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Post by oncomingstorm on Mar 29, 2017 16:50:20 GMT
It's one of the reasons Circle isn't taking to their new themes. Loki and Ghetorix are often too good not to include even when you're missing out on free points.
Minor reason if you ask me. Sentry stones is the big one. I agree, but then I look at the Anti-AD themes and I think that it's probably not a bad idea to have at least one of your lists in a pairing not relying on sentry stones. PP seems to be giving that out as a benefit fairly regularly, and I won't be shocked if almost every faction gets an Anti-AD theme at some point, in which case it'll be a legitimate meta-bender. Those themes in general hit Circle hard, but sentry stones in particular lose a lot of value from having to deploy 6" back. Ghetorix I think is rarely going to be a compelling reason not to play in theme. He's good, he's beefy, he's a good beatstick and finisher, but aside from his warp:casterkill/overtake with Kromac (who can take him anyway) he's basically just a warpwolfier warpwolf. Everything a warpwolf does, he does better, but he doesn't do anything that one of the flavors of warpwolf doesn't do. Loki is both easier to slot into lists, and does a bunch of things basic warpwolves don't do (pull, pathfinder, shield guard) that aren't tied to his bond. I see him as a more compelling reason not to play in theme, but for sure that's not always the case. If anything, the reason circle doesn't play in theme is because the models tied to two of them are unexciting and/or just bad. No one is excited about male Tharn, and very few people are thrilled with where Wolds are at the moment.
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Lanz
Junior Strategist
Posts: 685
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Post by Lanz on Mar 29, 2017 17:34:14 GMT
It's one of the reasons Circle isn't taking to their new themes. Loki and Ghetorix are often too good not to include even when you're missing out on free points.
Minor reason if you ask me. Sentry stones is the big one. The hellmouth is in the same boat and it's being passed over for theme lists. I think the power of the theme lists is the biggest factor here.
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Post by pangurban on Mar 29, 2017 19:10:40 GMT
Minor reason if you ask me. Sentry stones is the big one. The hellmouth is in the same boat and it's being passed over for theme lists. I think the power of the theme lists is the biggest factor here. There is nonetheless quite a big difference in how the factions take to their themes that can usually fairly obviously be attributed to getting to still take the most significant models you always take (Storm Lances, Winterguard Rifles) vs not getting to take the models you'd otherwise always take (Sentry Stones, Sentinels, Idrians probably). Oracles of Annihilation doesn't follow that pattern and I'm sure there are others, but it's definitely noticeable.
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Post by sideshowlucifer on Mar 29, 2017 20:14:07 GMT
That and the free solos just aren't really worth losing out on the other options. We Circle players have no theme that really clicks yet for the faction as a whole. They are all pretty corner case themes where the limited free solos just aren't worth it. Snacking on warbeasts is pretty neat as is ambushing WoO, but is that really worth giving up the other options for? Most of the time, that's a no.
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Post by octaviusmaximus on Mar 29, 2017 20:18:27 GMT
Some people didn't like me dismissing his argument. Now look where that has gotten you, into a poop fight in the internet where someone refuses to believe their bad idea is bad. The George Lucas effect. And? You dismiss my ideas as well when you dislike them, and I don't appreciate it. So in my opinion its only fair to treat everybody fairly. In the end the guy didn't back up any of his ideas with hard points in my mind, BUT It didn't kill me. I can at least see some of his points that he thinks...Sorta. I don't usually dismiss points out of hand, I am just not kind when pointing out when I think they are bad. I don't say he is bad, I find his judgement questionable and, as was pointed out up thread, I just pointed out a logic problem analysis where he was overly aggressive at pp for being 'bad at balancing' and then proposed a really really bad idea. Bad ideas happen, everyone has them, but its not worth expending much energy to try to paint them as better than they are.
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Post by Rowdy Dragon on Mar 29, 2017 20:32:55 GMT
I don't usually dismiss points out of hand, I am just not kind when pointing out when I think they are bad. Which is a bad idea if you want to put your point across. I do enjoy going to places in the internet where we can engage in a nice internet slapfight, but its well known that getting a person defensive is the worst way to get an idea across since it becomes personal. On top of that I HAVE seen you incredibly dismissive of others because you don't agree with them. Insulting even. You aren't necessarily the single arbiter of what good or bad ideas are.
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Post by octaviusmaximus on Mar 29, 2017 20:57:57 GMT
I don't usually dismiss points out of hand, I am just not kind when pointing out when I think they are bad. Which is a bad idea if you want to put your point across. I do enjoy going to places in the internet where we can engage in a nice internet slapfight, but its well known that getting a person defensive is the worst way to get an idea across since it becomes personal. On top of that I HAVE seen you incredibly dismissive of others because you don't agree with them. Insulting even. You aren't necessarily the single arbiter of what good or bad ideas are. Why get defensive over an idea? If it's bad, it's bad. Nothing personal about it. And yes, I have dismissed people when I don't agree with them. This is generally when they say something which is wrong or vague. You aren't the final arbiter of whether I am being dismissive or treating a bad idea with all the respect it deserves either.
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Post by Rowdy Dragon on Mar 29, 2017 21:03:56 GMT
Why get defensive over an idea? If it's bad, it's bad. Nothing personal about it. Because that's the common rule of courtesy. Its the same reasons we have bedside manners, and say sorry when we do bad things. Its the different between "Move your fat ass you pig" and "Can you make some room please" Its in human nature to get defensive over something that's ours. And abrasive language tends to get us defensive instead of even accepting whats true. As defined by you. Do you want to LEARN or do you wish to feel superior. Maybe a person was vague but had a good idea. Ask them for followup, and maybe you can learn something. Why so defensive about it? I said it so its true! In fact YOU said it.
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Post by octaviusmaximus on Mar 29, 2017 22:07:53 GMT
Why get defensive over an idea? If it's bad, it's bad. Nothing personal about it. Because that's the common rule of courtesy. Its the same reasons we have bedside manners, and say sorry when we do bad things. Its the different between "Move your fat ass you pig" and "Can you make some room please" Its in human nature to get defensive over something that's ours. And abrasive language tends to get us defensive instead of even accepting whats true. As defined by you. Do you want to LEARN or do you wish to feel superior. Maybe a person was vague but had a good idea. Ask them for followup, and maybe you can learn something. Why so defensive about it? I said it so its true! In fact YOU said it. "move over you fat ass pig" is disrespecting the person. I don't do that. You missed the point. Surely the courteous thing would be to be honest, rather than acting a pantomime around someone with a clearly bad idea. Im kit being defensive, I'm just telling you why you are missing the point I am making. Also it's "human nature" is a bad argument, used to justify bad things.
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Post by Rowdy Dragon on Mar 29, 2017 22:17:12 GMT
"move over you fat ass pig" is disrespecting the person. I don't do that. You missed the point. Surely the courteous thing would be to be honest, rather than acting a pantomime around someone with a clearly bad idea. Im kit being defensive, I'm just telling you why you are missing the point I am making. Also it's "human nature" is a bad argument, used to justify bad things. Well if I told you that I find your dismissive attitude rude and disrespectful to me as a person? Do you truly believe that when you'r being dismissive you'r not being bellittling? One person shares his or her thoughts and instead of helping them understand a counterpoint you assume the worst? And you do insult people as well. The second people started being negative you started belittling them and insulting people as a broad swath. And you are being defensive. Why not just admit your rude and get better? Nothing wrong with being rude as long as you admit that you are.
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Post by pangurban on Mar 29, 2017 22:24:22 GMT
"move over you fat ass pig" is disrespecting the person. I don't do that. You missed the point. Surely the courteous thing would be to be honest, rather than acting a pantomime around someone with a clearly bad idea. Im kit being defensive, I'm just telling you why you are missing the point I am making. Also it's "human nature" is a bad argument, used to justify bad things. Well if I told you that I find your dismissive attitude rude and disrespectful to me as a person? Do you truly believe that when you'r being dismissive you'r not being bellittling? One person shares his or her thoughts and instead of helping them understand a counterpoint you assume the worst? And you do insult people as well. The second people started being negative you started belittling them and insulting people as a broad swath. And you are being defensive. Why not just admit your rude and get better? Nothing wrong with being rude as long as you admit that you are. I'm largely skipping this sidetrack, but I do want to point out that merely admitting you're being rude in no way makes it ok to be rude.
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Post by Forsaken on Mar 29, 2017 22:47:36 GMT
Minor reason if you ask me. Sentry stones is the big one. I disagree somewhat. Certainly the sentry stones have become a go to in markIII but if that was the only thing preventing Circle players from theme lists then why isn't Bones of Oroboros seeing the love? It's because our internal balance is weak and the themes force us to play counter-intuitive models in exchange for minimal bonuses. I agree, but then I look at the Anti-AD themes and I think that it's probably not a bad idea to have at least one of your lists in a pairing not relying on sentry stones. PP seems to be giving that out as a benefit fairly regularly, and I won't be shocked if almost every faction gets an Anti-AD theme at some point, in which case it'll be a legitimate meta-bender. Those themes in general hit Circle hard, but sentry stones in particular lose a lot of value from having to deploy 6" back. Ghetorix I think is rarely going to be a compelling reason not to play in theme. He's good, he's beefy, he's a good beatstick and finisher, but aside from his warp:casterkill/overtake with Kromac (who can take him anyway) he's basically just a warpwolfier warpwolf. Everything a warpwolf does, he does better, but he doesn't do anything that one of the flavors of warpwolf doesn't do. Loki is both easier to slot into lists, and does a bunch of things basic warpwolves don't do (pull, pathfinder, shield guard) that aren't tied to his bond. I see him as a more compelling reason not to play in theme, but for sure that's not always the case. If anything, the reason circle doesn't play in theme is because the models tied to two of them are unexciting and/or just bad. No one is excited about male Tharn, and very few people are thrilled with where Wolds are at the moment. I agree with Oncoming here for the most part but would take it back to what I said above. Circles internal balance is wonky and the band aid solutions from themes only partially make up for it. Just because I can put corpse tokens on bloodpack doesn't mean their scornegy goes away. Just because I can get a stoneshaper for free doesn't mean a wold guardian comes even close to doing what a pureblood does for my list. Now personally, I like the idea of theme lists (being a roleplayer at heart) and am making efforts to play with them. I even think the themes can be fun and decent but I don't really play overly competitive and would like to see the balance of factions and themes be prioritized over jury-rigging to partially solve problems. Sidenote: Why isn't Lord of the feast an option as a free solo in a Devourer theme list? He's about as thematic as can be since the is essentially the personification of the heart eater ability. Other factions have 6point freebies and frankly he seems overcosted at 6 anyways.
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Lanz
Junior Strategist
Posts: 685
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Post by Lanz on Mar 30, 2017 0:38:23 GMT
So, here is one of the major problems I have with theme forces and spam. I made this list yesterday and posted it in the legion area recently as an example of what could be a functional CoTD theme list:
Legion Army - 75 / 75 points [Theme] Children of the Dragon
(Absylonia 2) Absylonia, Daughter of Everblight [+28] - Nephilim Soldier [9] - Nephilim Soldier [9] - Nephilim Soldier [9] - Nephilim Soldier [9] - Nephilim Soldier [9] - Nephilim Soldier [9] - Nephilim Soldier [9] - Proteus [19] Blighted Nyss Sorceress & Hellion [6] Blighted Nyss Warlord [0] Incubus (5) [0] Blighted Nyss Swordsmen (max) [15] - Blighted Nyss Swordsman Abbot & Champion [0]
This list could be done under other warlocks who also provide battlegroup-wide buffing, and the basic principal of exploiting the Soldier's ability to gut systems/aspects generally is one that works (from experience, though not with this particular list).
I hate this list.
I own two Soldiers. I would never fathom owning more than that because honestly they aren't that good a warbeast and we have lots of other options typically. Yet in this list they are functionally DEF 13 ARM 18 and can pick apart heavies, so they're viable. The problem here is that spam is the only way to run this style of list. Not because one option is best, but because the theme list doesn't even allow other options. If I want melee damage-oriented warbeasts in Children of The Dragon, my only choice is the nephilim soldier(other than my obligatory character obviously). Protectors and Bloodseers aren't in much better a position. Both are also not generally spammed (I doubt many players own more than 1 of each), but in this theme list, they can be spammed for their durability for the points (especially bloodseers, who would be 8 points for ARM20 lights). These are roles that they don't fill outside of this theme list, so even if you did, for example, purchase 4 bloodseers for CoTD, they would pretty much be exclusively for CoTD. There's just no reason to have that many bloodseers anywhere else. There's barely justification for 1, nevermind more.
If I invested in this theme list, and the theme list was nerfed or another damage-oriented nephilim was released, it would potentially invalidate all those purchases past the two I own. If PP releases a spear nephilim who is just a bit better in the raw damage category (thus generally a better backbone warbeast), then sure, I would still use soldiers, but not purely soldiers, and all those soldiers who get replaced would never see the table ever again - there's simply no reason to ever take them anymore at that point since the only reason they were bought to begin with was because they were the only thing that filled that role at the time.
So we have a theme list that encourages spam of a narrow subset of a models, and if anything in that list dynamic changes, purchases are invalidated. Ravens of War could arguably be considered to be in a similar case, because it also only allows for a narrow set of warbeasts, and if you want to fill a particular role in excess of a single model, you're pretty much forced to spam the same model over and over. If you want a raven's list with 4 melee heavies, your choices are the neraph and angelius, and you're taking extras of one or the other no matter how you slice it. Ravens isn't as bad since the beasts are more expensive, and an archangel is an option, but it still illustrates the same problem of having only a small pool of models to pick from. So if you want to run a list that pushes that type of model, you're forced to take duplicates - duplicates that only are being purchased because of that theme list and their balance dynamic within it at that specific stage of the game. Duplicates that can be invalidated by their own changes, changes to the theme list, or simply new releases that compete with them.
The only reason this can possibly be a safe purchase is if nothing ever changes, but if that happened, the game would stagnate. Things will eventually change to avoid that, and since you can't include new things without removing old things, those things become invalid. That's a terrible purchasing environment to be in.
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Post by octaviusmaximus on Mar 30, 2017 1:36:43 GMT
"move over you fat ass pig" is disrespecting the person. I don't do that. You missed the point. Surely the courteous thing would be to be honest, rather than acting a pantomime around someone with a clearly bad idea. Im kit being defensive, I'm just telling you why you are missing the point I am making. Also it's "human nature" is a bad argument, used to justify bad things. Well if I told you that I find your dismissive attitude rude and disrespectful to me as a person? Do you truly believe that when you'r being dismissive you'r not being bellittling? One person shares his or her thoughts and instead of helping them understand a counterpoint you assume the worst? And you do insult people as well. The second people started being negative you started belittling them and insulting people as a broad swath. And you are being defensive. Why not just admit your rude and get better? Nothing wrong with being rude as long as you admit that you are. Feel free to feel as if I an dismissing you as a person. That isn't my intention. No, I am not belittling when I am dismissing an obvious failure of logic. A does not equal B unless B=A. There is no extra effort required. How is calling a bad idea bad "belittling", but saying that PP "doesn't know how to balance" isn't rude? I would think that with such an obvious lapse in logic I don't need to tell someone in detail why their idea is bad or absurd. I could, and a lot of people did. Look at the benefit it brought them. If people feel insulted, that is their prerogative. I am not going out of my way to be mean to someone. There is no gain in doing that. I have a lot of respect for people, that doesn't mean that everything they create is a golden standard of beauty that must be handled with care. Like I've said to Haight on this very forum, I prefer to be right than kind. I don't care for acting like a wonderful, nice person while wasting everyone's time pretending that something is better than it is. If you find that grating, fine. But I'm going to keep doing what I do regardless. If someone wants to discuss something and leads off with a falsehood, or is overly emotive or anything which means that they aren't really interested in having the discussion, they just want support in their beliefs, then what is there to be gained in playing their game? Fa1 for everything is a clearly terrible idea. It doesn't make sense in fluff, it messes with game balance, it isn't supported by the model line, it doesn't make sense with anything. The person proposing it clearly hadn't thought through their idea for more than 5 seconds. They then tried to say that PP doesn't know how to balance their game? Warmachine still is an exceptionally balanced game. It has problems, but to magnify the scope of those problems is to do a disservice to the quality the game has. Pay attention to the CID and you can see how PP has very good reasons for the changes they make and that they are nailing it really well. In the few weeks that Grymkin have been on the books they have gone from very solid to exceptionally solid. In the 2/3s year between mk 3s release to February pretty much every MAJOR balance concern has been smoothed out in the game. It's sad that Mad Dogs, Reclaimer and Una made it to the final print, but the fact that game was reasonably balanced with a few outliers out of the gate is close to a God-damn miracle when you consider the size of the game and the number of changes.
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Post by Stormsmith Dropout on Mar 30, 2017 2:11:45 GMT
Gonna have to side with Octavius on this. If an opinion is expressed without any evidence or reason backing it up then it can be dismissed without any evidence or reason. It isn't belittling to the person who expressed the idea unless they want it to be. If someone isn't willing to put in time or effort to back up their views then they clearly don't care that much about those views. If you voice an opinion on a public forum then you should have really thought about it before hand and made sure that its something you believe.
FA 1 IS a bad idea because it would drastically mess up PP's ability to move product. Imagine, please, that all player's redundant models become un-fieldable. What happens? Many of those models go to second hand vendors. Take, for example, the Lancer warjack of Cygnar. If every Cygnar player only needs 1 Lancer, then they will sell off the extra lancers they have. There is a Lancer in the Cygnar BB, so pretty much every Cygnar player has 1. So, now ebay (or wherever) is flooded with cheap lancer models. Suddenly, Lancer supply has skyrocketed and demand has plummeted. What happens? Price drops. No one buys Lancers from PP unless its in the battle box. Now, take that example and expand it to every WMH model that does not already have FA 1. That's a lot of sales that PP will lose.
Along with that, consider how ungodly upset the player base would be. We've seen anger and hysteria over lesser things. I know that I would leave if FA 1 were implemented. I'm sure I would not be alone. PP can not afford to lose so many players over a bone headed move like that.
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