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 is my co-host who's been having a rough time with his Nurgle. It's Tyler. What's up, buddy? How you doing? Yeah, I've spent a lot of time in the last couple of weeks whinging to both of you privately, so yeah I appreciate the emotional support during this prime time. Thank you The important part is to celebrate how right I was That's what really matters is for me to publicly state back when I said Nurgle was gonna be in trouble and everybody thought I was crazy But I want to celebrate this because it's an important milestone of me once again being right and Others people are wrong. So thank you. I still think the rules may have been rigged there Pop is possibly some insider baseball That was no inside baseball. That was just not other than the power of my brain And any rate joking aside also joining us back on the show David. What's up, buddy? It's good to have you back Thank you. Good to be back Tonight we are going to be discussing Overused rules those rules that are getting used just a little bit too much and why it matters and what it means for the game And how we think it should change Perhaps as we move and get ready like now's the time to start talking about 4.0 Tyler You know that right because Like now is when they're gonna start planning out the 4.0 Books like right now in the studio. Those are those are in the planning stages, right? So I say we get it on the ground floor today. So GW designers. This one's for you. Listen up. This is free now This is just a service. You're welcome to use all of this To make the 4.0 books even better for the for the next go around but before we discuss those overuse rules, of course the news what we got a A 40k rimmer engine. Yep. Yes, and next it's some We had a couple war schools come out war cry that is these are war war bands, correct?  Talk about it? Guys a little bit. What do you think? Yes? So I'm always excited about Thunderstrike because I've been trying to very slowly make a necron cast Thunderstrike army and I've had a big problem with like, okay So annihilators are like nothing on objectives. So how am I gonna do anything with that and then they come along? Hey, here's some Thunderstrike which count is 18 models on the objective by which Six models three wounds apiece three up save and they've got the I count as three models on objectives Rule on their war scroll that was nifty and I also play Sylvanas some people may know Sylvanas has a similar Oh my god, how do I control objectives problem? But now they give me this lifty little thing which I can teleport just just 18 wounds on It's got to be an objective I think outside my territory and the enemy story you gotta be aggressive with it But I still is like, okay. I have two pain points for two different armies. This is meaning bitch That's why I'm happy that and my wife plays war cry so I can go and buy this and get my toys and She'll let me do it. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.   I mean, yes, exactly. As you said, they count as three on a objective. They're 250 points Yes, that is right 250 points. They are single. You can't double up on these And you know, so you're paying 250 points for 18 wounds that triple counts on objectives. Okay Cool seems fine enough. I don't know that I have Struggling to put that in or racing to put that in but you're right I think it does have an interesting role mobility can often be a problem. It's after you drop good With up to 19 attacks at threes and threes minus one two damage. That's pretty good At a full size. I think these are great like that to me is an attractive point price great allies as David said I would happily look to put these in my list They provide a number of potential utility roles, you know in the in the game. So yeah, I think it's great unit Yep. Yeah, so good stuff like it good not I'm like I'd maybe like it a little more I like 240 or 230 So it's a bit like stormcast isn't exactly their armor save isn't worth as much anymore is what I'll say And we'll we'll talk about that later in the show. That's a that's just a teaser for later in the show there But we also got the royal beast flares Now these guys are 10 for 115. They have one wound each But that's a lie Because three models in the unit have more wounds two of them being the dogs that have two wounds each and one of Them being the royal guy who's in the picture who has three wounds. So actually Actually, you're getting 14 wounds for 150 points, but it is on a five up save So talk to me about about these guys David. What do you like about these boys? so Prior to a little bit of an Austrian conversation They freaked me out a little bit because I was thinking when you get two of these units for 115 points 230 points for like gosh, what is that 28 wounds and then they can be reinforced. Yes Yep, exactly And then they have those unique attack profiles on the flamaster and on the dogs which give you a total of I think 16 swings hitting on Number better than five so fours and threes Winding on threes with random multi-damage. So I was like so here. It's got like It's got an elite attack profile on like goblin pointed stuff But then rightly pointed out David. It's in flesh eater courts. It doesn't matter, right?  The standard the the battled force four is no rend one damage or as we call it the AOS launch profile And you know, that's fine, but yes, it's in flesh eater courts. I'm not sure this is really doing anything that they were specifically Needing like it's more relatively High-attacking glass-cannony type guys That die pretty easy in flesh eater courts, but it continues their trajectory of units that do good damage While also being very easy to kill so the trading game with flesh eaters continues and like they are basically the last book that we don't know is coming right because obviously we know cities is coming in the in the here very soon and Then there's that other what that other mystery battle tome near the end of the year. What could it be? Why didn't they just say flesh eater courts? What were they obviously slaves to darkness? Obviously again. Yeah, exactly. It's clearly another lumineath book So that's cool. Um, they are surfs. Yes, and for also for all the things that'll interact with accordingly Which is fun. So yeah, these guys are good. I also have to mess up monsters ability They reduce monster damage if they're close to it. Yeah, they are Yeah, absolutely, right their actual abilities when it comes to other than the attacks are enemy monsters Can't carry out monsters rampages while they're within three inches and reduce their damage by one to a minimum of one So some damage reduction yet another thing We'll be talking about more in detail later in the show.  It's funny because this is going to end up being an interesting example of how Rules when used in certain ways aren't problematic But when used in other ways are like this is such a perfect counterpoint to things We're gonna talk about later on like I I I love that they released this today After the slide that I put together on this subject. It is so perfectly exemplifying What we're gonna talk about later. I couldn't have planned it better so fantastic Okay, great, and then yeah, they can also go faster if they have their dogs with them and there are monsters around so, okay cool fun Yeah, just a quick little quick note on TMX don't forget June 3rd and 4th. I think all of my classes are sold out But I know but there might be still a couple slots But either way Sam and John and I will just be hanging out over the weekend painting and stuff We're also launching our new game the next game from snarling Badger Studios comes out at TMX So if you can find your way up to Oshkosh, Wisconsin on June 3rd and 4th for TMX The link will be down in the description for that. So go check it out We'd love to see you there. It's gonna be a real fun time Okay, with that gentlemen, let's transition over to some pick of the week David what would you like to share with everybody? Gosh, I don't have a link for it. Maybe you do but Sword and Steel recently did a really great video two of them but the one from this week's what I'm talking about on how to put together the slam which Might not be relevant to a lot of people But when I was assembling the war song Revenant my first one for the first time I missed a little detail for how something clicked in place And I had to green stuff a whole bunch of the model to fix it and I was like well shoot I wish someone had put this together before I did and Sland similarly has some gotchas in it where if you don't know they're coming and you're new at modeling It could really get you so I liked that you put that together. Yeah, absolutely. It was in general some It's a good video helpful things like that for instructions are always good So Check it out. It is in fact linked down below Tyler. What do you want to share with everybody? Yeah, Eric asked in the comments fence if we're going to discuss power creep I think we will in some ways potentially tonight. We've been having some Yeah, in the background at least sure. I'm not talking. Yeah part of the issue is I don't really believe in power creep So we'll talk about it like I don't think power is actually a thing. I think it's that said that's a Figment it's a mirage That would be interesting to discuss some more detail. So the storm keep fellas They put together a two-and-a-half hour discussion on this topic and I thought they did a good job with that went into a lot of detail Giving a number of different examples. Some of them certainly resonate with my recent struggles against the now big six Six of these eight battle tombs in particular that have shot their way into the top of the meta already Was soul-blind in particular at the top of the heap right now. So, yeah I definitely have you know, I kicked off a threads last week You guys may have seen kind of laying out some concerns with where we are I need to do a follow-up to actually get into some some specifics I wanted to just hear what other people thought before, you know, waiting it too much with my own opinions So that's been fascinating to see seems like I'm not I don't know. It's it's you know mix fillings on it Right. I'm not the only one that's filling this. Yeah, but definitely some mixed feelings about it out there right now So anyway, yeah, good discussion. I'd recommend it. Awesome fantastic Ben see yes, Eric did know who he was interviewing. Yes, and it was a very funny joke. So that was that was all a good time Now my My pick of the week is going to be For our good buddy, Ninjon Who's who put together a video now? It's on a 40k model to tear in it But tier nids are organic things. It's a fairly easy thing to translate over into other projects and it was about basically Making your own color scheme and how to establish it quickly and how to go about sort of defining The color for a new army and color palette and paints and stuff like that And I just thought I did a really good job putting it together and showing how you can just like punch it up And do some interesting things and kind of react as you're going so Go check it out. It's the links down below shout-outs to ninjon who always is making very funny great videos. Um, so yeah, there you go Cody, where can we read Tyler's thread? I believe you you did a you did a thread on Twitter at least a couple times, right? Yeah, yeah Yeah, yeah, that's Rubian Wells Yeah, one be one be coach. Not two bees. Yes To continue there we go. Okay, so be scooby-scrooby then a scrooby. Yeah I'm amazed at how many people yeah to go. It's not just coach, but go scrooby. Yeah Jack scrubby and HG Wells. Yes, if you're gonna pick a couple of Founders of modern wargaming with the miniature toy soldiers that we all know and love You'd be hard-pressed to pick two better people than those two Obviously HG Wells with little wars and Jack scrubby with his work in the 50s on Essentially what created modern wargaming Obviously games games workshop had a particular fellow involved early on that maybe would would be worth a shout-out But anyway, yeah fascinating history with Toy Soldiers. Yeah, yeah Richard yeah. Oh good. I'm sorry. I say I had no idea HG Wells did that I knew who is a science fiction writer or is it a different HG Wells? Nope. Same guy Only that's a little miniature wargaming. Yes, he was little wars he wrote his own own rules up Richard Reed said hey Vince any chance you're going out to Dragonfall this fall unlikely It's the thing I've always wanted to go to but it's unlikely because it's always on the same weekend as a tournament I'm already committed to and that just keeps happening every year and so I End up being actually not that far away from where it is because where I go is Chicago and it's just up over the border in Wisconsin Life is funny sometimes how it how it works. All right, let's do some hobby time Tyler what are you been working on you paint up a new army you fed up enough with Yeah, definitely experiencing the new model, you know syndrome new painted model syndrome Apparently that is a thing at least based on my one data point so far. Sure. Yeah, yeah, I Well as David, no, I have been hyped about doing a second round of Nurgle And I'm gonna have to get some more emotional support to get there not really feeling it at the moment So think I need to figure out how to paint some stormcast. Well, I'm looking at a pure Thunderstrike army I have some stuff to be helpful for that. Okay. Okay So yeah, I got a got a color scheme in mind. And so yeah, Vince might be hitting you up for some advice Wanna one a few things but anyway, yeah, very nice. I've been I've been getting my buck kicked a lot. Have I mentioned that? That's in my hobby over the last few weeks Yes David what about you? What do you what you've been working on? Yeah, so I forgot the mini so I took I had pictures of the mini So I I did I did this thing. Oh wrong side. Those you can't see them very well are Chosen of zeech for my slaves of darkness army. I'm working on I did head swaps for Xanagoras to get them skull faces which I kind of liked and Just is is they were inspired by you Shakti. Sure Shakti and This is all done by basically combining instead of using grazed metallics. He slapped shop and Then you use a like I used a gold on some parts And then the rest of it's just contrast washes nice and it took like an hour to paint this See you love to see it. It's fantastic. Yes. Yeah, no, I'm super happy because I have no time for painting right now Cuz my newborn Yes, you mentioned that that's that that will chew into hobby time. I've come to understand This is why I've This is why I I stay away from from children of all kinds Can't I can't I can't afford anything cutting into my hobby time too much too much productivity requirements on my time But congratulations to you somebody's got to keep the human race going so I'm I'm I'm happy to hear it for myself I finished up this girl Right here. She was a lot of fun to work on so this is northern wind by Big child and I think she came out really nicely so there's gonna be a little bit of a video on her and stuff and This was I think one of the better pieces I've ever done So that was fun and it was just a lot of experimentation and color and different work And I was very happy with how it all worked out. So there you go a lot of fun there Finish her up and now we're on to to newer stuff And the thing I'm currently working on I can't talk about So there we go But hey, we're back to that again. It was inevitable that it would happen eventually, but don't worry. I won't last forever. All right So With that gentlemen You ready to just move quickly into this and talk about the topic tonight Overused rules Okay, let's get amongst it. Let me bring up here Whoop there we go.  This is going to be a discussion By the way, as we're talking through this feel free to comment yourself on what you think as always I want to see the audience Ring in on this on you know sort of what you all think about the What you all think about the nature of the rules and stuff like that so, okay Let's get into a little overview So I'm gonna adjust that just slightly there we go. Okay So let's I want to start with some some just basics I want to lay down some some terms some thoughts just to get us all on the same page because I feel like this kind of Groundwork is important when we're when we're gonna discuss something like this Because I don't just want to sit here and yell at the screen going like boo this rule boo Boo, you know, that's we we'd like to give a little more thoughtful analysis than that So Age of Sigmar is an exception-based game There is a set of core rules Individual battle tomes war scrolls, whatever the game elements create exceptions to those rules No issue That's how many many many games are designed not all games are exception-based games But this is a very popular format D&D is an exception-based game magic the gathering is an exception-based game All of these things work like that. There's a set of core rules. It says you can only do X And then after you do X you must do Y Right, and then some individual war scroll comes in or game element and says, ah, ha ha, but I can do X twice Or I can do X and then I don't have to do why right or I can do X and then I do Z or whatever That's that's all we do okay, and So most exception-based rule sets have some kind of third rail set of rules in other words There's something so core To the game itself that if you touch it if you allow something to be an exception to it The game will go off the rails almost instantaneously and fall apart okay, so These are oftentimes a little tough to identify But effectively one of them that's very easy to identify in Warhammer is something like setting up in combat Right That is a classic third rail Speaking my love language right off the bat here You're immediately triggered something that starts with an M So we've all come to enjoy lately. Maybe maybe something to do with murdering. Okay. I like I like where you're going Yes, there's a little different because they move into combat without charging Yes, but things like where you can just teleport into combat or be set up in combat It has like an extreme amount of power and should generally be avoided now. We have broken that rule recently It's not as though if you that's the thing I should say about this It's not as though if you instantly touch it the game instantly just dies. It's not it's not like that. Okay It's not some fragile flower like that. It's just Those third rails are really important because once you start touching them a little too much They cause serious damage to the overall health of the game Some rules are great example of that. Yeah, good good for anyone For people who used to play D&D way back when I was in college D&D 3.5 all by Pathfinder first edition at both great examples of Yeah, the first three or four times you let them switch something to a move action or a standard action a swift action It didn't break the game But after about two years of doing that the game was virtually unplayable, right exactly. Yes Action economy in D&D is a great example land sort of Dropped kind of things like it can often be one of the rails in magic Although that's broken all over the place, but in usually expensive ways or complicated ways or stuff like that All spells Yeah, like certain spells that are gonna they're gonna sacrifice extreme amounts of tempo right where you where you can things like that But each any of these games have their own third rails And again, some rules are meant to be bent others can be broken. So but they're important to be aware of because all of the games rules are sort of on this archery target of like perfectly fine to mess with no issue at all Right mess within reasonable amounts, and you'll be okay. Be careful. You shouldn't mess with this very often You should only mess with this in like extremely minimal amounts in very specific careful ways, right? That's the sort of shrinking archery target. I want to set in everybody's mind here, right? Like if we if every unit in the game just started getting plus one to hit it's clearly not a problem. Nothing breaks It's fine Units do slightly more damage. We know that's okay because all our attack is a thing and the game didn't break It's fine. Everybody has a good time. We all like plus one to hit. There's things to give neg one to hit as well It just counters out. It has a natural balance on the other side. It's out there in the outer ring, right?  That's a great example of where like Of a rule that you can just go wild with exceptions, right? Okay, do you think minus one to hit minus one to win sure should be firmly part of that as well I think they are.  They're they're they're kind of sucky sometimes, but they're definitely part of that You know what I mean? Like yeah, sure. It's manipulation of those kinds of roles on hit and wound by one in one direction, right are Absolutely just a completely fair territory to play around and when you're when you're creating these exceptions Right because there are so many of them. They all naturally ecosystem themselves out Right it would the only place it would get really dangerous is if you did like all of one and almost none of the other Yeah, right if we had 20 battle tomes that had could easily cause an egg one to wound and for That could do plus one to wound or something like that. Then we might have a bit of a mismatch, right? So, okay Okay, so So there you go, um and here but here's why they're really important, okay? in all of these Cases what exceptions are used in all of these games Exceptions are used to create identity Whether it's the class and what it can do in D&D or the color identity in magic or the army identity in Warhammer right The a battle tone defines itself through the way it breaks the core rules Do you go faster? Do you hit harder? Do you regen? Do you summon? Do you you know, do you have a bunch of ward saves and hence mitigate damage in a in a better way, right? Like all of these things are the exceptions that that create the identity of your your army And I've long lambasted a Games workshop for not having color identity effectively. So like in magic. They're sort of like this rough Color identity to each like to red white to to wooburg, okay? like If you have some effect doing something there's there's a natural home for that thing to exist Yeah, I give you're gonna bring stuff back from the graveyard. That's either gonna be like generally a Green effect or a black effect, but then it can be a white effect in very specific cases Right, so you can spread out some But it has very specific ways it gets used, right? So on and so forth What's the flow chart? Is it like these? Like this I don't know magic obviously primary secondary tertiary is the simplest so you think of it Yeah, like what's the equivalent of okay? This is a blue army or this is a blue red army Yeah, is there like a flow chart that okay? Yeah, you can you can look like color identity rule sets and see kind of what falls in each space and what? Bleeds lines in between multiple colors and why yeah, absolutely And so that helps keep things in check where it's like you don't have too much of any of Black white if that's a thing or blue red or whatever because you need to go into these other like every every of the different Colors of the color pie have their own identity and their own things They're good at and things. They're not good at natural sort of Achilles heels, but because it is somewhat spread out It's not as though it lived they like at the same time you can go too far and have it like really locked into one space And then that becomes a problem unless it's a rarefied rule Does that make sense one thing? one thing which makes it interesting in magic is that because you Things have costs the costs are so so with the color right can soup together different things So red's really aggressive and black has a lot of destructive negative play experience So you can make something which is really aggressive and has destructive negative play experience by diversifying your economy unless it looked like you had a you had a Counterpoint to that been no I was I was agreeing like if you put it together and make red black You get the combination of those two things right you can use both of those Together when you do that and this is why I've always called for something to be a gold army in this game But at any rate yeah, I agree completely you can they have that ability to start melding Yeah, so my thesis would be that it's it's tricky in age of Sigmar I mean, I think there's a level where you could do it like order and destruction and death all correct You would just do it at the Grand Alliance level. Yeah, exactly, but because you can't soup Destruction into order or I can't soup seraphana to Sylvanas or at least if I can it's very limited currently I can because the ally system How much you can define along a color code wheel would end up being more limited than say in magic I would think yeah Certainly that's it's an absolutely great point like it's not as though. I'm just building a mono red deck every time I build right I can build red blue or red blue white or all five colors You know I can go ham as long as I've got the money to throw it on for the mana base for it, right? but what it does do is is it exactly what Eric said which is it stakes out a design space or a flavor of gameplay and There can be different levels to this like certain rules can can sort of what I mean by that is think of the rarity of the rule I don't mean what's printed on like the card in magic of how rare it is I mean like how what level should this exist at how common this should this be right and This is it's exactly matching to what I was talking about with the targets early like plus one to hit No one needs to own that Everybody can have that Right like that's a thing everybody can just do that that doesn't need to be owned by any particular thing right, but Regenning models that you lost that are dead Should be like probably wholly owned by one Grand Alliance and maybe minorly explored by a second one or something like that And to some degree they've played in this space a little because they do so much top-down design So where there is an alignment like death right now kind of does own mostly the most of the model region With it only being a secondary thing amongst others until we started rallying on a four up everywhere And then everybody got super regen right here. Sure But but I've always thought I've often thought they could lock that in better like and and so Regardless of whether or not they did that these exceptions are important Because the way that these rules are written especially the ones we're gonna talk about today When they get overused it dilutes the identity of the army Right. Here's your special thing. This is what forms your army, right? And what makes your army special or what makes your army part of your army's Grand Alliance or something like that, right? Part of a family of armies like you can do this and so can like you so blight do this But so do you night haunt or so and so do you will be our whatever fine? Okay, cool. Got it all the death people do this thing and then all of a sudden the new ogre book comes out And the ogres have stolen all of that now I did that as a joke because as we all know the ogres never get to steal from anyone They only get robbed from But nonetheless, that's what I mean, right when something it's like whoa, whoa, what they they came in and robbed our stuff We're what we had that made us special isn't special anymore. Yeah, that makes sense Absolutely, I'm curious to what degree you're feeling this obviously in particular with these recent Eight battle tomes of the last 90 days the usual recency bias, etc Qualifications, but I thought Darren Watson and reply to my thread last week put it well where he sent me a Everything what what's the name of that movie everything everywhere all at once? Yeah, I've been getting it like you know the Darren I've been getting that feeling certainly a lot more with these more recent battle tomes than I had in the prior 18 months with those battle tomes But I could be off on that But it's just when I look at the Gitz book I see a whole lot of mechanics in that book look OBR a whole lot of mechanics with an OBR and I don't know just something that stood out to me personally. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely and Red million totally they would be John. Yes a hundred percent. They're John like they're so obviously John. Yes. Yes.  That's it sort of color identity So like it very much fits ogres and stuff like that. There are many like yeah, it's a very good fit It'd be that'd be a fun show sometime to like map the the armies onto their their Magic color names because all the combinations have names basically now Yeah, and this current year of our lord 2023 okay Anyways, so that's why it matters. Okay So the details here matter like how the rules are used matters, right? When we try to define is this a problem or not It's about how the rules are used How often is the rule broken? How available is the exception? Right in other words, how prevalent is it? How powerful is the exception? How much is the exception part of an army's potential identity versus a vanilla rule and how much does this lead to strong rock paper scissors? All right, yeah, these are my criteria David, what do you think of my criteria here as for evaluative? Measures of what we're gonna talk about. I think it's great I just have a yes and to add to that please Which is on the availability you can look at it from the perspective of how common is the rule there and a lot of rules If they're there the army just has access to them, but there is there are rules that you're hitting behind attacks You only get this if you take this sub faction with this artifact or this character And I think some things superficially in some army books Knight Hunts a great example of the cruel guest It's available has a reasonable tax to get to it Whereas in Sylvanas no retreat is available. The tax is so high. No one ever takes that so I think That can push around the needle on availability in either a healthy or an unhealthy way Many of these things that we're gonna talk about I'm gonna say yes if it has a tax it doesn't have a tax Got it. That's great. What's the cost? What's the cost of obtaining this thing? Yeah, that's a that is an excellent addition that I should have absolutely included on this list 100% And how much all that and how much does it cost to get at the thing? You're absolutely right You know if it's like the most powerful exception in the world This model has a hundred attacks that do a hundred damage that don't allow armor reward saves Okay, and it moves 30 inches and can run in charge and charges 5d6 and Gets an extra attack for every unit within 37 inches of it, you know just whatever the nonsense thing you can construct is right But the model cost 2,500 points. It's like, okay. Well, who cares it's trash It's unusable literally unusable right and in a standard game Probably even in a 3,000 white game or something. You can construe that however you want, right? But you get what I'm saying. Yes. So the cost matters. Absolutely Okay, I'll just ask you this top because I don't want to lose it at what point Do you have a point in time in mind to hit the power creep discussion? Through this. Yeah, we can talk about it right now at the beginning. So why like this perfectly fine time Okay, why why not Why am I not simply calling this power creep like these overused rules, right? Because one could look at this and say this power creep because I don't think good Well, I was gonna say let me just qualify at least from my standpoint and for example that video that I referenced and Hearing from a number of others again. There are disagreements There are Multiple points at which I am feeling this that we generally often refer locally as power creep I'm feeling this from the points point of view I feel that we have had a lot more sloppiness and point value placement, you know point value choices in the last with these battle tomes in the last 90 days One in particular point of consistency has been on the point pricing of heroes now It could be perfectly fine as David you and I have discussed to Point heroes at what I think is this new baseline of point values for heroes That's been established especially for small heroes. Nine moons or less If everyone gets suggested to that baseline But of course when I look at the original two battle tomes Which of course are the two armies that I happen to play so I might be feeling this even more So, you know personally yeah storm cast and nergal the first two battle tomes I compare the point prices and there's just often no comparison at what we've been seeing of late in my mind So there's that But there are a number of of elements when it comes to point values. That's one piece There are other pieces anyway, just to give a little context like it's not just one Strand at least in my mind and what I'm feeling and seeing in the game at the moment with the last 90 days of these battle tomes Yeah, before I go into my response, David, why don't you give your Give I'd like you to give some of your thoughts on it like let's you could tell I have you to respond. Yeah, sure so a Simple thought and a complicated thought simple thought first Broken battle tomes is not power creep. It's a broken battle tone If you look at something that has a 60% win rate and you're looking for the 45 55% bracket. That's not power creep That's something which is not working for some reason provided it gets adjusted That's a matter of if addition goes on long enough.  I think there is power creep I think there's a difference between planned power creep is the complicated idea and accidental power creep and I even I've talked about this and I could be wrong But I really do think this is how they're balancing it first it is it was three comes out You set the points way up here And you set them way up there because as you're coming out with new mechanics, which are fun and interesting Whatever you're coming out with needs to be at least as fun and interesting if not more so than what came before so if you're rolling a dice and To d20 and 11 or higher is it's it's fun and a tenor lowers It's not fun anytime you roll a tenor lower. You're re-rolling that you're trying to hit an 11 every time But that means mathematically Gonna have books increase in power And the way you balance that is you pull down the points of the existing armies Push up the points of the new armies and you attain equilibria You have a certain amount of time where you can do this before finally these points can't go lower Without breaking the economy of the game just in half and these points can't go higher for the same reason And then you reboot and if you look at the development cycle for age of Sigmar It looks very much like they have a sense of we can keep balance for this long before it breaks and Those ones I talked about earlier where you have like 60% win rates The reason those and my assessment are bad is because if you were to balance the scale to account for that you would shorten drastically Lifespan you have in which to play this game where you pull down points and push up points because now you had to pull Way down to here and push way up to there and and now you're at your end game a year before you're actually supposed to be at your end game So that's just me guessing what they're doing. Yeah, sure so Let me talk about why I don't think power creep actually exists Because if it did exist it would show in the stats and So that's number one and like it doesn't if I look at the top Performing books like on the honest wargamer right now, right? Like if we just pull the honest wargamer stats and look at the top performing armies right now at this moment Okay, well, well hammer would be better. I mean, I don't think sure You can update it quite a while. Yeah, it's it's not the like most recent dish Battle tomes all literally just going bang bang bang bang bang now. You do see jumps up there like gets jumps way up there, right? And And like at various points in time You've like throughout all of AOS's history you have battle tomes that just ride and stay strong for a long time Okay, oftentimes a new battle tome will like spike and Then fall back down Right Yeah, it's quite possible. It's obviously so early with a lot of these books and so it's quite possible that it's happening But I mean for what it's worth the top six right now are all new battle tomes So Nash court like I can't remember the exact order. Do you got you got it, David? Do you have the data? No, no, I don't have it in front of me. I was trying to get it, but I wanted to If it's alright push back a little bit of the concept looking at the top battle tomes because of what? Vince said with things spike and then they come down and new shiny stuff sees more play, right? You will you will naturally see in the top ones Bias towards new battle tomes performing well ideally within the bracket we want but still well where I think Power creep and Vince this might not you might not consider this power creep This might be exactly playing into your point where I think power creep becomes a problem is If you have at the bottom all the ones at the bottom are old tomes you have a phenomena of being left behind because I don't care if Salon Ash 2019 is the best thing since sliced bread as long as my Sylvanas 2019 book is playable if it's Yeah Yeah, I think there's absolutely, but here's what I'm saying Tyler We can argue about whether or not these last couple tomes have had things that are outside the pale or would get corrected or whatever Right non FAQ tomes just don't even count to me. Hmm. And by the way, that shouldn't be the case We shouldn't live in a world where we have to wait for FAQs to to harangue into into order. Whatever is wrong Okay, yeah, I don't know where we are with the average But boy does it feel quite extensive right now for that that lay Statistically the newest like the list release is not like just a battle-tome order in reverse Right, it's not like when you look at win-rate It's not a z to a of battle-tome release schedule It's just not yeah, and if power creep was a thing you'd see something roughly analogous to that It wouldn't be exactly that I understand like it's not as though like as all things you would see a general like that It would be a messy data point distribution on a generally increasing line, right? So there'd be I'm not saying it literally be sorted z to a like a like a mathematical thing But it would be like this second most and then real recent and then the fourth most reason and the first most reason and then Something like that is what it would end up looking like right? hmm But there are books that come out and just immediately run to the middle Right and don't ever have time at the top Power creep as we perceive it to me is nothing more than the natural extension of a bad development process That's why I say it's a mirage Okay, you're in the desert But there's no water there. There is something scientifically happening that can be explained It's not a lake Power creep is looking at that heat that that mirage of a lake and saying that's a body of water It's not I know it's not I can scientifically explain what's happening with the heat in the air and all of that, right? That doesn't mean what you're seeing is fake Hmm. Do you understand what I'm saying? Okay, let me let me make this more real for you. I'll move out of my analogy. Okay When you have a development process where you punch out nine books and clearly a short amount of time Yeah, right And you don't have enough formal development going into them Yeah You're going to naturally start this the scatter plot will get wider Okay, when you combine that with the fact that in exception-based design as Time moves forward you as the designers learn and think of more exceptions to do with your game Okay, you figure out more ways to play around with the rules Yeah, and to mess with stuff Okay, and so you start doing that and some of those exceptions will just Incidentally be quite powerful some will not Like I net came out it has a high skill ceiling, but it has a very high skill floor. It basically did nothing Yeah, right Skaven's got a relatively newish book. I don't see that tearing anything up Same story. I love playing the army, but it's a real hard thing to pilot All right and on and on on we could pick a lot of tones Right that well again my contention on this as you know is that like the the premise the narrative that I put forward and others have as well, right is that I'm delineating between 18 months and Most recent battle tones, but then that's not power creep That's just some bad books that went through a problematic design phase, right? Power creepy is you're trying to point toward a systematic issue that I'm saying is a mirage And that's not me trying to give GW like pass. It's not I'm actually directly saying they made a mistake there Okay I'm saying the mistake isn't in them going. Let's make this book more powerful or accidentally whether whether through malice or Incompetence making the book more powerful. I don't think that's the case I think that's them going let's explore design space more as we go and then not having enough formal development behind It to rain things in line because when you have designers start experimenting with stuff You'll you'll widen the scatterplot and it takes a formal developer to bring it back in and when you play when you go into hustle-up mode like I mean, you know Hurry up offenses have a lot more interceptions or in fumbles, right? Because they're in a hurry, right? That's That's what it is So it still feels me like this is a shown to itself because I have so many things I want to talk about but I'm sure we're already obviously 10 minutes into this and that's not the main topic But yeah, I would love to discuss this and more depth sometime with you and and and some others Tag it for sure is power creep real. That'll be a good one answer. No Okay, yeah, like but ultimately that's I don't think what you're we can complain about this over use of rules We can complain about the some of the recent books having some real misses Especially on internal balance, but none of that to me says this is a power creep problem It says like Nurgle was doing really well for a really long time Vastly outperforming by the by most books that came after it Okay, yes a particular builds and Nurgle that the Nurgle player base Not be able to play a player of an army Sure here comes David when a when a factual statement is made Okay, and then they have to start being like whoa, whoa, but here's why it's okay Let me hedge. Let me hedge. Let me hedge. Let me hedge. Hey, it's cool man Don't cover myself. Don't cover my stuff. I agree with you. They were they were overperforming. There are okay They were overperforming you can stop. There we go. You and I know there were reasons Of course there were of course there were there are Tyler. Let me let you know a secret There's always reasons. There's always reasons That's why we do this show Wasn't there a point where bugs were close to a 60% win rate Nurgle a fly spam Nurgle. Yeah, sure. Absolutely. Probably higher than just if you cut it to just the actual fly spam armies I think they were higher than 60% yeah, yeah, so But at any rate T peaker yeah, I mean You know, I that's why I don't I don't talk about I try not to talk about this stuff much anymore because like it's so easy, right? Yeah, just make that play look. It's okay. You're allowed to be salty about your toy. It's fine That's war hammer. It's as much a part of the hobby as anything You think I'm not salty still about the last two slanesh books. We've got it out back. They are Assault like baby. I got a shoe deer away from me when I go outside. Okay, sir. Yeah So your defense you never got to play flies before they became not flies anymore Well, no, I I could have I chose not to yeah, he likes it's not his style It's not yeah, which fine if people did but anyways, yeah, it's but it's a longer discussion. It is all right I do yeah, let's get into a specific example here. We go. I want to talk about the overused rule So having said I don't think this is a problem of power creep I don't think overusing rules leads to power creeper is a problem of power creep or something like that, right? What I am Interested in here with this is What are the examples these things and why do they matter like are they a problem? That's what we're going to answer You ready gentlemen, you're ready to answer it Okay Here we go healing Healing this is my first one. I'm gonna start with these are in no particular order by the way I didn't really organize these by like what I thought was criticality because I they they're all problems and we can We can decide the criticality So healing is such a fascinating thing to me because This was classically very limited All right, like super duper limited And It was like just not You basically didn't have healing for most of aos and in any way to really speak of like of course You had the healer d3 wounds during your hero phase And then a very few models had this incredible like healer d3 wounds in the combat phase You know, like if you fought or something or just in general and it'd be like wow This unit has really good healing, right? It can heal 2 d3 wounds per round Okay per battle round now recently Which would be like 10 wounds over the course of the game or something like that, right? That's that's basically what it would amount to if you're talking about the hero phase healing like d3 in your hero phase It's about 10 wounds over the course of the game Now all of a sudden we've got this new type of healing this You fight and you heal sick, you know up the damage you do up to six wounds max and it's getting put on like pretty powerful people Pretty pretty powerful melee people, right? And more drive and pull over to zombie dragon nepharata Drugs, sorry not. Yes. Thank you very much. I caught the joke there. They're very rough. Yeah, uh-huh very good Ben um So there you go. Thank you for the correction. Um Yes, now you go to being able to heal 60 wounds over the course of the game holy crap That is a lot different The average army in aos, right? It's about 120 to 130 wounds Just taken as a as a total right That means this one model right Can heal half the wounds of the average army on the table over the course of the game Yeah Yeah Now this is not handed a bit to hand it out all over the place, but boy is it getting handed out more Uh, it's spiked a lot recently Okay And so You know our my examples here are examples are soul bite graveyard It's basically like all the vampires all the vampires have this incredible new six wound healing nonsense Glutos also has this Right. He uh, he has the same. He has the same exact rule. Um, he has a vampire rule. Okay um OBR units Pretty pretty solid amount of healing there pushed out of the the various incendiary leaders Uh, and then you've got uh, but I should say soul bite has more than just the vampire healing They also have unit healing as well near grave sites and and passing out from their heroes and you've got things like Glog troll healing etc, right? So here's my question Is this a problem? like Is it so cw just said it made I think of a potential point In healing do we have the problem where it's completely irrelevant until it's too much? Right Is that the is that the situation we're in? Where like traditional healing was never anything or really a problem or nothing much to speak of it like it Once in a while. Hey some people could get some wounds back. Yeah, you need stuff, right? It's a thing like nergal has healing. I didn't mention it here, but they have one right at the top of your turn Every nergal model heals a wound Right. Yeah, sure. We're d3 if they're near a uh, uh, locus locus. Yeah, fecundity Right. Is that a problem? Right. What's the where's the line? Is what I'm trying to what I'm trying to get out here. David, you got any thoughts on this one? Is this a is is this one a problem right now? Are we getting there? What's the issue? What do you think? I think in some factions right now it is a problem. I think generally it's not I throw this into a bigger concept Actually, I call it recursion Um playing sylvanath. I don't have board presence. I have to achieve board presence. I do that by recursion I begin with basically unless I'm playing oak and brow very little board presence Um oak and brows change that equation. So I have to maybe rethink some of these theories Of the way which I was able to get that back was by say running bugs or whatever and having recursion Begin with very little board presence and you get a great deal of healing like sylvanath can No problem. Uh, you know, I I didn't have a lot. I'm using that to basically kind of It's my way of being present in the match is by coming back to life But then I think when you have armies like, um It meets premature because things spike, but so but break Soulblight grave lords is 63 win rate And I think part of that is is if you make things goblin pointed and give them Is huge board presence and you make things very very hard to kill by making their monsters ethereal And then you'll give that ethereal monster and a board presence based army Ability to heal as much for each of those is I could heal on derthu if I committed to it Um, I think at that point you start running into a problem. Not that the healing is too much But the healing taken as an amplifier of board presence It comes too much and I think most armies which have healing It's either not enough healing or it's not enough board presence to be an issue Sure, like it effectively doesn't matter. I let's let's lay let's lay some groundwork here I think we all agree that the traditional like d3 wounds in your hero phase Type of healing is not causing any problem. And is in fact fairly underwhelming, right? Like it doesn't really do much. You're not deciding a lot of games, right on it But I like as I've played soul blight tyler. I know you played soul blight david I don't know if you've had the the good fortune to play soul blight yet not yet newborn That's of course. Yes. No totally fair answer. Um, but I'll say god their healing feels really egregious Right. Um, it's especially egregious when combined with sort of neffi spell Um But even beyond that man that when all as you mentioned like this it It's a it for them It's a sort of stacking situation where it's there on very tough models that are capable of doing always hitting that six if they're fighting Right and that also are then combined with an incredible board presence Right all of that kind of stuff and So there's there's sort of a there is definitely a combination of of events here that are occurring Right where you're The army with like incredible board presence like probably I I really think soul blights in the running for strongest board presence I don't think that's controversial to say um And then it's just incredible recursion And and regeneration Um to where like most of time if I'm fighting them I just don't even try to kill the the like the vampire lord on zombie dragon. It's not worth it There's just no world where I killed that guy Like most armies that I'm gonna play. I just don't have the I don't unless I can get him like caught in the perfect trap It's just not yeah He's just gonna he's just gonna chew his way through everything I've got So to me that feels like there are some others that can do it Sure, sure. There's some like maybe that Pig wild iron draw and you just like slam that dude with a million pigs and he doesn't happen to have his ethereal Yeah, sure great, but if he has like neffi's ethereal buff up and he's on a two up I could throw I'll I'll give the I'll give the story Here's the story. Okay So I played soul blight this last weekend I was playing scaven I Lured nefarada into a trap. I know my buddy watches this show. Hey buddy who plays soul blight. It was a good game It was a real good game I thought he had me for for a lot of it But I eventually managed to lure nefarada into a trap now She had her ethereal on and she was on a two up save She had four wounds on her and I charged her with a thousand points of models okay And nefarada is ostensibly a wizard Now I understand she's also a vampire But she is ostensibly a caster. That is her reason for being in the army Like if I took her spells away, I don't think people be running her right And to me that says she's a caster uh I killed her so with four wounds on her and throwing every mortal wound On her that I that I could possibly muster. I mean from everywhere. I could design right I killed her on the wound Like on the wound. I got her Okay And so but if I'd missed that if one die had been You know not gone in my favor Right my opponent rolls one less one. That's all we're talking about Right. Yep Then she would be at one wound still then she would have fought. I was oh by the way all my units had always strikes first Effectively like I activated all three units before she fought. I should say that So I had three swings at her three units swinging at her thousand points total before she activates This is like the perfect trap the best trap I can set with my army I'm using half of my army on basically a 300 point hero Right. I had to set this up over multiple turns Okay, she's she's 390. I thought she was quite a bit more than 300. She is she's a little bit I know she's like yeah, but nowhere near what you're putting in sir. I get it. Yeah, you got it Uh If she had had one wound left she would have then immediately activated and put herself back at seven wounds That's what would have happened. Yeah, right. She would have done the six damage. No problem With what I was fighting her with So what that would have then been is I would have lost a bunch of stuff from her attacks and She would have lost three wounds being charged by three times her number of models Three times her points value a wizard Okay Yeah, not that there's any justification for a 300 point model was standing a thousand points of models and shaking it off With with basically taking three damage, right? So that's just like one example and I'm not trying to hang the whole story on that But to me the sole blight healing is part of a cocktail. That's just like too strong It's just too strong like this new method of healing. I think is just too much Six wounds per combat on a on a fighty survivable model is just too much Interject on that I may um I agree high level principles across the whole board I think if they were in an army or she I think if she were in an army where You're talking about a 90 to 100 wounds on the table Like yeah, I can't sure it'd be totally different, but she's not in that army. Yeah Yep Yeah, that's that was yeah It's gonna make basically the same point matt knew you and pointed this out as well It's the context in which she exists the board dry Etc of these options when you have say 60 zombies on the table as well or 120 zombies And they're doing what they're doing right now in the game I mean, I don't think I'm going out on a limb and saying that Zombies might be a little over cooked at the moment in this game Yeah With with what they can do and just the the variables that are involved with zombies at the moment So it does kind of exist within this broader context, but Yep, I mean Here's the easy way to to to prove the point you're talking about that's why I want to evaluate these along all of that criteria, right? Is because Let's pick up nepharata Let's let's pull her out of soul blight grave lords. Okay. She's she's seen the light Mm-hmm. She had a long talk with a laurel And A laurel was like yo come over here We've got these tree people. It's super cool.  All right, so we just pick her up. We drop her whole sail into silvaneth. She switches sides Okay So nephi is part of silvaneth now part and parcel She her scroll is exactly the same except all keywords that are relevant have been switched Yeah, so she functions exactly as she does just for the silvaneth army All right Is she is much in my army Is she as much of a problem in silvaneth as she is in soul blight? I think the answer that's quite obviously no Well, I know I I think you picked a bad a bad example. Um, tell me one A silvaneth right now if you lean into it and it's one of my favorite things to do You're usually looking back five ones from vereduace harmony. Um, your heroic rally is another two Um, and then you got your 3.5 from regrowth and then if you take the normal life storm It's too but the point is which i'm getting at I think way too many words to get to it So vaneth is already too good at that especially to take a laurel So then if you put that in silvaneth, we push you'd push him past the point where their Our entire army just coming back to life every single turn Let me let me so let me tell you why I don't think it'd be a problem like I get where you're saying Because of diminishing marginal utility Okay, all right because silvaneth is a lower Wound army generally that does struggle often to hold board presence Right That like sure she can make a tree lord She can make a tree lord ethereal wouldn't that be a funny thing right like yeah, that's cool. I love it Yeah, that seems like a fun thing, right um But in the end she's not going to have the same Synergistic use like that two epithereal derthu is going to be a lot of fun for for that player right, but there's a big difference between two epithereal derthu and two epithereal valosta Okay um Like even if that dude is just your only strike and fade target every round as he would instantly become right Uh, it's still just not as impressive because again, you're not holding any any presence on the board Right, whereas the army she's in now that healing is happening synergistically as she's going forward with everything Right and just consuming territory. That's why I don't think it's as much of a problem So when I look at healing I ask the following question how easy it like to define whether or not it's a problem I think in most cases it's still not But I think here's that like going back to our evaluative criteria right I think The context that healing happens in matters the most Is it part of an army that can establish? Good board presence that can put a lot of bodies down relatively cheap right And then restore those bodies will recur those bodies in various ways Is it part of an army that has Heroes themselves that are quite survivable already Right and and so hence this juices that just further right like it's building on a strength not trying to cover a weakness right and Uh, what's the cost to doing it nothing? Nothing, there's no you're not paying any cost for most of the healing and soul play You see you have you have all the toys you wanted that army at its current points cost right now Right, there's no there's no tax I'm gonna clip that I'm gonna send that on the internet tomorrow morning. Love that and I think that's a critical thing Yeah, that there's no there's no tax in soul blight You get to have all your cake to eat it to and you still have all the cake left over Sure, and I know there'll be some soul blight players in the chat Who will be like um Who will be like well, I couldn't take everything I wanted.  I'm gonna hear from after the show. I know sure yeah with all with all this But I do think in that context. That's why the soul blight grave lords healing is a problem and glutos isn't I agree completely even though it's the exact same mechanic Right. Yeah, yeah because glutos can make this like unkillable strong center of a slanesh army and who cares And who cares that's not how you win with slanesh Right, you win with slanesh by running out 55 bliss bar barters and just killing the enemy with Mass shooting damage since since and bliss barb seekers to to stop their saves and stuff like that, right? Like that's that's how you win with with slanesh. It's not about having one unkillable dude sit on an objective Who kind of moves around on the ground? At a moderate pace Right. Yeah So, yeah, so, I mean, I generally am aligned with this. I don't know how to say I'll I'll try to say this and we'll see how it comes across like Like vents. David, you started in 2018, right with this game. I think some around there before the age of sigma 2018 I started playing back in warhammer fantasy Seventh so you so you're we've got a few years on you. We we were a few more years and to be addicts At least with aos, right?  We talk about that all the time. It's it's interesting Yeah, I feel like to learn a lot like to challenge yourself.  We know. Yes. I'm a johnny It's the pure johnny play right. Absolutely. Okay, cool. It's not I whatever the heck is going on in one's brain That leads to that. That's what it is, right? It's interesting usually Johnny's are looking to figure things out and I I suspect I certainly feel like I can usually figure things out And when I can't figure something out now This is where I get comfortable. I'm comfortable talking about it because it could become as egotistical or Like it's not intended to be that way, but it's like that's that's part of the interesting part to me and Like my local guys they give me a hell of a time about this, right? Oh, tyler's now complaining because he's losing more than he's used to Oh poor poor boy, right? It's all is all of that starts to come out, which could be fair and that relates to earlier I'm a salty nergal player right now But when I have games that there are the right these situations that happen were like With eight years into this game Thousands of games under my belt And I can't figure it out and I see no path Sure that that does that does make me worry and that's been my like it doesn't happen that often But that has happened so far consistently With this healing mechanic within the context of everything else going on with soul blight Now that could be a matter of the kind of army that I'm playing Because the only army that I played against it I do think is going to struggle mightily with the nature of the mechanics with soul blight right now I'm not playing a like starborn starborn croak salon, right mortal wind spam Or or even something that's closer to that in the spectrum Anyway, that's kind of where I'm trying to come from with this without coming across as an ass Yeah, no, I get it my let me tell you let me let me let's summarize on this one and then move on to the next one But here's here's where I think I'm living with healing right now and and overused rules I think this is a problem In soul blight more than anything else Maybe a little bit on the troll front, but I don't think it's actually that much of a problem trolls have their own pretty strong weaknesses Like that dude's pretty hard to kill. He's a pretty tough boy, but that's probably okay Um, but I think we're on the precipice with this one Like I think we've got a really I we've seen this mechanic start to repeat this six wound healing thing start to repeat and I worry about the Problem of that in the future if that repeats more like if something shows up in cities That's healing this amount. I'm gonna have some real questions. Okay, but I have full belief that like When flesh eater courts comes out They'll have this mechanic Or something analogous to it. They've class. They've been a pretty healing intense army Yeah flesh eaters could easily stumble into the same problem Right Where we just have like incredible recursion just happening everywhere on and stacking with like heroes healing while the units are recurring It with with soul blight. I think it creates a soup where it tips Over the edge Right green Yeah, I think I think it's a points problem with them The reason and galactic foggy the reason why I'm saying or froggy. I'm sorry. I apologize mr frog um The reason I'm calling it soul blight as a whole is because the healing is tied up with all their other stuff Right, it's tied up with the board presence It's tied up with the fact that the heroes are tough and the vampires are so strong and powerful It's tied up with the units being able to restore lots of models and then just and then like You mentioned Tyler in one of your games. The dude was just like I'll purposely fail the battle shark test like I'm not even gonna I'm not going to use inspiring presence I could I'm just not I'm gonna let the unit explode So I get the unit back and can set it now three inches away from your unit somewhere else on the board I'm effectively just teleporting my unit because I was going to have less than 30 dudes or four or 20 dudes Or whatever the half strength is if I use the inspiring presence So why not just let them die explode and then teleport the unit somewhere else? Right and potentially immediately start contesting like an immediate objective. Yeah, right That's part of that's part of the issue with the with the three that I've been experiencing.  I'm gonna hear it from our soul by players To zoom out though, I think that I'm sorry. No, we're trying to move on but to make it not so much as bashing on soul flight There are the example If anybody had this board presence and this level of healing it doesn't matter what it is It would be absolutely and that's my fear isn't actually soul play because it's not like I think they're just way beyond the pale Okay, like suddenly they're gonna start running 80% win rates or something. I don't think that's the world we live Right, like let's not be hyperbolic. This isn't like a hair on fire thing, right? Like this is all stuff that can be corrected through points or otherwise, right? Like step one change nefi spell. Um, that's that would be a good start. Um, but like My fear is this keeps going Right. There's nothing to do a soul blight that we continue to see this Imagine putting that like like if they think this is a mechanic that has gas in the tank because you might say well vince But they wouldn't do that. Well d3 wound healing got pretty popular We started handing that out like everywhere more or less every army can have the d3 wound healing your hero phase thing That doesn't belong to any any faction or army, right? So if we decide this is the new path for healing and start handing this out in some way because you can reflavor this a million ways Right like the next time you get an orc book you could have orcs doing the same thing Yeah, strength from victory Right the orcs Get bigger and stronger and they're renewed bigger to fight whenever they whenever they kill enemy models. It feels pretty orky to me Right when when they kill models, they heal up to six wounds because they're just like ah, let's go Right like yeah, sure. That's a super orky mechanic now all of a sudden right So like we could just start handing this out like candy and that would scare the living crap out of me That's more what i'm saying. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah Okay, cool. All right cool So that's healing. All right next up. Hey, here it is. You knew it was coming We couldn't leave it behind Uh, this particular piece of crap rule Uh, this is four plus rally folks Um restoring models is a powerful tool as we just talked about we were talking about healing But this is slightly different because healing is often referred to as just like on a model's wounds not really restorative Um, the game is paced for most non aggro armies to to not be able to deal wounds equal to the total of the enemy Like that is say if you math out on average when combat is engaged And how much damage all the units do and how many units are going to be in combat Most time you don't end up with non aggro armies blanking the enemy force by the end of round five right okay Um, you do some number less than like 130 wounds Right now aggro armies will do that Okay, so like highly destructive armies will do this You know iron jaws can lift enemy force if they set up stupid and let them get like massive pig charges And everything and call the wall in one turn and like go supernova right Right So like there are super aggro armies that can hit that bar obviously right So rally is very powerful. You can do it in both hero phases assuming you're not in melee Restoring models vastly changes the tempo and pace of the game right And four plus rally is letting you restore half of your lost models in each phase In in one unit right there's the old cap well theoretically one unit Uh with a cat even with a cap of 10 wounds. It's still very powerful as that's 10 wounds back potentially each hero phase right Now obviously you could roll a little low. You could roll a little high blah blah blah blah blah of course right but it really does Just completely like once you set something that was pretty controlled Like everybody talks about the example of rallying a dragon back or something.   Mm-hmm. Sure Um assuming like it's going to take the dragon a certain amount of time to die All right.  Whoa does that math? Turn on its head Now this gets especially worse when this starts getting multiplied out right It's 10 wounds per unit Right now once you can start rallying Multiple units two for one three for one Boy, oh boy. Now we get into real Now we're in real dangerous territory, right four up rally bad four up rally multi triggering Very bad very very bad Okay, like I'm not holding back on this one. I'll say that's over the line. It is completely over the line I should not be able to put 30 wounds back on the table for one cp I know it sounds like a bold statement Yeah, but I know that Gets moon clan is doing that right now. You could do it in iron jaws with art boys Like I think that was the og of four plus rally in this game Which is kind of ironic because nobody cares about art boys doing it But yeah other than those two examples.  They're on a five up, aren't they? I think they're on a four up. Yeah Okay, maybe so maybe so I don't remember with top my head. I never play art boys, which says a lot So exactly. No, I don't I don't agree and there is another example by the by I was going to say I don't agree if extreme I don't agree with everything which you said Vince obviously but kind of play off of what you're saying There's a real concern here If you took for example On the serif on battle tone, uh, they're all blood can double issue a command point And then if you say we're going to release a underworlds hero who has a four up rally Everything within his banner gains a four up rally, right? And now So he issues it to them. They get it. You could have it basically if this gets munchkinned into armies which um Can multi issue commands or if it gets adapted into it. I think that Gets having a triple rally Not a problem because it's pretty rare and it's on a pretty weak world It's going with art boys, but I think there is something to be said specifically for multi issuing a four up a four up rally specifically If that becomes common, which I don't think it currently is Um four up rallies are that's a different conversation. The the trip issue Um, if that became our boys are a four comment, sorry If that became common, then I think Vince's point would absolutely Um I I would have no quibbles about that at that point. Okay. I don't think that hold on I got to jump in here The moon kind of thing is not behind a wall of any kind nor is it rare It's just a thing you can do under the light of the bad moon if you're moon Yes, um Uh And you have pretty good control of the moon now Yeah, so actually that that was a sort of another thought. Um in the grand scheme of the game, right? Um, we don't have a lot of people doing this in that sense It's it's not common. But in the sense of gets doing it They don't have any kind of tax to get access to it. They just our moon plans. They're in the thing. They get it. Um And like it's a real problem when it comes to the squeaky the squeaky moon plane units, which is who's getting this this ability Yeah, right. I think that the the nerf to to rally brought them more in line That's represented in their win rate coming down a bit Um, yeah, no, I mean, I was gonna say generally speaking my sense on a four up rally Is it he's behind a steeper tax than just a blood secretor or steeper tax like say for example if they had to take They got it if Greg rutt was alive Sure, and that's Greg rutt. He has to be alive. Then you get it. That would be I think a reasonable tax One to have it the issue is they always have it No matter what We're free Yeah, so this is where this is where we need to talk about like prevalence and gating and stuff like that because this really matters here, right Who's getting it? Who can receive it? What do you have to do to get it now? Here's my personal sense of the thing. Okay Uh, yeah, that is correct. Keith it is if a war chanter issues for for our boys Okay, um Here's my personal sense of the thing The four plus rally is cancer and should be stricken from the game. There we go. I'll start with a I'll start with a soft position Okay All right, it's Like we can talk about places. It's less problematic All right You know, uh, we can say Look things like these particular elements That are behind a big tax Let's not worry about like the multiplying it out slowness is the other example if who can multiply it out because they can repeat command abilities three times Do they have a way to do four up though?  Let's see who has more stuff All right, who can get to the good place.  It's whatever whatever or something right? It's less bad I'll grant you it's less bad and that we're dealing with a spectrum But my point is the spectrum never crossed into good It's just here's neutral Everything on a four plus rally exists somewhere over here From like nightmarish apocalypse to like annoying Right, but it's never in like somewhat nice to a real pleasure Hmm Yeah, go ahead David. I was gonna say I think it touches on something which I think It's kind of a common ground But it's also where I would build a counterpoint not a strong counterpoint, but a counterpoint nevertheless It's a negative play experience. I worked hard to accomplish a thing And you took my thing away and a negative play experience No matter what is gonna Feel bad to the person on the other side of it Some people is going to feel even worse depending on what their psychogenic profile is.  Oh great. Let's screw with each other like it's fun to me. Um If that becomes prevalent if negative play is everywhere it becomes a real problem But I do think find the right gate Of the kind of negative play experience which a fork rally represents Can play an important role in the ecosystem and that you get hyper linear aggression armies If you can survive them which a lot of times people with the fork rally where it's problematic can And negating their primary wind tactic of choo choo into you Becomes a very meaningful thing which brings balance to that ecosystem. Um, so I do think there are rarefied And big a big all caps rarefied scenarios where a four up rally is Healthy for the game state There's no scenario where it's not a negative play experience It's an interesting counter argument. I like that. I think I'll buy that actually I think I buy your your your argument um like In and I think I could get on board with that if if this stuff was more properly gated to sort of these limited things Where it was part of the armies as you said like their play style was to counter the choo choo train armies Right and that's like their path to victory as it were, right? Um, and it was it was constrained in its usage That means either behind attacks or limited very strongly to only certain units that are meant to survive in that role Or something like that, right? Then you're right. I think I think it could be part of a healthy ecosystem. I'll buy that right in the same way that like Various and sundry poisons Or have medicinal purposes when used in the correct Mixes or part of the correct tinctures or whatever, right? Yes, sure. I'll buy that Like it's it's a valuable poison. Don't don't eat it straight.  Yeah, I think that's a good argument I will buy that so I'll I will absolutely accept that that caveat onto my thing. Yes Tyler, what do you think your analogy holds? It is poison. It's absolutely Yeah, sure But your point is that doesn't necessarily immediately make it bad and I am forced to admit that Like a hundred percent. I I I'm with you. Okay. Yeah Uh, a few things come to mind so one Because uh, you especially but we in general I feel have talked about this a lot For a long while now. I I do regularly hear from people saying that you guys need to Stop complaining so much about four up rally and I ask, okay, why and One of the common critiques has been that well, it just doesn't tend in their experience It doesn't tend to have The outsized impact that we seem to be claiming that it has and one of the thoughts that I've always had on that is I mean, it's kind of we often talk about the notion of first principles like, you know, like And I just from that point of view as a first principle design I'm Against this more than for it. I would say and then you take the potential that it opens up the potential for outsized impact like The odds of it happening how high do those odds have to be for me to Think it's a poor idea on the surface. I really like your point, David But I generally do find it to be too high particularly when we're talking about this on Often it seems some very powerful units in the game You know, it's not just the four up rally But it's hey four up rally with one of the most under-costed units in the game at the moment Which is thunders at 135 points with everything that thunders are doing. No, sure The classic dock rallying bow snakes at the height of the bow snake at moratheon the bow snake At the height of their world tour, right? Yeah, like maybe maybe it's it's maybe it's fine now With the variables of dock are quite expensive. It's I mean their win rate has gone down for a reason We've talked often about how it's an army of screens and hammers You have to play well to play to do well with that army. You have to play very well And it's it's easy to get caught out to get a double turn lose your Very vulnerable precious key units like your 15 bow snakes, but yeah, uh blood warriors I think are I'll just say it. I think they are under-costed right now at 190 relative to again My prior sense of the baseline of where we were in this game and I look at blood warriors and everything that they can do Well, they're of course rallying on a four up with the bloods So it's just like that to me is where yeah, that's one of the elements that I see in terms of why some of this Does have an outsize impact more than I think it might might otherwise if it weren't on these types of units Yeah Sorry, go ahead. No, I I think that's exactly right to me The answer here is that four plus rally not only Causes this sort of tempo pacing issue and is an npe sort of moment Right, because you don't really have any way to interact with it like you attack the enemy unit In many cases they can pull their models so that they're out of combat not always But you know they can often do that depending on what we're talking about here decide the size of the unit certainly this often happens with things like uh blood warriors or or You know Thunders or stuff like that they'll set up properly so that that happens and if they can pull it and pull them Those out of combat they will do so if not, they'll just retreat and then rally on the next turn, right? um and It's hitting these like extremely potent units or Or in the case of the moon clan where it's tripping off It's either hitting extremely potent units i.e. the squig boys Right. Hmm. Well like the the bounders and uh, Yeah, the the bounders the hoppers. Yeah. Yeah, or In other words, it's hitting extremely efficient models Right who already do have their own recursion as well because once they finally die half that unit's popping back out Yeah Or it's hitting extremely elite models That are that are extremely costly to remove Right, so when you can very often sort of either nearly or completely Uh undo a lot of the work that was done against that unit and and sort of reset the game state To where like a lot of dice have been rolled and not much has really been accomplished that to me is a problem right So like yeah, it's uh, yeah It's it's a fascinating discussion on this in particular because there are there are such diversions and opinions that i've certainly experienced over the last year That we've been discussing this or 18 months. How long we've been discussing this So but yeah, it's I tend to come down where you were your events and I loved your argument Dave On maybe uh, thank you. Yeah and elements of value, but yeah All right, well my element of value doesn't change that blood worry is rallying on a floor a four up is awful Yeah, I mean We we've just got a lot of examples right now in the game of like units that are clearly quite strong Right in and of themselves as printed The number of models and wounds you get for the points is an efficient solid choice Thunders blood warriors, you know, whatever you pick your thing here. Okay, uh bounders, right or hoppers Like it's already a good unit like take the rally out of the equation people would play this unit Right, sure. It would be a valid choice. It would be part of armies It is already efficiently costed and worth it and then you stack on top of it that now in many cases It will be able to get Half of it's lost models pack Every time it's out of combat for a round And suddenly you're getting effectively a lot more wounds Right, that's really the challenge is like mathematically balancing that becomes very hard Because if that unit of blood warriors isn't 20 wounds if it's effectively 30 or 35 or 34 or something over the course of the game, that's a completely different proposition Yeah, yeah So, sorry I didn't mean to add a little bit of lag Yeah, so Alex Gonzalez, uh, rather my unit of heart participated and did not really do much. Yeah, Alex I mean, again, that's a lot of what I've been hearing people say right and but trying to make that point of outsize impact Maybe that's more the case like why it were kept at 10. So you're getting five back But they're not on a three up save So maybe that's part of the issue and compared to some of these other examples, but yeah So I was actually gonna basically speak almost directly to that. Um, yeah Irrespective of whether hoppers or bounders or whatever Squid you're bringing back is in balance. I don't have a strong opinion on that When you have something like a blood warrior Where you can easily get them rolling three dice for every two wounds They have if you run Korg as cool or they're running two for two and they're doing mortal wounds on a five That means that every one of those guys when they die is doing a mortal wound Which means if you're killing them in melee, which most times you are You're literally paying wounds from my army to kill wounds from your army Then when those wounds come back You start getting not a linear return, but an exponential return the same thing with thunderous because they're a ranged unit So you start getting Be my army goes up in board presence your army goes down by way of killing my army with the blood warriors Those things and I don't know if squigs are that are where This goes to my mind from being a negative play experience just being if you look at the math It is breaking the game. Right. Yep. I think that's an excellent point Yeah, agreed a very very well stated point. Okay. Thank you Uh multiplying cps. Well speaking of which let's get right into it Okay, so Some of the most powerful exception based rules in the game are basic command abilities like the basic thing We all have access to are still some of the most powerful things we can do Right We all know rally redeploy all attack all out defense are just some of the best things you can do I mean raise your hand people at home raise your hand. I can see you don't worry. I'll know if you have your hand in the air Also, while you're here hit like Well, we're just having this very feisty discussion. I seen all I'm watching all the chat go by So like hey great great commentary great discussion tonight everybody keep that keep the chat alive keep going I'm loving all this feedback in the chat. I've been I've been watching you all discuss this Uh and like you know hit like and subscribe and do fun things it helps other people find the show but These are some of the most powerful things like right we we know it sucks when you get roared Right Like Who likes getting roared because you know all out defense is one of the best things you can do right Uh so on and so forth And there's that's why there's so many restrictions on using these things Right on on cps the same unit can't issue more than one Same unit can't receive more than one Your cps are a very limited resource in most armies right like It's it they clearly recognize the power of this thing And just like this is very tamped down Right And yet Recently we have seen an absolute explosion This has happened a lot over the course of 3.0 of these multiply out ability and when you do so It scales Exponentially in power like rallying three units is more than three times more powerful than rallying one Check out All right like This is where the slinesh pretenders the thing comes. Yeah, right like it is wildly strong Now it's on a body to use it that doesn't matter too much often I mean you can issue a bunch of all out attack to a bunch of different bliss barbs is the way to do it but Um, that's not how I play it like I play it to you to mess around and play the melee version of the army that I want to play That's bad But it doesn't that's still not a defense of the thing Right, I would just prefer to not have that rule and have like actual good rules on a melee army That's supposed to be a melee army, but hey, what do I know? um Maybe just let me write the book next time. I'm sure I could do better uh, and the You've got the mega boss. You've got the slinish pretenders.  You've got skaven with thankful. He can double dip. There's a lot of double and triple dips Right. This is just a smattering. I could even there's no way I could list all of these here, but it's a lot of it You have the recent What's the recent seraphon one we covered? What was that? It's like, um They can issue it three times, but the first two don't cost them anything That sounds right. Yeah. Yeah, that's it. That's it No, no that that's what it is. Yeah, it's the skinks only, but I mean it's to half the army only Yes, yes, this is this is my shot face skin. Yeah, yeah, my my Favorite bad implementation of a rule like the fact that that got through development just blows my mind like somebody didn't read that and go So this army just gets two free command points to turn. Is that what we're doing here? Is that just the rule? Because that's what you wrote Did you know you wrote that?  I'm convinced Oh, oh, they will they will I mean I I'm smiling because I think The odd man out here. I think that real hilarious and I love it. Um, sure Sure, we keep going I I think it's an absolute Silliness, but hey, there we go Um, yeah, exactly same with pretenders six cp a turn and the triple commands are free. Yes, exactly That's the funniest part about pretenders. You'd think in this triple subfactor this triple issuing Uh sub faction cps would be rather limited. Nope You're just swimming in them. Just swimming in them. You're up at like six to eight nine 10 command points in the battle round. It's wild You're just like I got just can't get enough, baby Just drop It's more of that kind of stuff that I'm talking about events when I'm winging about the last 90 days Then necessarily I mean, yeah, it's some of some of its power creep But it's just this feeling of sloppiness compared to right what we were praising for 18 months For the most part with how good these battle tomes were and I look at this lanish book and Great, it's one sub faction and not only that but it's layers of ridiculousness and us and it's just all shooting for the most like It's just wild. Yep. Okay. So let's stick to multiplying cps Is this a problem? Let's ask the question David i'm gonna start with you this time.  Is multiplying cps a problem? Is this an overused rule in a bad way? Uh, if you strike rally from the list, I really love this rule and I don't think it's bad Um, because it's doing something which I love when mechanics do which is you take this thing Something the core book is doing commands exist rather than saying I don't issue commands. I Do this other thing instead? Um, you're saying you can do the thing which you have in the book more time So instead of feeling it's still an exception, but instead of it being a no but exception it's a yes and exception and Um, it's playing something which fundamentally most people have access to so my my sense on it would be um The only time I think this becomes bad is if you start getting a really big distinction between the haves and the have-nots and it really starts coming in on things like um, well, I know I liked it but things like redeploy like rally, um, and Uh, probably forward to victory would be the ones I'd say these might be tricky These are being triple issued versus you're talking about all defense Unleash hell a lot attack that stuff. I'm like, yeah, no shell man. That's pretty rough Obviously, we have a clear example right now with against lanesh. That's just here's my castle Of 33 to 55 or 66 bliss bar bar is right Triple issue, you know, only anywhere you come into me.   So I could be My question would be how is it ignoring the because some armies like uh, uh Foythana, whatever they are in um an item F ignore the restriction for redeploy Redeploy and then you just easy chain redeploy everyone regardless of whether they qualify So there's a multiplying in a way where I can redeploy and I don't need to qualify to do it Or I can unleash hell and I don't need to qualify to do it. That can be a problem With unleashed hell being models within six inches I feel like you'd end up with a pretty small footprint where you'd actually face down 33 bliss bar bar It's all shooting you at once. What are you? It's the timing. Benz, you want to clarify the timing? Yeah, you know, go ahead Yeah, the timing is as far as I understand how it works, right? Is okay So I charge in with five black kings, right?  All right. That's that I then move on to Another charge two blightlords charge into a different unit. Let's say 11 bliss bliss barters They would get to unleash hell as well at that time Okay, it's not all yeah, it's not all happening at once. It's just whenever it's tripped in the sequencing So I guess I should add caveat with that um Linear multiplication I do this for free and then later I can do it again for free and later I can do it again for free That'd be really problematic for that reason But you have to be when I issue a lot attack. I issue it three times to three targets Um that you don't get to do it again later. You just do it. So So I guess the way that the way most of these things work in the game It has to work in the in the form or not the ladder because most of these are triggered things, right? And so they have to be able to to because because they can't break the triggering condition Yeah, right They they have to then allow you to break the timing condition effectively Well in that case do you take on the shell off of that list? Basically a lot attack a lot defense um, those ones to me seem fine Rural charges. I mean there's a there's a million uses where we have of people who allow reroll charging in a big radius around That's not bob. That's not like nobody's losing sleep over that, right? So yeah, clearly that's fine if we if we can put auras on people left right and center that says everybody within Exenches of me gets to reroll charges, then you can triple issue reroll charge and it's like Yeah, great day fine. Cool. Yeah All right Um, that's my opinion a lot attack all defense reroll charges great the other ones That's a great. Yeah, so great. Yeah, and I think that's a good example right now Now that's not even getting to certain interesting command abilities that some of these people may have on their own that they can issue like the Maybe in books These have been Largely stripped out of books, but not completely. So there is some overlap here where you get sometimes an interesting thing Where unique command ability can be issued multiple times, but that is fairly rarefied most time. We're talking about these core ones um Yeah, tyler, what's your take on this one? Uh, yeah, I mean from a practical standpoint. I don't feel that I get if the question is Is this having outsized impact? I know you have other criteria, of course Is this a bad overused rule or is it fine? Where on the target spectrum are we falling right? Yeah, historically with this it's felt Um, a hardy tom lions. It's fine With that said Having played against slanesh and again with apologies to my friend brice Uh, a long time slanesh player. We played a game in it was more about I mean, obviously there there's a lot of power there that is Helping slanesh at the moment whether they need the help or not is this healthy for the game it was more of the experience of How that works with unleash hell That I found a little crazy Where it required so much thought and precision In right in terms of trying to minimize Not necessarily gotcha, but just minimize the the bad outcome, right? Like if I if I'm just willy-nilly charging and not thinking about what the hell I'm doing and the like Sending a unit in to absorb the unleash hell, right? We're trying to be positioned to absorb multiple It's just it got into a level of detail that I found a little excessive as a mechanic So like on that standpoint from like an aesthetic experience design experience It seemed very messy to me. Uh having played iron jaws I didn't have certainly had the experience of people feeling like the triple issue on iron jaws felt excessive As well now I haven't played a whole lot of iron jaws I certainly haven't played pig spam. So I don't really have first hand knowledge about like how Impactful has that been on iron jaws and as as an army generally they felt better designed in terms of the bounds On that army to absorb three for one Then maybe a lot of other examples you could give Yeah, no, I think that's exactly right. It's interesting too because they're an overlap of I have a special command ability And I can trip the triple or double Right, so that thing right right as opposed to just relying on the generics and certainly there is a core group of people who Um, you know if we did another np survey would would probably rate iron jaws pretty highly For that ability to crash their whole army into you because for you know Sort of casual players or people who aren't used to that kind of thing or don't have Chaff in their armies or maybe we don't play armies that have the capability to take chaff and so on It can or don't really understand how to set up Properly to avoid these sorts of things it can be an outer nightmare where the iron jaws are just like oh The whole army is in your face turn one and they're calling the wall.  Oh my god. We're all dying This is a fun game You know And so I get it like I want to be sympathetic to those people because it's not like it's not like you're just born With some innate knowledge of how to resist an alpha strike Right, like it's it's it's it's a thing that that army can do Yeah, what I'm getting at we I made the point to you before vince on the show, right that There's a certain level of Thought and complexity that I have been finding in the game increasingly that even as an addict of eight nearly eight years I'm like god Like the level of thoughts and planning and Analysis paralysis trying to you know, it's just when I think about them the context of a casual I mean, maybe they're not seeing a lot of this that more experienced players are seeing but it just seemed At times. Yeah, stuff like this seems nuts to me from a complexity standpoint Yeah, and I think the the reason that when you look at like the mega boss Although strong and although painful to a certain cohort of player Like I iron jaws. I believe are way down in like the low 40s. I'm not looking at the woe hammer stuff right now 42 or something. Yeah, they're way down three. Yeah And that's because everything in the game right now is working against them, right like There's there's just everything in the game because they always have been extremely One-dimensional force Now they can be played cleverly. I like playing them a lot. I have a lot of fun playing the army Um, but it's hard man.  You can like use that hammer cleverly Right, but at the iron more iron sense people. Yeah, it's like you've got the hammer Yeah, and Whereas like some of this this later stuff. I think not only does it it There's clearly a spectrum Like on thank well, we mentioned earlier david you talked about gating things behind a cost, right? So thank will can double issue It's cool ability, right especially in scaven where you often have lots of units Uh, like my army on just an example my army on saturday that I played was 13 drops Okay, great.  Like I was I was 13 units 13 drops. Let's go right I was using some galatian command Had my test master storm vermin trick How much work did you have to do to get to 13? Uh, yeah, we're just just rolled that naturally. It just that was a very natural emergent occurrence. It just happened because I am one with the tyler. I'm part of the council Sure here. So it's just it just comes naturally at any rate, um You know the point is like they're Thankful being able to double issue is is really fun and cool and and you know We can do some neat stuff when you can all out attack or all at defense or something like that or Or double redeploy a thing I'm very fond of doing with thankful in the scaven army because a Scaven have to live through mobility. You're like the army's kind of bad And so like you have to play really tricky and really use mobility to its maximum to win games, right? And uh So that it's fun, but it's stuck behind a 400 plus point Relatively fragile model Right, uh, like thankful is not that hard to remove. He's on a four up five up And and he and he has old school sort of healing like he heals a d3 in the combat phase, right? Right All right Better than than in the hero phase, but still pretty constrained Um So like to me that's the way to do this the same with the cruel boys vulture boss. He's not breaking the world That's putting it behind a relatively expensive special character. Here it is, right and even for the mega boss That's a 480 point model on the maw crusher to triple issue Right and that dude has you know, classically no mortal wound protection. He's over there. So to me When these abilities get put behind I think this is the best example where I don't really think this is a huge problem As long as these things are put behind the appropriate attacks when they're put on like big expensive Especially not super tough characters Things that can be that have counterplay and can be removed. I'm like, yeah, that's cool My like go for it. That's great Right, it's because it's giving you some kind of I don't know theoretical tempo advantage. I guess or something like that, right? hmm but Like it's making your resources more valuable um But at the same time it's not Like when it's gated in such a way You've paid to get there. So you are already starting You know down some degree. So I think that's fine when it can go on like a 90-point hero Who can suddenly start triple issuing or something like that? Oh boy Who boy? Yeah run into an issue Yeah, I love this tax issue. David that you brought up at the beginning. Yeah It resonates a lot with with many of these discussions here already You should give credit to vince for applying it here. I agree completely. Yeah. Yeah, if if put behind the correct gate Um, even cutting off what I said before even things like I think rally on at least how To be completely fine if they were behind right gate hmm Yeah, I mean So that's just a great example where it's not because although I do it on a keeper of secrets because I'm a lunatic Right and think that that's fun Uh and want to play with a bad model with bad rules Um that doesn't do anything unless you invest your entire army into it You don't have to do that you there are very cheap options that can be issuing that that triple Command like very very cheap No gate that again you would take anyways, right? Like throw that rule into the into the sun That unit's still getting picked for your army Site unseen well Yeah, you have to take a hero and you're gonna have you're gonna have a chat real Hold on. Let me do the math. Okay. I've got one one. I need one. Yeah, it works. It checks out It checks out we've we've run the numbers right So I think that this is a good like the interesting part to me about multiplying cps Was how much this is often gated and when it's gated properly, it's not a problem And when it isn't it instantly becomes a problem Right Um, so like whereas with the four plus rally what we saw is the units that can receive it Are the challenge here? It's who is doing this? Who what paywall did we put this behind? Right And I think that's the definitive trait here of when this becomes a problem So I think they need to to me a lot of these things are like fire They're very useful. They're very they're very, you know, they like we love fire fire is great Who doesn't love some fire? I love you sit by a fireplace or outside on a summer evening Roast in some marshmallows making some s'mores man That's great That's fantastic, right? Who doesn't love that? But if a fire is just randomly in the middle of your house, that's a terrible day Right, it's just like you got it. It's got to be in a controlled setting Right and and that's it. That's where this goes off the rails So, uh, yeah, there you go Um Anthony fairy, so I'm not the most well-versed in Warhammer, but slanesh is good question mark Where do I go to see lists? There is a very particular kind of slanesh that is good. It's not my kind but it is Basically a shooting heavy slanesh and yes, it's pretty good. Um, and I think uh, Woehammer has some actual lists as well. Doesn't it mother? Yeah. Yeah, that's that's what I recall I think I was looking at some earlier today. Yep. Yeah Woe like Unleash the tide of woe. I guess I don't know Yeah, I think we're seeing some list with With 10 slick blade seekers as well, which has been get a little melee in there, which has been nice to see not just all shooting So you've been the only good melee unit in the army. Yeah Sure All right Hey Fifth time's a charm, buddy. We'll get there. Um, all right. Cool So Uh, that's multiplying cp. So let's keep going Minus one damage. Oh boy. Oh boy. Here we go David, why don't you start us off on this one take us like what do you think about minus one damage? Um Similar to commands, but all the more so. Um when it's behind a tax, especially when the tax has a limited Ability to project the effect. Yep. Great. Um when it doesn't stack Great And there's a big caveat even with taxes if you start stacking this up. I think you can be it can just be too much the issue is um When you don't have a tax now some people would say, oh, David, you're you know talking coalesce. They don't have attacks I don't know. It's too early to be say to say for sure But if all of the units are pointed highly enough of access to this and that is a tax, um So coalesce might be fine, but but generally speaking If it's behind a gate, right? If it doesn't stack great, um If if uh You see petrofex elite as an example Um Are an example of something which would worry me because the fact that that's when I first came out Was the most played and now I think is Could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that's the most played Subfection for obr right now. Pretty much what I've been saying. Yeah Mortis guard necropolis stalkers Catechorus, maybe yeah, maybe arkin, but yeah um That's where things start kind of coming a problem I would question whether or not those units are pointed right considering it's effectively the entire army's getting access to it Versus and coalesce you're often going to be taking some raptidons a spawn of chotech A skink guy handing out poison something like that So it's not going to be your whole army versus oftentimes in petrofex Armies are so small. It's just it's the army. The whole army has it It's basically functionally map wide and I got it for just being this subfection um so uh that's Kind of where my concerns are with this Yeah, and I think that's fair. I think that maps on to to my exact concerns as well To me, this is one of those things that's fine when it's very constrained right uh because Because where this one breaks for me Is there are certain armies in the game that are largely too damaged and have paid for that luxury Right and like that is their win condition like Ogres are a good example of this, but they're not the only one Iron Jaws I've played a number of games against coalesced last year with iron jaws where I really felt this Yeah, which I mean, I'll say more about whether that's good or bad, but that was the experience. Sure. Yeah Another good example Although many of their units aren't necessarily too damaged base, but sure. I get where you're going violent violent fury and yeah sure but The so to me when you can when you can turn your whole force into this with relatively no cost i.e The petrofex build, right? This is where it becomes a problem because the because the outsized impact is so massive on some cohort of enemy armies that are like, okay, well now I just paid for nothing right like I what what effectively happened there Is you made them bring 1200 points or 1300 points instead of 2000 All right, that's what's effectively happening You're turning their army down to suddenly being like a 1200 point force Again, none of these things mean you can instantly win The game is still a skill testing game skill still matters most of all But boy is that the back foot You know, it's hard to beat 2000 points with 1300 effective points Whereas when this is like a aura effect on a single model that might be able to be killed Or put behind especially a spell Or something so like soul black grave lords waste away. I have no problem with spg's waste away spell I think it's a great sure absolutely Fantastic buff they are debuff. They have it's a great spell relatively constrained range very powerful Suits exactly to their army love it. It's neg one damage. No problem You got to cast the spell you got to be in range. I have a chance to unbind Interactive is all get out right um a plus right and whereas here With something like petrofex, it's exactly he said just like no, this is just my whole army What will have what you have to do to get that? Make the right choice Yeah, although I do at least my mind In looking at the colost and petrofex elite as the two examples here I do think there's an opportunity cost distinction that I would make between them In terms of colost is giving up quite a bit more in my mind As an identity as the nature of what they're doing compared to petrofex elite Where petrofex elite feels a lot of like everything everywhere all at once With everything that they can bring to bear in addition to reducing damage by one Is that just a factor? I don't disagree with you. I think you're actually right about that I think you're both right about that in in drawing a distinction there. I think this is a distinction with difference and But but let me ask you a question Is that because so many of the monsters were basically bad And and and uh bad I don't I don't think so If if weger and the monsters had good war scrolls And were pointed actually somewhere in the neighborhood of correct Like they're way over-costed now not a little bit like they're way over-costed for what's written on that scroll like in in Uh like a skink chief on stegodon is basically a war crime He's so over-hosted somebody should be brought before the Hague whoever put 330 points on there Okay, that's like a lot of stuff but like If that if those units were like because in petrofex The choice I'm making is the reason I can do that is because all those units are good like and mortis is good Stalkers are good The things I want to take to build my army out of are good Right, isn't this just a a function of the fact that a lot of the scrolls that that you want to be taking That would benefit from this rule Are just kind of over-costed or underwhelming You know, I was originally disagreeing with you. There is something to it. Um Um My assessment, uh The the coalesced units the monsters the sorus the croc cigar. Um Priced in a way, which is fair If the caveat that's losing the minus damage now now Yes, we can quibble as stegodons. Obviously horrible even at that. There's going to be loser worse girls I'm not saying there's no loser worse girls, but but generally speaking, let's use sorus as an example They're priced in a way which seems fair in Coalesced and you take them over into starborn you look at what starborn's doing with it's summoning its mortal wound vortex and suddenly Oh, this is priced fair Starborn because that worse girls playing paying a point tax for being in starborn Or for being in coalesced now, there's some worse girls You're not going to use in starborn and vice versa and coalesced, but generally speaking Um, they're paying for sins in both sub factions The issue is that for example, um Uh in mortis guard, I think are priced about right for where they are in mortis pretorians Don't think they're price priced right for where they are in petrofex elite Um, and if you price them right for petrofex elites, they would no longer be priced right for anything But petrofex elite, right, right. Yeah I think that's right it's like I see I think if the seraphon book had come out and they actually did the work on Croyger and staggidons. Let's just take those two units for example Okay Let's say croyger you looked at those elite units like that are generally hard to be good, but it's happened like it can happen Um, for example these stalkers and mortis guard. We're literally just talking about Okay, let's say That like let me reconstruct the world for you here in this very easy way I want you to take all of the stats of the stalkers and mortis guard And we're going to copy paste those over into croyger and warsplend Bop, bop Just literally cut and paste. Okay And then they're going to have the same points cost too, but I'm just I'm just effectively I'm just etching out the name All right. Yeah, okay And then for staggidons, let's say they're like down 100 points and had a good monster attack profile Like they could do real damage in some way I'm not sure that tomorrow that's not an instant problem Maybe it is maybe it isn't Okay But I feel like that's underpinning all of this to some degree because I can get at you know most everything I need through this and Obviously we don't want to get into like different points costs for different sub factions That would instantly become a nightmare and like if we can't get the points right if we can't get the points right now We're not going to get them right by making a more granular. It's like Craziest idea in the world is like well everybody complains about the points being wrong now. What's the solution make more points? No No, clearly that's Yeah, yeah So like I I completely agree with your point that about petrofex. I think to me The easy answer here is Stop giving neg one damage out to entire armies That's it. It's that simple like we can argue whether or not it's bad in coalesced But I think that's largely a fluke of history or one way or the other is what I'm saying, right Because it was bad before When it was limited to that stuff it happened at a point in the past. So it could be true again in the future Right. It's the same basic rule So just stop giving it to whole armies. Just don't Hmm. I don't I don't know. I agree generally with that I don't know if it was a fluke or just brilliant design and made them calling it prematurely um Looking at coalesced and starborn The entire battle tone seems like they put a lot of thought into making sure that things balanced here and here Um, and basically the thesis is is if you're gonna put neg one damage and a subaction across the army You're gonna have to write the entire book around that. Yeah, I kind of feel like I kind of feel with the four sub factions in general That's what they did in in seraphon and generally speaking I I don't get the sense that as much thought went into the uh, the obr implementations. Yeah Could be could be I think to me I'd like to see it just stricken from the the game and as an army wide rule We just stopped doing that. I think it's just a safe course of action. It doesn't need to exist Right, like the game the game loses nothing for losing this exactly exactly and somebody earlier had asked. Okay, uh herald Is it neg one damage basically a variable ward save? Why is it worse than a good ward? Okay? Well, what's a good ward five up? That's a good ward, right? Most people like five up on the right units are very powerful ward save as we talked about I mean the amulet of destiny was stricken from the game and it was a five up word It was too good from the uncertain units that could go on right Okay, well if I do 30 damage to a unit with a five up ward, how much damage did they take? On on on mathematical averages, right 20 20, yep, right Okay, so a five up ward is like what is is doing Uh Minus what a third damage basically, right, but it can it can also apply to damage one Whereas minus it's going to apply very equally. There's also a lot of things that can just sort of cut through now We'll talk about that in a moment Ward saves in general or reduce ward saves or screw around with ward saves like you're playing with a basic game mechanic there Right. Yeah, whereas neg one damage. There's nothing that Is I don't have anything in my ogres that overrides that it says ignore neg one damage if I take this special unit That's not a thing, right? It's just blanket. It happened And it's been factored in to the cost of the home unit To have the two damage the cost of you having a five up ward is not factored into my brute in iron jaws Right. Hmm Like it might be unfortunate if I run into the five up ward like oh darn Oh shucky darns. That's going to be hard for me to punch through Right, but I didn't pay any extra points for that. I just know that's a thing in the ecosystem And I can list plan accordingly for it or not right Whereas my two damage on my scroll. Oh, I'm absolutely paying for that And when you sap that out of me and make me one damage now all of a sudden I'm overpaying by a Usually a pretty hefty amount because you pay a lot to have two damage based on your scroll It's not something that you just hand out in most cases Okay, so as a last point on this I'm generally confused about what I think about this one, but I do lean more toward The the sense that it's probably a net it it's not a good idea But again, it's more from a first principle point of view than anything. What about cruel gas cruciators We had obviously them at one point. They stacked, but let's just say they were gas cruciators problematic and stacking But why would they? I think cruel gas are the perfect example of a unit now that no longer stacks where its attacks Has limited board effect and it's got counterplay in the sense that there's Vagillion things which can remove it. I got very good at killing those things Because most of my opponents were night hot players So um It's the perfect example of how if you are going to implement this you should implement I think the distinction between minus one damage and most other things we're talking about Is while casey is fine If you just remove casey from night hot as a faction and maybe push around some points accordingly That's great Like right, I mean that might that might need to come down in points a little bit But they'll still be great versus like I think if you Going back to an example killed all four up rallies all of them all forever That would have in some specific situations some negative impact um For all the reasons I I I laid out in my earlier argument Yep. Mm-hmm. Yeah Okay. Yeah, that makes that makes sense. Yeah, I think some people in the comments really sum this up well Like this neg one damage thing is is again This is like super fire right because we've just seen two of examples of it recently now. That's not a trend I'm not saying I think it's going to be seen more But boy should it not be seen more number one like as an army wide rule Number two when you look at something like night haunt as a lot of people said in the comments We're gong over there. It's mostly part of an army with one wound each not giant wound sinks Conditional neg one damage or is for a low wound army like night haunt doesn't seem as bad, right? Yeah, exactly, right? Whereas if this is a common thing where army wide many armies in the ecosystem can just be at neg one damage It just shuts out Entire armies from that from just like playing those armies are just straight losers Right there their win rate just yeah that that really resonates dude from a design standpoint because that does strike me As being categorically Along the same veins of shutting off wards or shutting off storm cast science of the storm You know ability to deep strike or something shutting off allegiance abilities like a core element of an army's design Yeah, that that definitely resonates. So yeah, incidentally when we do our what we got wrong show Which we're going to have to do at the end of this year number one night haunt for me Couldn't have been more wrong about night haunt down there like 39. I thought they're going to be great And then I'm not going to say the second thing that I got wrong because somebody has already taken He doesn't need another I'll just be I'll have to be taking victory laps on that for a while. Don't worry. It's fine It's all good. Um, okay Willard Ward said neg one damage is nothing against one damage armies. How many scrolls have one damage versus multiple? It's a good question. I don't I don't know the actual like number of that off the top of my head But There's like clearly the number of scrolls is higher who just do one damage like certainly that is true but This very much hurts the particular armies where they've built their foundation on that Right. So another another thing with that Obviously, I don't know the exact number. I haven't broken it out, but I can just speak from playing uh storm cast slaves to darkness and sylvanas All of my elite stuff, which I would consider taking except like draka who I take because she doesn't do this If it's punching through armor and getting me what I need. It's also multi-damage. Yeah, it's Storm caster another good example like most of your units are of any value. They're your hammers are multi-damage, right? And it just does exactly.  It's really unfortunate Right. Keith there's a lot of authoritarian technically in this category with this half the damage of each attack running up Do you guys basically just kind of place that in the same context of cool gas cruciator because it's on one particular model It's like a little special dude. He can be a special boy You know for the same reason marathi's allowed to max yourself at three wounds, right? Because you can be Special characters can be little special boys, especially something like the light of a tharion wandering around the board at Wet six inches or something on a Is this move speed? You know, he's just a little foot assassin like the week he is The one of the best of the worst unit types in the game So I would very much like that guy to be special. I think he's great Um, and you still don't really see him. It's a real. Yeah, it's a real shame Okay more wounds Foot hero stats, you know what sometimes they're just annoying This one's one for me boys. This one's just for me um But let me see if this resonates with you Why are goblins just the equivalent of vampire lords? When did this happen? Sure, okay Now maybe this is my grognard coming out. Maybe this is the fact that I've been playing warhammer since the 90s But back in my day A weedy goblin did not have the same stat profile As a mighty vampire lord when you looked at them You saw different numbers along the line Okay There was an obvious difference And I used to pride myself. I was like, you know what's super cool Is that my scaven is so fast like look at that initiative He like only the elf lords outspeed my are faster than my scaven, right? We're so fast You know like man, it's awesome Okay, or whatever you like something to be proud of something that sets you apart now Since the launch when we got the launch Of of aos and we reset the storm cast heroes to the the five attacks of threes By the way, not even all storm cast heroes have this we call it the storm cast profile But really it's only the lords that happens. There's a lot of only four attacks and three attacks Which is so pitiful now.  This is just it Now technically the loon boss on foot is five attacks threes threes neg one d three I went and looked this up because I went and looked at all the heroes So he's averaged to But the loon boss on Put him on something and he's mostly three three neg one two Okay Uh, whereas the vampire lord five attacks threes threes neg one two the claw lord Six attacks threes threes neg one two eat it eat it storm cast heroes I think it's bonkers. I played against that dude a month ago. Jesus Uh, yeah, that's a whole story, but we can move on good lord Why is this happening? Is this should we just give up? And be like this is the hero profile. This is what you get. There's a complete lack of distinction in heroes Uh At uh beyond their save which by the way is usually three plus or four plus right? It's not like it varies much more than that Almost all these foot heroes are three up or four up now admittedly three up is a lot better than four up I'm not Foolish enough to say that's not a difference to that distinction What what do you what do you mean by that's it? I yeah That's it as in like there's no what are you talking about? Are you talking about We should have six up save. We should have five up save We should have two up save or are you talking about like they need more abilities to differentiate or both How about just different stat profiles like maybe the little weedy goblin The little weedy goblin hero is just like four attacks on fours and threes You know neg one rend one damage.  Correct. Who said excuse me, vince ventrilla. It's 17 attacks at three threes neg one two Yes, correct the what he's joking about there is that the smash rat Yeah, that the claw lord can build a bunch of extra attacks through through many different things including being wounded So yeah, he can he can end up at like a egregious number of attacks at three threes I disrespected him and I paid for it dearly. Yeah, you don't disrespect smash rat Um, although arch warlock smash rats my favorite I ran him against the sole blight player and the sole blight player was not ready for what smash rat had in the bag um He knew he tried to change me down with his vampire lord, but smash rat was too clever I'm sold, but i'm a stormcast and nergal player who has been experiencing this every time I write a list So david, what do you think? Uh, the first one is vince. I listened to the the glutes by gitz As you guys did and you got to the part with the characters and I had a realization which made me Start laughing for like on and off for like an hour. It's the best thing ever When I realized that what's happened is that the the the little goblins are taking so many drugs I think they're playing dark souls.  Like if I made a gitz army, it would be a dark souls gitz army at this point But no in seriousness though, I think it would be brilliant if we had more fours and twos Don't care where they are first to hit twos to one fine vice versa fine Um with ren going up or down and damage going up or down and attack numbers You don't need to change what the end equation You don't need to change the end equation is if the end equation is maximum potential of six damage Sure, but you can you can differentiate it. So at least feels different when you're rolling the dice At the same time, I'm also okay with the end equation going up or down a vampire lord On foot should be more dangerous in melee than a goblin. I don't care how specially is Okay, I'm not against that. It's just it's it's hitting on two levels. It's it's the outcomes Same how you get there's also the same and it's like, okay, yeah Psychos did they look like psychos psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them. I don't give how crazy they are Okay So at any rate like I don't give that that's what I'm saying. Yeah, this is not like the biggest problem in the game It's not like this is causing some massive imbalance. This just really bothers me Uh Murdock is on one. Yeah Murdock, you're on one in the chat. I'm right there with you, man. That's part of the power creep show He's making the point that I brought up earlier about the This premise that we have a new aggregate baseline specifically when it comes to a lot of these heroes in the game small heroes support heroes, I think a lot of these are Priced too cheaply relative to the prior baseline that I thought we were at over the last 18 months There's an obvious problem. It should only be the gits heroes to our point Sure Right, right So no one else no one else do this toy only the gits Yeah Yeah And by the way, I'm fine if you want to keep the little heroes Like if the little goblins still want to be on three up three up and you just want to boost everybody else Like give the vampire lord eight attacks on three threes at night to rend two damage or something cool great That's fine. You know, it doesn't need to be like the biggest difference in the world I just want some difference where I feel like this guy is what he is. That's it. It's completely ever similar to problem Or with the way save stacking where it's just give them higher rent Like if your goblins rent one and the vampires rent three Boom, baby. I just cut right through your save again Totally fine. I would be completely fine Were you like strength seven toughness seven back in the day vampires?  I don't think we're that high I think they were okay. I'd have to go back and look like I've been five or five. Maybe maybe five and five They had a very high weapon skill in very high initiative. I m