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Post by greytemplar on Jan 3, 2018 18:35:54 GMT
Technically, the reason for WJ points existing is gone.
In mk1, nobody ran jacks because they were bad. Nowadays, even if you didn't have to run jacks everybody would run at least a few.
Of course, eliminating WJ points would require all point costs to be shuffled around and games would have to increase their sizes to accommodate.
The initial reason may no longer be necessary, but it doesn't harm the game and it is an interesting mechanic.
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Post by macdaddy on Jan 3, 2018 20:04:49 GMT
Technically, the reason for WJ points existing is gone. In mk1, nobody ran jacks because they were bad. Nowadays, even if you didn't have to run jacks everybody would run at least a few. Of course, eliminating WJ points would require all point costs to be shuffled around and games would have to increase their sizes to accommodate. The initial reason may no longer be necessary, but it doesn't harm the game and it is an interesting mechanic. I actually think, without warjack points, you would see a lot of infantry only armies in warmachine. Most of the reason I take jacks with casters like Testament, or Vindictus, is because I have warjack points. Otherwise I would really only be spamming maximum infantry. It also balances the systems a bit, because warlocks in hordes cannot actually function without beasts to fuel them with fury.
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Post by snarlyyow on Jan 3, 2018 21:26:59 GMT
I don't really understand this thread. The fluff of Warmachine and the Iron Kingdoms in general is that Warcasters can control jacks. The game is sold this way. Fundamentally, from a fluff and sales perspective, Warjack points encourage people to take warjacks. From a purely sales perspective warjacks (and warbeasts) are what separates Warmahordes from 40K, Guild Ball, and Infinity. When potential customers come into a store and see Warjacks and Warbeasts and Battle Engines they show more interest in the game then they would otherwise. When visitors see me playing the first thing they ask about are my Warjacks, not nameless grunts in my unit of Stormblades (though they get there too!).
So, yes, I don't understand this thread. The game is designed from the bottom up to be played with Warjacks. Warjacks are not bad. Holy hell, five months ago every other person online seemed to be complaining that warjacks were too good. Warjacks are great, power attacks are great, the game works mechanically better than it ever has.
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Lanz
Junior Strategist
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Post by Lanz on Jan 3, 2018 21:35:29 GMT
PP wants the game to fundamentally revolve around battlegroups without also forcing people to take nothing but jacks/beasts all the time. The current system enables that. If warjacks were just 'better' people wouldn't take infantry unless they enforced some equally-artificial rules to force people to take those (like GW's force organization structure). Warcaster points currently ARE basically the same in mk1. In Mk1 it didn't make sense to pay for a warcaster because it wasn't optional, so those points were taken up regardless, and the difference of warcaster was just how much points you had beyond that - exactly the same as now. It's a far better system now than Mk1.
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Post by W0lfBane on Jan 4, 2018 0:17:40 GMT
If not for Warwick points I would run so many pure infantry lists.
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zich
Junior Strategist
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Post by zich on Jan 4, 2018 0:19:28 GMT
In the age of "play 20p of dudes to get more dudes" it's the last thing keeping combined arms lists semi-relevant. It's not a great fix, but it's better than not having it.
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princeraven
Junior Strategist
Shredder spam is best spam
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Post by princeraven on Jan 4, 2018 4:19:15 GMT
Preventing excessive Warmachine dudespam with heaps of free points is a good enough to keep it in the game.
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Deller
Junior Strategist
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Post by Deller on Jan 4, 2018 22:46:22 GMT
Nowadays, even if you didn't have to run jacks everybody would run at least a few. I promise, there’s plenty of Cryx lists that would have 0 Warjacks or just 1-2 Arc Nodes if jack points did not exist.
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Post by MacGuffin on Jan 5, 2018 3:14:34 GMT
I think Chaingun's point is being misunderstood. The point is not to eliminate warjack points without regard to the effect on the presence of warjacks in the game. Rather, the point is to more elegantly ensure that warjacks are played -- which is, as Soul Samurai noted, the Unique Selling Point of Warmachine. Warjack points are an effective means of accomplishing this goal, but not a satisfying one. A more satisfying means of encouraging warjacks might be to give them a monopoly or near-monopoly on an important aspect of the game -- maybe armor cracking or durability. If warjacks (and, by extension, warbeasts) monopolized that role, one would expect to see a healthy number of warjacks in every list. Naturally, to ensure balance with infantry and other model types, you would need to make warjacks bad at something that other models do well -- maybe hitting high defense, or speed, or something fluffy and believable along those lines. That way, warjacks wouldn't be strictly "better."
It's a good point, and one clearly made by a player who likes warjacks. I don't think anyone really wants to get rid of warjack points without making some offsetting change to ensure warjacks find their way to the table.
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Post by HubertJFarnsworth on Jan 5, 2018 4:20:47 GMT
The problem with that is once you say "this model type is the only model type that can crack armor" then there's no reason to play anything else. Who cares if I can't hit your troops? I just have to stand around contesting stuff until someone can shoot your caster, or just keep rolling attacks until I get boxcars, or bring AOEs.
Most wargames have some sort of force org chart to keep lists mechanically balance and in-line with the fluff. In Warmahordes we instead have jack/beast points and to a lesser extent now themes. It keeps the list balanced by ensuring that every player will have at least some armor on the table and it keeps it in line with the fluff since the single most impactful ability of casters/locks is their ability to connect to mechanika/beasts. Without that Warcaster are just mages with deeper Mana pools and Warlocks are a bunch of different kinds of sorcerer and whatnot. Plus as others have said it ensures that anyone walking up to a table will immediately see the selling point of the setting: stompy dteampunky robots and the giant monster they love to hate.
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Lanz
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Post by Lanz on Jan 5, 2018 4:43:47 GMT
I think Chaingun's point is being misunderstood. The point is not to eliminate warjack points without regard to the effect on the presence of warjacks in the game. Rather, the point is to more elegantly ensure that warjacks are played -- which is, as Soul Samurai noted, the Unique Selling Point of Warmachine. Warjack points are an effective means of accomplishing this goal, but not a satisfying one. A more satisfying means of encouraging warjacks might be to give them a monopoly or near-monopoly on an important aspect of the game -- maybe armor cracking or durability. If warjacks (and, by extension, warbeasts) monopolized that role, one would expect to see a healthy number of warjacks in every list. Naturally, to ensure balance with infantry and other model types, you would need to make warjacks bad at something that other models do well -- maybe hitting high defense, or speed, or something fluffy and believable along those lines. That way, warjacks wouldn't be strictly "better." It's a good point, and one clearly made by a player who likes warjacks. I don't think anyone really wants to get rid of warjack points without making some offsetting change to ensure warjacks find their way to the table. They already do this. The heavy warjack is the standard for durability and hitting power. The entire meta is bent around this. Damage output is measured across the game based on the ability to one-round a heavy. That's the metric that's used by almost everyone either directly or indirectly. Models are deemed 'competitive' or not based on this. Also, warjacks used to be bad at hitting higher defense. They just had lower MAT in mk1 (with 5 being 'normal'), and they were just bad. A lot of these ideas were in previous editions and were removed for good reason.
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Post by minmaximus on Jan 5, 2018 9:34:11 GMT
Yeah when you give something a defining feature of "this thing is really good at killing things like it", the game goes one of two ways.
1: That is the only thing that matters anymore because its untouchable by everything else. 2: That thing is 100% irrelevant because other things are somewhat better at killing it than they are at killing something else.
There's no real way to enforce warcasters who support infantry taking warjacks besides just telling them they have to. You can nearly guarantee Irusk would rather bring more winter guard, and even casters like Coven- who have a spell to buff warjacks- would probably cut themselves down to a couple of arc nodes by necessity, but otherwise never consider a warjack in their list.
The only real sweet spot available here that would naturally get warjacks and infantry on the table would be for warjacks to be so incredibly good at everything that spending focus on anything else would be a ludicrous notion, but that without focus they would be entirely dead weight. Even then, you would just bring as many warjacks as you can feasibly juice up and fill the rest with infantry, and would probably have to kill off the concept of a "jack caster" entirely, because warjacks cranked up to being that enormously powerful would make someone like Nemo3 a god.
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Post by snarlyyow on Jan 6, 2018 5:47:14 GMT
I dunno, I think sr2017 really balances everything. You need jacks to score zones, you need some amount of troopers. I'm sure there would be lists with nothing but troopers but also lists with almost nothing but jacks if not for SR2017.
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Deller
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Post by Deller on Jan 6, 2018 12:05:05 GMT
I dunno, I think sr2017 really balances everything. You need jacks to score zones, you need some amount of troopers. I'm sure there would be lists with nothing but troopers but also lists with almost nothing but jacks if not for SR2017. You don’t actually need jacks at all, Battle Engines score rectangular zones just fine.
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Post by welshhoppo on Jan 6, 2018 12:10:52 GMT
I dunno, I think sr2017 really balances everything. You need jacks to score zones, you need some amount of troopers. I'm sure there would be lists with nothing but troopers but also lists with almost nothing but jacks if not for SR2017. You don’t actually need jacks at all, Battle Engines score rectangular zones just fine. And warcasters!
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