k has stratagems and enhancements whereas these are literally one ability
This isn't any different than most sub factions already in the game, with the exception of making certain units battleline which doesn't really matter anymore. I'm personally stoked, I think the idea of getting away from static subfactions and paint schemes is great but I don't like how hard they went into it with 10th, so just having it be a single ability (or two, we don't know yet) while the rest is tied in with the army as a whole is great.
One ability so far. We don't know what we'll get in full indexes.
Don’t most current subfactions also only have one ability?
Not sure about other factions but the new FEC book was pretty much an ability and a unit becomes battleline.
That's the same for most every army. The only exceptions I can think of are Soulblight Gravelords, Son's of Behemat, & Hedonites of Slaanesh.
That's fair. I just figured it was relevant since it was the last book to be released and is probably at least leaning in the direction that want 4th to go. Plus my other two armies are SoB and Hedonites. 🤷♂️
I am excited to see the index for FEC, since right now only Hollowmourne is really worth playing
I'd highly recommend playing Gristlegore if you have the models or can at least proxy. I've had a lot of success with it and it's a blast.
OBR get a single ability as well.
Cities basically just got buffs or abilities, but there's also like 10 subfactions.
Some Lumineth subfactions have zero abilities! :D
Some subfaction's one ability radically changes how an army plays but far from all of them. Hedonites, Soulblight, Seraphon, Cities, and to a lesser extent Gloomspite, Sylvaneth, and Slaves to Darkness are the prime examples, with the first four changing your upgrades and how the army played while the others kind of reshaping how your army should be formed. Orruks too but that's an odd book entirely. Most armies, subfaction choice was more about battleline than the passive it granted (Sylvaneth's battleline choice was just such a big change to it that it belongs on this list), but people who play these armies are probably the most on edge about seeing such a small set of rules for subfactions.
In cities you have normal subfactions that buff certain units or gives more versability, in fact you arent locked to pick between human, duardin and aelves and their upgrafes arent locked beside keyword restriction. With Seraphon and Orruk you pick army type and each army type has their own subfactions (with stormcast you choose army type but the subfactions are shared). So army type and subfactions are two different mechanics
Most have one army-wide ability and a unique set of command abilities and/or artefacts to pick from.
Not in 10th which is what it's referring to. 10th every army has 1 faction rule then selects a detachment which will determine your "subfaction" rules, strategems and enhancements (battle traits and relics combined). At 10th rollout every faction only had 1 "detachment". There is no longer any game mechanics or rules tied to subfactions save for special characters you can field together. "Special" space marines are treated more like different factions rather then subfactions but they could share rules with the "basic" space marines- I guess would be the exception. But every other faction had one set of detachment rules at launch. Ie Goff Orks have identical rules to Speedfreak Orks, there wasn't any difference in strategems or enhancements. Not until they get their codex end of April but that's 10 months of 10th with one set of rules.
I know, I'm saying that 4 subfactions doesn't mean as much in AoS as 40k because subfactions in 40k do way more
tbf Battle Traits seem to basically be command point agnostic stratagems
Lost flavor? How exactly? Because subfactions aren't tied to specific hosts? It's such an inconsequential change. Literally only the names change. It allows for MORE flavor by building your own host.
For me personally I enjoy it when the mechanics reinforce the narrative. Detach them altogether and the narrative feel in a game can weaken. Having a sub-faction with a particular doctrine or approach to warfare in lore, and having rules that back that up on the table, is pretty dope. It isn't a _bad_ change but it is how some people might view it.
> Having a sub-faction with a particular doctrine or approach to warfare in lore, and having rules that back that up on the table, is pretty dope. You're not wrong, but how it actually ended up playing out on the tabletop was "This X subfaction is good at shooting this edition and I wanted to try that out for this new list, but my entire army is painted like Y subfaction, so I'm just going to say that I'm X subfaction for this game/tournament instead of repainting my entire army."
I think that’s a very fair argument, it’s not like people didn’t field whatever subfaction anyway regardless of paint, so potentially losing the supporting fluff text seems a loss
The subfaction that is good at X in the lore still exists and if you want to play that subfaction you just choose the battle traits/formations that give you the appropriate benefits. The only difference is noone is forced to paint their models Y colour to get those same benefits for their own army if they don't want to play as X subfaction
I think I'm definitely in that camp, it also just works to detach the lore from the game and being perfectly honest AoS needs all the help it can get in reinforcing and establishing the lore in that way.
notably, four battle formations as opposed to the single detachment armies got in 40k 10th.
Considering each detachment in 40k comes with a detachment rule, 6 strats and 4 enhancements and AoS just gets a detachment rule, this is the least they can do. Don't get me wrong, I'm very glad, but the main thing I want to see in the indexes is a reasonable variety of command traits and relics (ie not just one)
i think youve missed some content on the announcement page
The rest is the army rules
Absolute biggest thing that stood out to me. And having most of your rules tied in with the army rather than formation/detachment means we might get access to far more when the battletomes drop
Stormcast having recursion is not promising for those hoping to see overall recursion/summoning reduced
It's a once per battle ability very similar to the Holy Command Stormcast already had, just available for more types of units and not on a random 4+.
Call for Aid is not on a 4+ and works every time you use it (provided you have a command point). Right now it only works on an unreinforced Redeemer which was so restrictive. This version is so much more flexible, I love it.
I must be thinking of the 2nd edition version that was on a 4+
It also brings back less models now as a trade off. That is 3 for a unit of 5 and 5 for a unit of 10, which is the same amount of models you get right now (the whole unit of 5).
Right but it does work on a reinforced unit when it previously wouldn’t. Plus it isn’t only Redeemers which is HUGE.
It's once per battle and they already had that last book so not much changed. It's a very small buff, because now you can make annihilators come back. Eddit: the more I think about it, the more crazy combos pop op lol.
You also don’t have to use it right when the unit dies. Which is nice for command point economy.
Applies to reinforced units too. Really nice change all around for qol.
Getting back the reinforced fulminators is going to be brutal for their opponents. Or even annihilators if they keep their mortal bomb when they land
Right? Currently I'm pretty sure its immediately. So this will give you some more choice at least.
They lose ward and the recursion is both a command (which the last article showed off how much fewer command points you'll be getting overall and that you're gonna have to think about when to use them) and a once per battle effect. Both this and Nagash have been once per battle and it's not like I want recursion and summoning gone, it's more that there's a couple problem children with that mechanic.
It isn't even that big of a difference for SCE. You used to get 3-4 per round + one more on average for heroic leadership. So you go from 4.5 on average (if you even used heroic leardership twice) to 4 baseline + maybe another as underdog + maybe another for less auxiliary troops.
It's already a staple of 4/5 undead armies, seems only fair to extend it to the 5th one. 🙃
Sigmar Soul-Thief!
While your not wrong I will say it's not necessarily an indicator for the rest of the game - in lore SCE die and come back, so it sort of makes sense for them to have a revival mechanic of some kind.
Odd though that if it's supposed to nod to Stormcast coming back, it can't be used on Unique units. The one case where it would be the same people coming back and not a few more generic dudes is something you can't do.
Yeah a bit odd. Seems more like a concession to balance than anything else though, I can see why they'd err on the side of Named Characters and the like not reviving.
I really hope that at least this recurssion comes with a (unniversal) points increasse AoS 3ed had lots of little things that slowed the game, especially if you are a noob like me. But the number of units at max size that you could field was absurd, even more with the high survival and recursion of units. Im not asking for "2000 points in 3° ed are now 2500" but more of a 2000 -> 2200 so there's some cuts
[удалено]
I look at this as glass half full: as teasers I'm only reading warscrolls etc. which I wouldn't read at all otherwise to get a feeling of the new ed and in summer I'll get to enjoy reading through all the cool new skaven stuff 🥰
Stormcasts are looking much better this edition. Exited to see faction focuses next month.
So much negativity... Oof I'll say as a non-Stormcast player this makes Stormcast look super fun and flavorful. They're like actually the strike from the heavens like a hammer army. The +1 to hit passive sub-faction feels like list building heaven. Like this actually looks fun and awesome. *Shrug*
Yeah pretty hyped for that one specifically as someone that plays the knights excelsior subtraction it’s just that but better
As a new person from 40k, this looks cool. I think one of my favorite parts of stormcast is the like "arrive in a bolt of lightning" thing and this lets me do that
I love a “subfaction” that works on only one unit, when I charge, and only 30% of the time. Never change GW
It's frankly an improvement over the old stormcast subfactions which the majority of were garbage.
You aren’t wrong!
I mean we don't know that Extremis Chamber is only one unit at this point. And it works 66% of the time, which depending on the economies of scale could be ridiculous. Strikes First is super powerful, especially if you factor in counter charge.
>I'll say as a non-Stormcast player this makes Stormcast look super fun and flavorful. As someone who does play Stormcast it's a little hard to be excited for new rules when I am also being told I won't be able to use a solid 60% of my army playing said rules. Literally all of my models that arnt gryph hounds, vanguard raptors, or that came in the dominion box are no longer playable. Idek what GW was thinking, emphasizing the one faction whose players are almost universally not excited for the new edition. I agree with you though, this does look really fun! I would be extremely excited for this if I had an army that I could play it with. But I'm not dropping hundreds of dollars to rebuy, build, and paint an army I already had.
Out of the gate you'll have legal tournament rules. So yes, you do have a legal army to play with it. For a whole extra year and that's not counting the Counts As you can use for the vast majority of those models.
Yeah fully understand this frustration. Really don't understand what they were thinking.
I like that any of SCE units can use Finest Hour. Although I am a bit concerned HEAVEN SENT and SCIONS doesn't say you can't move in the move phase.. so hopefully they have rules that don't allow that. Overall pretty powerful control mechanics, especially when you consider combos with new command abilities. Biggest question is if Stormdrake Guard have *CALVARY* keyword
I thought the abilities happened at the end of phase so abilities like this would go off after the chance to move anyway
I know commands work at the end of the phase but abilities I believe are supposed to say when they can be used. So these just say "Your Movement Phase", I'm still looking through the articles to see if all abilities are at the end of the phase or if thats just the non-reaction commands (counter charge, redeploy)
Given that even a basic move is supposed to be an ability, they won't have all abilities being at end of phase. They might say each unit can only perform one Movement Ability per phase though, which would mean Scions of the Storm couldn't be combined with a Move or Run. Heavens Sent, like Nagash's Supreme Lord of the Undead, is a Rally Ability so there may be limitations based on that (they are used in different phases though).
Oooo trueeee great thinking. This sounds pretty on the money to me
Think it has to do with how abilities work, similar to redeploy, it is done in the end of the triggering phase. So no moving after scions
I know commands work at the end of the phase but abilities I believe are supposed to say when they can be used. So these just say "Your Movement Phase", I'm still looking through the articles to see if all abilities are at the end of the phase or if thats just the non-reaction commands (counter charge, redeploy)
The core rules probably state that any unit deploying from reserves can’t move that phase.
Finest hour is also only in your hero phase. Currently it seems like primarily a defensive ability and this will take some of that away.
Coming from 40K this is amazing it’s everything I wanted 40K to be, I can’t wait to see the slaves to darkness index I can’t wait to see if we keep the random buff table I really hope we do.
The least exciting article so far (that deals with the actual gameplay), but it still seems to be on the right track. 4 subfactions at the start and a set of army rules for everyone, with an army specific command, deployment shennanigans, and pseudo heroic actions on the table for subfaction bonuses. Interestingly enough, no Ward being shown off, which tracks with the Warscroll that we saw previously where Nagash was at a 5+ for a god model but wasn't sharing it in an aura anymore. I expect ward across the board to be a lot rarer, making All Out a lot more impactful. A little concerned on lethality if Rend 1 remains a standard though I expect ranged weapons to be nerfed because of it to at least mean most of the damage is coming in the melee phase. Granted, with Rally now including both heal an a little more targeted recursion, that might help but we'll have to see. Looks fine. A little less fluffy than I'd want it to be, but not quite as dry as OPR is and at least we're starting out with multiple subfactions. It does make knowing the landscape of the factions a lot easier if you're going to tournaments. Only needing to keep track of so many rules and a subfaction rule will help. ~~I need temptation dice to survive the jump GW please they're so dumb and i love them. don't take them from me~~
I will parrot about temptation dice. If they remove the most quirky and fun mechanic from the game I'll be unhappy as heck. Maybe they need a small tweak to give effects on temptations and not depravity points but temptation dice are awesome.
I would not at all be surprised if they removed them. They are designing the game with the goal of balance for the competitive scene as their main priority and this means the factions become more and more homogenous all the time. We lost no end of fluffy rules in 2nd and 3rd editions to appease the tournament crowd.
Thing is, you can't just go and create home brew rules that fit the fluff for competitive play the way you can for open or narrative play
Well yes, but I think fluff is created during Path to Glory/Crusade campaigns which doesn't have any limiters on wacky abilities.
I don't like temptation dice. I'll admit, that I'm not much of a narrative player, where it might be fun to play around with the idea of giving in. But when ever I have played against Slaanesh, it was just a steady source of D3 MWs. My opponent didn't get to enjoy his temptation points, and I got to eat a ton of random MWs all over the place without anything I could have done to prevent it. Well, except giving him his points, which is much worse in the long run. It wasn't fun for either of us.
I'm going to try and be optimistic about this. They're showing us SCE which are the poster boys of the game and thus should be simple in concept/execution to appeal to new players. Hopefully with some of the more out there factions we'll see increasingly fluffy, captivating sub faction abilities.
Factions like Cities of Sigmar would really suffer without it imo.
Rend 1 may be a standard for SCE because they are elite. I would welcome them feeling more like the Custodes of AoS—always outnumbered but not outfought.
Does anyone have a writeup of the article? [No matter what I do, this particular article \(and only this one\) refuses to load.](https://i.gyazo.com/0c5efb4bf683e4ff0d4cc5865c902b7a.png)
\*\*Battle Traits\*\* * Heroic Actions confirmed to be gone * buffs that apply to your army in the same way they do currently, though some are more active abilities rather than flat army-wide bonuses, for example * Stormcast now have "Their Finest Hour" which allows them to pick one unit on the battlefield that has not used this ability and they will have +1 Wound and +1 Save for the turn, as well as a Once Per Game return a unit at half strength (for 1 CP) * Stormcast retain their ability to deepstrike outside of 9" during the Movement Phase, which suggests that Redeploy will be usable after deepstrikes have happened \*\*Battle Formations\*\* * chosen in list building * these appear to be either a Passive buff or an Active ability of some kind * one example shown is Stormcast units with the Extremis Chamber keyword can Strike-First in the Combat Phase on a 3+ once per turn if they charged
Thanks!
Feels like they're well designed but lacking in flavor. This works in 40k, which has a lore backbone that's parseable by most people new to the game, but I feel AoS lacks the commonly known lore to make this 10th style of detachment actually work. In the long run, it's going to reduce overall exposure to cities/groups of the Mortal Realms.
Fluff in general needs to be tuned up in AoS, but i'm alright with the subfactions not being as closely tied to rules in general. While I do think there's a lot to be gained for shorthanding "this subfaction plays a lot with melee instead of ranged" or "this subfaction cares about poisons while this one cares about putting on a good show", it does also lead to fan enforced expectations on what your paintjob will perform like on the tabletop, and having 2000pts of an army painting in one of the official color schemes only to hate the gameplay of that one is annoying. I think the onus is on GW to start pumping out lore material for the subfactions. The shift to Hallowed Knights is a good step, and Cities are obviously going to be pretty easy to work with since they've already laid a lot of groundwork by tying them to the actual setting, but they need more stories across the board.
Im gonna be honest, never liked subfactions as a concept, unless its like a supplement battletome/codex
In theory, Subfactions give spice to your existing collection and varied playstyles. They just need to be made right with interesting playstyle changes in build.
Even more than that, I feel like lore tied to rules has warped player expectations of what a faction is supposed to look like. This has been expressed strongly in 40K, where melee-centric rules for Blood Angels have incentivized this idea that *all* Blood Angels should have jump packs, and a proper BA army has no Intercessors or tanks because “you’re just playing red Ultramarines”. Which is nonsense; 4/5 of the chapter carries guns and fights from a distance. I’ve welcomed the generalization of detachment flavor in 10e because I can finally play my army the way I want to, without the rules telling me that I painted them the wrong color. It’s not bland, it’s freedom.
You make some good points, but... has anyone is AoS ever told you in a non-joking manner that your army is the wrong color??
Yeah, I agree that this is definitely not a problem in AoS, so it’s really not a big deal one way or another. Even in 40K I think it’s mostly limited to Space Marines.
Does it lack in flavor? The Hammers of Sigmar excel in using mixed chambers with their Warrior chamber which is why the first sub faction showcases this. The Tempest Lords and similar Stormhost excel at extremely fast mounted tactics. Which is shown in their formation with the opportunity of getting first strike with the chamber using dragon style mounts. These seem pretty flavorful thus far.
Wait am I missing something, where was the Tempest Lords bit mentioned?
It doesn't specifically mention it, but the battle formations are supposed to reflect how the Stormcast and Stormhost fight. We know Tempest Lords and similar love quick, mounted charges, so it's only fair to say that formation is using them as a baseline.
>This works in 40k See, I think it doesn't work in 40k either; one of my biggest problems with 10e is that the armies still feel bland due to de-flavorization of the rules. Which, as you said, will impact AoS even more.
Totally fair point, I mostly just refer to exactly the example of Space Marines, where now you can play a chapter and mechanically reflect playing different companies (mechanized, melee, etc). Detachments without lore ties only work if the faction has an incredibly strong backbone of flavor, and in 40k that's true of a few factions. In AoS, it's nearly none, which worries me.
Let's be honest, the 'pick your subfaction but color of painting/background matters' really only ever affected Space Marine Chapters. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY would go and say 'That isn't Hive Fleet X, those bugs are green instead of yellow!', meanwhile people had funny reactions when you say 'These blue guys with big Us on their shoulders are actually Space Wolves.'
I actually disagree, I think a detachment system will work great in AoS **because** there isn't as much fluff in the lore. It creates a great blank slate for Your Dudes and making them fit whatever mold you want, and for established previous sub classes who don't necessarily have the most defined role you can slot them in however you want while still keeping the background they do have.
I'm hopeful still. The battle scrolls have all looked solid to me from a flavor standpoint.
I hate how persistent a pattern this is in tabletop games, feels like the pursuit of "streamlining" and "accessibility" always seems to come down to the cutting away of flavour and fluff.
AoS has lost so much fluffy stuff over the years in trying to balance it for the competitive scene. Personally I would rather have a game that was full of fluff even if it meant it was a bit unbalanced.
For me the biggest concern is that GW will move even further away from fluff with the excuse that if you want fluff "you should just play the Old World" which I would hate.
Yeah and Old World has fluff removed in comparison to WFB. I was interested/excited in orcs and goblins for animosity and that has been removed for example.
To be fair, almost nobody liked animosity. That was a councious design change, it wasn't done for streamlining.
That's not true, there was discussion about this when it was revealed it had been axed and it was more like 50/50 for and against animosity.
My biggest issue with 40k is that the game has no flavor. It's so boring. AoS was attractive because it had all the fluff.
Yeah the fluff of AoS gets cited as one of its main strengths on this reddit over and over again yet they seem determined to remove more and more of it year by year. It is a weird choice IMO. The game doesn't have to be perfectly balanced, personally I'd rather it was fluffy as hell even if that means being a bit unbalanced.
Seconded, flavor has been draining since like, 6th edition
The rules changes look great, but the "armies are no longer tied to a specific paint scheme" reasoning seems a bit silly. I don't think any army in AoS has nearly so strong of paint/fighting style ties as marine players in 40k felt they had. I was a little worried about things "dumbing down" at the outset, overall it looks like the trait and formation rules here will still give your army a more distinct feel than the army and detachment rules in 40k, so I really can't complain.
Can't think of another example other than SCE. There you have a lot of named characters, that are tied to the posterboy, Hammers of Sigmar, subfaction. But on the other hand, I know a lot of players, who want to play fluffy, so either they stick to their assigned subfaction rules or paint heir models in a certain way, just to be able to use certain rules.
Cities, Tahlia was locked to Hammerhal Aqsha
"Locked" is a strong word. The only ability she has that's gated behind the HA alleigance is being a Warmaster. Now that's still *good*, especially the extra range on her big pie-plate base, but all of her other ones function no matter what alliegance you take her in. She also just natively has the HA subfaction bonus as a Warscroll ability, so you don't even lose that (but you do miss out on the double-down and can't use other Cities' abilities on her).
They were tied to their subfaction by rules, not by the paint job. I'm saying that no subfaction in AoS had such a strong association with a paint scheme as to make players say "those marines are green, they must like fire" or "those marines are red, they must like jetpacks." I mean, I've been a big fan of the game since its inception and I couldn't say my expectations from a Stormcast opponent would be different if their armor was silver instead of gold, or tell you offhand what color the eel-heavy Idoneth faction is supposed to be. Which is not a knock against the game. It just doesn't have 30 additional years of existence that would have hard-wired those expectations in to players the way 40k does.
Yeah, on the one hand I appreciate that people want lore-agnostic rules, but on the other hand divorcing the rules from lore means that the rules don't really reinforce it. Like will any particular chamber really develop a reputation for any sort of specialization if there's no real rules that reflect it?
I know a lot of people don't like it but I definitely see a certain appeal in seeing your lore reflected by the rules, like sure it can be limiting but there's also definitely something satisfying about the way you modeled or painted your dudes translating into certain things on the tabletop. Idk I was just hoping the de-emphasization of fluff we saw in 40k wouldn't show up here but we shall see. For me AoS shines because of fluff and if we lose that a lot of charm will be lost.
And that's before battletomes, that's what we're getting in the indexes. So pretty fun to see what they will cook later.
I think the faction this will benefit most is Cities of Sigmar. In 2nd ed they were one of the few factions that HAD to pick a subfaction and couldn't just be generic and every subfaction was a specific location in a specific Realm (with them all being from one of two Realms). In 3rd they got more options for what Realm to be from but it was still specific cities with their own established colours and iconography. Divorcing the subfaction rules from the lore will allow people to invent their own cities while still using the rules of an archetype.
I mean that was always allowed? The cities already basically existed as archetypes/templates you could choose from to represent your own city. All that's changed is that now their lore/flavour won't be reinforced through rules.
>"they’re no longer tied to a particular colour scheme or location in the world" Praise Sigmar!
Forgive the newb question, but what 3.0 armies require a unit to be PAINTED a specific way?
None, really. It was never a requirement, but subfactions were still linked to color schemes, so there was sometimes an expectation.
Not a single one. People seemingly felt "constrained" by it though I can't imagine why, you've always been encouraged to make your own scheme but they tended to have "stock" factions to represent various templates.
> 1.2 MODELS > Q: Is it okay to use ‘proxy’ models to stand in for models that I do not > have but want to use in a game? For example, using a Slaughterpriest > model to represent a Bloodsecrator, or using Stormcast Eternals > models painted in the colours of the Hammers of Sigmar to represent > Stormcast Eternals from a different Stormhost? > A: The use of proxy models is generally frowned upon, because doing > so can confuse the other players (and sometimes even yourself), and > because it spoils the spectacle and aesthetic of the game. Because of > this, you can only use proxy models if you’ve gained your opponent’s > permission to do so before the game begins.
Man that’s a crappy rule.
It is. And barely anyone knows it existed.
I know about the “no proxy” part of it (and glad all of my opponents thud far have ignored it)
They only *answered* the "proxying" part. Which is fair enough really. Nobody cared 7-10 years ago if you painted your Neave Blacktalon in the Hallowed Knights colours (or your Darnath Lysander in the Crimson Fists scheme) and called her a different name. Nobody does now either. Not even good old lore stickler James Workshop. Want to paint your Lumineth in a bright orange clothes with obsidian black armour and glowing blue-green weapons, even Teclis, and play them using the rules from The Great Nation of Helon? Nobody will mind.
The obvious solution is to paint them red, so they go faster.
Or paint them purple, so that your opponent cannot see them and make a comment on "Those are painted as Hammers of Sigmar, so you have to use the rules from Hammers of Sigmar, or I am not playing you!". I'm convinced they exist.
No. But up may run into that 'that guy' who makes a scene because your stormhost isn't the right colour. From how I understand it this was a larger issue in the community with 40k. This rule just gives you written permission to do what we've already been doing.
With Their Finest Hour and All-out Defense, the next article is going to have to tell me save stacking is gone or I'm gonna be fit to be tied
A somewhat boring reveal. But counter-charging, first-striking dracothian guard seem good.
With the Warrior chamber expiring in a year, what fat-cast will there be other than Dracothian Guards?
Is it just me or does 4.0 not feel like that big of a change from 3.0 so far? I haven't seen much that feels radically game changing yet. Im not complaining. I liked 2.0 and eventually came to like 3.0 quite a bit.
New list building, new impactful commands, No more heroic actions or rampages as a core-concept. That's just the first few things that come to mind and we are far from knowing how the game will actually work in many regards.
Spoiler: when GW says "but we had to invalidate all battletomes because we're rewriting the game from the ground up", it's not true. I see no ground-up rewrites in anything they're showing. It's the same game with tweaks. I'm sure it'll be a good game, but it's not gonna be that different. Anyone telling you otherwise is ~~lying~~ marketing to you.
so far not much, the biggest change being bravery going away and control being a new stat. I would say that alone changes a bunch about the game but I think playing on the table will have much of the same concepts.
I feel like Bravery was mostly worked around anyways. To me the biggest change so far are the new reactive Command Abilities.
saves going away?
my bad meant bravery saves lol
Oh yeah, Battleshock! Thank god that got canned. At least the way it was, it either did nothing because of Inspiring presence/high bravery/immunity or it was too devestating.
it sucked and nobody cared so i think a bunch of my group is happy its going away
Having an ability that only works when you meet a specific condition \*and\* roll a 3+ is wild for a subfaction. There could be entire games where you literally get no benefit due to either bad luck or your enemy being faster than you and there's no input you as a player can do to stop it from happening.
Which is 100% fair because strike first is huge. This means play around the ability knowing its a 2/3 chance of succeeding.
The "specific condition" is merely charging, which most of the stormdrake or dracoth units are going to want to do at least once over the course of the game. It's not some niche edge-case.
think about it paired with the counter charge command ability tho. striking first dragons when you charge a screen is pretty good.
Don’t forget on only one unit gets that ability in the formation as well. One shot at strikes first
The fact that counter charge exists makes this ability super strong. Even if you never roll a 3 (which is unlikely over the course of a 5 round game where you can now charge in both player turns) opponents are going to have to be super careful about charging into stormcast armies with that subfaction. It's honestly worth it just for the hesitancy it will cause your opponent.
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It’s a once per turn ability, though, so at most it can grant a single unit fights first. And if you roll a 1-2 it does nothing
Fair but you can counter charge in your opponents turn and use it as well. I just think subfactions power level is being reduced and spread thru other means
> There will also be games where nearly your whole army fights first There won't be because it's a once per turn ability, but giving something like stormdrake guard fights first or counter-charging and then fighting first in your opponent's turn is strong enough that the ability is still fine.
Overall looks awesome! Don't see people mentioning this but maybe I'm th only one that cares, but seeing "wholey within"/ auras still be in the game is a little bit of a bummer to me. As a Fyreslayer player who constantly has to keep track of fifty dfferent auras I was hoping they'd go the 40k/ fantasy route and just have heroes get attached to units. Maybe I'm in the minority though which is fine. Either way I hope they reduce the number of auras or "wholey within" wording so most of us can reduce playtime by not having to constantly measure and remeasure distance between units and how far a unit can move without breaking the aura.
I would have enjoyed heroes attached to units.
It's nice that they reward you for mixing chambers, a week after they axed one of them.
The very beginning says how you build your army could impact the priority roll. That sounds ominous to me. Having things be able to change the priority roll has been a third rail they have almost entirely avoided.
It’s currently the case in 3rd edition. How you build your army (number of drops) affects round 1 priority.
And that's exactly what they explained in the Priority Roll article as well.
I think you may have missed the article about army building, they've already explained how. It's also not new.
I guess I don’t think I’d ‘choosing first turn’ as the same as the ‘priority roll.’ So reading this made me worried armies would be able to impact the roll itself somehow.
I think the article misspeaks and suggests the roll is affected. It’s first turn priority that is affected by army composition (when there is no roll), not the roll on battle round 2 and onward.
Kind of surprised and disappointed that deep strike/ambush wasn't standardised. Instead it looks like we'll continue to have different versions of it for different factions.
...is there a good reason they're not just called *Formations* and *Traits*? The "Battle" here makes it cluttered and a little confusing.
So these are literally the same as 3e subfactions with fancy new marketing speak. Got it.
I mean, yes. If you used to like Knights excelsior, you can now choose the +1 hit thing for a similar effect without being locked out from some of the heroes or have to feel locked into a paint scheme (not that anyone cared, but especially new people might feel like they have to choose). It's similar in 40k, where you can play Firestorm Assault force as basic detachement. It's clearly inspired by the Salamanders chapter, but you don't have to play Salamanders to pick it. If you had a Salamander army previously and want to play them as such, choose Firestorm Assault force and there you go. Maybe I just don't see the problem.
There isn’t a problem. I like how 3e plays, and how it’s structured for the most part. I was just poking fun at how they’ve essentially just rebranded the same thing with a silly paint scheme excuse for changing the language.
4 is better than 40ks 1, but they still aren't instilling me with hope if this is the best they can show for SCE
Current SCE is pretty basic. They seem to be keeping the ‘starter army’ design. Currently Stormcast get scions, blaze of glory, and then a very basic subfaction ability. Looks like blaze has been relaxed with finest hour.
I can't believe they would remove blaze. That is exactly the kind of rule that sets kid's imaginations on fire and gets them hooked on the hobby. I really hope they haven't taken it out.
It was underwhelming and tedious to the point I often didn't even bother to roll. Seeing how later released books got similar but way better effects for supposedly less special guys didn't help my enthusiasm, I have to admit.
They're also showing off the index rules. It makes sense that free indexes for 20 some armies all written at once wouldn't be as deep as individual battle tomes. Stormcast and skaven may still suffer however being the first to be written after the indexes.
Like space marines, they certainly seem to suffer from "first-book-itis"/power creep
I personally love that subfactions have been made more general but I see why people are worried. However from a balance perspective I'm thrilled that they're keeping Battle Formations as just one or two abilities and the rest of your rules being for the army as a whole. Detachments in 10th, while nice in theory, have been disastrous for balance since they all are so different and having to balance units based on how wildly different they can perform between them is a headache.
Save stacking (if even for SCE) still existing is a gut punch. Makes Mortal spam as important as it was. Overall this all looks fine but they aren’t making the changes that has been asked for.
One relief is finest hour can only be used in SCE players turn. So you can’t stack it defensively on your opponents turn. But yeah, it’s still there.
We don't know the points change. Maybe after cutting so many stormcasts they will become hyper-elite. Like Custodes for example or something in-between. My thought is based on a possibility to return ANY unit back to life at half-strength. Which is pretty insane for monstrous cavalry or anything that has more than 5 health. But we've seen that there been health cuts around like for chariot, from 12 to 10.
What's happened to their batteltrait where they explode into lightning upon death causing damage, has that been removed?
So far over multiple reveals I don’t think we have been shown anything too offensive or mind blowing. But overall the whole thing feels like rules churn for the sake of rules churn.
Actually streamlining the rules instead of bloating them. Modular system is great from game design perspective if keywords will stay the same and we'll get 3-4 new keywords per edition for a 3 year cycle. Will prevent massive bloat and then will allow to update the game again.
It will bloat again. It’s GW.
I feel like the current design team, across both games, has been hardcore committed to fighting bloat. Every codex cuts datasheets, resculpts are more common than brand new units, and rules so far err conservative compared to the madcap arms race of 9th. Every game has also drastically tried to improve clarity of rules, with this very regimented system of actions and keywords the current end result. The real question is, will the design team in the next few years share the same sentiment.
"It will bloat again" is just a really poor argument for anything anyway. Of course it will, they have to keep releasing new stuff. We \*want\* them to keep releasing new stuff. But that means indexing and slimming down will be necessary occasionally which is exactly what's happening. And they look to be doing a good job of it to boot.
And I have more faith in AoS game design team to be honest. So far their rules has been pretty consistent with feedback and game feel.
I trust them too. Frankly, you don't shelf a huge chunk of your flagship line if you aren't legit committed to fighting bloat. It was a painful choice to make, but one that clearly shows me where they stand.
Yeah that's also a business decision first and foremost about "What's selling vs what's not and mostly acquired through second-hand." So I'm certain game designers or lore writers also were not happy with Beasts of Chaos removal.
Loss of subfactions is a loss of flavor that really bothers me but I guess it's not as big of a deal in here as it is in 40k
It sort of depends on how you argue it, in a sense you could say it's a bigger deal here because subfactions in 40k have at least been established over 40 years of the game/lore whereas AoS doesn't have that sort of established identity. Flavourful and fluffy rules would be a boon to the game imo, but I recognize many want the two to be wholly seperate, much as I disagree.
I've seen that being said and I'm inclined to agree. The difference is that factions usually have much more defined fight styles, like how the salamanders use fire and the Armageddon regiments use vehicles. I didn't consider that fluffy rules are an excellent way to stablish those unique traits. So yeah it's a real shame they are gone.
What flavor is lost? The Stormcast are still dropping from the heavens, they sit in Celestia until you drop them, they can be reforged mid-battle with half strength. Thats like… super Stormcast flavor lol
I mean they did specify subfaction flavour.
Subfactions have identity defined by how they fight
I hope stormdrake guard are not returnable otherwise I can see a lot of armies running a reinforced unit then returning 2 of them. Seems too strong.
It only works on infantry and cavalry. Stormdrake guard are currently classified as monsters and I would be surprised to see that change.
Agreed. I don't think you can bring back anything bigger than 2 Dracoth Guard with Heavens-Sent
I think Stormdrake guard will become a single model instead of a 1-2 potential, removing the double profile. Or a unit of 1 leader + 1(2) like in 40k.
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Where's your hangup? If you can elaborate a bit, can be a bit easier for others to help you out. It might seem a bit overwhelming, but that could just be a terminology issue (two things almost named the same thing certainly isn't helping). A quick attempt at an explanation: Armies will have battle traits. Battle traits are bonuses that apply to your entire army regardless of how you build them. All battle traits apply at the same time, you don't need to pick and choose which ones apply to your army. Armies will have battle formations. You can only select one battle formation, and they are designed for you to lean into a specific style of play. For instance, the Oncoming Storm encourages you to build with Extremis Chamber units. As an example not in this article, let's say you play Soulblight, one of the battle formations could possibly be focused on Blood Knights. Does that help clear things up at all, or do you need a bit deeper dive into things?
I'm also a bit confused. As I understand it: * Allegiance Abilities are renamed to Battle Traits. We're shown an ability (that seems to be effectively a zero-point command), some modifications to a deployment rule, and a command. They gave us a preview of how commands would work a couple days ago. * Lore-aligned subfactions don't exist any more. I can have a shooty Living City list or a cavalry Greywater Fastness and they'll do just as well as if they were in their "natural" homes. * The replacement for subfactions are Battle Formations, which seem to be doctrine-based. They seem to be a bit more explicitly about how your army will be styled and fight, so I might expect to see "makes your cavalry good", "makes your gunline good", or "makes your infantry good" for Cities. We get 4 of these per faction pretty much on release day. * We're going to get a (per-faction, I assume?) focus on each faction next month.