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Post by Charistoph on Jan 17, 2020 14:15:26 GMT
I remember when the Nephilim Bodyguard came out and people were saying, "Wait, one of two beasts in the faction that can frenzy into our warlocks is the bodyguard!?" Worth noting that individual moments of betrayal are possible, but sustained doesn't seem to work. Remember, Lylyth cut out her shard and was still loyal to Everblight. Aye. And really, frenzying isn't a "I hate you and I'm going to take revenge!" Its a "raaaaargh!!!ragelashingoutatthenearestthing!!!blarghhh" Its an unintentional lashing out.
It is an emotion-based, temporary betrayal if it charges the Warlock or any of their units, but it is still a betrayal. Back on the original idea, I think that if warcasters have power up, warlocks should get a “power down”. Let’s say you can remove a fury from every war east for free before your maintenance phase. My thought is,feel that that’s part of the reason why low fury warlocks are not very attractive. And we may want to have low point beasts be more of an option. Why not just get rid of Frenzy and Threshold while we're at it? All things considered, I still think Warbeasts have some considerable advantages over Warjacks in that every Warlock can run all their Warbeasts hot for one turn, no matter the resources they may otherwise have (like Beast Handlers or Shepherds). Warcasters, more often than not, require significant investment in the army to make a moderate-sized Battlegroup run hot for one turn.
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Post by elricaltovilla on Jan 17, 2020 14:35:31 GMT
If there were a change to the way warbeasts work (and I'm not sure there needs to be one). I would make it so that the warlock can "hold" or "keep" the animus of one of their dead beasts on their spell list, rather than making them more fury efficient.
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shmeep
Junior Strategist
Posts: 742
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Post by shmeep on Jan 17, 2020 20:00:13 GMT
If there were a change to the way warbeasts work (and I'm not sure there needs to be one). I would make it so that the warlock can "hold" or "keep" the animus of one of their dead beasts on their spell list, rather than making them more fury efficient. my issue with animi is that they have a bit of the same issue MK2 Shredders had. A couple of factions (trolls, skorne, blindwater) have animi that are very important to them - and are 'locked' behind an expensive beast. if there's one thing I wish would be changed about animi is to allow for some way for these animi to be used without having to reduce a 14-16 point warbeast into a glorified support . yes, I know they can and do get in work themselves, but you still have a lynchpin heavy. the new Terrorizer model alleviates the issue for the Skorne in one theme (or one caster), and apparently he can be taken as a requisition option, so it's nice to see PP steer in that direction at least a little - an animus on a stick that's costed and impactful like a(n expensive) solo.
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Post by greytemplar on Jan 18, 2020 6:25:43 GMT
Aye. And really, frenzying isn't a "I hate you and I'm going to take revenge!" Its a "raaaaargh!!!ragelashingoutatthenearestthing!!!blarghhh" Its an unintentional lashing out.
It is an emotion-based, temporary betrayal if it charges the Warlock or any of their units, but it is still a betrayal. Does your hand betray you if you are hammering a nail but miss and hit your thumb?
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Post by Charistoph on Jan 18, 2020 16:55:07 GMT
It is an emotion-based, temporary betrayal if it charges the Warlock or any of their units, but it is still a betrayal. Does your hand betray you if you are hammering a nail but miss and hit your thumb? Not a proper comparison with the Nephilim. This is closer to your dog biting you.
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crimsyn
Junior Strategist
Posts: 389
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Post by crimsyn on Jan 18, 2020 23:13:53 GMT
Back on the original idea, I think that if warcasters have power up, warlocks should get a “power down”. Let’s say you can remove a fury from every war east for free before your maintenance phase. My thought is,feel that that’s part of the reason why low fury warlocks are not very attractive. And we may want to have low point beasts be more of an option. I think your ideas are based on a false premise. Your premise seems to be that when warjacks got Power Up in the changeover from Mk.II to Mk.III, it created a fundamental balance issue making the Focus mechanic better than the Fury mechanic and warjacks better than warbeasts. What actually happened is that Fury was better than Focus for all of Mk.II, meaning that warjacks, in spite of being prominently featured as a selling point for the game (the game is called Warmachine, not Warinfantry) and in the starter products, were generally pretty bad on the tabletop. Power Up evened that out and brought them roughly up to par, and made it possible to effectively run more than the bare minimum number of warjacks. Warbeasts don't need a Power Up equivalent because they were already so much better than warjacks before Power Up came along, and I'm not seeing any evidence that Warbeasts and the Hordes factions who run them need significant buffs in order to be competitive with Warjacks and the Warmachine factions.
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Post by Charistoph on Jan 19, 2020 6:20:19 GMT
Warbeasts don't need a Power Up equivalent because they were already so much better than warjacks before Power Up came along, and I'm not seeing any evidence that Warbeasts and the Hordes factions who run them need significant buffs in order to be competitive with Warjacks and the Warmachine factions. That doesn't even consider the fact that Jack Marshals are a thing, while Beast Marshals don't exist outside of CoI, and most of the armies have ways of "calming down" the Warbeasts once you get past the Battlebox stage one way or another.
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Post by coolguyclay on Jan 20, 2020 21:54:53 GMT
Warbeasts don't need a Power Up equivalent because they were already so much better than warjacks before Power Up came along, and I'm not seeing any evidence that Warbeasts and the Hordes factions who run them need significant buffs in order to be competitive with Warjacks and the Warmachine factions. That doesn't even consider the fact that Jack Marshals are a thing, while Beast Marshals don't exist outside of CoI, and most of the armies have ways of "calming down" the Warbeasts once you get past the Battlebox stage one way or another. I only have a Hordes army but have collected a few Menoth pieces that have yet to hit the table. I have no idea how Jacks and a Warcaster can keep up with a Warlock and Beasts. Heavy melee warjack: 2 initials + 3 Focus (1 power up, 2 from caster). Typical heavy beast: 3 initials, 4 Fury plus did not cost Warlock any resources! If you land 2-3 beasts in a turn, a Hordes army can push out a lot more resources in a turn. I guess Warjacks have better base stats generally? I guess I need to try it personally on the table but I certainly like my options with Hordes.
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shmeep
Junior Strategist
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Post by shmeep on Jan 21, 2020 0:29:04 GMT
That doesn't even consider the fact that Jack Marshals are a thing, while Beast Marshals don't exist outside of CoI, and most of the armies have ways of "calming down" the Warbeasts once you get past the Battlebox stage one way or another. I only have a Hordes army but have collected a few Menoth pieces that have yet to hit the table. I have no idea how Jacks and a Warcaster can keep up with a Warlock and Beasts. Heavy melee warjack: 2 initials + 3 Focus (1 power up, 2 from caster). Typical heavy beast: 3 initials, 4 Fury plus did not cost Warlock any resources! If you land 2-3 beasts in a turn, a Hordes army can push out a lot more resources in a turn. I guess Warjacks have better base stats generally? I guess I need to try it personally on the table but I certainly like my options with Hordes. On paper you're right, in practice frenzies prevent you from running your entire army hot. It sounds great on paper, smash everything to pieces with the alpha and don't worry about threshold/frenzies, but tourney lists prove that just doesn't work. Depends on your faction. Skorne, Circle, Grymkin, Menoth (Harby), Ret and I believe Mercs are extremely powerful right now, but it's decieving - aside from Grymkin the strongest hordes lists rely almost entirely on their absurdly powerful infantry or battle engines, mot the beasts themselves. WMH just seems to naturally gravitate towards becoming infantrymachine. I have to say that Hordes' more fluid, reactive system is much more appealing to me too. Ironic how flavorful it is - focus is more rigid and machinelike, fury wild and adaptive.
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Post by Charistoph on Jan 21, 2020 2:39:46 GMT
I think part of what is bringing infantrymachine back in to play is not the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of Beast and Jack, but the focus of the game: zones and flags. For a similar point cost as a Heavy (if not less), you can bring in 10 bases which each require an attack dedicated to them in order to remove them. The average Gargossal is better at clearing these "light infantry" than the average Heavy or Light because of their ability to do area power attacks, but a Battle Engine can often do similar for less cost than a Heavy. Heavy infantry are also better at clearing out other infantry because they have more bases to dedicate to clearing the zones.
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Post by greytemplar on Jan 22, 2020 6:07:29 GMT
I only have a Hordes army but have collected a few Menoth pieces that have yet to hit the table. I have no idea how Jacks and a Warcaster can keep up with a Warlock and Beasts. Heavy melee warjack: 2 initials + 3 Focus (1 power up, 2 from caster). Typical heavy beast: 3 initials, 4 Fury plus did not cost Warlock any resources! If you land 2-3 beasts in a turn, a Hordes army can push out a lot more resources in a turn. I guess Warjacks have better base stats generally? I guess I need to try it personally on the table but I certainly like my options with Hordes. On paper you're right, in practice frenzies prevent you from running your entire army hot. It sounds great on paper, smash everything to pieces with the alpha and don't worry about threshold/frenzies, but tourney lists prove that just doesn't work. Depends on your faction. Skorne, Circle, Grymkin, Menoth (Harby), Ret and I believe Mercs are extremely powerful right now, but it's decieving - aside from Grymkin the strongest hordes lists rely almost entirely on their absurdly powerful infantry or battle engines, mot the beasts themselves. WMH just seems to naturally gravitate towards becoming infantrymachine. I have to say that Hordes' more fluid, reactive system is much more appealing to me too. Ironic how flavorful it is - focus is more rigid and machinelike, fury wild and adaptive. Its not that there aren't downsides to running your beasts hot. Its that the downside was not that severe. And if the board position was such that you're most likely going to lose the beast next turn anyway, then there is definitely no downside.
If power up were to go away and we needed instead to nerf beasts to compensate, the only real option would be to make a frenzying beast not remove the fury it had.
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Post by copperflame on Jan 22, 2020 16:07:15 GMT
Power-up should not go away imo (and I'm a Hordes guy). It made warmachines so much more effective and much more present in games after that. It was a great way to make them different but even with warbeasts. Now, that isn't to say there are not examples of where things are not balanced (nor could they ever truly get there?). I look at the stats of X warbeast compared to Y warmachine ... and think what-the-firetruck? Note! I also only play one faction so my perception is far and away not all-encompassing. But on the subject of Power-up... its great, glad to see it!
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Post by greytemplar on Jan 22, 2020 16:34:21 GMT
Well yeah. I think it should stay. My point was to reinforce the fact that Warjacks were underpowered in mk2.
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gordo
Junior Strategist
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Post by gordo on Jan 27, 2020 20:56:55 GMT
Well, as long we are pie in the skying a rules buff for Warbeasts, I've been pinning for a change to the basics of Threshold and Frenzy checks for a long time.
As it stands now, they don't come up much in any kind of "calculated risk" way. When a warbeast makes a Threshold check, it is almost always directly after their Alpha and at full fury... Which almost always means they will fail because they have to roll 5 or 4... This is really more of an "expected outcome" than a "calculated risk". Unlike Focus mechanics which require a player to make regular and difficult turn-planning decisions at the start of their turn, Threshold and Frenzy checks just don't involve the same kind of decision making... What's more, it's often actually worse for beast to pass his frenzy check because then you have this beast that is full of fury, can't be transferred to, can't boost, etc...
But what if there was a benefit to passing a Threshold check? Some reason for players to actually want to intentional take that risk from time to time?
I've always felt that if a beast passes a frenzy check, they get to remove 1 fury. Fluff wise, the beast controls their rage, swallowing some of their anger without lashing out. Mechanically, this would allow any warlock the luxury of running larger Battlegroups without relying on some external units/solos to help their beasts contribute a little per turn. Same way that thanks to Power Up, any Warjack can contribute per turn without requiring focus investments.
This would make the differing Threshold stats more meaningful. Beasts that have a 10 Threshold vs a 7 would actually have an advantage that players can count on. Effects that let you reroll frenzy checks would see more play. Effects that raise or lower a models Threshold would as well.
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Post by coolguyclay on Jan 27, 2020 21:42:46 GMT
... other good points ... This would make the differing Threshold stats more meaningful. Beasts that have a 10 Threshold vs a 7 would actually have an advantage that players can count on. Effects that let you reroll frenzy checks would see more play. Effects that raise or lower a models Threshold would as well. This is a clever change. Often Hordes players are all or nothing on leftover Fury. Either you play the turn just right to Reave the exact amount (ignoring anything on the beast on the chopping block that will surely die), or a beast ends up with a lot of Fury and you're really hoping for the Frenzy! Not enough risk-reward to leave one fury out there, even on a beast with 10 Threshold. In my experience, Frenzy checks are rare when not intended. Running more beasts "hotter" seems like a problem when compared against Warmachine though. Those extra boosts could really add up as "resources". Plus a lot of Frenzy checks is a lot more rolls, but player's choice if it's worthwhile. Cool ideas. It's a good option! While brainstorming weird changes ( the completely other way), and this idea is to speed the game up: 1. Drop Frenzy checks and the Threshold stat (saves rolls and extra stats on cards) 2. A Warlock can remove extra Fury from a beast taking 1 (or 2?) damage for each Fury removed, discarding down to Fury stat. 3a. A Warbeast with any Fury will auto-Frenzy (and as normal, can drop the Fury? Or too powerful and they keep the Fury? Or gain one more Fury up to max? Want to avoid exploiting light/lesser beasts that might as well Frenzy each turn). 3b. Or, instead of 3a, just drop Frenzy. Warbeast sits there. Rather than a missile that might get killed or might get attacks against the enemy, it's useless. Often the only "downside" to Frenzy is unplanned attacks (kill a grunt instead of a juicier solo), but rarely do I see things Frenzy against their own army. I just like the conversation about game ideas. Want to keep the rules tight and maybe that is simpler, but also maybe this is addressing something that isn't really an issue!
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