I Love that this is gonna be the start of the show. Hello everybody if it's Wednesday It's Warhammer and that must mean it's time for another episode of Warhammer Weekly joining me as always Hilariously is my co-host Tom who is currently I guess spilling something all over himself as near as I can probably Tell what's going on at this moment Tom like yeah, I'm ready to go and they sat there quietly because we have to give a few seconds to start And then all of a sudden he's just like oh god put it in some Jerry Lewis bit ensues Let's go on buddy. Hey guys. Hello friends Your timing could not have been more perfect. I mean it was literally as it was like you're alive. Oh god Well, I you know, hey, I like to entertain what can I say sure and it's it's gonna be entertaining tonight Well, we've been missing on the show is physical comedy, so I think that's the way to go well, we just need more dogs like bring more dogs in the mix of dogs and Just ridiculousness. I think we can get there with physical comedy a hundred percent. Yeah, absolutely Well, we got a packed show for you tonight folks It's gonna be a whole lot of stuff going on. It's just Tom and I but that's okay Don't worry. It's gonna be a full house. Of course. We got a lot of news and tonight. We're gonna talk about game Design, this is actually gonna be sort of a two-part series This week. It's just gonna be Tom and I oh Somebody said there's an echo. I don't think there should be Tom has his good headset on tonight. I'll look I'll look and see if it's echoing. No No, I don't I don't see any echo coming through on the system I can turn on my game a little bit. Yeah, turn it down just a little bit. That's fine Yeah, at any rate You still seem to be coming in clear. So yeah, that's fine. Okay at any rate. We're gonna talk about good design This is week one. We're gonna talk about some language. We're gonna talk about AOS in the next week. We're gonna brought it out I'm really excited about next week show. It's gonna be at an earlier time. We're gonna have a nice We're gonna have a special guest Next week to come and talk to us about game design somebody who does it professionally So it's gonna be a this is gonna be a great two-week series and then all of a sudden it's gonna be an explosion of endless shows about Lumineth and broken realms and everything else that's gonna happen from here until the end of time So I realized if I ever wanted to do these game design shows It was gonna have to be like now as we sit on the precipice of a great wave ready to crash forth upon us So Tom speaking of that great wave Let's do the news. What do we got? Rumor engine Yeah, it's up. What is it Tom? It's an orc thing. I'm saying it's an orc thing Yeah, probably there you go This just continues on from my previous belief We'll talk about that in just a moment, but we've said many times. There's gonna be a new Destruction army, maybe new orcs of some kind I think that you know, we've said maybe orcs in the in the in the new launch box. It would make sense, right? We'd be able to destruction This is one of those orcs There you go Lock it in. That's what I'm saying. Yep. Okay. Cool. Easy. We're in agreement Excellent Tom, what's next? So there was a reveal show this weekend apparently I wasn't around for it, so I had to I had to replace you. Yes, that's correct I saw I I showed up and caught the last the tail end. I saw I saw you jump in the chat there So Tom since we didn't get your opinion during our live reaction show our good buddy John Nina's Awesome, Ninjohn stood in as as an excellent you somebody called it somebody called it Fake but good Tom. That's what that's what John was So I thought that was a good title for John you should you should start putting that in his channel At any rate, what was your what was your take on everything? But what did you think of everything the soul-blight grave lords the OBR warband? Cragnos Cragnarok Let's start at the beginning. So like grave lords. What do you think? They're fine.  I mean like So I posted this one like I don't want to go into a big rant on this but I posted this on Twitter Alexander Nygaard had a wonderful observation this evening Where he posted an image of like the new like crazy train Vampire with the big crazy hair and the mask. Yeah, yeah, sure Alongside like art from the seventh edition. Yeah, yeah Vampiric kingdoms and like literally it looks like she just like walked right off the page Yep And I love it. Sure, you know, like the the memes been floating around where it's like Like shows like the seventh edition Like covered the battle tone multiple of the older covers. Yes, exactly Yes, which is the vampire in red armor around a horde of undead and you know, and then this Picture, yes, these are the same picture. Yeah, I Pam from the office. These are the same picture. We can we can we can darmak and gelata to nagra or whatever. Yes Yeah, and so like I love it I love all of that like the echoes of Like of the aesthetic just coming through I just absolutely love that and like I love that It's mixed with some real-world stuff and like a lot of the Eastern more like kind of Eastern aesthetics and Like Eastern European Eastern European specifically. I understand And I like I just love what they've done with it for what it is, right? Since we're talking about let's bring up new vampire lady. I know she's like our next news item There she is. There's a vampire lady our new this is all related to soul of light. They revealed this beautiful Lady, this is the one Tom was talking about that it walked out of the seventh edition book or whatever So and yes, I think she's awesome this sort of mosquito-esque vibe, right? Yeah, like and so it's just interesting to me because Like it I love this for vampire players because they're getting exactly what they've always wanted sure sure I Sense where this is going, but I'm gonna let you keep going down this road. Go ahead I'm just I'm simply going to end it by saying I love that they're getting what they're getting Okay, right. Yeah, and I just I wish that we had done that elsewhere. There we go. There it is. It's late not it No, I I made no mention of any specific army, of course, of course Uh, all right.  Like bat hair lady this lady these certainly aren't the classic aesthetics Yes, I understand this did feel like art in the seventh edition book But we've never had a figure like this is what I'm saying, right? Like there is a difference between something in old art and what we've seen in the figures. This is very different than I mean, what I will say is this this is uh, like Like the art piece I'm I'm naming specifically like her face is dead on. Yeah. Yeah, it's the sword is new There's no way they weren't looking at that art as a reference and inspiration for this model. Yes. Yes And so I mean what I would say is that I love that like But let me say this way you could put this in the old world and it would still feel right. Sure. Sure. Does that make sense? Like yeah, and so that it was Much like the chaos warriors that we've seen from a design standpoint Like aesthetic design not game design. They are they are embodying Like the heart of what that thing is sure and I feel like they've done that with the vampires Like this is the heart of what vampire accounts have always been Yes, and just to reference I want to answer some comments real quick. She's in cursed city, isn't she? This and the rat king are both part of the soul blight grave lords release But are also related to the cursed city because the two things are very intertwined Hence why the skeletons have the same basic sort of aesthetics and stuff like that So it's probably they'll be like an expansion box where they actually give you Multiple of these characters and ways to use them that tends to be how they do this stuff Uh, Damien one says nobody wants to talk about the flying monster in the soul blight grave lords book cover We did talk about it on saturday. Everybody can go check out that show My answer is either somebody's being very artistic with a vampire lord on zombie dragon possible Or it's a redo of the Of the vampire lord on abyssal terror Right, so yeah, which would be fun Do you expect a left turn in this army tom? Are we going to get some weird stuff? There's probably more we haven't revealed yet No, okay. You think we're gonna play it safe The whole way through like I like I think that we could get a like a uh, Vampire lord on abyssal terror for example like a replacement equivalent of that. Um, I think we could get uh, some more like variations of the sort that we've seen in Uh, cursed city, so I think we could get some feral vampires Mm-hmm. Sure. So I'm like more be shall fail. Yeah, vampire. Like I think that those are fully within the purview of what we might see um, we're not suddenly going to get Uh, frankenstein monsters Yeah, I like flesh columns. Yeah, yeah, I understand. We're not we're not we're not suddenly going to get uh flaming skeletal Infernal some things. Yeah, sure We're still we're still like we're still like 19 Initial, you know, it's gonna say like 1975 and even then they had weird undead dnd Right, like we're so far beyond the curve on potential weird undead here. Warhammer remains Existentially locked in the most basic conception. It is the vanilla ice cream the cheese pizza Of of what the these monsters could be. Yes Yes, I agree. Yeah, we have not achieved third edition undead No, no god. No, we're nowhere close to that not even in the realm Literally, uh at any rate. Yeah, cool stuff. Uh excited for that. I thought the the what do you think of the OBR guys? I guess you're this is prior. I think you'll see you're fine Yeah, it's good. All right. Now comes the important part, tom who is Cragnos Um, I mean he's um Beast Joel Named big baddie. Um, I know you're pulling pretty hard for destruction Um, I I suggested looking at it that it might have been beast of chaos like We've had those echoes.  Uh-huh I'm gonna say that this could be our first gold faction Mm-hmm Um and that actually the kernathi are bridging order and destruction And that this may be like the a destruction leaning kernathi Okay, gotcha. So that's where I'm gonna go. All right. Yeah, he's destruction. Um That's a destruction god beast. It's a guy under beast grave. So anyways, um, and I'm I'm I'm hoping that we just Tamp all this other nonsense down like as I said, you can either agree with me or find out. I'm right. So it's one of the two uh, sure the um I've I've called my shot on this one uh, okay So yeah, good stuff.  Yeah, absolutely.  Yeah That's literally what he's talking about in the video right when he gets up because he says like my people are gone All right, like oh, yeah I woke up from the mountain. My people are gone. Like it's pretty they communicated a lot with like two sentences Right Yeah, uh, when you have a place called beast grave happening in a mountain full of the remnants of the silent people you don't need a lot of Words to communicate what you're actually trying to say They just they just put it out there for us and then we're all like, but it's a centaur That's it. That's like as far as we got So there you go Yeah, I see that Uh, okay cool beans, uh, right on all right. What's next? What do you got next on? There's so much more stuff I know there is uh an f aq drop this week. It did Massive big changes not really not really no, but we got the f aq to uh doc and slanesh Uh, how about I address the doc first or slanesh first and you address the doc first. How about that? Sure Okay, the slanesh f aq included nothing of note and it's all of the obvious answers And there was absolutely nothing fundamentally important about it. I appreciate them answering questions for people who had them Everything was very clear. There was absolutely no mystery to any of that nor was anything fundamentally changed The only one interesting thing that happened in there, which I am appreciative of for those people who still want to do this Are they did include fixed rules for seleski's host from white dwarf, which was cool That was very nice of them to do that certainly not necessary. So I appreciate that I mean, it's pretty worthless now because it is still a an allegiance without artifacts or command traits or the ability to take Any of the new sub factions from wrath of the ever chosen And what you get for all that is one extra depravity once a turn It's amazing Just stunning gonna be a hard pass from me I'd ever liked celeste's host anyways despite really loving celeste and thinking like I used celeste quite a bit um But uh Sure, I I still do honestly I've I've ran celeste a lot tom so I mean this isn't about my games played But I've used celeste quite a bit. She she frequently finds herself or they Sorry, I frequently find themselves in my list because they're like just about the right points cost where they fit most of time Yeah, and I will say that uh, it's been good Like as a hero like it's by the standards of that army Okay, like Understand where I'm setting the bar here. Sure. I understand. Okay By the standards of a terrible army go on sure I've actually found them quite useful and have even sort of figured out ways to make that silly area buff actually start working Um, like either you have her alone or them alone in lurid haze, right? So then there's zero Right, and it's whatever nothing's happening or more often what I have her doing is on one side of the board with one of each unit Like she'll be a flank hero.  They're a very self-sustaining hero, right? So right Yeah, so there you go Uh, so at any rate, this isn't about celeste, uh The point is is that that was the one interesting thing in the slush thing Yes, of course gludos his command ability works how it did Uh final rating two out of ten should have included points changes Uh, we all know that the points are wrong. Everybody knows it By about 30 or 40 percent sure like we all know the points are wrong You can argue about how much but we all knew it needed a drop We don't need a lot of evidence for this. We just need to apply the magical power of common sense Uh and going okay, great. Uh, we didn't do that, but that's okay Here's two four months from now when hopefully we do Uh, all right, tom the doc FAQ hit me buddy. What'd you think? Uh Well, you want to talk about the actual items in it for folks who might not have read it. Yeah, let's start there um So the biggest change i'll hit that first sure was Against all reason In common sense sure And the design of the entire rest of aos yes up until this point historically Yes, they have now ruled that doc priests and doc priests only yes get one prayer per turn each Rather than being able to pray through what's on their war scroll and what's in whatever bonus ones they get in the book As every other priest does in the game including storm cast and corn And I could go on and on and on and fire slayers and there was the one Yep Sure, uh So there's that. Yep So it was just a very curious weird change that really kicked, uh Like and then it makes the like it has a remember how we've talked about secondary and tertiary consequences of design Oh, absolutely. Yeah, this is what I was going to talk about. Yeah, uh It absolutely kicks in the teeth the Uh The avatar of canes it does because They are 100% like their prayer was a bonus prayer Above um beyond everything else so that you could actually activate these guys And make them functional that can no longer be done Um, and so they are now uh again relegated to the dustbin of worthlessness So congratulations gw. That's one of the shortest shelf lives. We've ever had a model. Yeah, I want to turn around. Yeah, like it was Oh, this is so cool. We can use it. Oh Yeah, it's interesting. I mean avatars really did become like standalone avatars Became near worthless overnight right because you're almost they just need to take it away You're almost never going to use the prayers to activate them at this point You almost you can't because you those are like all buffs you needed to use And then literally that's just a statue standing there until turn Three if you're not in hangar you if you're in hangar, right? Now I could still see play for it in hangar because you can actually like Because they didn't bother to answer this There's like some now open question of can you cheat your way into all the statues being alive by putting the Blessing on one of them that advances the turn in hangar so that wouldn't one shoots to turn to because that unit now counts Is being on turn two they all do I don't want to get into the minutiae of it. I don't tend to agree with that reading So but that's fine the The the point of it is if you're not playing hangar your avatars basically aren't doing anything and it was the wrong fix So ben sava talked about this a lot on on a scoregamer And I I tend to agree with ben The correct answer here and we can talk about priests overall and balance overall like yes I agree completely.   So do we need to clean up priests? Yeah, sure absolutely But this wasn't the right fix for this army The right fix for this army was they should be allowed to pray twice twice makes sense limit them to two Right, so then you've got the choice of all the different things and you know, whatever whatever And it should have been and the and you should have pushed the points costs on the cauldron People back up not all the way up but up Like that should have been the solution there like because part of what they might have thought about was well We made them so cheap. We should not limit them to one prayer and I just don't think that was the right answer because it it functionally like It functionally makes it so they can't actually fulfill the role they need to and it really hurts a wide swath of units Well, and it really hurts the damage on the cauldron Sure, and and again No part of this just to lay this down because I can see this already and boy oh boy We're gonna get into it later tonight The immediate thing I can see a lot of the audience running to is doc is still gonna be fine. They're still very dangerous Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course like they're fine like doc is gonna roll over you like it's You know like it's not even a thing Like doc didn't need this to win. That's not the point. We're not the discussion here is not competitiveness Okay, right like doc is competitive. This doesn't really affect doc's competitive Yeah, I'm not like and please hear me folks. I am not critiquing the competitiveness of doc That's not what this is. Yeah, this has to this is like a quality of life change And this is about creating compelling alternatives. Yes, especially within the viability of lists Right, what you would really want is this internal parody where lots of different units have different ways to be used for people to make the list They want to use In interesting ways Right, not powerful interesting and what you just did is like say nope all those fun lists that we're using that stuff Right, that's gone. Right.  Sure, right? Uh, I will never run anything other than hagnar. No, yeah, it pushes a lot of people hard into hagnar, right? Because because what it means is that Um, all of if my cauldrons get into combat in turn two I would otherwise lose all of that damage. Sure Yeah, like it's I don't want it. We don't need to spend the whole show about this. We could I mean this goes to You know a pick of the week Which is if you want to see what I think is an excellent discussion of it I'll link the honest worry aimer chat with with ben saba that is a very careful smart dude He plays at least been playing doc a lot and I think he discusses it very well, right? It's not a power concern It's not a should prayers be fixed as a whole because he agrees. Yes We all agree with that it's that this was the wrong change for this army for no reason that incapacitates Like units in their army for just reasons that don't have anything to do with power. This wasn't reigning in You know, which elves being at rend neg two or something You know running or running over you for a million damage Yeah, because ironically this didn't change anything of what those Priests are going to be doing Their number one pick will always just be chant their free prayer that they got, you know as part of their allegiance Like that's what they're going to do because that's why they took them, right? And so now what it says is they all that prayer stuff that's written on their war scroll You just delete it because you will never use it. Yeah The problem with doc right now where it needs to be fixed is obviously in the points They're they're dramatically under pointed like dramatically under pointed But this wasn't the this like this was a nonsense fix and and I think part of what happens here would be get into this is when an army's overpowered Sometimes we like cheer any fix that we feel like it weakens them because you want to see them brought down a peg I want to see doc brought down a peg too As as the slanesh player who had to watch that book come out the same time as my book I'm like i'm over here with a baseball bat ready to hit him in the knees. Believe me But like but this is just it was just not the right as also a doc player As also a doc player. Yes But I hate myself and in the proper slanesh fashion. Anyways, so that was one change. Like I said go watch that It's fine. It is what it is. Um, um, what else do you know there? Yeah, so there are some other changes. Uh the hagnar Uh buff the the word save um Augmenter from the command ability the command trait that moved them from a six to a five up um was confirmed to only affect Normal wounds not mortal wounds Yeah, which is a pretty significant Like moving the needle against some armies But against many armies.  That was it Everybody knew that was the fix And instead we kept blessing of kane We made it models within so we can still string out for reasons I'll never understand and and then to like counterbalance the power of that We said oh this this one save thing is like the one time in the game where it takes a base rule That works on wounds and mortal wounds and instead of like changing the value for the rule It changes the value and what it works on Yes, so like yeah, and so you created a corner case Where it's more bookkeeping because now you have to explain to people That that oh no those are six ups against mortals, but against all of your weapon They're five ups so against your hearthar berserkers When they don't roll natural when they don't roll natural sixes. I get five ups re-rollable But if you roll a natural six and it's immortals. I only get six up re-rollables. Yeah, right So like it just Okay, like it it's minutia and it's and it's uh, and it's uh It's bad design. I'll say yeah, sure It's minimal comparatively to what we're going to talk about tonight, but but yes, absolutely But like it's introducing complexity when it doesn't Yeah, and because what it's going to do is people are going to get lost in those nuances Sure, and it's gonna make five ups against mortal wounds and all that kind of stuff Yeah, and it's going to create just bad conversations and bad feels around the table. Sure. Sure. Um Okay, so what other changes, uh Let's talk about the biggest change heart render Back to neg two shortest existence of neg one For a while But marathi spear got a little dulled after she went and killed a lot of well didn't kill but defeated a lot of storm cast with it Got got dulled on that on that Aether gold armor or whatever, you know sigmarite armor, sorry Uh, and uh, so she had that she had to take it back have the have the iron scales Sharpen it back up and now it's back to red too Sure, okay Like cool beans she's a beast again fully Yeah, like okay. Well, she's stabbing people in the face again And like it's going to be really good and cool You know like I don't know like that's that's a nice adjustment. That feels good um Yeah, I don't know. Uh The other clarification it was really curious joe crier had a great call out to this on The first treatment that honest wargamer did on monday when the fact dropped in the FAQ dropped Rob and joe did a show and one of the things joe talked about that was really curious and I agree with them is that, um Shadow patrol the way it's currently awarded every unit can teleport Like all six of them Rather than like one unit per turn like it was in the first doc book so It's kind of like change host Kind of yeah, I don't that that's an FAQ needing an FAQ clearly so Good call. Yeah. I guess it's nobody asked Yeah, I don't know. I don't know they were silent on it. It was really curious So hopefully that gets changed otherwise like Uh All of the shadow patrols will be really funny. I'll be happy to see some uh Um Some guys on the table. Oh and calibron that was the other change the calibron. Yeah, they cleaned up that sentence It was clearly a typo. Yeah as we guessed. Yeah, so yeah, that was good Uh Keith Reimer said vince do you think that we as a community are too quick to want gw to nerf or reign in the latest Battletome codex when we don't know what's coming next Uh as a whole community. Yes a thousand percent because we overreact to everything As myself I try to work very hard to have uh to really like Think critically about this use 23 years of playing this game Uh experience and and to to level out my opinions the fact that I play 17 armies the fact that you know, I I know what most these things feel like You know play weekly and stuff like that if I if I say I think the points are too high And it needs an adjustment quickly I stand behind that I stood behind it like change host was broken And like the things that I called for to happen immediately are actually things we saw pretty immediately or that they eventually did like You know change host being too powerful Uh Sally's being too few points, you know that kind of stuff right uh croak is still too few points and yet that dead frog is still That desiccated mummy is still there So I guess I don't win all the time I mean, I I mean And you are strangely off on your recall for slanesh 1.0 as well Well, sure. Oh, no doubt. I mean I look dude. I was I was in that I said it was fine and I was wrong I've said that like a hundred times, but I'll say it a hundred more Like I was dead wrong Right. Yeah, you're when you're blinded by something you love that much tom. You've been in love before You know what it is. I have you don't see the flaws when you're when you're first in love you're you're smitten Yeah, yeah, what are you gonna do? But but over time the flaws did become apparent to me and we we had to have a falling out You also were one of the first to say to encourage people to voluntarily shelve them until they were fixed I was so absolutely, which I did as well. So Um, yeah, so those were the FAQ changes really interesting Uh, yeah, uh, you know interesting stuff overall I was happy to see as I predicted the son's abandonment update to add the new we can walk over these things now too Uh, love it.  We don't we're all okay with it No, no, no, no, no. No, we have a keyword. Um, whatever the nexus is whatever No, there's a there is a word For an aether nexus or whatever whatever the Like whatever the the term was used For idk's votes. Oh, okay. Yes. Yeah. They were something that had been something. Yeah. Yeah, that were summoned onto the battlefield, right? Yeah, like that's We already have the tech in place at the end of the last edition that didn't get carried over in 2.0 I missed it by that much. Hey 3.0 is coming. So we're good. Okay. What's next now? Okay, what else? um FAQ oh, so We had a bunch of stings on pre-order this weekend A lot's dropping including the new lrl books plural Yeah, I did appreciate their facebook post. It was like which book do I need to buy? Now the fact that you have to make a facebook post is telling But do you have the old book?  You know you did Maybe uh, uh Look tom, it's fine. It's fine. Don't maybe look man You don't think I bought I you don't I when I got my new sladesh limited edition tome I walked over to my bookshelf I have like a side for retired books and a side for current books, right? And I took the old limited edition sladesh book and slid it over there and then put the new one in its place like Yep The cycle is now complete. Uh at any rate. Yeah, that's fine. I mean it has it has the sword masters on the cover I it does it does there you go So, yeah, so many new kits. Oh my god, like I mean I cannot believe they dropped this all in one week We've got the rue writers. We've got all the heroes. We've got the Uh monkey king on the cloud. We've got the the whole shooting match the terrain everything Uh, we did see prices. I'm not sure if you saw it. Did you see all the prices tom? I did not I'm not buying any of the models at the outset. I am I've already put in my order for some of the huracan and wind chasers. That's not a lie or a joke. That is true What uh, because I'm going to steal the mounts and turn them into slick blade seekers Uh, because I think they'll go faster because these are the fastest unit in the universe Uh, as per rules we got spoiled, which we'll talk about in a moment Yeah, so I'm gonna take the wind writers and put uh slanesh people on top of them And on the clouds no no no huracan and wind writers the the rue writers The rue writers got it. Yeah the rue writer cavalry Um, those are like I'm going to turn those into my slick blade seekers I see yeah, okay, because I really hated putting together slick blade seekers They were a nightmare and I hated them and I'm never putting together another pack of them But I do want to have another unit hence this There we go. Uh, yeah, I mean most of the prices look pretty in line from what I you know from what I saw Uh, notable things the huracan and are like the super expensive cavalry Well, not super expensive. I guess that's not true. I mean, they're 60 us. That's not that's pretty reasonable actually There's more expensive cavalry out there Uh, the binari blade lords are a guard What's that? Baron guard. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. The blade lords, which is the sword masters are also 60 bucks Uh, the bigger characters are 55 So five blade masters. Is it five for 60? I don't know. I don't know how many come in the box. I have no idea. I'm just looking at um, it's not what I'm looking at, Tom I hope it's not five for 60. I would assume it's 10 I would assume so I hope so That's what I'm gonna say Uh, yeah, I don't know. Yeah at any rate the uh, you're like most of us What do you think like the little windmage cloud writer is 35 the banner blade dude is 35 That's not bad 35 for the normal standalone characters are 30 Like the little guy's on foot like the the the guy with his Bob Ross magic paintbrush and stuff like that. So yeah, I mean all stuff seemed or it was the important part that also got announced We got our four battalions. We were wondering battalion boxes. Sorry. We were saying right. Are they gonna happen? Are we getting them the answer? Yes indeed.  Do you remember what these things are? What do these battalions contain? Let's play a game tom. What do these battalions contain?  I see you googling right now.  That is correct. There you go. That's right. Uh too much value. I thought there was more value in that No, it's okay. It's okay. The hell court is but I mean it's the cheaper one. The hell court is 80 The zinth of the zinth of the phil. Oh, that's not bad. No, it's not. It's 80 us. Yeah, it's a good deal Uh, the zinthus is still war magi, which is two hurricanum slash lumen arcs and a foot mage Or whatever I guess The extra guy. So it's just two hurricanum. Yeah, two hurricanum. Yeah, that's just two kits. Yeah, that's 80 bucks as well The invidian plague host which is a slobby bilepiper a spoilpox scrivener And uh a bunch of plague bearers 20 plague bearers, which is funny, uh is 90 and horrex dreadlance, which is 10 Uh of their heavy cav Uh plus the liege cavalos is uh 115. It's the expensive So there you go, uh tom's breaking more stuff as the prop comedy continues So this is what happens when I start hobbying again. No, it's like I got all these models all around me It's the worst So we know that these are going to have new rules for battalions that include units like this in there. Yep, which is great Uh, yeah, uh, I have already ordered my fleshy your quartz one Mortavelli's helicort It's the perfect base for my for my smash bat list I might actually order one as well. Yeah, I mean look man. If you're looking for smash bat It's a great start because it gives you all the ghouls you need Gives you a star on either your flare or your your flares or your regular crypt ores you need My son was wanting to do uh fleshy your ports And I told him that we would wait and see what was in teclas Before we did that and with this like he needed an arch region, right? Yeah, sure. And so like between like this is like this box Gives you the arch region and then couple that with like a couple like getting started boxes And it's literally the entire army. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. That's yes. It's so easy. This was a great addition Uh to the fleshy your quartz world it like between that and getting the new Vargleck or whatever that I can use as a vargolf like it was at the smash bat list. What could I do but go super? smash Like I had to do it So anyways, plus as I the more I see if so like rave lords the more I know I'm not going to collect that one So because it's just legion to the gosh 2.0 Um, it is it is 100 didn't interest me the first time around you're not getting me this time around I'll probably pay a few of these vampire people just because they're fun but uh So happy with all those battalion boxes. Good. I hope we get a little more stock this time, but somehow I doubt we will Uh, no, we did not talk about the new lrl rules for this week. Mr. Chase. Don't worry. We will Uh Yeah, so I was uh, I was I was on board for that one Uh, so yeah, I'm happy to see them Especially because when you figure that's the retail and then of course you're going to get You know discounts anywhere you buy those it's actually quite a quite a nice deal for those boxes So as usual, you know, these are cool important part tom. How excited are we that there could be a battalion? Hold on Are you ready for this tom? We might live in a world where a spoil poc scrivener and slobby bio piper Have some purpose In a battalion. I'll believe it. I I'm just saying it could happen tom It could happen Don't don't don't poo poo my dreams here tom. Okay We all want these guys these coolest models in nergal to actually have a purpose right Uh, so I'm just saying Let's make it happen. Uh, sorry. I was literally ordering The fleshy report box right now Right now it just dawned on me that I was like I probably ought to do that just in case stock's gonna be well It will be Uh, at any rate. Yes, like we could get new war scrolls for them tom. That could happen I mean We'll see Hey, look slobby bio piper and spoil poc scrivener are two of the coolest models they've ever made For it's true. Certainly for most armies and certainly for nergal And yet yep, like they have had the junkiest of junk rules for the longest time Come on guys. Come on I mean if they were just like repointed and put in a better battalion Look, just do something with them. It'd be cool. You could like there's lots of ways We all want to see it Fingers crossed. So broken realms techless continues to be interesting. I want to know what the battalion is That's just two hurricanums in a battle mage. I want to know what this battalion's about Well, I wouldn't it's the light city And that's what I was going to say is I don't care about the battalion You want to know what the city rules for the high city? Tell me more about this uh cities that can take lumineff units go on that's we know it's coming They've set up that city in the short stories. We've got this battalion. That's clearly meant to be high. She Do it. Yep. Do it. Give us the song Yep So they have my attention um So, yeah, so I've ordered a bunch of um Yeah, I have a big order that I put in Um, yeah, so that's uh, I'm excited about that. I'm excited about what he needs to know what the smash bat list is It's two royal mordant battalions in hollow morn. I'll let you figure out the rest yourself But you that's that's that's really the secret of it two Plus an arch regent and a regular gulking. That's it. Uh, it is a four drop list You can look it up on honest wargamer. They do have smash bat there for you to reference They've got a couple different versions of it. So Check it out And yes, smash bat can smash that and and no, there are no terror guys.  I'm just saying even they're gonna take some punishments You're gonna hit first like he's gonna die before he ever swings Uh, I am assuming that they've somehow lost that ability been in this in this instance Sure Yes My smash bat in motion Nerded yes, yeah Okay, uh, oh, I thank you for the shout-out shorts appreciate it. Uh, okay Uh, what's next what's next on our news? I know what's next on boom. It's lrl rules teasers Uh Yes, so we've been getting a bunch of lrl rules teasers all weeks Uh, and none of those matter at all as far as determining how powerful or competitive an army is I just want to say that right up front So we all understand that nothing that we're about to talk about has anything to do with power Because until you know the whole picture unit size saves moves wounds Points Like like that's all stuff of how you determine power Yeah eels The like offensive eels at a hundred points Would be like the best unit in the game ever and even more dominant than they are now a unit of three eels A unit of three eels at a thousand points for three would be the worst unit in the game See so like you can't read one rule like a zappy zap at a move speed and know how good they are Okay so Uh First I wanted to I don't have it up right now, but we saw the windrider rules Thanks.  I didn't grab that graphic, but the what they what they the first thing they shared was the hakanan windriders who can pile in Six inches when they charge and fly and do not have to pile into the nearest unit. They can just go wherever they want okay and uh To the moon Yeah, so This is a unit that regardless of what its normal move is We know there will be some way to make them move 16 inches because that was in the same article You can have if you've got your little windrider guy. He can make them move 16 And fly and fly so they can fly 16 in their movement. Assumingly they'll also be a valid target for the double their movement spell Yep, so assumingly they can fly 32 inches Yep, then charge Yep Then pile in six inches flying in any direction they want Including not ending near any units including not ending not your any units The obvious play here is you have these guys can steal an objective off you from anywhere They are because they will shoot across the table at like a million miles an hour Charge you and then pile in six inches around you to 3.1 inches So they're no longer in combat with you and they just all pile six inches onto the objective Okay Pretty awesome. Yeah, that's shenanigan horrific, uh, I hate it Just more of overbaked lrl rules. I and again, I'm not talking about powerful I'm just like I see they got one rule one rule that broke three core rules Most people are lucky if they get like some kind of bonus in a rule without a limit slash right They got one rule that broke three different rules Sure. Why not? I mean, it seems kind of elfie to me Sure I agree with coach steal the objective off my gargancy little jerks. Yes. Yes. There you go. Five of them can't take them from you coach. That's true Uh I assumingly they and who knows, you know what they're and again, it's not about power It's about I mean being done. Who knows, although this could be very like If those guys are pointed cheap then that rule will catapult them too very powerful But they could be let me be clear. They could be straight trash That unit with that rule could be straight garbage Yes, okay, because they can't actually do anything right if they were two wound models with bad bow shots That cost too much points by even 10 or 20 points And they hit on fives or melee and they hit on fives in melee or something or even just like if they're fours and fours No red one damage if that's literally what they're like one attack fours and fours. No red one damage or something, right? Then yeah, they could be a bad unit.  Uh, lrl rules and then just like Well, how much more can we add? It's like no, it's like stuffing a bear at build a bear. You just keep shoving it in there And just keep shoving it in they just have a checklist of all the core rules and see how many times they can Check the boxes of violating rules, right? That's what's going on here. Yeah, but let's talk about sunmetal tom Let's talk about these ray blades because that's what I've got up on screen right now This is our sword masters rules. So I'm gonna say nothing I love me some sword masters. Yes. So this is the new sword masters rule Uh, so what do you think of these tom? Obviously sword masters have two different attack profiles One that's two inch range with one attack that auto hits wounds on a two neg two rend one damage And then the other that is a floria blows that has a number of attacks equal to the number of enemy models within two Inches of the attacking model and then his threes threes no rend one damage assumingly the Floria blows can still trigger sunmetal mortal wounds Because it's making a hit roll right because there's sunmetal weapons sunmetal probably mortal wounds on a five or six plus Probably has some ability to get the spell cast on it to make it a five plus probably that's assumptions But probably if if they continue like every other venari unit They can if they're because they're venari they can probably set up in shining companies So they can be neg one to hit they have a four up shrug spell shrug For simply existing all that kind of stuff again We're not going to judge power because I don't know how many wounds the rest of their save I don't know how much they cost they could be hot garbage They could be the greatest thing on two legs But we are going to talk about design since that's the the name of this week's show I suspect that this unit is what? Uh instigated vince's decision to cover this topic this week. It absolutely was It absolutely was um No, you know what I I love the ability for them to stance dance I like that I Like that they are communicating that they are superior swordsmen uh-huh um, yeah I think that the perfect strike is a trap most of the time Except when it's not let me say that sure Like when you want to hear or something Right, like, you know, if you're lining up on like Archeon for example, sure Um, like the perfect strike anytime you're trying to execute a single model. Yes, right That's the right answer. But most of the time that's a trap Which means most of the time you're going to want to use flurry of blows and in that instance Because you're fishing for a ton of you're fishing for a bunch of attacks that are going to proc mortal wounds Yep But in that instance, it's going to be a nightmare and we're going to talk about that Yeah, so Yet again, thanks.  I like a full zero percent of this Okay So if this was a head design I would have sent this back. Yo, you'd be like go back to your office and think about what you've done. Correct This is incorrect. This is wrong But I would explain to the person why they've done it. I want No, you wouldn't you'd say I want an essay Of the top three things you've done wrong and why you think you've done them wrong, right? And then we'll talk about and then we'll talk about All of the ways that you're wrong. Yeah, correct. So, okay Here's here's why I hate this rule Okay, why I think this is bad design. Let's get into it. Let's talk about purpose right now We have we have we have other we have other segments. You can't just change You can't jump it into the main body segment here. I'm gonna set it up now Okay, we'll get to it later. This is a setup Here's why I think this is bad design here. I'll learn through it quickly and we will dive into this later in the meat of the show Perfect strike auto hitting is never good. That's just silly. That's just silly It's a silly rule Because it takes the interactivity out of the game the number one thing on the npe survey people said they don't like Is interactivity being reduced? Well, this is the definition of that Got an egg one to hit got an egg five to hit got an egg million to hit Who cares you auto hit even if they were one plus to hit it would have been better Because then at least there's some kind of interactivity with the dice Okay, like I can actually like have geminids get thrown at them and have them attack goblins with netters and make them at least miss something Well, so here's what I'm gonna say Vince. I think you're wrong because in this instance specifically Because as I said, I think that the perfect strike is a trap Most of the time they're actually going to be doing their area Flurry of it blows and your minuses to penalties to hit will actually affect it again I'm talking about the perfect strike side of it when they do this.  You ready? Here we go These are the best swordsmen in the entire mortal realms period There is no god no vampire lord no demon no great warrior or a child of sigmar No warrior no matter how forged no matter how tested no matter how good not sigmar Not the light of the world itself Not go track putting go track not anyone Is as good of a swordsman as some random elf from this unit It's so good. I love it because all of them still have a chance to miss And these guys do not Not to mention the fact that they're too wound is better than almost most of these gods and greater demons and people We're talking about two who almost consistently have three ups to wound In our kaon Sure, sure, absolutely The Mary Sue of the universe there is no being in the mortal realms as that shows such pissuant skill at arms As decorate some random elf I have a real problem with that narratively I want to run an entire army of these guys And I just mean usable weapon Right. They are the they are the unmitigated weapon masters. There's no one better period. This is it Whatever you think whoever you think your person is.  These are the simply the best The best weapon users period Just like tackless is the best spelldom No, because that's not necessarily true. There actually are you know gives and takes to that In this they're like just mathematically it is the case That's real annoying. Okay. Now. Let's talk about the flurry of blow side why this is bad design because When we did this with decimators who you tend to have like two of It was annoying to calculate or chain gasts, which nobody has ever taken but me who again also you tend to have like two of Right or four four. They come in twos, right Right just like decimators These guys don't come in units of five or 10 or 20 or however many they're gonna have here Where I now have to go around for this two inch stick and go One two three four Do I have that guy here look over do I have that guy? Yeah, okay five All right one two three four. Okay. Yeah four five. Okay. Good. Yeah They'll probably be in units of five to 15. Sure. Sure. You only have to do that for like 15 units 15 models For each unit, right right cool cool Cool. Cool. Yeah, cool. Like even a steam gun is nowhere close to this because again a steam gun is one model that I sweep an eight-out stick from and go This many and and even it takes too long Like I agree I don't like decimators and steam guns and chain guests They all take long because you get to have this little fight over exactly what's in there But at least those are like onesies or twosies Imagine decilators if it didn't mean decimators that the drakoth writers with the big axe who can keep any stupid Vents imagine me running this army. Yeah, you would be so persnickety about this and I love like obviously what you're gonna you want to you want to get Because every one additional thing you get is one more chance for a mortal wound Right. Right. And yes, of course. Yeah, you're double counting models here Yeah, if you've got one guy in range of three of them, then that guy one guy adds three attacks to the unit Right. Yep. Yeah. So like against a unit of like 10 goblins 10 of these guys Because what they're they're they're are they two inch reach or one inch? They're two inch reach. They're two inch reach So like feasibly you could have I don't know solid 50 attacks at least against Uh 10 goblins Yeah, like this is Such nonsense. And by the way, I don't like I saw some people saying bring back templates. Yeah, templates didn't solve this either I played for 20 years with templates You know what that did cause arguments because I we'd hold the template over them and be like Was that dude in or not? Am I getting the corner of his base?  It's gonna be It's gonna be so outlandish Slow it is like why lrl are like time sink the army Uh between they're interrupting you with their um actually on everything you do okay and The fact that they they have so many things that are so fiddly like they're dumb Ymetrica push Or whatever, you know, like all that stuff anyway Yeah, I don't like this and I think I think it's a direct example of bad design and again that is not A statement on power these guys could be hot Garbage I would still say this is bad design Okay, well, we probably need to unpack that in the body of the show as we will what is bad design Yes, and what it's good to talk about today. Yes, and we're an hour into the news. I know. I'm sorry. This is a really long show Uh, I try to get him to stop any wooden. Okay. Finally, uh aos Third edition There's a rules rumor that grim dark live dropped. Yes, and it's who's in the chat, by the way Hey, it's spicy. It is spicy. So let's talk about the rules Uh, all right. This is what this is as per grim dark live Uh coming to us our infield reporter grim dark live Hopefully still in the chat. I saw I saw I saw I saw him there earlier Age of sigmar 3.0 dropping in july new board site. So we're gonna we're gonna do this We're gonna go beat by feet here tom of do we buy it? Okay Individual lines age sigma 3.0 drop dropping in july. What's your odds? That this is correct. Do you buy it? Oh, yes. Yep 100 100 agreed one to one new board size 44 by 60 Do you buy it? I agree 100 it is happening Get on the train the second they did it with with 40k and it's four work ride boards. It's like yep It was that train left the station and is barreling toward us Uh massive box set with stormcast and a destruction army being the launch box Considering this was my original call sure. Yeah, this was your original last fall Uh 100 I buy it. Okay Uh, absolutely agreed. I'm in for this one one to one odds I think that's absolutely what the launch box is going to be Let me just say Also, a lot of this corresponds with some of the things I've heard like Whispers of in the in the dark corners of the internet Sure, so like what grim dyrech is reporting. I've also heard from likely other sources sure Possible new destruction army released. He mentions a couple that it could be Do you think we'll get a new destruction army? Yes, I do And I actually think that it will probably be aligned pretty closely with the silent ones Okay, okay, uh, but I don't think that it's I don't think it'll be a new race. Let me say that Gotcha. I'm saying two to one on a new destruction army Like I had I originally said Well, I don't but I you're misunderstanding me. Yeah, I got it. I think that it will be related to like I originally thought orcs I think orcs are gonna be front and center. I've already said that. Yeah, which I agree with But I wonder if like when you look at the masks for the silent ones Like it has orc-y designs. Sure Um, and so I just wonder if it's not going to be some outworking of like silent ones like silent orcs Yeah, like silent orfy ones All right charge reactions coming back units can flee stand and shoot Other things or whatever and then there's the thing that says maybe reaction points Do you buy this? Dear god, I hope not. Okay I'm going two to one This seems exactly like the type of thing they would do it in addition change Because doesn't this feel like what they would want to do call back to those old rules of Announcing your reaction to the charge. I think they'll I don't think they'll create a new resource I think they'll just use like command points or let you do it like once a turn You know I'm saying like they'll make it limited in some way like that I don't think they'll introduce a whole new subsystem But tell me that doesn't feel like exactly the type of thing they want to do Oh god, like what I the reason why I don't like it so much is because it sounds like something they would do And like it feels like the change the type of change they've made from Going from first edition aos to second edition when they added command points from command abilities to command points And it feels like what they did was they went, you know what we need more of Responses sure You know, I really like how handgunners do this thing When people charge them and they're like, yeah, let's do that across all armies Again, it's just the old warhammer fantasy charge reactions. If that's the case, right? It's all it is. Yes Real quick. I want to answer a question in the comments here It's real quick. Gloden said haven't started playing aos yet If the new edition is coming soon, is it worth learning the current rules? My answer is yes Undoubtedly because I don't actually expect much of the rules to change like even if all of that was true That that's basically not much of a change from the current rules Other than adding some maybe new options of ways to spend your command points or something Right. Yeah, like what I would what I would anticipate is that if They will take what they currently have and then maybe some aspects of some phases may get a little bit more complex Right So the what the core of the rules are now is probably the core of what the game will be in the summer Yeah, that's what I would anticipate Um now is as great a time as any to get started Unless you're wanting a destruction army or storm cast and then I would wait until the summer Yeah, and you can still like play with some other army If you can get your hands on like a chop army or an inherited army from somebody then you can learn But yes, if you want like storm cast or destruction chances are there will be a new force for those so and and not only that Like it will be affordable because it'll be bundled up and it'll be an awesome deal because they always are So this summer will be like I would just start saving your pennies and uh I And then the other half of it is that it like most of the older stuff They will often like decrease their power level So like the current storm cast will probably not be as good as the news storm cast Yeah, and uh to answer andrew fairbanks in the chat. No, I do not think they'll kill the double turn I never in a million years as long as aos exists. I believe it'll have the double turn potential The priority role would be the correct way to say it. So what let me ask this What if they do kill it? I just I believe there's a 10,000 to one odds Too many designers have talked too many times openly on podcasts about how much they see it as an integral part of the game Okay, like that's just I mean they've been very transparent about this It's true. So like it's just I mean don't get me wrong. I love the double turn. I know a lot of people don't I do Priority is great. I I do hope we continue to explore ways to mess around with it Right, like there's other things you could do and so that'd be fine That's cool. Like you could we could play with incentives like we did on it with aos too with the whole Uh Endless spells getting to move if you have the priority, right like they could play around stuff like that So there you go. Yeah, I'd be done with that Okay, anyways, so finally Finally We come to the end of the news. Holy moses. What a new section.  All right Sorry, let's get into it. It's all right. Tom. Let's talk pick of the week. What do you want to share with everybody? Uh, man, there's been just some great content this week. Um, I'm gonna first go with uh Uh, hey, woe twitch friend of the show Um, he did a wonderful four or five days ago did a wonderful like hey Do you want to know all about doc? Super well-timed with the the doc book releasing obviously and it is as always an enjoyable listen a very uh, a very, uh Straight forward kind of take on on what doc is and what what the heart of that army is So I would uh, I if if daughters have gained interest you at all I would highly encourage you all to check out the video. Nice Uh, a couple shout outs for myself Uh, so first off, uh, martin orlando good friend friend of the show all around awesome person Uh, good painters previously storm cast and now good painter lumen eff man Uh, he is the uh, he is uh, running the uh Aos tournament at the atlantic city opened june 11 through the 13th at harrah's in atlantic city jersey So if you're looking to get back in the hot tournament action As we're uh, as we're coming out of this long Hibernation we've been in and you're on the east coast that could be a great way to do it So do check that out Uh, atlantic city open. I'll grab the link and throw it down there Uh, I also in this pick of the week section. I have a special request for everybody Today Our good buddy our hero our pal our friend Our love doom and darkness He said hey guys, I'm taking a step away from aos got a lot of other stuff going on in his life He's had a busy personal life A lot of stuff happening And he just hasn't been able to put his whole head in the game recently and I get that and content making is often time consuming And troubling so Doom and darkness is going to step away from aos for a while and focus on other stuff Uh, which is Which is perfectly fine, but here's what I want everybody to do I want everybody if you know doom and darkness and I'll link to the most recent video he made great battle report I'm going to link out to his most recent battle report I want you all to go to that video I want you all to like that video Now I want you to leave a comment for doom. It says something along the lines of We'll be here waiting for you when you come back Don't pressure him to come back. Don't say anything else. Don't be like don't leave Don't do that Man's taking the doing a good thing for his personal life Sometimes you got to take step step away and get your head straight. I respect that But I do want him to know That when he's ready We'll be here for him So leave him a message on his channel Tell him how much you enjoyed his content and tell him you'll be right there waiting for him when he comes back Because I'm sure he'll be back He loves it too much. I know what'll bring him back I know I like I know what'll bring him back And I know when we'll see doom But that's okay So leave him a message like that make his day And then make him understand how much we all value him as a content creator One of my personal heroes one of my favorite people and honestly a good friend So he and coach both took such great care of me when I was in Australia Literally have you know all the way around the world and uh So I am eternally grateful to both of them Okay Now with that said let's talk about some hobby time Uh, okay Hobby time Tom you've been hobbying. What are you doing? What are you working on there, man? Uh, I am I'm putting together some ghosts Spooky ghosts. What are you doing with your spooky ghosts Tom? Spoopies? um, you know just uh Exploring some ideas so Um, trying to get back into the hobby mojo like I'm in the mid like the pre-edition funk Because I know a new edition is coming And uh, as you know anytime there were in this like seasonal transition the end of the season Like especially at the end of like an addition change like all of my hobby energy is gone um And with this like being the last being you know the whole year of cobin and stuff like that. I've just really screwed to like Work on things and so I've done a lot of building recently, but I haven't done as much painting Um, and I thought you know what I'm gonna Uh, I'm gonna maybe try to get some far a little bit farther on my night haunt So I suspect that we may see night haunt in the forthcoming broken realms So there's hope that you know, there may be more toys to play with because we saw that character, right? Yep. Um, and so I I'm hoping that we'll see it in in bellicor Right, uh, so maybe in a month. We might have an update to night haunt which might make them a little bit more playable um And uh, and you know moving forward to the new addition kind of prep them for for what is to come So we'll see right on Uh, I bet on I bet on Like it to be too easy for them to just bolt on sub factions They love doing crap like that as wrath of the ever chosen showed so, you know, that's just that's just That's just blue ocean design that they love to do Uh, it's been a rough hobby week for me.  So everybody understands I've been fighting through like a problem Where I had my back was injured pretty bad and now it's in my arm and so My right arm has been in like extreme pain, especially if it's in this forward position Uh, which would be the position you you do to be painting Uh, so I've still been trying to paint and record stuff through like extreme pain But I don't manage to get a fair amount done. Uh, I did manage to finish up my slick blade seeker unit So they're all good and ready to go. There's one of them right there Looks like a nightmare to put together. Uh, it is it is Uh, I managed to get the shard speaker assembled. She'll be a project coming up Here pretty soon And right now I'm working. I needed something a little lower impact. So I'm working on this big piece of terrain thing Uh, just a little mountain thing I needed something that wasn't quite as intense while I rest my arm.  I really love it, especially the fact that like normal pain killers do nothing for it. So It's great It's great Uh, so it's been a lot of fun. Uh, anyways, but we we soldier on we soldier on We must to keep painting uh-oh Uh Yeah, indeed. I'm sure we all heard it. So I I saw my wife say she's gonna try to sneak dogs into the office Yep, and I heard of the wolf They're coming Yes indeed Yeah, there they are Yep, she won't look at you. No No, she's not gonna look over. Oh, there you go. There you go. Hit like hit like and subscribe. There you go The other one's very jealous Thank you, dear my my dogs are in bed I'll try that nick. That's good advice. Uh, yeah, it's the problem is it's not Yeah, it's it's weird. I we don't need to get into my my pain It's not muscle inflammation. Like I have I have still been working out and that hasn't like the muscles that kind of stuff Isn't what hurt what's hurt. It's actually like I injured the nerves somehow. So Good times anyways Uh Cool. All right. So doggo break. There you go We'll we'll mark the doggo break. Uh, because I'm sure that'll be fun Uh, doggo break. Okay. I've got that in my timestamps. Uh, all right. So tom Let's talk about design, man. Shall we? Sure Let's talk about good design What does that even mean? What are we even talking about? Can we bring up a new graphic? Yes, we can Okay Do we have a power point? No, I don't have a power point, but I do have images I have some images You're letting me down. I'm sorry tom I used power point to make the images. How about that? They just fit better and it doesn't cover our face I made a power point and then saved it into images classy So we start with the I brought up first this this design axis, right? And part of what I want to I don't make this a little bigger so people can see it. There we go It's about as big as it's gonna get. Okay. So part of the problem is and I saw this on Uh, I saw this as soon as the sun metal thing came up Right? Yep. And don't worry. I do stretch before before push-ups to answer brand's question Uh, at any rate the as soon as that came up everybody was immediately having a power argument It's like the only thing we know how to talk about. Oh, this is broken. Oh, this is op. This is too weak It's like the we talk about this one axis as though. It's like the only thing in the world Right, right Well, I don't think people have language to talk about the other axis Right. I think that's true Because it's the easy one we all feel But when I introduced this quadrant idea originally the reason I did it Is because I thought There just simply is something else going on here, right? Right. I first felt it with the ko book Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's where it really hit me and occurred to me because I had Problems with the ko book and a lot of it wasn't that I didn't think the army could compete Right, right. If you go back to those episodes my pushback. I said no, I think the army is okay competitively But I'm bothered by these design elements these things in the book, right, right But I it was so difficult to read the book, right, but I didn't even really Piece together. I didn't have the ideas the language formally structured in my head yet, right And Then came more we've seen it the more we've seen it the more it's been up more as I get it's becoming more obvious What's going on? Yes. Yes The Design is totally separate from power. You can have a well-designed trash book So I'm gonna I'm gonna make two arguments here about design when it when this when it comes to this chart The design of a tome is completely independent from the war scrolls in it a controversial statement to be sure And what I mean by good design is that the book is easy to read Inspires lists and armies creates a natural flow both linear and modular and we'll spend the rest of the show unpacking All of what I mean by that, right And again, I'm sure people will argue over the exact placement of some of my books on this That's fine. Do you do you have that? Definitely that definition should be like the caption Underneath like if you have your thesis written up here. Yeah, it's written up here in the corner. I put it up here Okay, it's just really tiny. It is at the moment. I didn't think about that when I when I save this picture Right and so like Designed to me isn't well and Brian asked that's not even what I mean Yes, it is internal to the book But it's not a measure of power at all like can I take unit a and is it doing something better than unit b? Like that's the war scrolls. What a book is Okay, here's what I mean Why why are war scrolls separate? War scrolls are separate from the book Because I don't need the book to use the war scrolls. We didn't have bricks for most war for most Armies for the majority of the history of this game Right, we only had the war scrolls and then like maybe some rules sometimes and maybe not Right books books marry War scrolls together into a union a cohesive unit And they produce battalions Right Okay, like so follow me down this metaphor, but battalions are the product Of the allegiance that's been created there Okay And all of that should flow from the moment you enter the allegiance and begin reading the rules Who then subdivide into sub factions? And then produce battalions that either span sub factions are limited to sub factions right But all of that should all that design is cohesive and should flow into the different topics and the different elements So like decisions that you're making in sub factions should point you towards battalions They should point you towards decisions on how to play the army Yeah That's good design Good design should feel like when I like let me unpack these all very quickly in turn Okay, sure and I saw somebody say like anything like Brian s write interactions fun unique abilities synergies alignment with background Yeah, that's fine as long as we're talking about the ability level battalions things like that then yes, I agree with your statement Uh bad design violates say Thomas speaking rules 20 words are less nice Uh and somebody said if it takes this much to explain it probably shouldn't fit on a chart I think it I I'm trying to unpack this because I'm trying to teach a new language here partially Right of like how to think and talk about this and I really do believe we're so addicted to talking about power That it's very hard For us to divorce that from our thought when we think about this Right, right um Because we so indelibly imprint the power experience with the book on Like any other it casts a long shadow over any other concept we have right Okay, what is easy to read me? What means exactly what it sounds like? Uh when I read the book It should actually not have Super long crazy abilities popping up where they don't need to be over use of complex rules where they don't need to happen Uh Lots of references back and forth to other sections that make it complicated to even read Callouts to rules that are outside the book Right. This is just basic stuff of like how to write a good book A good game, right?  Well, what's a triumph? I don't know what a triumph is Right. Why is triumph nowhere in this book explained? Okay, like that's a very cornercase rule That we're just assuming I have access to and like yes, I understand, but they don't they don't tell you what to hit is Yeah, yeah, okay There's a certain level of basic rules We engage with that you assume everybody knows what they are And there's a certain level of specialty rules that it behooves you to reprint them Okay, right on a common in magic. They don't explain what power and toughness means on every card But when they have first strike, they do put the whole text after it of what that means But you're right. You're right and and so there's a degree of complexity there that like There are entire games. There are entire tournaments that people will have certainly ever played There may be entire years that you've played warhammer and never utilized the garrison rules Right, absolutely. Yes, exactly. Those are real rules Yes, garrisoning another perfect thing where like they put those rules in there and said you can garrison stuff and then never bothered to explain How garrisoning works and then how garrisoning works differently with moved Mobile objects on the table Right, right Right And so and and so garrisoning is an example that like that was never unpacked and actually it created a bunch of complications and weird corner cases Because of how it ended up interfacing Or not really well interfacing with the way that the rules were written And that had to be cleaned up and clarified in all in the following up acues Yeah, my other point about rules complexity is Things that show up a lot in the game your battle line units stuff like that when I say easy to read Those should be simpler units We shouldn't be putting long complicated exception based high high memory using rules On things that are going to form the bulk of most people's armies Battle line units should never have more than one rule. I'm gonna get I'm gonna go out there and say Like I could see like one they're like very very straightforward, but yes one specialty ability is what I'm talking about like Like they can have like, you know, like a captain ability and a But like one actual ability ability battle line units should be streamlined Which is why again to to source back to magic commons tend to not like do not have the overtly complex Rules interactions that like mythic rares or planes walkers or stuff like that do because they they Shuffle and push the high complexity into the less encountered cards theoretically So that people who are playing limited or draft or doing something like that or whatever Don't or newer aren't running into that left and right obviously and some kind of constructed You're still gonna you're gonna have a deck full of complex cards theoretically, but still right So Like that's what I mean when I say easy to read when I say inspires lists and armies I mean you should read through it and think This sounds like it's doing a cool thing. It's exploring a facet. It's opening up the army It's using the war scrolls in an interesting way It's I want to do that. I want to own this army because of something I read there. I'm sorry go ahead down Right. No, like you read it and you go. I want to do that thing. Yeah Yeah Yes, and christiel said so you're telling me pink horrors are bad. Yes Yeah, yeah 100% they absolutely fail the design test now One of the things about this is like there is sway here Right, these aren't rules as much as they're more guidelines guidelines, right? Yeah, you know Like obviously you can bend and break some of these rules, right not to morph us from the matrix too bad And some of them should be bent and break right But it's like doing it right is the art of good game design, right? You adhere to the guidelines as much as possible And break it when it's the whole product is going to become stronger because you did Right, right Maybe you should feel are a good example for that. Maybe they're not I don't know Yeah, like you should feel like Breaking design like the your principles Should be like they should it should be in a it should be meaningful Right, and when I say something about what those things are right when I say it's like it should make you want to play the thing Let me give you a real example. Okay, let's let's make this real tom. All right Uh And oh by the way, and we'll talk about linear and modular a little while later Okay, here. I've got two things you're ready. Here are my two examples tom of stuff that I think passes this sniff test I'm interested for your feedback These are the tempest eye battle traits and the cabalist battle traits from slaves to darnings. Okay I think both of these sub factions passed the smell test of what I was describing When I read tempest I I was like, oh, okay cool. Let's see So we're real fast and we get cool save rolls the first round because we're on this big mountain We get to run quicker. Okay. I got this command ability that lets me then run and shoot Oh, and I can have charadron overlords units in my army too, right? Like instantly you get it You get what tempest eye is about Because like those additions are doing the things that all the rest of the things are doing, right? It's saying movement running, right getting some ko in there another skirmishy Shooty type of thing, right? Uh, the run and shoot like everything about the force is efficiently communicated through these rules Right, right Cabalists is the same way for me. You look at this and it's like, okay You've got a wizard you can pick and they can do this ritual That either like gives you a big bonus to spell casting for all your wizards by icing people Oh, which is very chaosy, right? Or you can move Endless spells around and manipulate them, right? And you all get a cool bonus spell that does damage and saps movement Okay, fantastic. Get it. This is the caster one So if I like wizards and I want to do like a wizard circle in chaos This is where I go for my slaves of darkness, right? Both of these communicated Stuff that would make me want to build a list Right if I if what in my head is cool with chaos is like chaos magic And stuff like that, right? That's what I enjoy Okay, that's what I think is cool Then as soon as I read cabalus, I'm like, oh, I'm home This is my thing. This is my jam I like cool chaos sorcerer lords and sorcerer lords on mana cores and you know, whatever, right, whatever So this is where I live right Yep, it communicates that efficiently like the A lot of the cities of sigmar do this a lot of the slaves of darkness do this because these are both standout books right for this reason um I just like your comment tom.  I'm just pointing that out It's it is safe right now.  Yeah, so, um At any rate, that's I think to me This is like when you talk about inspiring lists, by the way, I could have picked like 20 other things from across these books, right? right But it there's nothing necessarily like linear or modular about either of these two That's why I picked them right because you don't need a but like yes use wizards But like okay, not all your people are wizards, right? So it's weakly linear tempest eye It's like very open actually because it's what do you want to run and shoot? Yep, you know people play tempest eye like I do with a ton of shooting units That just like skirmish around but people also play tempest eye with like just the all dwarf Army right it's an incredibly versatile City that can lead to a bunch of lists. That's why it's so good and inspiring You see everything from like I'm doing with like some ko included shooty city more like empire-y type troops Yeah combined with all the way to like all dwarven stuff to like elven stuff like it's around. It's all over the shop Because it's a great inspiring thing right yeah Is there any book that stands out to you tom that you think really passes this muster? Of like just by reading it it inspires you to want to play stuff It gives you ideas for lists before you ever looked at a war scroll You kind of knew what list you wanted to run Uh, uh fleshy reports did that. Yeah, I could see that Like because each of the sub factions as I dug through I'm like, okay. These guys like piling in and eating things, right? And then as I went into sub factions, I was like, oh, this is a monster one Oh, this is the massive like army troop ghoul one, right? Yeah, like It just fits Like as you flip through and you're like, oh, this is the battalion that does this thing Yeah, right Yep So for me if fec was one i'm just like looking at my my bookshelf fec was one of them that just really jumped out I think too, you know to to some Degree I think daughters of kane does this as well I think doc does this really well, especially with the sub factions. I think seraphon does this quite well Yep They're a little more hard linear in how they do it and and and by the way There's nothing innately good about linear design or modular design But you should be using but you do need both of them. They both have values They have upsides and downsides. We'll talk about them later on Because this is another concept in game design that I feel like it's really important for people to understand what that means So the But again, there's nothing innately good that you want either of those. I think seraphon passes that test I think like I said, I think I agree with you on fec I think the orc war clans Largely pass the sniff Yep, yep, yep, I would agree with that Like you get inspired to make lists in that book just by reading any part of that book You could flip to anything and you're like I want to build this out of this, right? It's incredibly successful at that Like it feels right when you build those lists. Yeah. Um, so let's talk about some that don't feel right Yeah, man. Let's do that Like what is bad? What does bad design look like? I think storm cast eternal's fits in this. Okay okay, because So much of the book has been like Generationally like aligned So you can actually see like the generational markers in the book This is first generation storm cast. Sure. It's the second generation storm guys. Yeah This is third and there's only a couple points where they cross over And The sub factions the the storm host haven't actually married The um married the that that gap. Yeah Does that make sense? Like it hasn't actually bridged Um the generational divides amongst those books and so like you have like each generation with all of their battalions associated with Which are internally just awkward and bad and just not cohesive Like it's not what you want to actually do to build. Yeah, right? And so I think that that a lot of the battalion problems that storm cast have actually are the generational problem. Yeah Yep Yeah, uh, so I picked two options here Both at a macro level and then a minimal level of bad design We can come back to the mega gargant later because he's more of a specific example But barric herb oz like bad design to me. I look at this and i'm like, okay Do not subtract one from the bravery characteristic of a America herb oz unit that spends a share of aether gold. Well, first of all, that's a crappy rule Because all you're doing is making me not suffer the punishment for already badly written rule Right. Yeah, you're backing out penalties. You're backing out penalties, which always feels worse That's number one right Number two then the code you can reroll battle shock tests While they're wholly within opponents territory Like okay, I guess sure which is like a marginal Um marginal benefit that it then has a limiter on it Yeah, and and most of the time it's not ever actually going to come into play ever right Uh, all because like the main because the main battalion it actually makes all of your guys that are going to be need to Be battle shock immune battle shock immune Or um Or you just have an admiral who does it passively right right? Yeah, exactly. So it's a non And a ridiculously limited pointless rule that is has a trigger and you'll probably forget about Yep, yep, that will rarely come up The amendment is pick up to d3 different friendly barrack herb oz units They start the battle with one share of aether gold addition to any they normally receive Okay fine enough Like it's weird that it's random, but it's fine right And then the footnote once per battle at the end of any combat phase one friendly skyfarer's unit that fought in that phase Gains one share of aether gold Uh, welcome to forgetting town population you that you had this rule like ridiculous once for battle at a certain point One friendly unit of a certain type gains a nominal benefit Fantastic No airships do not roll battle shock tests because they're single models Uh, so that's nonsense Uh, chemist supreme replacing the ability on a war scroll fantastic So now I can't even read my war scroll anymore to actually know what it does Now, I mean all the new one does is just lets you choose two targets, but continue Like it just like it just modifies it, but they've replaced it But it also yeah, I agree But it also modifies it in a way that's actually really hard to fulfill because now I've got to have this idiot Within two units a holy within 12 inches of two units like so it's hard It's not giving you anything new it's just letting you do something you could already to do more I understand. I'm just saying actually utilizing it feeling like you're getting the most out of it is hard I understand that's all I understand. Yep And then the great endron work you get a you get a free endron work. It's like pretty bad so Yeah, and and and pretty bad doing something you don't normally really want to do which is to have your ship jam down Like yes egregiously close. Yeah, absolutely Right and it fires off in a phase that like you're not going to be doing that in right so to to be clear What I don't like about this is that You have a lot of like duplicative feel bad stuff that is also limited in weird ways right Where it's like I are okay. I get this rather weak benefit. That's easy to forget That rarely happens Right. I get this neat bonus that I'm going to forget to trigger Because it's incredibly cashed and limited to one unit, right? It's like you can do x but only when y and on z if then q Whenever rules start getting written in that kind of a cadence Right That's problematic when you get nonbows like you mentioned with like oh, you can re-roll battle shocks But why would you there's 50 different ways you're going to be? Already immune to battle shock, right? You can re-roll ones out of this thing, but there's probably 10 other ways you have to re-roll ones to hit, right? Well, it just tells me that they are like the rules are written in Like seclusion from how the army actually plays right Like that's what that strikes me as when I read that Is that the rules aren't aware of how the army itself plays? Yeah, and if they were aware, why would they have ever written this rule, right? Right Yeah, so like it's just an example. I'm not trying to rip on ko here, but I think it is one of the it's a very like It's a poignant example of something that is perpetual throughout that book, right? I just think the design of ko is so lacking Right, and that's not a it's not a statement on their competitiveness again separate axis ko is a very competitive army Right, it's also not necessarily even a statement on fun Right, that's a whole different axis. I didn't put in there But like I think many people probably enjoy playing their ko army, right? uh So yeah, like I think other armies that fall into this trap of like not having this sort of intuitive inspiring design are like obviously the original legions and the gosh, which is just like a Bring in your death, you know, let's just get all the death in here. We can like there's no real things in there that are that inspiring that the The rules are very flat the things it's doing is very flat Right, because it's because it's too broad, right? If you would have written legions of the gosh like you wrote cities of sigmar, man, that could have been amazing Right, you could have you could take all that stuff and write a really interesting book Yep Uh, I think the new silenash is an absolute just travesty of poorly written rules Of bad design Well, it got ko Yeah, it's all of these exceptions and non bows and like You jump through like 10 hoops to get a minor benefit for no reason, right? That's That's the kind of stuff Let's stay on target. We're we're table setting right now. Yes. What we're doing is we're establishing examples of these things Yeah, yeah, I think those are those are I think the examples, right? Yep, but you want to talk about gargants Yeah, so this is just a little minor example of what I think is like Bad design in this way when I talk about things that inspire now This is a lot of war scroll because remember not all design happens at the book level, right? Like that's what catapults this in general. We've been talking about book levels. So you just need to like Recognize that if you start using examples from war scrolls, that's going to be problematic for some. Yes. I understand So design, I just see them as two separate things, right? Like my point being is that when you're talking about good You're saying bad design War scrolls get designed and then army books get designed like allegiances. Correct. Yeah, yeah You have your war scrolls. They're their own thing. I could throw all the books I own in the bin and still play warhammer age sigma for the rest of time Just using the scrolls, right? I don't need the books The books are not a necessary thing to play this game period Right the game functions fully fine without the the books Hence the books are separate from the scrolls. Scrolls are the necessary component Of the game. The books are not So the books have an onus on them to do something interesting But with the scrolls Scroll design is also important, right? Like just because they're not in the good design of a book Doesn't mean that good design on scrolls doesn't matter. It matters a heck of a lot Right In fact, I think the number one problem we have in the game right now If I had to put my finger on it is we've got too many badly designed scrolls And then you're trying to spin gold out of, you know, right scrolls that are problematic Yeah, it just it ends up being an anchor for the book because now the the rules of the book are showing up trying to like Do something interesting as you just said and you're yeah, you're trying to turn lead into gold, right? You need some kind of alco... you need some kind of alchemy stone Phosphor stone sorcerer stone, whatever we want to call it Whatever country you happen to be in the harry whatever adventure harry potter is going on today, right? Indeed, so To me Here's this easy example that broadens out. Okay One of the things that aos does well In its design Is that most things tend to feel really good Because aos uses a lot of what we call top down design Yep, okay. I don't want to get down a huge tangent here. So I will explain this quickly Top down design is when you start from a single concept of the thing I show you the model of a big giant And I say Write me the rules For this thing You have the top of the thing the the thing itself that carries the rules That's what you have with first at the top of the pyramid, right? It's the thing And you write the rules based on how it looks how it seems how you think it play how it you think it would exist in the world and so on That's top down That's how most stuff in aos is written You have the concept of something right and then you develop rules for that thing Yes, you back into the rules from the concept Okay. Yes The other option is bottom up design Bottom up design is when you start from the rules that you need and then build a shell around it Example Uh, this army really needs like a fast mobile Anvil Doesn't hit hard But we want it to be able to have like re-rolling saves and have a move of at least like 12 inches So I can get around and kind of hold people in place Okay, what unit could we make to do that? Right, that would be bottom up design Everybody get the difference there Right, and so what they've done is they've created a rules shell and then now they say okay design me some models that fit Uh, we're gonna say that these guys do this type of thing and they develop they would hypothetically you develop like a art uh Like an arts like an artist's Summary, right that you would then like send out to have drawn and then Models made from the concept that of the rules construction, right most of the time Warhammer is is just they simply are a top-down shop almost exclusively Okay, yes because the models live first the model makers rule today They make models they ship it over and then say somebody write rules for this Right, right, right, uh for those that are familiar with other game Other you know game system stuff like that if for those that remember the tragedy of fourth edition d&d Yes, um an example of bottom up design was how Do you remember the gen con when I called him on this? That's as if they would be yeah, we actually yeah where we talked to designers. Yes Yeah, and uh One of the things that they did was that like briefly you had an archetype and then a bunch of like there are four different archetypes And then all the subclasses Yeah, four different roles and then all of the subclasses within any role What I had noticed was there was a pattern of them borrowing from the other archetypes So it's like mainly a fighter than it borrows a little bit of cleric. It's mainly a fighter It borrows a wizard and I asked are you going to be filling in the rest of these boxes? Yes, right because whenever you get into grid filling based on rules, you're doing bottom up design Yes, where you're saying we have this we don't have anything that does this right what what would that something like that look like GW doesn't really do that as far as we can tell sure Yeah, yeah, exactly, uh, okay, so the um The important part about that is that because they tend to do top-down design We often get rules that feel kind of like they fit the thing Not always and sometimes they certainly miss wide on power Right, like it might fit the thing but be way too weak Yeah, right or Fit the thing and be way too strong Right, right By the way, why are high elves? It's over designed slash also often overpowered in every addition. Why? Why is zinch almost always cheaty broken? Is there because they're the the essence of what those things are are those things correct Because they're a top-down design shop and the dark side of top-down design is you tend to balance things poorly Right Because like that's the Your vision of that thing your vision of that thing guides your rules, right? Correct and elves their concept literally their concept in Warhammer is they're just better than everybody That's it. They're just better at everything They're better fighters. They're better wizards. They're better archers. They're better than you right hence They're better. They're better Right, right. Zech's whole thing is cheating. That's literally their whole thing. He knows the future. He knows the fates. He You know, he's a planner and a schemer and so when you communicate that to rules That lets you bend rules, right because that's how I saw just to address lazy bum real quick here. He said because some lead designer GW favors them It's not it's not any one person. That's just it. It's a culture not a person Probably since I've started playing Warhammer A dozen different designers have written high-off content or elf content like that and in almost every single time They end up being powerful and over designed It's because of the culture of doing only top-down design Right Which is generally like The design principles we follow is top-down design It is but that's why I also have a formal developer in you to then correct my my excesses Like this that's the difference like you can do it if you then compensate for it, right, right, right, okay So anyways, again, I don't want to go down to this road too far So that's why it when we're so we are so trained On this top-down design and on the rules fitting the thing that when something like the mega gargant comes out And he's got a club this that is bigger than most models Right Like it's it's this it's this big right most models aren't like it's bigger than most cap Nose to tail, okay Yep, and it hits for two damage And like I've heard all your explanations I've heard it all I've heard all your nonsense about mathematical smoothing and all of that Okay, I don't care I don't care Because you're the one who decided to train me That big things do big damage Big monsters bite for like d6 or five Or four derpy derpy sore hits for six Right. Yep. You're the one who trained me that this is how the world works You can't just come in and go. Oh, but not for these guys And then say I'm silly for calling out that difference Right, right like no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You're the one that made the ground rules of how this world works Okay, and then you decided to break it And by the way, if you were worried about mathematical smoothness, then you like there's You've literally had this solved since the fourth edition empire book where you could play sigmar himself And sigmar could either make like big normal sweeping attacks or do one big mega smash for high damage That was in the fourth edition empire book Okay And and a million monsters like say, oh, I don't know the sword masters We just looked at have multiple modes of fighting between single attack and wide sweeps I don't know why we said why we forgot that technology existed But anyways, so then you've got that so let's look at so the titanic boulder club two damage club First of all, that's problem. Second of all, this is the horde clearing giant. That's what it seems to communicate Right. He's got this star on his number of attacks. He counts up the enemies within within three inches So yet again, we're doing that counting thing another one of these guys So earlier see cf4 mentioned statement And Of like counting models and why that's already sus Okay and then you've got If the and then you're saying, okay, cool.  It doesn't cap. You just get to do it. Nope Nope Notice this little arrow down here at the bottom for no reason For no reason Right You can just this caps at 10 just does Like for no intuitive reason The sword masters probably don't cap. No, no, no So this is like this right here is a great example of how to badly design a war scroll Right, you set its damage too low. You make it all about clearing hordes Then you fail to actually do that job very well So there we go I knew you were going to trigger a Uh, a dnd discussion in the comments by the way, and I'm here for it. I'm watching it happen. By the way, it's great I'm not getting not getting sucked into it But I'm interested so continue. It's fine okay So that's why I want to say bad design can happen at both the Macro and micro level right the whole book or the individual scroll even an individual rule right There's lots of elements of this and again, none of this stuff is a statement on power Right Yep Homs has said oh, I didn't even notice that line. I cheated in my last game Homs, I don't blame you for a minute Not for a minute because that line shouldn't be there Because it's not intuitive Right It is a governor on this for no reason right Uh, no no no skate. I didn't say stop. I said I'm here for it You're not like I I love I now the back of my brain is watching your dnd discussion and enjoying it We could we could do a whole show. I mean I do do a podcast on role playing games. So there you go Uh Okay The rule isn't sigmar. It's magnus the pious that might be are you looking at the fifth edition book or the fourth edition book coach anyways, all right So tom Yes, let's talk about Uh linear versus modular design Okay, okay What's linear design tom you and I have talked about this a lot It is a set of incentive structures that push you towards like Your first decision will often create a chain reaction that decides all of the decisions Or some large number of them Right and because what it does is is that the incentive structures of the actual Um options of the decision-making process all point in one direction Um Yeah, I was going to use another dnd example, but I decided not to so go ahead use a dnd example Uh, so feats feet structures in third edition three five and path finders. Um Uh Feats were often linearly designed such that like when you chose one feet it set you on a when you took dodge You were on a path. Yeah, you're like, okay, here we go. Here we go. We're a wind attack. Yeah, sure sure, right There's trajectory now Because of the decision that I've made how do I get to that trip master? Right, right. Yes, or or what'll happen is is yes, you look at the end and say I want to do x So then this is this is the only path that I that I can take to get to x Yeah, um and so linear design is design that pushes you It what it does is rather than giving you more options It limits options and and and oftentimes artificially restricts options And often in a soft way Where it'll say you can make other decisions, but it's almost always bad Okay Why is it good? Like what's good about linear design? Uh, it it makes uh for newer players. It's really helpful Because it helps point Players in a direction of saying hey these two things will work well together Yeah, and so you do want some linear design because you want to help You want to create a series of breadcrumbs from a design standpoint to help people see The good like the things that go together things that rock the things that fit like yes, I want dodge But like I actually want to be able to also do this mobility thing and have bonuses to my Is my my ac when I move again, I'm using dnd examples Um and those are like I want to be a mobile nimbley bilimbley type of guy These are things that do that thing and so they point that direction which is which can be good So you need to have some linear design, but the whole Everything doesn't need to be uh World of warcrafts to world tour Skill trees Yeah, yeah, yeah like mmo skill trees are a perfect example of linear design. Absolutely. You are punished for doing something That isn't moving advancing one step forward in your diablo skill tree or your weapon tree or whatever sure Yeah You know when we so when we think about this in warhammer, there's lots of examples of linear designs scattered throughout the game and it's fine Yes, uh as to screen said like they usually are built around keywords though Though not always but often yes, that is usually the tool of the design language that that aos usually utilizes to push linear design yes yep Keywords are normally the the the design language of Uh of of aos. Yes, um Yeah, absolutely There are some exceptions, but it doesn't matter. Yes, it's a common thing and so like Let's take let's walk through an example here of like Uh of what to me is like linear design doing its best work, right? Which is in the seraphon book Which I think has some exemplary linear design So you look let's say you come to the seraphon book and you're like that wasn't a brand new book So people had preconceived notions.  I love sorus. I think sorus are the coolest Okay, so all right. So when I read the book, I want to know what am I what are my sorus boys get? Right, I know what my sorus scroll looks like because I've played with that since I all the time I didn't have a book. What am I going to get for my sweet lizard bros? Okay And so I look into the rules and right here I see the coalesce and I see predatory fighters add one to the attacks characteristic of jaws weapons used by Coalesced units. Okay, cool. All right Neat my my fights on my sorus could get up. We'll get a bonus attack. Okay. That's cool. I like that That's neat. There's some other things in here as well that I might find neat, but I'm like, okay I've seized on a thing Sorus have a jaw attack. Skinky dudes don't Got it. Okay. This is good for my sorus And I want to make my and I want to make my jaw attack pop Right, exactly. So then I'm like, okay. That's her strength. Yep. Yeah, exactly. So I keep reading Right and I look at coalesclaw The the sub faction, right? Yep. And I see, okay, cool. Oh neat. Okay I can add one to hit rolls for attacks made by my coalesclaw soruses that made a charge move And then the command ability is just count as though you're charging, right? I'm like, okay, cool. So my jaw and and any other attacks I have hit better All right. That's a good thing. I like where that's going. So now I get one more attack and I can get plus one to hit on both Okay That's sweet, right And then I get to the sun claw temple host the battalion and I see ferocity unbound for my sorus warriors Right where improve the rend characteristic of my jaws weapons from uh used by this unit Improve the rend by one of my bite attacks Right. Yep. Yeah, cool Now I've got one more attack hitting on better that also is getting a plus one to rend awesome right like That's Very linear design, right. It's super linear, right? But every one of them incentivized me to like take more sorus because I continue to have ways to invest in sorus right, right If it was just the top thing I might mix in other stuff that also have jaw attacks But then when I look at quaddles and the sorus are specifically and the battalion is sorus specifically, it's like It's building right right and that's going to incentivize list. That's basically all sorus Like all the way down. It's sorus all the way down. Yeah. Yeah and And so that's very linear right And there are limitations to that right Yeah, I mean, what are the what are the dark sites to linear design? We've already really touched on some but to put a pin on it Tom, what do you think? Uh, it's uh limiting decision making right by creating Soft incentives the other way that functionally become hardened sentence Right. Yep, um where I can make other decisions, but they're just patently worse in every Manor right and oftentimes from like a game Like a play standpoint. It will limit how you're how you can play the game. Yeah Yep, I would also add in a game like warhammer. It makes it actually difficult to balance units If you over linear design right, right, um because suddenly like You have to point those things as though they're like getting their maximal benefit They're popping off, right? But even if they're not in that thing, right, that's not always the situation they find themselves in Right, right. And so like suddenly the performance capability of this thing varies wildly Based on which particular situation it's in right like A source Good I'll say then that thing will only show up In those corner case skews, right Yes, because it'll only be worth its points when that's the only thing you're doing, right, right Exactly It's a real dark side, right because a source in a Like starborn You know, none of these things present is just like one of it's just terrible. It does nothing. It's just a body It's just a body. It's awful. It wouldn't you wouldn't use it Right and not even as good of a body is like a skink body, right Right, the cheaper skink is literally better Right, right, but it's not how they're pointed right and they're not and they're pointed that way because the design Created these situations where they need to be pointed according to the most optimal instance of their usage not They're like how the majority of usages are gonna occur, right so It What the dark side of it is that yes also which I I do agree with dose green Sometimes it can just be kind of boring if you overuse it, right because you feel like your lists are just getting made for you Yeah, right If you have like a one drop or you know near all of an army and a battalion full of all the units that are obviously getting benefits From the stuff you're doing From the the sub faction you take and your generic rules a change host like situation Right. I mean smash that it's kind of like an eternal conflag Right Yeah, I mean that's an interesting case because you really it's it's this weird Johnny-ish linear design that sort of builds a bunch of crazy stuff out. Yes. You have to like but like But everything all your decision points are made for you Because you're building your army around smash bat Sure, then then what that means is that everything has to flow into smash bat smash effectiveness, right? So this is why you grab the arch region. This is why you grab the region. This is why you Um, and then you take the battalion so you get a second smash bat like a minor smash bat um And and the battalion you only take in it and you've only taken the units that are in the battalion To let the smash bat move extra, right? So you're what you're like actually doing is all that's pre decided for you The units that you have are basically like you only take a double sized unit of like flares because you have the points Right like but you're otherwise just filling out minimum requirements for the smash smash bat list. I I agree. I agree And so not not to not to poop on your smash bat But no, it's an example, but it's an example of linear design design. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yes absolutely um Yeah, so to me like linear design is a critical part of the game that should be there, right Because it does provide a roadmap. It does provide inspiration. It does provide cool stuff Like look when I started playing magic Back in the 90s one of the first things I had was a white mini deck Right. Yeah, you did Because it was awesome because you'd have like tundra wolves and and you know white knights and jihad crusade. Yeah, exactly And you'd buff them all up and suddenly you're pikemen because I mean at that time there wasn't a lot of really great options So like I was using using pikemen, right?  Like There it is, right So, uh, never used savannah lions ever in my in that deck because savannah lions did not have first strike and first strike is how you win Or how you well, yeah, you won at my tables in 1994 So, uh, and how I still win an arena what we need for a baby. Yeah first strike is good. Anyways, um So, uh the Uh So the point is like it's it grabs people right like the reason that that that deck and goblins and Slivers and all of those tribal decks were so compelling that they would build whole sets around that stuff Right in magic the reason that people do like those skill trees in mmo's, right? Like it does grab us Right, there's something to indicate something about right. Yeah about the identity of those things, right? Yes. Yes And so like There's a reason to have it in your book. The problem is it can go too far Right where it starts designing your entire list for you Where it starts reducing your creativity where it starts making it impossible to point things correctly Outside of like their optimal build because it will then reduce the number of viable builds down to only those particular exact things Right, right So and arguably this is what we have with ko Um, like I would argue that a lot of what happened with zilfin at least early on in ko's history Was this sure So obviously there's a lot more diversity in a lot of lists now But um Previously like there wasn't and part of the reason was because of how design worked, right? Yep, so let's talk about the opposite of that if that's the headache then how do we get the cure How do you what's what's the how do you cure the hangover of too much linear design? That is modular design, right? And Modular design is the opposite of it Modular design says this thing is interesting in and of itself right Yep, and it Has function and value Without needing any synergies or linear pushes Into any other place because it is functional on its own. It fills a role. Well Does a thing well, right and and it has a home in there Okay right and uh And this Yeah, as you're saying and this is actually something I think age of sigmar doesn't do enough of That's what I'll say. I think we have too much linear design and not enough modular design It was actually hard for me to find a bunch of good examples of modular design Like I found these two But as I was thinking about this of what I wanted to pick I made a list first Before I got these two and it wasn't a big list right Because ultimately this is a game built on synergy And that's why when you've got gloom spike gets that have to play like synergy bingo In really bad ways, right when you've got books like slanesh that just have no synergies like they forgot to write them Right. Yep. Yep. It's it suddenly becomes challenging Right because other people are over here like I've got 52 synergies to make my 100 point unit kill 500 point units and you're like I don't I've just got a hundred point unit, man Oh my god doc doc. Yes. Yeah, absolutely Doc doc goose Uh, yeah, so my two examples of great modular design are bellicor and the light of al-tharian Tom, why is modular design good? Modular design is good because what it says is that um, you can uh Like on one hand you can play what you like right sure because every because everything stands on its own Yep, everything like everything is is is worth Um taking of its own merit and of its own right And so it doesn't need to stand on the shoulders of some other ability or unit or battalion in order to actually function um And so it is often an independent piece kind of of itself Um or or it has like some some minor dependencies, right? Um, so like when we talk about like power pairs power pairs are an example. Yeah Yep Yeah, exactly that what's I agree with that. I would also say what's good about it is it encourages discovery Yeah, because yeah, you're absolutely right It allows for kind of this sort of you can slot it in anywhere you want You can build your list in a lot of ways you want But it also encourages these unique discoveries of actual interactions more in play Than in rules if that makes sense like oh This model is good to pin the unit with while I then hit it with my hammer Until until I'm ready to hammer a great example of this by the way is uh daughters of kane um Sisters of slaughter Sure As a as a chaffing unit like it wasn't until we played teams And I watched you chaff for me. Yeah. Yeah, sure that you saw the power Right because like I wasn't gonna like I was like, I'm not gonna invest points in those.  Well, I'll charge and then I'll pile in behind And okay now I've opened up the lane for you to charge right exactly Um, and so if there's nothing on the On those sheets that say hey, these two work well together Yeah and so, uh, somebody said please explain power pairs power pairs are like Soft linear design where like they work as a modular group, but there's no broader like great direction So you've got like, um So uh cities of sigmar, I'll do I'll do an easy power pair cities of sigmar the rune priest in cities of sigmar Um, or the rune lord has an ability that increases. He has a prayer that increases rune by one Right on another dwarf a do-or-do unit. All right the dispossessed unit. Sorry. Um, and so you pair him with like a unit of iron drakes To make them rend neg two and so like when you set them up on the table, you'll set the priest next to that um That unit of iron drakes and they're basically going to travel together the entire game, right? They won't almost ever operate independently Like they're two independent units, but you're going to keep them together because there's synergy that's going on between them Right, but notably that isn't nothing about that was directly linear other than the dispossessed inclusion I've also seen people use those with things like hammers, right to make a really potent melee unit, right or even like Uh, you know iron breakers to actually make like an anvil that can hit back and do some damage Right, like the point is it's versatile there. It didn't say like nowhere on the rune lord Does it say combine with iron drakes for plus one rent? So they're shooting, right? Right? So and they themselves are a nice little modular package You can slot in, you know, like 500 points you can just slot in to like any city's army Right, that's why that that little pair shows up in like everything from living city to tempest I to to Insert here Right had queens and witch elves are another great power pair um the I one of my favorites in ko is um Blanket on their their name Like your skywardens like shooty skywardens. Yeah with a chemist with a chemist And so so you're like getting re-rolls on this super shooty unit and they just kind of run together and they travel around the table right right, so Yeah, a good example of this of like a power pair Failing to function would be like oh what I'd really want is the re-rolls to hit from my lord of pain on my slick blade seekers In slanesh, right? Well, unfortunately, the lord of pain has a move of like not very fast and the slick blade seekers have a move of a million So, you know, that's a challenge, right? so but so uh, so power pairs are are They're they are a shorthand way that vince and I like to talk about Uh unit divisions um, yes, uh, like hearthgar berserker and like the hero that's going to run with them for example um That like those are what we consider power pairs and they're a great Like they can be independent, but there's often soft inclusions that are going on there. Yeah, exactly Modular design. Yes skates at source or as plus bleak swords. Yeah, 100 right? All right. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep like modular design, uh What the the nice part about it is it's Because it's this softer set of incentives it usually ends up So it allows people to express their creativity a lot more to be more like Uh to build their list the way they want to use the units they want to use And to have interesting one-offs where they're not like where they feel like they're playing a smoother game Because it's easier to have one unit kind of just doing whatever it needs to do or maybe a unit in a hero Rather than like my entire army must operate in this linear death star right and move around in this sequencing of like Seven different aura buffs that it's trying to ping off on each other. Right like night like night haunt. Sure. Sure And you know bellicor and light of al-tharian are two Interesting examples to me because you know bellicor is everybody's best friend Right. He's like the he just shows up in any army right now Right now. This is this is going to change real soon. I suspect by the way, right? Yes, he's he's not going to be this like Extra utility guy but like a main guy Yeah, um They but like right now he just shows up. He has this, you know, he has a good spell He does good stuff. He's a double caster and of course he has this hugely potent game altering ability called dark master Right, but he doesn't synergize with anybody. No, he also doesn't synergize Yeah, and so this is why he's not this is why this is not necessarily linear design Because he doesn't like link up with anything, right? He doesn't point you to anything, right? He is an independent unit that does his own thing, right? He is worthwhile independent of no matter what else you're running. What else you're playing Um, and light are the al-tharians the same way right that dude is a baller Of his own right. Yeah, he doesn't really need anybody else not much stuff interacts with him. He just kind of runs around And and and has a good time, right? And by the way dose screen Yes, I do agree with you like when we were talking about power pairs We were saying they're kind of the bridge between linear and modular, right? Where you've got two units kind of acting in a modular sense How linear they are often depends on how like those little synergistic things happen to be structured Right, they but they tend to be the bridge Um Yeah, so that's all we were saying. Yes, they're kind of the middle ground Sometimes it can be very soft and you've got two very modular things that just happen to fit well together Sometimes they can be quite hard depends on the arm or the scroll So The point is is that like this is the thing I feel like we need, you know more of and to me Like what when you look at when you sum all of this up, right? The books that stand out, okay, we're gonna go back to my my image here The books that stand out to me as like the highest quality design So like cities slaves, oryx, seraphon, right? Yep Um, they use all of the tools in the toolbox that we've talked about Right, right Straightforward rules easy to read Some use of linear maybe too much linear in some case I think seraphon might be a little too much linear design, but you know, we can have that discussion Like maybe it should come down a little because it's not you know Because it's it is maybe like I could argue with myself in my own placements, but it's fine right Yeah, I mean, I would say that they're like so and when we when we're doing design work One of the things that you always like to the the drum you like to beat is designing at a 45 degree angle. Correct. Yes um And what that means for those of you that don't know is that you at every decision point You want the player or you want to incentivize then to both be looking like forward And upward right okay in a sense like so you want them to say For them to have a real decision to make of do I do more linear? Building on what I'm doing or is it advantageous for me to go non-linear? Yes Correct and and at every step of that ladder So at the first decision point second decision point fourth decision point 10th decision point Ideally they need to look at it and go is it more advantageous for me to go Uh more linear or less linear at this stage and there'll always to be a real decision to be made right right exactly Yeah, I you're absolutely right like my that is sort of my mantra right design at the 45 degree angle linear Is a line that stretches out before you at zero degrees leading you down a path Modular is just a stick straight up in the air It's it's the point you're standing at with no direction it offers you right Where you want to be at is the 45 degree angle where it's constantly pulling you equally in both directions Right and there's real decisions to be made at each step Right and so and what I would argue is is when you get into those books that are the the best design What you find is that whenever decisions are being made by those armies, they're always pulling you in both directions absolutely, and I think cities and slaves are like Absolutely the perfect examples of this right because when you look at something like cabalists Cabalists however you want to say it right Yeah, it incentivizes some casters Yeah, that's linear that's that's pushing you in a weekly linear way right okay? I want some wizards in here to take advantage of this But your army isn't made up of wizards right no, it's not and So it gives you like a little bit of direction He's okay and like what I found in I've played cabalists quite a lot and I'm like I tend to have about three wizards And if you skew into wizards, it's not going to be very good right it tends to be the worst choice right so like Maybe like five six hundred points of my army is wizards right Yep, and Maybe I take an endless spell maybe not And Then from there, I I'm free to sort of slot in what I want Right like I have an incentive that I've built on And now it's like okay. What do I want to play from here?  Yeah. Yeah And and make the list what I want it to be right Same thing with most of that stuff in there by the way like to spoilers the same thing like yeah You should probably have a demon prince leading it and It's like right you should have a demon prince and probably bellicorp because he also triggers all that demon prince Right and he's a great independent actor right and that's enough. That's enough. You're done And by the way, I've brought plenty of these spoilers list without bellicor and I'm like yeah, okay Right. There you go. Right. Yep And You know cities is the same way by the way when you look at those cities like they kind of they give you all these soft incentives For like this is kind of how the city plays Right, but most of them take a pretty weak hand, you know, you look at Living City and it's like, uh It's it's Ambush stuff and I've seen everybody talking about ambushing from everything from like steam tanks to sylvaneth to uh massive units of iron drakes to like Lumen arcs Right. I mean, it's just like Wide open man You know, what are you doing? Because you just you like have a shooting attack is basically the the you must be this tall to ride this ride Right So, uh, it's it like they both do such a fantastic job Of being in that space Right. Yep. And I think that a lot of the other books in that high in that sweet spot of the the golden square Uh, also like do that to some degree or another right? So, uh, Andrew asked do linked heroes such as iron scales with snakes make things too linear? Um, i'm gonna jump in and say I don't think so As long as all the rest of the book doesn't point you down the snakes route, right, right? Yeah The key with linear is it's like and this is where you know, like this is where doc can run into some problems Is it's like, okay? Here's your snake thing snake snake snake snake snake snake snake do all snakes You know now Doc has a really high internal parity. So it's pulling you in a lot of different directions Right, but it does put you like on a set of rails a little harder than than probably you should If it was like just the malusite. No, but it's like the malusite plus santharchi plus wipe here at guard Right and so, so let's let's do an exercise. I think that this is perfect Ben So let's look at This is gonna be great. I'm ready. Let's look at one of the sub factions. Okay Craig. Yeah Okay, so craith's hallmark ability Do you remember what craith's hallmark ability is after at the end of combat after all of your after all units have fought Roll a dice for each unit of craith sisters of slaughter that have fought this round on a five plus. They may fight again Okay This is a perfect example of linear design Because what craith says is that if you are playing any other unit That is not sisters of slaughter In combat. That is a subpar choice. Right. You don't get this ability Yeah, if you are playing anything with sisters of slaughter This is ipsum lorem decks. Right. Yes. Okay. And so what you're incentivized the way they have written Uh craith is to say only play sisters of slaughter in craith. Yep And they have not created any incentive structure to play non sisters of slaughter in craith So an example of like 45 degree design here would have been to do something like this At the end of combat if a unit Has fought roll a dice um On a six plus that unit fights again If the unit has the sisters of slaughter keyword add plus one to the roll There you go. Sure. Yep. Sure. So what it does is it does this it says this is the sub faction of sisters of slaughter Right because they are extra effective in this faction But you're allowed to play other things and still get the benefits. Right Um, and the problem is is that that's but that's not what they wrote They wrote something that says only play sisters of slaughter if you have witch elves go take a hike. Right Right look elsewhere Sorry joke 280 witch elves craith player ouch um And I think that is like, you know So one of the things doh said is linear design is almost described as exponential increase in power when you push it in a single direction I think it can be and that's where I was pointing at like the balance problem Right like at its worst at the darkest timeline of linear design is all your builds are made for you The book becomes boring and everything is basically whacked as far as power goes because it's either in its exact home And firing at like mega efficacy and needs to be like so drastically over pointed because it assumes all the buffs Right or it's useless Right, right. Like that's it. That's linear design at its worst Right, right And so is it it pre it premakes all the decisions for you Yeah, right Exactly Okay, cool. So I like I What else haven't we touched on tom? I mean, this is everything that I sort of teed up to cover uh Like did we miss anything in our design language discussion? Bottom up top down linear modular what easy to read mean what inspiration means all this kind of stuff Hopefully question out there for the people in the chat. Did this all make sense? Was this interesting? Do you agree with me that like design quality is actually a thing? That's like if I can get a yes on that I'm going to feel like this is all success Because that's really been the thing I want to give people this language So when you see something on the internet like sunmetal and it rubs you the wrong way those sword masters like it did me right That we don't immediately devolve like I saw people posting damage Readouts from what sunmetal weapons do like you even know anything about what they're capable of With synergies buffs and other stuff that could happen even remotely but like That's so not the point. I don't care what damage they do Right Yeah, like so let's return back to um The sword masters As a as like a wrap up So the challenge with sword masters as they're currently written Is that it presents you with two bad decisions as a player? Because when I go to hit I can choose to do one of two things either I Take away interactivity Yep, okay, because what I'm going to do is I'm going to auto hit Right So all of your penalties to hit all your defenses that you've built your list around I'm I'm going to ignore so either I ignore interactivity Or I now decide that I'm going to Do my area attacks and have to count every one of my 10 models in the unit Two inches out and figure out how 50 60 70 attacks how many attacks these 10 models are going to get against this unit Ye