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Post by Voss »

AoS caused the local store owner to almost sever ties with GW completely. They kept a corner for it on the basis that blood bowl was coming (and eventually arrived).

Many other stores I've been to keep less and less in stock, though that wasn't strictly an AoS phenomen, nothing convinced them to change direction and carry more product again either. Been then GW consistently shits the bed with indie stores.
Last edited by Voss on Wed Mar 29, 2017 11:25 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by shlominus »

i'm on the board of the largest tabletop gaming club in my country (austria) and aos is effectively nonexistent here. aos didn't reverse or even stop the decline of 8th edition, it completed it.

while both kow and 9th age have growing communities, aos has nothing.

once or twice a year someone asks for aos-players in our forum, is disappointed and never heard from again. that's all there is.
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Post by Zinegata »

Funny thing: The local minis tabletop group's getting a bit tired of the current Blood Bowl League and they're beginning to feel a Medieval skirmish battle itch. You'd think they're consider AoS, right?

Nope, first option was Saga, which is basically so small it's indie:

http://www.grippingbeast.co.uk/

I've read the rules and while I think it's still mired in 80s-era minis thinking (tape measures, attack and defense rolls), at the very minimum it tries to innovate with its "battle board" (think of it as a tactics board where players can assign dice to activate units or "trap card") while largely doing away with list-building (units still cost points - but when you only have 6 points to spend you're not going to be fine-tuning your lists until midnight).

At the very least, we can quip Vikings (TV series) references while playing it.
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Post by OgreBattle »

Zinegata wrote:Funny thing: The local minis tabletop group's getting a bit tired of the current Blood Bowl League and they're beginning to feel a Medieval skirmish battle itch. You'd think they're consider AoS, right?
I was thinking Mordheim or Coreheim, from what I've read SAGA looks neat.

Something I'm not clear on is if they have different rules for different kinds of weapons, I'm under the impresison that SAGA units just use their stats ('elite guy' 'conscript guy') and swords/spears/axes are largely interchangeable. Except for the dane axe which is a special unit rule.
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Post by Zinegata »

OgreBattle wrote: I was thinking Mordheim or Coreheim, from what I've read SAGA looks neat.

Something I'm not clear on is if they have different rules for different kinds of weapons, I'm under the impresison that SAGA units just use their stats ('elite guy' 'conscript guy') and swords/spears/axes are largely interchangeable. Except for the dane axe which is a special unit rule.
Differentiation in Saga is based on faction, rather than weapons. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing.

Basically each faction has exactly four types of units - Warlord (leader), Hearthguard (elite soldier), Warrior (regular soldier), and Levies (cannon fodder). And all of them have the same baseline stats across all factions.

However, each faction can spice up their unit types in specific ways - often by giving them a different weapon loadout.

For instance the Welsh faction have Hearthguard and Warriors who are required to come equipped with Javelins, which give them a chance to do a ranged shooting attack after movement. Their armor is reduced by 1 for this advantage.

The Normans on the other hand have the option to give their troops mounts - which increases movement capability but at the cost of armor to ranged attacks and the inability to use cover. Exactly one unit of unmounted warriors may also optionally be equipped with crossbows (though again losing armor); which pack a punch but can only be used while standing still.

Viking Hearthguard meanwhile are mostly vanilla, but one unit of four can be nominated to become Berserkers which roll double attack dice in melee but with a big penalty to armor.

Note that the first two examples involve a change in weaponry, while the Vikings involve a change in unit tactics/doctrine. Nonetheless, the game pretty much treats weaponry/doctrine changes as interchangeable and the focus is instead on their in-game effects and differences across the various factions.

Finally, it's worth noting that all of these optional switches don't cost any additional army points. You can have four regular Viking Hearthguard or switch them for four Berserkers without changing your point total.

While there are probably ways of exploiting the system, I actually like it for the simple reason that it gives a fair amount of depth to army-building without making it overly complex or inelegant. It reminds me of Blood Bowl to a large extent - where you don't have too many troop types but get a fair amount of flexibility for each of them (especially later in the campaign with upgrades).

I'm not too sold on Mordheim as well - I'm really becoming very intolerant of measuring tape bullshit and rolling too many damn dice.

I suspect that the next big tabletop game will be the one that actually gives the players a big square grid map so that we don't have to break out the measuring tape anymore; and that it will consolidate rolls to just attack rolls instead of the current attack, armor penetration, and defense rolls for one bloody sequence.

The tactical depth of the game will instead revolve around actual tactics and skill in timing - e.g. choosing to activate your units in a specific order and using special powers in-between to augment your maneuvers similar to how the Saga Battle Board does it.
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Post by maglag »

So Necromunda Shadow War Killteam is out and GW released free rules for all the factions that didn't come in the main book.

Plenty of people saying we may be looking at 8th edition beta. Each unit has their own movement and weapons have save modifiers.

Fluffwise, it's hilarious that Eldar can deploy an autarch and Tau can bring an Ethereal to what's basically a murderhobo adventure, whereas loyalist scum merines and glorious chaos marines can't bring anything bigger than a termie. Well, at least the ethereal gets armor and shield generator by default.

Curiously Dark Eldar get only Wyches (besides the option of an haemounculus or scourge as special operative). GW probably hasn't sold a single model of them since their latest codex along overwatch made them virtually useless.
Last edited by maglag on Sun Apr 02, 2017 10:04 am, edited 4 times in total.
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Post by Koumei »

I will be pretty disappointed if that's actually an 8Ed beta, because it's actually someone's old copy of Necromunda they found on the floor. And a lot of the weapons and things have been really simplified and I don't know if that's really a good or bad thing.

Also certain variants of certain factions aren't represented (Kabalite Dark Eldar, various Space Marines but ____), and all of the factions that are metal only (Sisters) can just get fucked.

Still, nice terrain kits I guess.
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Post by maglag »

Generic loyalist scum will get their rules on the actual book that costs money, as well as orks.

And wyches can take actual armor and guns, all the way to blasters and dark lances, so you could use their rules for a Kabalite force without much problem.

But sisters can go get fucked for now. Or they're saving it for some special splat. Anything is possible after the new Celestine.
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Post by OgreBattle »

sustained fire dice and the 'roll as many dice as you have attack and keep the highest number to add to your WS then compare to everyyone in b2b contact' are not things I wanted back from 2nd ed/Necromunda.

"everyone use clubs they're an instant KO weapon and cheap as hell compared to swords and axes" is also something I'd rather not see return.

Dividing up skills is also odd feeling as space marines are capable of incredible acrobatics and eldar warriors train up freakish armor crushing strength in normal 40k. Applying limitations meant for human hivers to supernatural immortal death commandos is not good.

Oddly the DE Archite Glaive has less rules than the 7e version, as the Shadow War version is one handed while the 7e version has a one handed use and two handed use profile. Agonizers being cheaper and weaker than power swords is also funky. Why chain hooks are added in as a new weapon while many DE 7e weapons are left out feels weird. Making the mirror-helm special wargear also feels weird when people playing 7e just enjoyed it as an aesthetic choice.

Goddamn wraithguard D-weapons meant for murdering heavy tanks for 'small scale skirmish' is also funky.

I'm not feeling this Shadow War, fan made killteam rules look more coherently thought out.
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Post by maglag »

Base rules spoilers.

Terminator armor is back to 3+ on 2d6. While also keeping the 5+ invulnerable. I don't even...
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Post by Voss »

Koumei wrote:I will be pretty disappointed if that's actually an 8Ed beta, because it's actually someone's old copy of Necromunda they found on the floor. And a lot of the weapons and things have been really simplified and I don't know if that's really a good or bad thing.
It's a freaky mashup of Necromunda (which used 2nd) and sort of the 3rd-7th rules. A lot of the simplification comes from the latters weapon rules, plus a surprisingly sensible avoidance of templates, and removal of anti-vehicle stuff that doesn't come up in Shadow War.

I'd be very surprised if this is secretly 8E beta. Mostly because of the time scale. With a this actual summer release (june/july), shit has already gone to the printers, and is completely done. No 'beta' makes any difference.
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Post by Koumei »

I wasn't aware 8Ed was that close to actually being out. Anyway, it could very well just be a primer or preview or whatever else you want to call "Something that gets people used to what you're about to shovel onto their plate".

From natfka we have the following rumours:
-Codices are not going away. Whether that is good or bad depends on whether you prefer simplicity and the rules being cheaper, or complexity and having a nice big book to hold your stuff in. (This one is more a correction of a rumour to the contrary, by a solid source.)

-Flamers just do random wounds instead of having templates. This makes me sad. I don't know why they're doing away with something simple, reliable and visual. Also the number of hits will basically spell life or death of flamer weapons for the future, which for some armies is a third of their force.

-Vehicles (and buildings?) no longer use their own special system for damage, they're just big models with a whole bunch of Wounds (as in, double-digits even for a Rhino). Probably high Toughness across the board, too. Like when they toyed with adding vehicles to Necromunda. I'm not sure how much I like this. It sounds like sacrificing too much for the sake of simplicity. And now you can basically just say a gun is "Good" or "Bad" based entirely on its Strength and AP, rather than being "Anti-Infantry" or "Anti-Tank" or "Mid-Range".

-More weapons will do varying numbers of Wounds. Like in older editions/Necromunda. And yes, the shitty Save Modifier thing is back. They're trying to make it sound like an obviously good idea, like it was ever a mistake to not do that.

-Once again anyone can charge from any vehicle, no longer does it have to be an Assault Vehicle or Open-Topped. That one doesn't particularly bother me either way - there are probably some things that really benefit from that and needed it? The fact that Space Marines get more use from their Rhinos isn't that big a deal as they're more of a shooting force anyway.
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Post by Username17 »

Necromunda is its own line that has pretty much stayed in 2nd edition rules with minor modifications since the mid nineties. The various expansions, add-ons, and sequels don't ever meaningfully adapt positive rules changes from the 40k line and things rarely if ever jump back into the 40k line from Gorka Morka or whatever.

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Post by Mord »

Koumei wrote:-Vehicles (and buildings?) no longer use their own special system for damage, they're just big models with a whole bunch of Wounds (as in, double-digits even for a Rhino). Probably high Toughness across the board, too. Like when they toyed with adding vehicles to Necromunda. I'm not sure how much I like this. It sounds like sacrificing too much for the sake of simplicity. And now you can basically just say a gun is "Good" or "Bad" based entirely on its Strength and AP, rather than being "Anti-Infantry" or "Anti-Tank" or "Mid-Range".
Can you go into a little more detail about this? I've always thought that the parallel system for vehicles was a useless layer of added complexity, but I probably haven't thought about it as hard as you so I may have missed some important things.
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Post by Koumei »

Sure: tell me what the best weapon is, the lascannon or the multi-melta or the "2+ Poison" Sniper Rifle or the Haywire Gun. I'm not going to tell you what the target is, tell me which of those is just "the best".

Yes, you can still use Range, Rate of Fire and special rules to change this, though Fleshbane/Poison, Armourbane/Melta, Haywire and, to a lesser extent, Gauss and Rending, are all special rules that are made specifically to one or the other. Once they're all the same thing, you have to re-write a bunch of these rules just to spell out "This is Super-Effective Against That in ___ Way". At which point you have basically saved zero time and space.

With the two systems, you can already easily make weapons that are useless against tanks but instantly lethal to infantry, or the other way round. And I don't have faith in their ability to recreate rules that are good at handling these types of weapons in a more unified system.
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Post by Voss »

Flames are a weird exception (and a different problem, with always hit), but templates in general are a great thing to jettison, they're horribly time consuming, and consist up multiple guessing games that can be fudged:

Roll to hit plus roll one die for direction and two dice for distance (-BS in some circumstances, but not in others), sometimes with a minimum distance is just a load of bullshit, especially with a large number of blasts (and with small blasts, they cover so little I'm not even sure it's worthwhile), and can drag people to overthink movement and positioning to spread out for blast, eating extra time on that end too.

Did the player really move the final destination in a straight line in the right direction, or was there a slight curve at a slightly different angle that just happens to bring more models underneath?

And speaking of underneath, how often is that a guessing game of its own, especially when it's towards the center of the table and both players are trying to determine things from different angles where the answer directly benefits them if they less accurate?

Short version: it's a damn messy subsystem that's shittily written, eats a lot of time and produces poor results. Hits 1d3 or 1d6 (or whatever) targets approximates the same damned results, but eats a lot less time and produces zero arguments.
Last edited by Voss on Thu Apr 06, 2017 7:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by OgreBattle »

wraithlords already set a precedent of what an armored vehicle looks like converted to toughness/wounds, having 10+ wound rhinos seems weird.
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Post by Voss »

Not really. They're just retreating to a lot of the 1st edition vehicle rules- the game started with toughness and wounds (well, Damage value, but it functioned identically) for vehicles. It functions a lot better than the some things are MCs and other things that are exactly the same are vehicles, but worse because you can break bits off them and make them pointless.

The grey knight dread knight and the various tau suits just being better despite being piloted walkers just like dreads was a sign that even GW recognized they fucked the pooch on vehicle rules.

The vehicle rules are just another unnecessary and clunky subsystem.

As long as they don't bring acceleration and flight levels back too...
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Post by Koumei »

I'm fully predicting Meltas becoming pretty shit (high-but-not-THAT-high Strength, decent Save modifier, short range, less good than just a plain old S 9 or "S 7 but two shots!" weapon), along with Flamers if the average hits is worse than around 5-6.

So as long as there are no armies that focus primarily on those two weapons we're fine.

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Post by shlominus »

i agree with voss about clunky subsystems. this is the main advantage the mantic "clones" have over gw games imo, they streamlined and simplified a lot, making games play a lot faster and with much less hassle. when i started out playing matic stuff i thought their approach was lacking "something", but once you get to know it, you realise nothing is missing, unless you enjoy arguing with your friends about a missile hitting 2 or 3 orcs.

not having to worry about where you position your models to the fraction of an inch not only makes the game a lot quicker, it's also good for your mental health. ;)

btw, could someone here take a critical look at warpath-firefight, mantic's newest game? i've been playing a few games and enjoy it a lot (i did not enjoy warpath though), but i'm sure it could use a good denning. alternately activating units and special order's make the game seem much more interesting to me than 40k.

@koumei: melta weapons did the most damage in early 40k, with only laser cannons, or max. power heavy plasma guns having more strength. multimeltas did 2d12 if i remember correctly, with laser cannons doing 2d6 and max. heavy plasma d10. i'm sure melta weapons will stay a go to-weapon for vehicle-killing.

and don't forget that flamers with random hits get better when shooting at smaller, spread out units or individuals (or simply when shooting from an angle or distance that won't catch many enemies under the template).
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Post by OgreBattle »

I hope they don't remove vehicle damage, I like the general idea and think it should extend to giant monsters.
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Post by maglag »

Excellent point on flamers not using templates anymore saving a lot of work. It's the kind of things you've just grown used to but aren't actually that useful for a game that's already pretty slow.

You know, one cool thing GW could do was implementing AoS "big monsters get weaker as they lose wounds" system to 40K vehicles.

So a full life predator can run at max speed firing all weapons but by the point it is reduced to 1 wound speed will have dropped to zero and only the pintle storm bolter can fire anymore.
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Post by Koumei »

Well as it stands, once a Melta penetrates the armour, we're talking a 1/3 chance to transmute it into elemental explosion. So once we see how many Wounds a Monolith or Land Raider has, then we know how many dice you'll need to roll. If it's just 10 for one of those, we're talking 3d6 Wounds being necessary (protip, they're not going to use eight or ten sided dice, you'll keep using d6 buckets). Presumably with vehicles having a "This is a vehicle" tag and Melta weapons having "Wounds: xd6, +yd6 against anything with the vehicle tag". And once you're rolling to wound and then rolling a potential armour save and then rolling a number of random wounds... go on, tell me about how much time you've saved? Also I'd love to hear how you'll be tracking all these wounds on all these models.

Fair enough on Blasts (I have yet to see rules saying *they* are going away, and NotNecromunda still uses those), but Flamer templates are quick and easy to resolve, and the kind of people who get bent out of shape over the number under them are the kind of people who have to be reminded it's a shitty game that doesn't work for pro tournament play. So if you have money riding on the results, you actually have too many chromosomes. And seeing as they have elected not to do the Epic thing where you have one big base with the whole unit on it (and that counts as "a unit" and not "ten guys"), we apparently have to accept that each model is actually a guy with a name. And that means making it part of the game that your opponent can spread out so they are not in Fireball Formation, but by doing so they are making it less likely they can reach your unit with all of their guys and more likely more of your units can reach some of their guys. I'm okay with that kind of trade-off being a thing if we can't do Epic stands.
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Post by Voss »

Same way you're tracking hull points and damage effects now, I'd wager. And I have no idea why you think rolling a couple extra d6s (or even quite a few extra d6s, if we go with your baseless guess) requires more time than consulting the various charts and tables, applying AP and other modifiers, and additional situational dice to the armor roll.

It's time consuming now, bringing in line with how everything else works isn't going to add more time, even if you do have trouble with adding d6s.


Yes, flamer templates are quick an easy to resolve. resolution time isn't the problem with flame templates. It's that they're currently way too good, hitting automatically in large numbers, and against a lot of targets it's just 'pick up half the unit' time. Especially if they're the ever more common S6 Ap3 type, in which case you can just erase units at will.
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Post by Koumei »

Voss wrote:Same way you're tracking hull points and damage effects now, I'd wager.
You track Hull Points of non-Supers with a single d6. If something has 10 Wounds, then are you bringing your special d10 just for that? Are you putting 2d6 (a 6 and a 4) on it?
And I have no idea why you think rolling a couple extra d6s (or even quite a few extra d6s, if we go with your baseless guess)
What baseless guess? That they won't be introducing the special GW d12?
That even the dinkiest vehicles will have double-digit Wounds is already "not confirmed but accepted as fact". Yeah they might just end up with 5-6 which is pretty reasonable as numbers go and is in line with Monstrous Creatures. But that isn't the info we currently have. I can't tell you how many dice weapons will do, just that if we're talking 10 Wounds for a Land Raider (with the current info suggesting more than that), and Melta weapons are still worth having, then we're talking 3d6 or more. That's basic math.
requires more time than consulting the various charts and tables, applying AP and other modifiers, and additional situational dice to the armor roll.
Roll to Wound: compare S to T to figure out the number you need to roll. This is simple enough to remember that it's no worse than rolling and adding to S to see if it meets or exceeds the AV.

Saving Throws: okay now they have these when they didn't used to do so. Modified by save modifiers, possibly negated by good weapons, or maybe they're all Terminators on Wheels. Who knows? But even if you have to check Modifier vs Save Value and it ends up "Don't roll", that's a step that wasn't there previously.

Roll a bunch of dice, add them together, subtract from AV: this should take under a second to do, but I've seen people that can't ad hominem, let alone add numbers. This really could end up taking longer than rolling one die and looking at a chart based on how dumb the opponent is. And I don't have much faith in that regard.
even if you do have trouble with adding d6s.
Like I said, iterations of really simple math is really easy to me, but apparently some people have actual trouble rolling a few d6 and adding those together and then, if the result isn't "It's Dead", subtracting that from another value to determine remaining wounds. Apparently this is just a thing that happens... and seemingly happens quite a lot in wargaming communities.
It's that they're currently way too good, hitting automatically in large numbers, and against a lot of targets it's just 'pick up half the unit' time.
That's really only the super flamer weapons as fielded by Space Marines, Chaos Space Marines, and... I think Necrons get a 1/game one? Maybe there's a Tau Suit that has a good one? The vast majority of flame weapons are actual Flamers and Heavy Flamers, and they're kind of shit. Like, a Flamer is a bunch of bolter rounds that hit on a 1+ instead of a 3+ and ignore cover, and yes when the enemy is 20 close combat models very close to eating your face, that's pretty much exactly what you want (because if you don't wipe them all out with mass hits that way, then you die), but it's not like people are ever excited about the option to take Flamers. The reason why the Flamestorm cannon and the Heldrake are considered so amazing is specifically that they're AP 3 + Ignores Cover + Decent frames for getting the weapon close enough.
Last edited by Koumei on Fri Apr 07, 2017 6:05 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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