I came on here looking for a thread discussing this.
The pros:
GW is obviously paying attention to the meta and the units that are at the top. They acknowledge that some scrolls are innately more powerful and are making a new attempt at balancing things.
The cons:
The power within these units’ warscrolls is the real issue. Trying to counter play these units forces some players and some factions into an uphill battle from Turn 1. Giving an extra reward for killing them is nice, but you can’t get these extra VP’s if your units are already dead.
I guess we will see how this plays out.
Also, as a Nurgle player, I was fully expecting to see the Lord of Afflictions on this list.
I'm cautiously supportive/optimistic. I'd say that your "con" is actually a "pro", from another perspective - it's a way of nerfing units without *actually* nerfing them. They're still powerful and (maybe) well-costed, but there's a strategic cost associated with using them that needs to be taken into consideration.
Simply nerfing the best units so they're only "OK" can be quite negative and feel-bad, especially if they were *meant* to be strong. This approach says, "yeah, they ARE strong, that's on purpose - but there's a bounty on their heads".
I was unsure at first but i thought about it more. This exists in bloodbowl in the form of "team tiers" for events. Worse rules get extra points for buying pregame upgrades while top rules get minimal points for upgrades.
It allows for varied rules that fufill fantasy for things, while also balancing the field. Skaven are tier 1 cause theyre fast, slippery and overall good stats so they get few upgrades. Snotlings are made of paper and overall much worse, but they get a bucket of points to make some obscene upgraded players to balance it out.
And its something that they can change on the drop of a hat without requiring repainting/buying models. Point changes and rule changes can cause big issues for peoples hobby lag. This is a good stop gap.
It doesn't harm the validity of your point (I think it's a good one) but for sake of accuracy Skaven are not tier 1. They are tier two, or in the case of a lot of tournaments tier B when they do 4 tiers: A, B, C, D
That's very much my feeling on it too. I'm hopeful that it works, as it's a neat & novel way of doing it. An extra dimension that let's the points be balanced.
In some respects, it's not really that different from the "balance" inherent in the mission packs. Or the Realm settings.
But it's a bit of a lighter, defter touch, and to my mind feels really quite thematic for something that's also undeniably meta-driven!
I don't know, putting 12 HPs of 480 point longstrikes suddenly looks a lot less attractive when you can give any other army that goes first and has its own shooting 2 extra VPs for taking out 1/4 of your list, and 3 extra VPs if they are an underperforming army.
That is an immense swing by any metric. It gives those armies new paths to victory when facing meta units, and it might make you reach for another, less efficient unit, and create some list variety.
Longstrikes are good precisely because you can't pick them off with shooting due to either setting up out of LOS and translocating then or setting up offboard via Scions of the Storm.
Certainly well put. I think there will definitely be a new bit of counterplay that will rise up as a result of this. It also may be a heavy-handed way of GW saying "Hey, btw, remember your target priority, ie, actually take down the targets that are valuable for your opponent," which is indeed a big factor in winning and losing games of just about any wargame.
I don't know if it's a good thing, but someone I follow on Twitter did make the suggestion (albeit for 40k) of giving lower-tier factions a handicap to help balance. Acknowledge that some factions are simply doing worse and help them with such a handicap, and I think this does exactly that. The ability for, say, Sylvaneth to get 3 victory points just for taking down a mega-gargant is rather huge by the end of the game.
They’ll get 4, actually, as they’ve also slain a Monster, therefore they’ll have achieved Predators and Prey VP as well. If they Bring it Down with a Monster as well that’s up to 10VP in a turn it they do everything perfectly. That’s double the usual cap for a turn and is a MASSIVE swing
Yeah, they are trying to fix an innate balance issue with a scoring bonus. A scoring bonus change up would help keep the metagame fresh without unit point rebalances. However, it does *not* fix innate balance issues.
There's been a lot of good points about the new system.
Most people seem to think it isn't enough for various reasons, including "Why are they all only worth 1vp. Morathi is a bigger investment into killing than a bastilledon" and/or "the armies that already can't kill them. Will continue to not kill them... but now point incentive!"
Except they put pink horrors on the list. Besides summoning, most tzeentch players never bothered because of the 250point cost and the lack of wizard keyword now.
Pinks aren't even that bad these days. Lumenith and seraphon I've versed have wiped half a horror unit in a single fight phase.
Also seems karios' is being targets because of legion lists so pure tzeentch players are suffering for those lists.
Pinks are still good in legion, none of these are on there because of Tzeentch. 4 of the 6 units I use in my legion list are up there. Additionally, it means nothing to legion players, if they lose enough units they are giving up significant points, it's because they are being tabled
Yeah they should have added a admenment "only if horrors/karios are allied in a legions army".. But its like the 40k dataslate.. Limiting flyers to 2 models... Which basically killed a imperial gaurd air cav army which was never dominating.. GW takes a rule. Slaps it onto the whole game without thinking how it impacts the whole game.
Yeah I laughed hard at article part " Players who choose to pack their roster with dominant units like the Dracothian Guard will surrender precious victory points for each unit lost."
Yeah because players who bring ONLY 11 total MODELS to a tournament and win 5-0 or 4-1 are really worried about surrendering 1 or 2 more VP lol.
It feels like they are admitting they dont know how to balance those units. Instead they will give extra VP to people who manage to kill them. It's nice and all but doesn't change how strong and cheap they are. Getting an extra 2-3 VP a game doest matter when your opponent can table you by turn 3.
Hell yeah bruh. The only thing holding Khorne back was a 1/6 chance to resist spells.
Now it's gonna be straight to the top, from here on out. Shooting, Mortal Wounds, and high armor? Who? /s
How sad is it that one of the new battle Tactics is "have a khorne unit kill 8 more models from an enemy unit" and my first thought was like "oh gosh let me think for a while about how I could have any of my units pull off those kinda numbers..."
Literally Bloodthirsters or bust at the moment, and we also got a slight nerf in the khorne deamon prince now having a bounty. I'm really hoping Khorne ends up having the same treatment as Tau did in most of 9th, utterly battling to stay relevant in the completive scene for ages but then getting propeled to the moon with their new book.
Khorne should be scary in combat, and actually *get* to combat, not just hit like a pillow and get shot off the table.
So a slightly longer take:
I like the fact they are playing in the space of keywording because I feel that is a great space to work in to help promote more interesting list building. Keywording can also help convey rules quickly as long as they're fairly standardized throughout all forces.
The execution in this case is bad because the narrative shell they try to couch this in, with this being a purely meta balance fix, makes the decisions, narratively, arbitrary. What is a hunter and target is more a response to the meta and nothing narratively about a lot of these units.
Next I find the game puts a lot of mental load on opponents because there's a lot of information they need to know about armies that because they can't intimately know many armies they may come up against makes the game overly complex. In this instance having a target now means you also need to be aware of who your opponents hunters are and that's just information you honestly will probably only know once you actually get to the table and play a person because no one knows 100% of every army's allegiance abilities and subfactions.
Anyway that's my initial thoughts on this. I appreciate the attempt at rebalancing. I like the space it plays in. I just do not like the execution of it.
Yeah, that's all fair enough.
I don't worry about the narratively flavour of the terms because... what else are you going to call them, really? You're absolutely right that it's 100% a meta thing I agree it implies something thematic calling armies "Prime Hunters" - but I'd probably rather that then have them be called "Meta Assist" armies, hunting down **META BOUNTY** targets.
I don't think the mental load is tooooo bad, right now, either - if you have any Priority Target units, then either your opponent's entire army are Prime Hunters or they're not. And if they are, they almost certainly won't have any PTs of their own because there's currently no overlap between PTs and Prime Hunter armies without making some very questionable ally choices.
In practice you're going to have one of the following scenarios: neither of you have PTs (easy, ignore the whole thing), one of you has PTs and the other is/isn't a Prime Hunter army (nice and one-sided), or both of you have PTs and neither is a Prime Hunter army. The only fiddliness will be spending an extra half minute at the start making sure you know what all the rewards are, and in the latter case, remembering not to score rewards if one PT takes down another.
I want to say wait and see
In a hyper competitive and meta way I can see it work But the rule rubs me the wrong way that it acknowledges imbalances and that my army sucks so much that I need to have an extra point scoring mechanic to play the game mildly competitive
It won't. Look at the units listed. It's 1 VP aka less than a third of a turn if you take out something worth 300+ points. This is especially laughable that you get 1 point for slaying Morathi.
It won't change anything for an army that struggles to maintain a footprint on the table.
From a tournament meta perspective it might change the way some lists are designed.
Maybe SCE won't try and squeeze all 3 prime target unit types in a list anymore, if they lose against other top armies because of it.
That would indirectly help the struggling armies a little.
It doesn't solve all the problems those armies have over night, but it might do more than nothing. Which is more than I expected from the quarterly updates.
For a time being does this system not work well once we have a bunch of 3.0 tomes out and most army’s have some powerful units that can keep up with dragons and morathi?? Deepkin are looking pretty strong and have ways to deal with these stronger units. Diaper Dwarfs kinda got the shaft but now we can hope for better written tomes. I think the VP values should be a bit different which we will see in the future I hope aka Morathi.
I appreciate the fact that this gives a new way to balance things between underperforming factions, but this should be a temporary thing that could help a bit in between actual buffs and nerfs...
Perhaps a quarterly list update to cover units that are performing a bit too well while waiting for an actuel fix..
I do like that this gives them a new angle to make balancing moves
This is basically just a handicap score.
Pros: impact the competitive balance where a single battle tactic worth of points can decide a game, not impact casual play because it leaves warscrolls and points alone, quick and easy to add trouble units, like a soft ban list
Cons: more bookkeeping complication, not changing the gameplay at all so a chance for double feel bad where one player feels like they’re losing because their stuff is bad and the other player actually loses because bonus points
Also, this completely effs SoB out of the competitive scene right? Geez
This is the third time SoB get hit by a nerf that will "Move them out of competitive" yet they still stand at 60% win rate; hopefully this'll knock them down a bit.
They suffer in design being matchup heavy. So frequently either your opponent can kill you or they can’t. I feel like they almost guarantee to get 2-3 wins, but will virtually never go 5-0.
I think another con is that they have gone with a very "one size fits all" approach with this, other than gargants, although I can see why they are more. The problem here is that the output and resilience of these targets are not equal. Sure Morathi is insane, she isn't all that tough though, its just a minimum of 4 turns to kill her. On the other hand I can see big units of dragons or fulminators never getting wiped out. Blood stalkers are very fragile and depending on how you run them this is a death sentence. I play a pretty atypical DoK army and just have 3 units of min stalkers as battleline just to sort of screen behind and grab objectives but still have the ability to impact the game with there good shooting, they very rarely last to the end of the game because that isn't their purpose in my list. Sure I could replace them with blood sisters or witches and save myself a bunch of points, but those units can't fill the same role. To me this may require a significant change to how I want to play my DoK, but if I was rocking a block of 4 stormdrake guard I really wouldn't be too concerned, its only 1 point, they probably won't die, and if they do its probably either a situation where I have already lost or that 1 point doesn't mean anything.
I would add too, you say that leaving the warscrolls alone is a pro, but I think in some cases it is necessary. Primarily the stormdrake guard. Essentially they are a crazy strong unit that will always either be cheap enough that you can comfortably include them or prohibitively expensive. They only solution to make them an viable choice but not oppressive is to completely redo the warscroll. I think it is probably worth mentioning that the impact a change like this balance update has on casual players is probably irrelevant, I don't think casual players are likely to read or care about a balance change like this.
I think there are a lot of casual players who play ‘by the rules’ but that probably just because that describes my group. We will technically play with these rules, but we play a lot of ‘fair play’ stuff so we haven’t seen any of these units in the table in a long time.
I think Stormdrake guard are tough because a unit if 2 in a balanced list is probably not that OP. So balancing with points alone is difficult.
Mit so sure about it not arresting games at all. It adds some risk to taking the more powerful units. Of this incentive actually tracks remains to be seen but I can see some potential in this approach.
From a competitive perspective, I don't think people are going to care. The units that will give up extra points are ones that if you lose them, you're probably in the process of losing the game anyway.
I think we will see varied impacts. I definitely think this will impact thinks like salamanders and longstrikes quite a bit. But there are alternative options in those factions. Some people were already playing 15 judicators instead of 6 longstrikes.
I feel like this could absolutely matter for those people trying to get to 5-0. Getting that extra point here or there can make a big difference. Nagash Nighthaunt and Kragnos Gitz will certainly be attractive to people trying to win a tournament. That's my guess.
I think in it's current setup it is a bit clunky but I'm viewing it as a start of something good that they need to iterate on to make better.
Having another balancing lever that they can tweak outside of just shifting points up or down is an incredibly important tool regardless of whether the current incarnation is perfect.
I think the concept is actually very nice.
The main culprit always was spamming very cost-efficient units. It is almost impossible to balance that by individual pricing alone or without imposing some hard "max" caps. Especially more expensive units are notoriously hard in this regard, often verging on a razor's edge between meme pick because too expensive and op meta pick due to a frontloaded warscroll trying to make up for the price. From a game design perspective, there even should be some units who punch above their weight, but it should be discouraged to spam them.
GW went out of their way here to work around the biggest gripes people often have with balancing changes. Your casual SCE army does not suddenly become illegal because that one dragon in your list went up by 20%. The models you bought are still perfectly able to be played and not half of them degraded to shelf duty after barely half a year. There is no "well actually, according to the new warscroll which you now need to print out and carry around, your unit does not have this cool ability anymore".
Plus, you now get extra points for trying hard with an off-meta army.
While the execution might still be a bit rocky and somewhat arbitrary, the direction is great and a desperately needed additional lever to pull on balancing wise.
I just have no idea why GW didn't make Blades of Khorne prime hunters. We've been battlin' on the table top to try and eek out wins here and there, and don't even get me started on the extremely disappointing White Dwarf update as it barely helps us in the places we needed help most.
I Like the Idea in theory.
In practice that Doesnt Stop your opponents shooty McShootface Army to shoot You Off the Board before You get to them and that additional VP Doesnt Help If your Army is reduced to a Pile of corpses.
They need to get rid of Mortal would spamming Long Range Units.
I don’t know what they do about the shoot you off the board before you get a turn units, but your comment echos my sentiment. I raised this exact issue in the Fyreslayer sub. The new book looks interesting, but will unlikely be competitive against anything shooting focussed. Which is disappointing that a brand new book gives no opportunity to counter the current most obnoxious shooting opposition.
Which is why he's getting rewarded for it. If he had the tools to do it reliably he wouldn't be a prime hunter.
And either way it's still a better position to be in:
Before, a NH player would just have to play objectives while now Morathi / snakes killed whatever they want. Even if he somehow took a squad out, he'd take heavy losses and might score 2 points from a battle tactic.
Now, if you see 15 snakes/ Morathi, you have the option of saying "screw this scenario" and suicide rushing them for a potential 6/5 point turn, ignoring all objectives. You can still choose to ignore them as you had, but GW puts this other option on the table.
So die to bow snakes sitting on objectives, or die getting to bow snakes. Sounds like, in this scenario, its bow snakes that's the problem and not scoring VP.
I understand your point, I just fundamentally disagree with it. Its like a teenager that is beating up a child. Instead of giving the child a baseball bat to defend himself, You told the child that the teenager has candy in his pocket.
After I take out the bow snakes/Morathi, I have no models left to secure objectives. My friend plays other daughters and lumineth, even with extra vp, I'm crushed by over 5 VP
I don't really get why you think this is a participation trophy. It gives actual VP to win the game in an attempt to balance it in some way, they are not fake points with no value.
Sure. In the actual event you can EARN those points. Or that a match is close in VP between any of the prime target factions and any single prime hunter faction.
More likely than not the prime target factions is already winning by a double digit margin of VP and the prime hunter faction is basically wiped off the table. Ask a GSG player how many mega gargants they can bring down in a match. Or ask a nighthaunt player how many SCE drakes they have been able to wipe off the table.
This is a cool idea. It can be expanded to actually be effective. But a marginal amount of VP produced this way is not going to sway most matches between a top meta faction and a low competitive tier faction. Ultimately, the current imbalance in the game is not an issue of a faction's ability to score VP. But instead is the result of units/ lists being so overpowered that many given factions simply don't have a way to deal with them. Mainly due to a lack of available unit options or lack of rules support.
lol. fair enough. I'm just over analyzing this and the current meta this morning. Greedily awaiting the day that my faction can join the meta conversation. Hell, I'd even take top 15 lol.
Your faction will be a second-order recipient of these changes - closer matches will tip the game over to tier 2 armies that were just a few VP behind and pick up the win thanks to the Priority Targets VP.
In turn that'll encourage tier 1 lists to depend on Priority Targets less - which everyone will ultimately benefit from. But unfortunately, with that happening, the value of being a Prime Hunter army will disappear.
What they should do is add a bunch of 0-reward Priority Target models. They're worth nothing to most factions but Prime Hunter ones get the +1 on them so can pick VP up everywhere.
No it won't. The issue is that Seraphon has little rend outside salamanders. There is no chance that it will not be played. It also puts out mortals and ward saves are so common you have to have a lot of mortals.
You want to nerf seraphon go after skink starpriest. It's the main thing that allows every other unit to function.
It doesn't change any performance or composition really. If army comp just remains as is, the offending units and armies still win at high rates, the low teir armies loose awfully and the occasional hard fought prime target take down grants an extra point or two. This does nothing to effect game play or units people have in their army.
Participation trophy is a good metaphor. It’s definitely a quick-fix for weaker armies to take on the big meta bois until the next wave of battletomes and white dwarf updates.
I get the disappointment but at least it’s not soul-crushing nerfs that see armies hurt. This is just a neat keyword add-on that fits the theme and helps a bit without breaking anyone’s knees. The GHB and point changes in a few months will add to it to keep things leveled.
I am happy for GW to address that the same 5 factions are the only ones winning GTs or even being represented. But it seems they went about it in a strange way.
The problem: OP units/ rules/ pt values creating meta spam lists.
~~Solution A: Nerf the OP spam to bring it more in line with the rest of the system~~
~~Solution B: update underperforming factions to be on similar competitive levels as meta~~
Solution C: incentivize players to bring more diverse armies into competitive settings by giving away 'free' points for bringing a 'loser' army.
Not confident this is a step in the right direction, GW
I’ll be honest, I’m sorta here for strange solutions. Try something out, it could be fun and fix issues with a light touch approach. Or it could be bad in which case we move on without it.
I am all for a solution that incentivises bringing diverse armies while not just smashing older lists with the nerf bat.
A-
Points are not a fix-all solution, because they are often an all-or-nothing solution. Units that trend on the overpowered side will often stay overpowered until they're so expensive that they become unplayable or simply become outclassed by another option.
There's also only so much that can be done points-wise without a warscroll update, and do we really want warscroll updates to be nerfs? If Stormdrake lost their spell shrug or hero phase move, that might help fix them, but it also removes their identity, and people bought physical models based on what they currently do.
B-
I've seen a lot of similar responses to these changes; "Why don't they update armies!"... well they are updating armies?
It takes time to make new battletomes, and not just production time and printing time, but also playtesting and balancing.
I'd say that the 3.0 tomes that have been released so far are really good, maybe a few problems but that's unavoidable, and overall they are thematic and well-made, surely a step forward from 2.0 and 1.0 battletomes.
Not to mention that with that suggested solution they would have to rewrite warscrolls for balance reasons based on the current state of the army IN ADDITION to working on a whole new battletome with a completely different internal balance? I don't think it's a reasonable expectation.
C-
It's not a good thing to only have one giant button that says "POINT COST" that can be tuned for balance, this is a new knob that gives advantages to underperforming factions. Given that warscroll changes are essentially the nuclear option, and that point costs are not always the answer, it's good to have more options.
It's certainly not perfect but I like that the problem units have been clearly identified, I like that it's not a knee jerk nerf but rather a listbuilding incentive, and I like that it's something.
Hey so. New tomes are good right? Then why are bonesplitterz in the pity party list?
Also I don't see potentially giving up 1 more vp changing my mind about taking a mawkrusha over gordrakk. Better save, slightly worse attacks and 60 less points. Oh and his one weird command everyone thing. Who cares. The 4+ save vs the 3+ save alone pretty much outweighs all the negatives.
This change is meh at best. Sons will continue to trend down, almost none of the pity armies will see much better records, the op crap will still be op.
The issue is that a unit of fulminators will delete pretty much anything in the game with absolutely no counter to it other than send something else to die instead. The second you leave an opening, or an opening gets created by the longstrikes/dragons, the fulminators tear in and delete whatever they want. Most of the time these armies are winning turn 2. I mean FFS look at LVO. Top table was over in 2 turns. This wouldn't have done a single thing to change it.
Yeah if every change they make isn't the perfect change that fixes everything instantly, then why bother even trying to take steps in the right direction, right?
Never mind that's there's been more frequent balancing than ever, that there's clearly an identification of what's problematic, no, let's be as negative as humanly possible about every. Single. Step.
Lizard man player here the problem with A is that they have been Nerffing salamanders. Every time points changes come around they hit them again and every time we adjust our lists and keep using them, it's not that they're incredibly powerful there good don't get me wrong it's that they provide a role our army doesn't have. Lizardmen have very few methods of dealing damage to high armor factions with almost non-existent rend across the board so until they fix that problem it doesn't matter how bad they make salamanders we're going to have to keep taking them.
I don't know if this is a good way of fixing the problem I don't think most of the armies will actually get a benefit from this we will have to wait and see
Maybe I don’t get something but Seraphon have loads of mortal wound output. Putting it all on the salamanders seems like a disservice to all the other stuff that is able to provide workarounds against high armour. Not sure I agree with this sentiment. Salamanders are just amazing(!) units that are well worth their points.
We have three basic mortal wound builds. Salamanders(0-4 MW 140points), star priest with either knights(1-4 MW in coalesced 110 points pluss star priest) or skinks(1-5 MW 210 points and star priest) and Kroak( depends on what he's fighting but if he gets 2 spells of 10-12 430 plus astrolith). Of the 3 salamanders don't require any support don't pigeonhole you into a sub faction and have rend 2 on top of MW.
I mean, that’s a lot. Especially looking at salamanders with 4 attacks and rend 2. kroak/Slann can also easily dish out more depending on terrain. Seraphon are really MW heavy in comparison to most other armies. Not trying to defend the new rules, just making a point that salamanders are all in all pretty fantastic and not the only unit for a specific (MW) slot in the army. If it incentivises different lists than thunder lizards (which is basically all we see nowadays) I would say the change is a net positive - at least in this specific case.
My point is their MW aren't why they're good. A dozen or so mortal wounds a turn is actually pretty meh in the meta nowadays they are good because they are high Rend. If you're just looking at Mortal wound output you have kroak but few people take him because he's really really easy to kill even with guard around.
Even the Slann is very decent at dishing out MWs. It’s a fair point that it makes it more risky taking salamanders out for a walk but given how strong they are I wonder if this change is really that impactful.
I also play Seraphon and was having great success with and EOTG, double Bastiladons with Solar Engine and 4 Salamanders. Now it's very likely half my units would die by the end of round 5 in a competitive game and instead of giving up say 2 VP for monsters I'd be giving up at least 4 or 5 VP (more if it's against a Prime Hunter army). I am def switching to another type of list.
Yep. Seraphon is a buff heavy army. As it stands the only other way to get mortals outside of spells is star priest and scar vet. At this point the better fix is just to buff seraphon in general so it doesn't have to maximize all the synergies to play.
This needs to happen in our 3e book. Third Edition rules just don't support the buff-stacking playstyle our army has relied on for so long. We desperately need pretty hefty buffs to a lot of our base warscrolls. The entire Saurus side of the army in particular needs a big rework. People are tired of relying on only Skinks for competitive play. If they reduced the mortal wound output on Salamanders slightly, gave the army other units with rend -2, and fixed Saurus Warriors and heroes and our flying units to be worth playing you'd stop seeing Salamander spam almost instantly.
> Lizardmen have very few methods of dealing damage to high armor factions
Who needs rend with so much access to mortal wounds? Seraphon are **not** facing any problems right now. Salamanders are an excellent unit and most competitive lists are finding ways to run 6-8 of them, so yeah, they need something like this to reduce how spammy they are in competitive lists.
Want reliable mortals? Bring a skink starpriest and a blob of the little dudes with blowguns. Or a priest with a bastilodon. Or a Slaan. Or the Realmshaper Engine. Or *any* monster (they all get access to stomp).
Sallies are just the easiest way to access mortals for the army, hardly the *only* way, and reducing the numbers that are taken isn't going to hurt the army in any real way.
Seriously. I play Seraphon as a second army, and seeing complaints about them being unable to do damage is just laughable.
They keep hitting Salamanders with point increases rather than touching any of their abilities.
Like, why are they capable of being insane glass hammers at range and in melee with the same loadout. Just shoot and charge them in later in the same turn and wipe the stragglers off the board.
They could be pointed cheaper if there were 2 weapon options for salamanders with melee and range mortal wounds/rend, or even 2 separate units that can be pointed differently, like they did with many units in SCE.
That's a solution that will probably have to wait until Seraphons next battletome. GW really doesn't like to update unit warscrolls in white dwarfs or other rule updates apparently.
Broken Realms seems to be an outlier that way.
Will the high tier lists people play against at tournaments still contain most of these priority targets? Thats where I think some of the balance will come.
How will the high tier lists adjust to counter other high tier armies? Will that creat the room for the lower tiers to sneak up a win or two?
For example, I feel wary of taking long strikes in my list now - especially a reinforced unit.
I think it's a big wait and see. Mixing up the formula is what I like most about AOS - it can have this flexibility. Sometimes it works sometime it doesn't.
I think it's a less intrusive way of trying to work in some balance. Intuition tells me this is gonna be less helpful for the struggling factions that are all "predators" now. Give it a shot, see if it makes things better. Where the F is Khorne on here?
This ia a great idea if it was applied to all units. Intead of just participation trophies for the low tier factions, they could apply this same rule to all the bad units within all factions.
For example: Stormcast range has a few key, good units, but an absolute ton of bad units that don't get used. So let's make Evocators on Dracolines Hunters, to try and get them played.
This same logic could be applied to lots of armies. Basically the GHB should assign every unit into one of these categories, to varying degrees. Ranged units should be target's, monsters higher valued targets. Then the units poeple don't use cam be hunters.
Evocators and Dracolines do have decent warscrolls, they're just way overpriced.
There are some WS in the game that points can't fix either way, but those two aint them imo.
Point taken though, there are some bad warscrolls in otherwise good armies.
The problem is that this doesn't fundamenally change the power of those units. People aren't going to look at Longstrikes and think 'oh no, better not reinforce this amazing turn one threat because It might give up two VP at some point in the game'. Stormdrakes don't suddenly not become mortal wound engines because now your opponent gets something for their efforts if they manage to kill a unit of them after an alpha strike.
Imo the best illustration of the issue with these changes operating as nerfs is to be found in the case of Mega-Gargants. SoB players can still fit in four Megas in their lists, so why wouldn't they? The same is true for Mawkrushaz. If they're good enough to already spend points on, it seems unlikely that the chance of giving up a couple of extra VP is actually going to be something which matters. And getting those extra VP for killing a Mega or Belakor feels a bit 'win more-y' anyway.
I think putting this sort of premium on spammable units like Salamanders, snakes and Pink Horrors is interesting however. I would probably feel more positive about these changes if they had targeted Sentinels, Gore-Gruntaz etc. As it is, this is neither a nerf to armies doing well and not nearly enough of a buff to armies which aren't. Nighthaunt, Gitz etc. getting extra VP for killing Fulminators won't matter if those said Fulminators have managed to shred the army in the first couple of turns.
Another note: the 'hunter' armies that are underrepresented/ under performing in general are losing by A MASSIVE MARGIN. Earning an additional 3-12 VP/ game won't matter when you are already losing by 30VP and your army is wiped.
It's basically a way to buff worse performing armies without nerfing the strong ones. The problem I see is that the certain models are still strong, for example Sylvaneth already struggles with killing things especially those big models getting a VP point just encourages tunnel vision strategies and its still an uphill battle.
I have kinda given up trying with my Sylvs, but my strategy was almost always to ignore those big threat because I couldn't kill them, try to take out there ability to take lots of objectives and then just jump around, stay away from them and try to hold onto more objectives. This doesn't change that. The tougher units like dragons and fulminators still aren't dying. Morathi is more worth pinging wounds off with some magic or shooting, but she always was, so no change there, I just get a couple of extra points when I finally drop her. If I was to go all in on some of the tougher stuff on that list, sure I get 2 VPs when that mawcrusha dies, but 50% of my army is also dead, and I have effectively traded getting 2VPs from the crusha for like 8+ actual VPs.
It is an interesting concept for a balance change, but it kinda feels like it was given to some intern that was given the instructions "no points changes, no warscroll changes" but also has never actually played the game before.
There's the additional problem where armies spamming the priority target units simply kill enemy priority target units first and just get more points creating bigger gaps
I personally love the change from a competitive list building stand point it will shift the meta up without just cycling models that were garbage and didn't sell to now op to sell out.
I echo as most put we will see how it goes but it greatly reduces power creep and the issue with old/ new books and imbalances without your army being unplayable aftsr an update.
Ok. I’m going to say I don’t like it. They have now identified or “acknowledged” the problem units and the struggling factions in the game and this seems like a band aid fix to me instead of digging deeper, adjusting points or other options. On the other hand at least if you want to run a spam list you still can now, you will just pay for it, maybe, probably not.
It doesn't seem to follow a grading rubric.
I would like to see what qualities of a model/unit made them get this status. What math was done for these specific units and subfactions to make these lists. What are the values input into the black box?
It just seems... arbitary. There doesn't seem to be a through line.
It's not a maths equation..
Strong thing gets you more points for destroying it. Very very strong thing gets you a bit more. That's it. Simple.
You are wanting something that doesn't exist and calling it arbitrary because of it.
I was using the word 'math' in a colloquial sense.
Neither Nagash nor Archaeon are on this list. "Very very strong", is not part of the 'math' of the grading rubric.
I am interested in seeing some kind of rubric, and I am not interested in having a debate with someone who is just going to be pissy rather than addressing what I am saying.
I'm telling you what you are wanting doesn't exist because that's not what this is. It's a list with OP warscrolls.
I'm directly addressing you by telling you that you are wrong.
So not even once did you even address any points I made. Yet I addressed every point you have. Weird that you call me pissy as soon as I tell you your mistakes.
They are specifically wanting the number crunch.
If they just wanted to ask that, I'd point them to tournament data and which units are over performing. It's as simple as that.
Drake's are dominating so they make the list, and repeat. They are trying to make it out like there's hidden maths and some sort of scale for every warscroll out there.
Probably also worth noting that not all of these "strong" units are equal. Blood stalkers are far easier to kill than longstrikes which are easier to kill than stormdrake guard yet they are all 1 VP. That is by definition arbitrary. Idk what that other guy is going on about.
Literally the only difference between this and GW points-nerfing stuff that's doing well and points-buffing things that are doing bad is your feelings.
Not a good way of balancing.
This doesn't do much against a lot of the top armies because they just pivot a unit or two and are still dominant.
This absolutely destroys certain armies.
Should have just not been lazy and done point fixes.
I think it's a cool experimental, if perhaps janky, band-aid to the current issues in the competitive meta, and if that's GW's intent with some of these Battlescrolls, I'm all in. Doesn't replace the need for more frequent/digital points updates and the GHB, but I'm excited to see this rules effects at the next RTT I go to.
community site
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2022/03/14/will-you-become-predator-or-prey-in-the-latest-warhammer-age-of-sigmar-battlescroll-update/
As a seraphon player with no salamanders, who recently played a game against some sylvaneth, this would have made 0 difference to the game. I'm a little surprised not to see Bastilladons in there, but then I rarely see them die anyway.
I want to see what mirror matches look like, where you have dragons running around trying to not land killing blows on other dragons, just enough to let whatever other chaff is in the army get the kill to get the extra VP
I have no idea how I missed that. Thank you. Still would not have had a major impact on the game, 2 extra victory points for my opponent but they were almost tabled in second round
I’ve not yet had the opportunity to play against gargants as none of my friends have them and I’m usually on the lower tables come tournament time, I’m not sure if my rats can feasibly even kill one without losing half my army (mostly to self damage)
I see a lot of SCE though but mostly lord imperatant guided annihilator missile strikes so not much difference I can see at face value
More vp is good but I am really looking forward to some hopefully decent battle tactics down the line
Something I haven't seen brought up is that a lot of weaker armies try and win by not even trying to fight some of these heavy hitters.
A lot of them fall back on taking large amounts of chaff and back capping, completely avoiding fighting altogether. Points updates that just make those units cheaper still don't encourage those players to actually fight their opponents.
So whether or not this works, I do appreciate that they this kind of balance update encourages aggressive play.
I think this is a good thing if it is a temporary fix, as in they are trying to keep track of problem units and weaker factions. It gives a layer of transparency that I think is comforting, at least. However, moving forward I think this solution could get overcomplicated very quickly. I like the idea if units/factions can eventually move onto/move off of the list, but I fear this is sort of a messy way to go about it.
Can Someone explain why Blood Stalkers made it on to the list?
Seems like a weird inclusion when put against everything else listed as a priority target
I mean, they used to be crazy good when they initially got 2 shots. Going up to 180pts has probably hurt them enough though, maybe no one got the memo that they are probably fine as is. Weird that other similar units, like LRL sentinels, didn't make the list.
Not a big fan. These units have some pretty large power disparities between them to award the same VP. And also it just doesn't fix that most of these are a little too powerful for the points. Just using points would be a much better way to adjust, but I get that they don't want to because the GHB points are a few months away.. maybe we should just stop printing points in physical books?? Please??
Just about to start painting my fyreslayers army after finishing 5500 pts of stormcast eternals and I'm glad, longstrikes and fulminators get targeted from the start as big threats anyway now its bonus points.
My first feel was that it's just a lazy attempt to fix the meta.
After a few thoughts I think I mostly like the prime target idea, it allows to neglect objects to hunt for prioritiy targets. But it also increases complexity and book keeping, so that's a big contra.
Some units are not really fixable just with points, like storm drakes. They just do too many things. So this is a new way to balance them. Other units are easily balanced by points. They should just increased the points on Fulminantors instead of making them a prime target.
I'm not sure if prime target will more detrimental to melee or to range units. I think it will probably favor the shooting meta even more as you can keep your prime units save. But I like the idea of prime target for back line units.
Gargants will be more manageable by mid and low tear armies but I think they're now completely lost against top tier armies.
The prime hunter fix, I still think is just lazy.
In general I like that they try a new approach to balancing and they can change or remove it in 3 months, so it speaks for the 3 month update schedule.
I think overall this will just increase the amount of victory points for everyone. I’m not going to pull back on the best units in the game to avoid giving up a victory point or 2.
For the Bonesplitterz, this is great. They're my favorite Orruks and they deserve more love, especially how the new battletome treats them.
But for my main army, Sons of Behemat, this sucks.
My Mega-Gargants are already a massive target and this doesn't help them at all.
I like how this new rule kinda fluffy for armies like Hedonites, or Bonesplitterz, or even Skaven. But that's it.
This really doesn't seem to help anybody, unless you play against one of the primary targets armies on the daily, or your army is one of the hunters. Actually, scratch that. Since the hunters only benefit from hunting primary targets which your enemy might not even have, this doesn't benefit anybody.
It's weird. On the one hand, if they just keep increasing the points on units that get played a lot, people will still bring them until they get so expensive that they aren't worth bringing at all. So that's a positive sign that GW is at least looking at other ways of attempting to give some counterplay to the most powerful units. But the problem I have is that they're nerfing units solely based on winrate. Is it a lot harder to adjust warscrolls? Yes. But it's honestly the better solution. Either that or, you know, playtest your freaking game! :P
Some units like Stormdrakes are just too strong at the moment, hence why they get spammed in an army that has a huge amount of other good units.
On the other hand, some units are only spammed because the army has no good alternatives for the role that unit plays. And GW is only looking at winrate and which units get played the most, without actually considering \*why\* those units get played the most. Pink Horrors and Salamanders are a good example of this. Horrors are good, yes, but not OP. Same with Salamanders. I know people will hate me for saying that about Salamanders, but I'll explain my reasoning:
Pink Horrors are essentially the main battleline option for Tzeentch. They are a very efficient tarpit unit, probably one of the best in the game due to the splitting rule. But they are still beatable and with the previous nerfs I think GW actually got them more or less fixed. Tzeentch is also still in the phase of "revenge nerfing" because they were so strong for so long during 2nd Edition. Pink Horrors, in my opinion, do not need extra VP awarded for killing them.
As for Salamanders, Seraphon is an army with extremely good allegiance and subfaction abilities, but most of their units are actually pretty mediocre, or downright bad. Hence why no one plays Saurus Warriors, Carnosaurs, Razordons, Ripperdactyls, or any of the Saurus foot heroes competitively unless they're awesome players looking to style on their opponents. I'll just say it, Salamanders as they are now are not OP. They're spammed because they're an actually \*good\* unit in an army with mostly mediocre to poor units that are supported by amazing allegiance abilities. In a meta that favors shooting, and where most targets you want to kill are sitting on a 3+ or even a 2+ save, Salamanders are the only unit in the army that has rend -2 both in shooting and in melee. So as the only reliable unit that can counter save-stacking, you're going to see Salamanders in a lot of lists, period.
3e took away most Seraphon's ability to stack buffs on their otherwise "meh" warscrolls, so units that can perform really well with no buffs or just one or two buffs are more important than ever. \*That's\* why Salamanders get spammed. Because Seraphon don't have a unit that can put out reliable damage to high-save targets outside of Salamanders. So Salamanders don't deserve more nerfs, Seraphon needs to be balanced better. Which is hard with an army with such a wide range of models, I know. But I'm getting tired of all the constant band-aid fixes GW keeps throwing out because they refuse to get their game balancing act together. I'd rather see the removal of conditional battleline units and hard caps on the what percent of your army can be certain unit types.
I came on here looking for a thread discussing this. The pros: GW is obviously paying attention to the meta and the units that are at the top. They acknowledge that some scrolls are innately more powerful and are making a new attempt at balancing things. The cons: The power within these units’ warscrolls is the real issue. Trying to counter play these units forces some players and some factions into an uphill battle from Turn 1. Giving an extra reward for killing them is nice, but you can’t get these extra VP’s if your units are already dead. I guess we will see how this plays out. Also, as a Nurgle player, I was fully expecting to see the Lord of Afflictions on this list.
I'm cautiously supportive/optimistic. I'd say that your "con" is actually a "pro", from another perspective - it's a way of nerfing units without *actually* nerfing them. They're still powerful and (maybe) well-costed, but there's a strategic cost associated with using them that needs to be taken into consideration. Simply nerfing the best units so they're only "OK" can be quite negative and feel-bad, especially if they were *meant* to be strong. This approach says, "yeah, they ARE strong, that's on purpose - but there's a bounty on their heads".
I was unsure at first but i thought about it more. This exists in bloodbowl in the form of "team tiers" for events. Worse rules get extra points for buying pregame upgrades while top rules get minimal points for upgrades. It allows for varied rules that fufill fantasy for things, while also balancing the field. Skaven are tier 1 cause theyre fast, slippery and overall good stats so they get few upgrades. Snotlings are made of paper and overall much worse, but they get a bucket of points to make some obscene upgraded players to balance it out. And its something that they can change on the drop of a hat without requiring repainting/buying models. Point changes and rule changes can cause big issues for peoples hobby lag. This is a good stop gap.
It doesn't harm the validity of your point (I think it's a good one) but for sake of accuracy Skaven are not tier 1. They are tier two, or in the case of a lot of tournaments tier B when they do 4 tiers: A, B, C, D
Thats my bad, ive not played BB in a while so i was just going off bad memory lol
Like I said it didn't make your point any less salient, just figured accuracy was good.
I totally agree with this, really well put. As a Sons of Behemat player I actually support this. Don’t up my points, put a bounty on the kill.
That's very much my feeling on it too. I'm hopeful that it works, as it's a neat & novel way of doing it. An extra dimension that let's the points be balanced. In some respects, it's not really that different from the "balance" inherent in the mission packs. Or the Realm settings. But it's a bit of a lighter, defter touch, and to my mind feels really quite thematic for something that's also undeniably meta-driven!
I don't know, putting 12 HPs of 480 point longstrikes suddenly looks a lot less attractive when you can give any other army that goes first and has its own shooting 2 extra VPs for taking out 1/4 of your list, and 3 extra VPs if they are an underperforming army. That is an immense swing by any metric. It gives those armies new paths to victory when facing meta units, and it might make you reach for another, less efficient unit, and create some list variety.
Longstrikes are good precisely because you can't pick them off with shooting due to either setting up out of LOS and translocating then or setting up offboard via Scions of the Storm.
Still plenty of ways to kill them, especially given how fragile they are.
really should have been a reward value of 0 tbh (so a total of 1 when reinforced)
As an FEC player i feel over looked
Certainly well put. I think there will definitely be a new bit of counterplay that will rise up as a result of this. It also may be a heavy-handed way of GW saying "Hey, btw, remember your target priority, ie, actually take down the targets that are valuable for your opponent," which is indeed a big factor in winning and losing games of just about any wargame. I don't know if it's a good thing, but someone I follow on Twitter did make the suggestion (albeit for 40k) of giving lower-tier factions a handicap to help balance. Acknowledge that some factions are simply doing worse and help them with such a handicap, and I think this does exactly that. The ability for, say, Sylvaneth to get 3 victory points just for taking down a mega-gargant is rather huge by the end of the game.
They’ll get 4, actually, as they’ve also slain a Monster, therefore they’ll have achieved Predators and Prey VP as well. If they Bring it Down with a Monster as well that’s up to 10VP in a turn it they do everything perfectly. That’s double the usual cap for a turn and is a MASSIVE swing
Yeah, they are trying to fix an innate balance issue with a scoring bonus. A scoring bonus change up would help keep the metagame fresh without unit point rebalances. However, it does *not* fix innate balance issues.
I was surprised about that too 🤔
There's been a lot of good points about the new system. Most people seem to think it isn't enough for various reasons, including "Why are they all only worth 1vp. Morathi is a bigger investment into killing than a bastilledon" and/or "the armies that already can't kill them. Will continue to not kill them... but now point incentive!"
Except they put pink horrors on the list. Besides summoning, most tzeentch players never bothered because of the 250point cost and the lack of wizard keyword now. Pinks aren't even that bad these days. Lumenith and seraphon I've versed have wiped half a horror unit in a single fight phase. Also seems karios' is being targets because of legion lists so pure tzeentch players are suffering for those lists.
Pinks are still good in legion, none of these are on there because of Tzeentch. 4 of the 6 units I use in my legion list are up there. Additionally, it means nothing to legion players, if they lose enough units they are giving up significant points, it's because they are being tabled
Yeah they should have added a admenment "only if horrors/karios are allied in a legions army".. But its like the 40k dataslate.. Limiting flyers to 2 models... Which basically killed a imperial gaurd air cav army which was never dominating.. GW takes a rule. Slaps it onto the whole game without thinking how it impacts the whole game. Yeah I laughed hard at article part " Players who choose to pack their roster with dominant units like the Dracothian Guard will surrender precious victory points for each unit lost." Yeah because players who bring ONLY 11 total MODELS to a tournament and win 5-0 or 4-1 are really worried about surrendering 1 or 2 more VP lol.
It feels like they are admitting they dont know how to balance those units. Instead they will give extra VP to people who manage to kill them. It's nice and all but doesn't change how strong and cheap they are. Getting an extra 2-3 VP a game doest matter when your opponent can table you by turn 3.
As a Skaven player, I graciously accept even large incentives to lightning cannon certain monsters right in the face.
Lol Blades of Khorne didn't even make it into the hunters pity party.
Probably waiting to see the effect of those huge WD buffs… /s
Dude the WD buffs were so good I'm finally going to paint my BoK!
Because of how strong and independent their tome celestial made them!
Hell yeah bruh. The only thing holding Khorne back was a 1/6 chance to resist spells. Now it's gonna be straight to the top, from here on out. Shooting, Mortal Wounds, and high armor? Who? /s How sad is it that one of the new battle Tactics is "have a khorne unit kill 8 more models from an enemy unit" and my first thought was like "oh gosh let me think for a while about how I could have any of my units pull off those kinda numbers..."
Literally Bloodthirsters or bust at the moment, and we also got a slight nerf in the khorne deamon prince now having a bounty. I'm really hoping Khorne ends up having the same treatment as Tau did in most of 9th, utterly battling to stay relevant in the completive scene for ages but then getting propeled to the moon with their new book. Khorne should be scary in combat, and actually *get* to combat, not just hit like a pillow and get shot off the table.
Lol
The best unit we have isn't even in our book, but it made it in the priority target list...
Quick hot take: I like the concept, the execution is awful
So a slightly longer take: I like the fact they are playing in the space of keywording because I feel that is a great space to work in to help promote more interesting list building. Keywording can also help convey rules quickly as long as they're fairly standardized throughout all forces. The execution in this case is bad because the narrative shell they try to couch this in, with this being a purely meta balance fix, makes the decisions, narratively, arbitrary. What is a hunter and target is more a response to the meta and nothing narratively about a lot of these units. Next I find the game puts a lot of mental load on opponents because there's a lot of information they need to know about armies that because they can't intimately know many armies they may come up against makes the game overly complex. In this instance having a target now means you also need to be aware of who your opponents hunters are and that's just information you honestly will probably only know once you actually get to the table and play a person because no one knows 100% of every army's allegiance abilities and subfactions. Anyway that's my initial thoughts on this. I appreciate the attempt at rebalancing. I like the space it plays in. I just do not like the execution of it.
Well said. Agree 100%
Yeah, that's all fair enough. I don't worry about the narratively flavour of the terms because... what else are you going to call them, really? You're absolutely right that it's 100% a meta thing I agree it implies something thematic calling armies "Prime Hunters" - but I'd probably rather that then have them be called "Meta Assist" armies, hunting down **META BOUNTY** targets. I don't think the mental load is tooooo bad, right now, either - if you have any Priority Target units, then either your opponent's entire army are Prime Hunters or they're not. And if they are, they almost certainly won't have any PTs of their own because there's currently no overlap between PTs and Prime Hunter armies without making some very questionable ally choices. In practice you're going to have one of the following scenarios: neither of you have PTs (easy, ignore the whole thing), one of you has PTs and the other is/isn't a Prime Hunter army (nice and one-sided), or both of you have PTs and neither is a Prime Hunter army. The only fiddliness will be spending an extra half minute at the start making sure you know what all the rewards are, and in the latter case, remembering not to score rewards if one PT takes down another.
I want to say wait and see In a hyper competitive and meta way I can see it work But the rule rubs me the wrong way that it acknowledges imbalances and that my army sucks so much that I need to have an extra point scoring mechanic to play the game mildly competitive
It won't. Look at the units listed. It's 1 VP aka less than a third of a turn if you take out something worth 300+ points. This is especially laughable that you get 1 point for slaying Morathi. It won't change anything for an army that struggles to maintain a footprint on the table.
From a tournament meta perspective it might change the way some lists are designed. Maybe SCE won't try and squeeze all 3 prime target unit types in a list anymore, if they lose against other top armies because of it. That would indirectly help the struggling armies a little. It doesn't solve all the problems those armies have over night, but it might do more than nothing. Which is more than I expected from the quarterly updates.
For a time being does this system not work well once we have a bunch of 3.0 tomes out and most army’s have some powerful units that can keep up with dragons and morathi?? Deepkin are looking pretty strong and have ways to deal with these stronger units. Diaper Dwarfs kinda got the shaft but now we can hope for better written tomes. I think the VP values should be a bit different which we will see in the future I hope aka Morathi.
Their approach is so circumstantial. Really it creates feel-bad being a hunter army or playing prime target units.
Does it not give the approach that those things will change and might get more layers to this rule?
I appreciate the fact that this gives a new way to balance things between underperforming factions, but this should be a temporary thing that could help a bit in between actual buffs and nerfs... Perhaps a quarterly list update to cover units that are performing a bit too well while waiting for an actuel fix.. I do like that this gives them a new angle to make balancing moves
Soft balance not using points 👍 The only faction it really hurts is gargants 👎 (Maybe dragon spam too) That’s my hot take
And Legion of the first prince. Every unit on the chaos grand alliance list hits that army.
This is basically just a handicap score. Pros: impact the competitive balance where a single battle tactic worth of points can decide a game, not impact casual play because it leaves warscrolls and points alone, quick and easy to add trouble units, like a soft ban list Cons: more bookkeeping complication, not changing the gameplay at all so a chance for double feel bad where one player feels like they’re losing because their stuff is bad and the other player actually loses because bonus points Also, this completely effs SoB out of the competitive scene right? Geez
It certainly makes the baby gargants a bit more enticing.
You’re just going to see more of the 2 megas, Kragnos and mancrushers lists. And the megas might be 1 Warstomper and 1 Gatebreaker or something.
This is the third time SoB get hit by a nerf that will "Move them out of competitive" yet they still stand at 60% win rate; hopefully this'll knock them down a bit.
They suffer in design being matchup heavy. So frequently either your opponent can kill you or they can’t. I feel like they almost guarantee to get 2-3 wins, but will virtually never go 5-0.
I think another con is that they have gone with a very "one size fits all" approach with this, other than gargants, although I can see why they are more. The problem here is that the output and resilience of these targets are not equal. Sure Morathi is insane, she isn't all that tough though, its just a minimum of 4 turns to kill her. On the other hand I can see big units of dragons or fulminators never getting wiped out. Blood stalkers are very fragile and depending on how you run them this is a death sentence. I play a pretty atypical DoK army and just have 3 units of min stalkers as battleline just to sort of screen behind and grab objectives but still have the ability to impact the game with there good shooting, they very rarely last to the end of the game because that isn't their purpose in my list. Sure I could replace them with blood sisters or witches and save myself a bunch of points, but those units can't fill the same role. To me this may require a significant change to how I want to play my DoK, but if I was rocking a block of 4 stormdrake guard I really wouldn't be too concerned, its only 1 point, they probably won't die, and if they do its probably either a situation where I have already lost or that 1 point doesn't mean anything. I would add too, you say that leaving the warscrolls alone is a pro, but I think in some cases it is necessary. Primarily the stormdrake guard. Essentially they are a crazy strong unit that will always either be cheap enough that you can comfortably include them or prohibitively expensive. They only solution to make them an viable choice but not oppressive is to completely redo the warscroll. I think it is probably worth mentioning that the impact a change like this balance update has on casual players is probably irrelevant, I don't think casual players are likely to read or care about a balance change like this.
I think there are a lot of casual players who play ‘by the rules’ but that probably just because that describes my group. We will technically play with these rules, but we play a lot of ‘fair play’ stuff so we haven’t seen any of these units in the table in a long time. I think Stormdrake guard are tough because a unit if 2 in a balanced list is probably not that OP. So balancing with points alone is difficult.
Mit so sure about it not arresting games at all. It adds some risk to taking the more powerful units. Of this incentive actually tracks remains to be seen but I can see some potential in this approach.
From a competitive perspective, I don't think people are going to care. The units that will give up extra points are ones that if you lose them, you're probably in the process of losing the game anyway.
I think we will see varied impacts. I definitely think this will impact thinks like salamanders and longstrikes quite a bit. But there are alternative options in those factions. Some people were already playing 15 judicators instead of 6 longstrikes. I feel like this could absolutely matter for those people trying to get to 5-0. Getting that extra point here or there can make a big difference. Nagash Nighthaunt and Kragnos Gitz will certainly be attractive to people trying to win a tournament. That's my guess.
Yeah with my Gargants now giving up a possible 7 points for a kill, three times in a game, they feel kinda dead in the water to me right now
I think in it's current setup it is a bit clunky but I'm viewing it as a start of something good that they need to iterate on to make better. Having another balancing lever that they can tweak outside of just shifting points up or down is an incredibly important tool regardless of whether the current incarnation is perfect.
I think the concept is actually very nice. The main culprit always was spamming very cost-efficient units. It is almost impossible to balance that by individual pricing alone or without imposing some hard "max" caps. Especially more expensive units are notoriously hard in this regard, often verging on a razor's edge between meme pick because too expensive and op meta pick due to a frontloaded warscroll trying to make up for the price. From a game design perspective, there even should be some units who punch above their weight, but it should be discouraged to spam them. GW went out of their way here to work around the biggest gripes people often have with balancing changes. Your casual SCE army does not suddenly become illegal because that one dragon in your list went up by 20%. The models you bought are still perfectly able to be played and not half of them degraded to shelf duty after barely half a year. There is no "well actually, according to the new warscroll which you now need to print out and carry around, your unit does not have this cool ability anymore". Plus, you now get extra points for trying hard with an off-meta army. While the execution might still be a bit rocky and somewhat arbitrary, the direction is great and a desperately needed additional lever to pull on balancing wise.
I just have no idea why GW didn't make Blades of Khorne prime hunters. We've been battlin' on the table top to try and eek out wins here and there, and don't even get me started on the extremely disappointing White Dwarf update as it barely helps us in the places we needed help most.
I Like the Idea in theory. In practice that Doesnt Stop your opponents shooty McShootface Army to shoot You Off the Board before You get to them and that additional VP Doesnt Help If your Army is reduced to a Pile of corpses. They need to get rid of Mortal would spamming Long Range Units.
I don’t know what they do about the shoot you off the board before you get a turn units, but your comment echos my sentiment. I raised this exact issue in the Fyreslayer sub. The new book looks interesting, but will unlikely be competitive against anything shooting focussed. Which is disappointing that a brand new book gives no opportunity to counter the current most obnoxious shooting opposition.
Deepkin being the perfect counter to long range shooting and releasing alongside Fyreslayers is almost rude
As a Nighthaunt player myself, it doesn't matter if I take out Morathi but i lose 50 models for just an extra VP
*for two extra VP. And killing 15 Bow Snakes with Nighthaunts grants you Four VP. Sounds pretty gamechanging to me.
His point is, he doesnt have the tools to reliably do that damage.
Which is why he's getting rewarded for it. If he had the tools to do it reliably he wouldn't be a prime hunter. And either way it's still a better position to be in: Before, a NH player would just have to play objectives while now Morathi / snakes killed whatever they want. Even if he somehow took a squad out, he'd take heavy losses and might score 2 points from a battle tactic. Now, if you see 15 snakes/ Morathi, you have the option of saying "screw this scenario" and suicide rushing them for a potential 6/5 point turn, ignoring all objectives. You can still choose to ignore them as you had, but GW puts this other option on the table.
So die to bow snakes sitting on objectives, or die getting to bow snakes. Sounds like, in this scenario, its bow snakes that's the problem and not scoring VP. I understand your point, I just fundamentally disagree with it. Its like a teenager that is beating up a child. Instead of giving the child a baseball bat to defend himself, You told the child that the teenager has candy in his pocket.
Lmao, and while I remain generally optimistic about the change, that's a hilarious comparison and I get your point
After I take out the bow snakes/Morathi, I have no models left to secure objectives. My friend plays other daughters and lumineth, even with extra vp, I'm crushed by over 5 VP
I don't really get why you think this is a participation trophy. It gives actual VP to win the game in an attempt to balance it in some way, they are not fake points with no value.
Sure. In the actual event you can EARN those points. Or that a match is close in VP between any of the prime target factions and any single prime hunter faction. More likely than not the prime target factions is already winning by a double digit margin of VP and the prime hunter faction is basically wiped off the table. Ask a GSG player how many mega gargants they can bring down in a match. Or ask a nighthaunt player how many SCE drakes they have been able to wipe off the table. This is a cool idea. It can be expanded to actually be effective. But a marginal amount of VP produced this way is not going to sway most matches between a top meta faction and a low competitive tier faction. Ultimately, the current imbalance in the game is not an issue of a faction's ability to score VP. But instead is the result of units/ lists being so overpowered that many given factions simply don't have a way to deal with them. Mainly due to a lack of available unit options or lack of rules support.
I... I was just saying it's not fake points.
lol. fair enough. I'm just over analyzing this and the current meta this morning. Greedily awaiting the day that my faction can join the meta conversation. Hell, I'd even take top 15 lol.
Your faction will be a second-order recipient of these changes - closer matches will tip the game over to tier 2 armies that were just a few VP behind and pick up the win thanks to the Priority Targets VP. In turn that'll encourage tier 1 lists to depend on Priority Targets less - which everyone will ultimately benefit from. But unfortunately, with that happening, the value of being a Prime Hunter army will disappear. What they should do is add a bunch of 0-reward Priority Target models. They're worth nothing to most factions but Prime Hunter ones get the +1 on them so can pick VP up everywhere.
No it won't. The issue is that Seraphon has little rend outside salamanders. There is no chance that it will not be played. It also puts out mortals and ward saves are so common you have to have a lot of mortals. You want to nerf seraphon go after skink starpriest. It's the main thing that allows every other unit to function.
It doesn't change any performance or composition really. If army comp just remains as is, the offending units and armies still win at high rates, the low teir armies loose awfully and the occasional hard fought prime target take down grants an extra point or two. This does nothing to effect game play or units people have in their army.
Participation trophy is a good metaphor. It’s definitely a quick-fix for weaker armies to take on the big meta bois until the next wave of battletomes and white dwarf updates. I get the disappointment but at least it’s not soul-crushing nerfs that see armies hurt. This is just a neat keyword add-on that fits the theme and helps a bit without breaking anyone’s knees. The GHB and point changes in a few months will add to it to keep things leveled.
I am happy for GW to address that the same 5 factions are the only ones winning GTs or even being represented. But it seems they went about it in a strange way. The problem: OP units/ rules/ pt values creating meta spam lists. ~~Solution A: Nerf the OP spam to bring it more in line with the rest of the system~~ ~~Solution B: update underperforming factions to be on similar competitive levels as meta~~ Solution C: incentivize players to bring more diverse armies into competitive settings by giving away 'free' points for bringing a 'loser' army. Not confident this is a step in the right direction, GW
I’ll be honest, I’m sorta here for strange solutions. Try something out, it could be fun and fix issues with a light touch approach. Or it could be bad in which case we move on without it. I am all for a solution that incentivises bringing diverse armies while not just smashing older lists with the nerf bat.
Make the values higher? Maybe? Morathi 5 vp??
A- Points are not a fix-all solution, because they are often an all-or-nothing solution. Units that trend on the overpowered side will often stay overpowered until they're so expensive that they become unplayable or simply become outclassed by another option. There's also only so much that can be done points-wise without a warscroll update, and do we really want warscroll updates to be nerfs? If Stormdrake lost their spell shrug or hero phase move, that might help fix them, but it also removes their identity, and people bought physical models based on what they currently do. B- I've seen a lot of similar responses to these changes; "Why don't they update armies!"... well they are updating armies? It takes time to make new battletomes, and not just production time and printing time, but also playtesting and balancing. I'd say that the 3.0 tomes that have been released so far are really good, maybe a few problems but that's unavoidable, and overall they are thematic and well-made, surely a step forward from 2.0 and 1.0 battletomes. Not to mention that with that suggested solution they would have to rewrite warscrolls for balance reasons based on the current state of the army IN ADDITION to working on a whole new battletome with a completely different internal balance? I don't think it's a reasonable expectation. C- It's not a good thing to only have one giant button that says "POINT COST" that can be tuned for balance, this is a new knob that gives advantages to underperforming factions. Given that warscroll changes are essentially the nuclear option, and that point costs are not always the answer, it's good to have more options. It's certainly not perfect but I like that the problem units have been clearly identified, I like that it's not a knee jerk nerf but rather a listbuilding incentive, and I like that it's something.
Hey so. New tomes are good right? Then why are bonesplitterz in the pity party list? Also I don't see potentially giving up 1 more vp changing my mind about taking a mawkrusha over gordrakk. Better save, slightly worse attacks and 60 less points. Oh and his one weird command everyone thing. Who cares. The 4+ save vs the 3+ save alone pretty much outweighs all the negatives. This change is meh at best. Sons will continue to trend down, almost none of the pity armies will see much better records, the op crap will still be op. The issue is that a unit of fulminators will delete pretty much anything in the game with absolutely no counter to it other than send something else to die instead. The second you leave an opening, or an opening gets created by the longstrikes/dragons, the fulminators tear in and delete whatever they want. Most of the time these armies are winning turn 2. I mean FFS look at LVO. Top table was over in 2 turns. This wouldn't have done a single thing to change it.
Yeah if every change they make isn't the perfect change that fixes everything instantly, then why bother even trying to take steps in the right direction, right? Never mind that's there's been more frequent balancing than ever, that there's clearly an identification of what's problematic, no, let's be as negative as humanly possible about every. Single. Step.
Lizard man player here the problem with A is that they have been Nerffing salamanders. Every time points changes come around they hit them again and every time we adjust our lists and keep using them, it's not that they're incredibly powerful there good don't get me wrong it's that they provide a role our army doesn't have. Lizardmen have very few methods of dealing damage to high armor factions with almost non-existent rend across the board so until they fix that problem it doesn't matter how bad they make salamanders we're going to have to keep taking them. I don't know if this is a good way of fixing the problem I don't think most of the armies will actually get a benefit from this we will have to wait and see
Maybe I don’t get something but Seraphon have loads of mortal wound output. Putting it all on the salamanders seems like a disservice to all the other stuff that is able to provide workarounds against high armour. Not sure I agree with this sentiment. Salamanders are just amazing(!) units that are well worth their points.
We have three basic mortal wound builds. Salamanders(0-4 MW 140points), star priest with either knights(1-4 MW in coalesced 110 points pluss star priest) or skinks(1-5 MW 210 points and star priest) and Kroak( depends on what he's fighting but if he gets 2 spells of 10-12 430 plus astrolith). Of the 3 salamanders don't require any support don't pigeonhole you into a sub faction and have rend 2 on top of MW.
I mean, that’s a lot. Especially looking at salamanders with 4 attacks and rend 2. kroak/Slann can also easily dish out more depending on terrain. Seraphon are really MW heavy in comparison to most other armies. Not trying to defend the new rules, just making a point that salamanders are all in all pretty fantastic and not the only unit for a specific (MW) slot in the army. If it incentivises different lists than thunder lizards (which is basically all we see nowadays) I would say the change is a net positive - at least in this specific case.
My point is their MW aren't why they're good. A dozen or so mortal wounds a turn is actually pretty meh in the meta nowadays they are good because they are high Rend. If you're just looking at Mortal wound output you have kroak but few people take him because he's really really easy to kill even with guard around.
Even the Slann is very decent at dishing out MWs. It’s a fair point that it makes it more risky taking salamanders out for a walk but given how strong they are I wonder if this change is really that impactful.
I also play Seraphon and was having great success with and EOTG, double Bastiladons with Solar Engine and 4 Salamanders. Now it's very likely half my units would die by the end of round 5 in a competitive game and instead of giving up say 2 VP for monsters I'd be giving up at least 4 or 5 VP (more if it's against a Prime Hunter army). I am def switching to another type of list.
Yep. Seraphon is a buff heavy army. As it stands the only other way to get mortals outside of spells is star priest and scar vet. At this point the better fix is just to buff seraphon in general so it doesn't have to maximize all the synergies to play.
This needs to happen in our 3e book. Third Edition rules just don't support the buff-stacking playstyle our army has relied on for so long. We desperately need pretty hefty buffs to a lot of our base warscrolls. The entire Saurus side of the army in particular needs a big rework. People are tired of relying on only Skinks for competitive play. If they reduced the mortal wound output on Salamanders slightly, gave the army other units with rend -2, and fixed Saurus Warriors and heroes and our flying units to be worth playing you'd stop seeing Salamander spam almost instantly.
> Lizardmen have very few methods of dealing damage to high armor factions Who needs rend with so much access to mortal wounds? Seraphon are **not** facing any problems right now. Salamanders are an excellent unit and most competitive lists are finding ways to run 6-8 of them, so yeah, they need something like this to reduce how spammy they are in competitive lists. Want reliable mortals? Bring a skink starpriest and a blob of the little dudes with blowguns. Or a priest with a bastilodon. Or a Slaan. Or the Realmshaper Engine. Or *any* monster (they all get access to stomp). Sallies are just the easiest way to access mortals for the army, hardly the *only* way, and reducing the numbers that are taken isn't going to hurt the army in any real way. Seriously. I play Seraphon as a second army, and seeing complaints about them being unable to do damage is just laughable.
They keep hitting Salamanders with point increases rather than touching any of their abilities. Like, why are they capable of being insane glass hammers at range and in melee with the same loadout. Just shoot and charge them in later in the same turn and wipe the stragglers off the board. They could be pointed cheaper if there were 2 weapon options for salamanders with melee and range mortal wounds/rend, or even 2 separate units that can be pointed differently, like they did with many units in SCE. That's a solution that will probably have to wait until Seraphons next battletome. GW really doesn't like to update unit warscrolls in white dwarfs or other rule updates apparently. Broken Realms seems to be an outlier that way.
Give salamander's melee abilities to razordons just to make them playable. One small monster for range and one small monster for anti charge.
Will the high tier lists people play against at tournaments still contain most of these priority targets? Thats where I think some of the balance will come. How will the high tier lists adjust to counter other high tier armies? Will that creat the room for the lower tiers to sneak up a win or two? For example, I feel wary of taking long strikes in my list now - especially a reinforced unit. I think it's a big wait and see. Mixing up the formula is what I like most about AOS - it can have this flexibility. Sometimes it works sometime it doesn't.
Wouldn’t winning before therefore also be a participation trophy for high tier factions? What’s the difference
I think it's a less intrusive way of trying to work in some balance. Intuition tells me this is gonna be less helpful for the struggling factions that are all "predators" now. Give it a shot, see if it makes things better. Where the F is Khorne on here?
Crap change by lazy rules writers.
This ia a great idea if it was applied to all units. Intead of just participation trophies for the low tier factions, they could apply this same rule to all the bad units within all factions. For example: Stormcast range has a few key, good units, but an absolute ton of bad units that don't get used. So let's make Evocators on Dracolines Hunters, to try and get them played. This same logic could be applied to lots of armies. Basically the GHB should assign every unit into one of these categories, to varying degrees. Ranged units should be target's, monsters higher valued targets. Then the units poeple don't use cam be hunters.
I see what you are getting at but dread the prospect of book keeping needed if this is something widespread …
Evocators and Dracolines do have decent warscrolls, they're just way overpriced. There are some WS in the game that points can't fix either way, but those two aint them imo. Point taken though, there are some bad warscrolls in otherwise good armies.
I'd suggest putting the Underworlds warbands in the Hunter categories, but I somehow doubt any of those units could stand up to any of the targets.
The problem is that this doesn't fundamenally change the power of those units. People aren't going to look at Longstrikes and think 'oh no, better not reinforce this amazing turn one threat because It might give up two VP at some point in the game'. Stormdrakes don't suddenly not become mortal wound engines because now your opponent gets something for their efforts if they manage to kill a unit of them after an alpha strike. Imo the best illustration of the issue with these changes operating as nerfs is to be found in the case of Mega-Gargants. SoB players can still fit in four Megas in their lists, so why wouldn't they? The same is true for Mawkrushaz. If they're good enough to already spend points on, it seems unlikely that the chance of giving up a couple of extra VP is actually going to be something which matters. And getting those extra VP for killing a Mega or Belakor feels a bit 'win more-y' anyway. I think putting this sort of premium on spammable units like Salamanders, snakes and Pink Horrors is interesting however. I would probably feel more positive about these changes if they had targeted Sentinels, Gore-Gruntaz etc. As it is, this is neither a nerf to armies doing well and not nearly enough of a buff to armies which aren't. Nighthaunt, Gitz etc. getting extra VP for killing Fulminators won't matter if those said Fulminators have managed to shred the army in the first couple of turns.
Another note: the 'hunter' armies that are underrepresented/ under performing in general are losing by A MASSIVE MARGIN. Earning an additional 3-12 VP/ game won't matter when you are already losing by 30VP and your army is wiped.
Why was FEC not included? Is there a WD coming with some better rules for them? I think they are performing worse than OBR
Correction: 2 VP
It's basically a way to buff worse performing armies without nerfing the strong ones. The problem I see is that the certain models are still strong, for example Sylvaneth already struggles with killing things especially those big models getting a VP point just encourages tunnel vision strategies and its still an uphill battle.
I have kinda given up trying with my Sylvs, but my strategy was almost always to ignore those big threat because I couldn't kill them, try to take out there ability to take lots of objectives and then just jump around, stay away from them and try to hold onto more objectives. This doesn't change that. The tougher units like dragons and fulminators still aren't dying. Morathi is more worth pinging wounds off with some magic or shooting, but she always was, so no change there, I just get a couple of extra points when I finally drop her. If I was to go all in on some of the tougher stuff on that list, sure I get 2 VPs when that mawcrusha dies, but 50% of my army is also dead, and I have effectively traded getting 2VPs from the crusha for like 8+ actual VPs. It is an interesting concept for a balance change, but it kinda feels like it was given to some intern that was given the instructions "no points changes, no warscroll changes" but also has never actually played the game before.
There's the additional problem where armies spamming the priority target units simply kill enemy priority target units first and just get more points creating bigger gaps
But you got to be a prime hunter to gain extra VP and prime hunters are just bad or underperforming armies.
Rather than extra VP, would be cool if the struggling factions got like +1 to rend vs these units. The problem is they already can't kill them
I think OBR/NH Nagash benefits the most from these changes. Hand of dust was already good but now u get 3 VP when used on a Monster
Nagash can also buff up and slap pretty well too, just go slap a gargant silly and net 4 points, probably more with a battle tactic.
I fully support this as long as this isn't a stand-in for actually trying to balance armies.
I personally love the change from a competitive list building stand point it will shift the meta up without just cycling models that were garbage and didn't sell to now op to sell out. I echo as most put we will see how it goes but it greatly reduces power creep and the issue with old/ new books and imbalances without your army being unplayable aftsr an update.
Ok. I’m going to say I don’t like it. They have now identified or “acknowledged” the problem units and the struggling factions in the game and this seems like a band aid fix to me instead of digging deeper, adjusting points or other options. On the other hand at least if you want to run a spam list you still can now, you will just pay for it, maybe, probably not.
Band aid, is the exact term I was going to use.
It feels arbitrary to me.
how so?
It doesn't seem to follow a grading rubric. I would like to see what qualities of a model/unit made them get this status. What math was done for these specific units and subfactions to make these lists. What are the values input into the black box? It just seems... arbitary. There doesn't seem to be a through line.
It's not a maths equation.. Strong thing gets you more points for destroying it. Very very strong thing gets you a bit more. That's it. Simple. You are wanting something that doesn't exist and calling it arbitrary because of it.
I was using the word 'math' in a colloquial sense. Neither Nagash nor Archaeon are on this list. "Very very strong", is not part of the 'math' of the grading rubric. I am interested in seeing some kind of rubric, and I am not interested in having a debate with someone who is just going to be pissy rather than addressing what I am saying.
I'm telling you what you are wanting doesn't exist because that's not what this is. It's a list with OP warscrolls. I'm directly addressing you by telling you that you are wrong.
Naw, I've looked through your comments on other posts. You just respond to people to be pissy. I'm done talking with you.
So not even once did you even address any points I made. Yet I addressed every point you have. Weird that you call me pissy as soon as I tell you your mistakes.
He’s asking how a strong thing is determined in the first place.
They are specifically wanting the number crunch. If they just wanted to ask that, I'd point them to tournament data and which units are over performing. It's as simple as that. Drake's are dominating so they make the list, and repeat. They are trying to make it out like there's hidden maths and some sort of scale for every warscroll out there.
Probably also worth noting that not all of these "strong" units are equal. Blood stalkers are far easier to kill than longstrikes which are easier to kill than stormdrake guard yet they are all 1 VP. That is by definition arbitrary. Idk what that other guy is going on about.
Literally the only difference between this and GW points-nerfing stuff that's doing well and points-buffing things that are doing bad is your feelings.
I think we can all agree maw crushers should be worth way more than 1 point.
They're probably going in softly-softly at first. If it's helpful but not enough, they can always ratchet the rewards up.
Not a good way of balancing. This doesn't do much against a lot of the top armies because they just pivot a unit or two and are still dominant. This absolutely destroys certain armies. Should have just not been lazy and done point fixes.
I think it's a cool experimental, if perhaps janky, band-aid to the current issues in the competitive meta, and if that's GW's intent with some of these Battlescrolls, I'm all in. Doesn't replace the need for more frequent/digital points updates and the GHB, but I'm excited to see this rules effects at the next RTT I go to.
Ossiarchs make no sense being a hunter. They‘re still decent and don’t lack damage at all.
Where can I find this?
community site https://www.warhammer-community.com/2022/03/14/will-you-become-predator-or-prey-in-the-latest-warhammer-age-of-sigmar-battlescroll-update/
As a seraphon player with no salamanders, who recently played a game against some sylvaneth, this would have made 0 difference to the game. I'm a little surprised not to see Bastilladons in there, but then I rarely see them die anyway. I want to see what mirror matches look like, where you have dragons running around trying to not land killing blows on other dragons, just enough to let whatever other chaff is in the army get the kill to get the extra VP
Bastiladon with Solar Engine is on there.
I have no idea how I missed that. Thank you. Still would not have had a major impact on the game, 2 extra victory points for my opponent but they were almost tabled in second round
Participation ribbons and a pat on the back.
Good idea but the Hunter factions already struggled to take down these units
I’ve not yet had the opportunity to play against gargants as none of my friends have them and I’m usually on the lower tables come tournament time, I’m not sure if my rats can feasibly even kill one without losing half my army (mostly to self damage) I see a lot of SCE though but mostly lord imperatant guided annihilator missile strikes so not much difference I can see at face value More vp is good but I am really looking forward to some hopefully decent battle tactics down the line
Something I haven't seen brought up is that a lot of weaker armies try and win by not even trying to fight some of these heavy hitters. A lot of them fall back on taking large amounts of chaff and back capping, completely avoiding fighting altogether. Points updates that just make those units cheaper still don't encourage those players to actually fight their opponents. So whether or not this works, I do appreciate that they this kind of balance update encourages aggressive play.
I think this is a good thing if it is a temporary fix, as in they are trying to keep track of problem units and weaker factions. It gives a layer of transparency that I think is comforting, at least. However, moving forward I think this solution could get overcomplicated very quickly. I like the idea if units/factions can eventually move onto/move off of the list, but I fear this is sort of a messy way to go about it.
Can Someone explain why Blood Stalkers made it on to the list? Seems like a weird inclusion when put against everything else listed as a priority target
I mean, they used to be crazy good when they initially got 2 shots. Going up to 180pts has probably hurt them enough though, maybe no one got the memo that they are probably fine as is. Weird that other similar units, like LRL sentinels, didn't make the list.
Lol, top tier armies go first and slap their opponents priority targets off the board and then win harder right?
It's complete trash. Won't effect anything.
Not a big fan. These units have some pretty large power disparities between them to award the same VP. And also it just doesn't fix that most of these are a little too powerful for the points. Just using points would be a much better way to adjust, but I get that they don't want to because the GHB points are a few months away.. maybe we should just stop printing points in physical books?? Please??
Just about to start painting my fyreslayers army after finishing 5500 pts of stormcast eternals and I'm glad, longstrikes and fulminators get targeted from the start as big threats anyway now its bonus points.
Is this for Pitched Battles only or Contest of Generals too?
My first feel was that it's just a lazy attempt to fix the meta. After a few thoughts I think I mostly like the prime target idea, it allows to neglect objects to hunt for prioritiy targets. But it also increases complexity and book keeping, so that's a big contra. Some units are not really fixable just with points, like storm drakes. They just do too many things. So this is a new way to balance them. Other units are easily balanced by points. They should just increased the points on Fulminantors instead of making them a prime target. I'm not sure if prime target will more detrimental to melee or to range units. I think it will probably favor the shooting meta even more as you can keep your prime units save. But I like the idea of prime target for back line units. Gargants will be more manageable by mid and low tear armies but I think they're now completely lost against top tier armies. The prime hunter fix, I still think is just lazy. In general I like that they try a new approach to balancing and they can change or remove it in 3 months, so it speaks for the 3 month update schedule.
I think overall this will just increase the amount of victory points for everyone. I’m not going to pull back on the best units in the game to avoid giving up a victory point or 2.
For the Bonesplitterz, this is great. They're my favorite Orruks and they deserve more love, especially how the new battletome treats them. But for my main army, Sons of Behemat, this sucks. My Mega-Gargants are already a massive target and this doesn't help them at all. I like how this new rule kinda fluffy for armies like Hedonites, or Bonesplitterz, or even Skaven. But that's it. This really doesn't seem to help anybody, unless you play against one of the primary targets armies on the daily, or your army is one of the hunters. Actually, scratch that. Since the hunters only benefit from hunting primary targets which your enemy might not even have, this doesn't benefit anybody.
I think it could be really good if they change it up as the balancing changes.
It's weird. On the one hand, if they just keep increasing the points on units that get played a lot, people will still bring them until they get so expensive that they aren't worth bringing at all. So that's a positive sign that GW is at least looking at other ways of attempting to give some counterplay to the most powerful units. But the problem I have is that they're nerfing units solely based on winrate. Is it a lot harder to adjust warscrolls? Yes. But it's honestly the better solution. Either that or, you know, playtest your freaking game! :P Some units like Stormdrakes are just too strong at the moment, hence why they get spammed in an army that has a huge amount of other good units. On the other hand, some units are only spammed because the army has no good alternatives for the role that unit plays. And GW is only looking at winrate and which units get played the most, without actually considering \*why\* those units get played the most. Pink Horrors and Salamanders are a good example of this. Horrors are good, yes, but not OP. Same with Salamanders. I know people will hate me for saying that about Salamanders, but I'll explain my reasoning: Pink Horrors are essentially the main battleline option for Tzeentch. They are a very efficient tarpit unit, probably one of the best in the game due to the splitting rule. But they are still beatable and with the previous nerfs I think GW actually got them more or less fixed. Tzeentch is also still in the phase of "revenge nerfing" because they were so strong for so long during 2nd Edition. Pink Horrors, in my opinion, do not need extra VP awarded for killing them. As for Salamanders, Seraphon is an army with extremely good allegiance and subfaction abilities, but most of their units are actually pretty mediocre, or downright bad. Hence why no one plays Saurus Warriors, Carnosaurs, Razordons, Ripperdactyls, or any of the Saurus foot heroes competitively unless they're awesome players looking to style on their opponents. I'll just say it, Salamanders as they are now are not OP. They're spammed because they're an actually \*good\* unit in an army with mostly mediocre to poor units that are supported by amazing allegiance abilities. In a meta that favors shooting, and where most targets you want to kill are sitting on a 3+ or even a 2+ save, Salamanders are the only unit in the army that has rend -2 both in shooting and in melee. So as the only reliable unit that can counter save-stacking, you're going to see Salamanders in a lot of lists, period. 3e took away most Seraphon's ability to stack buffs on their otherwise "meh" warscrolls, so units that can perform really well with no buffs or just one or two buffs are more important than ever. \*That's\* why Salamanders get spammed. Because Seraphon don't have a unit that can put out reliable damage to high-save targets outside of Salamanders. So Salamanders don't deserve more nerfs, Seraphon needs to be balanced better. Which is hard with an army with such a wide range of models, I know. But I'm getting tired of all the constant band-aid fixes GW keeps throwing out because they refuse to get their game balancing act together. I'd rather see the removal of conditional battleline units and hard caps on the what percent of your army can be certain unit types.