GW News: magic and prayers in #NewAoS

That sucks. Ditching morale mechanics and becoming all the more obsessive with pointless objectives are certainly two steps in the wrong direction.

But then, I'm getting into TOW instead, what do I care

 

Last time objective control gameplay was done right was, imo, back in Dawn of War 1.

MAGIC!

A WIZARD has a power level that determines the number of SPELL, UNBIND, and BANISH abilities that they can use per phase (a WIZARD (2) can cast one SPELL and BANISH an endless spell or invocation).



You now pick a single spell lore, and every sorcerer in your army can attempt to cast any of the spells from that lore, instead of keeping track of which specific Weirdnob Shaman knows Mighty ‘Eadbutt.



Only one friendly wizard can cast the same spell each turn, unless that spell has the new UNLIMITED keyword, but these can’t be cast again by the same wizard in the same turn.

Casting rolls are still 2D6; if a casting roll is snake eyes, then spell fails, the caster takes D3 mortal damage and can cast no more spells in that phase.



Unbinds are only limited by your level.

PRAYERS!

They also have levels!



You also pick a specific lore, but instead of a single casting roll, you roll a D6 chanting roll, and on a roll of 2+, your PRIEST gains that many ritual points, which accumulate over multiple turns.

Each prayer has a chanting value that you’ll need to match before being answered (some include a higher value that can power up the result). For example, Slaughterpriest's Witchbane Curse.



A chanting roll of 1 will lose your priest D3 ritual points. Prayers can’t be unbound.

MANIFESTATIONS!

Instead of spending points to add endless spells when constructing an army, you can pick a manifestation lore. This grants access to a selection of endless spells and invocations that you’ll be able to summon in battle (YES!).

Some factions will have their own Manifestations, while the current endless spells from Malign Sorcery and Forbidden Power are divided into thematic lores.

Wizards and priests both can attempt to use the Banish Manifestation ability to expunge them.



There are more ways to interact with these conjurations, to cover next week, alongside a new miniature, probably Skaven, on Monday!

 

Honestly, the differences are suprisingly minor when ti comes down to it....

I know this isn't going to happen. But please god use critical damage for like spells and abilities so we have something else than "Do D3 mortal wounds" on everything....

Yeah, that's a signficant improvement, compared to the previous rules which were always general rules. Maybe we'll finally start seeing some true anti-X weapons, as opposed to special weapons being better against literally everything.

Eh, 1 spell lore for the entire army feels weird? Especially for armies like ours, where you have very distinct spellcasters (Slann v.s. Skinks)
It also means that a single spell lore is going to need to provide access to a lot of different tools. The current system of 6 spells per lore (of which usually only 1 or 2 are decent...) wouldn't work for this in the slightest.

At the same time, the different lores need to be distinct enough to warrant their existence.

This feels very weird. Why not just have each wizard pick its own lore?

Also; do spellcasts and unbinds now both count towards the same limit? So a wizard (1) can either cast, or unbind, but not do both? That rather sucks? At least it'll reduce how magic-breaking characters like Nagash are with their absurdly high casts/unbinds.

And the only example of a spell we get is still just a boring default "do D3 mortal wounds".....

We need some examples of those unlimited spells. Cuz if something as basic as Mighty 'Eadbutt is still subject to the rule of one then it doesn't look very promising...

Does that mean you're going to be stuck only having endless spells as possible options if you pick that lore?

This system is weird...

 

Honestly, it's a mystery why damage from a single attack carries over in AoS. It really messes with the design-space for attacks...
Would love to know why it was ever implemented this way.

 

And the new skaven model.

• It has a silly amount of damage on its ranged attack for a minor ranged hero.
• It has "totally not mortal wounds" on 6's
• Look out sir comes back
  • Fun fact; everything that isn't a hero can give the benefit. So have your skink priest be guarded by a bastiladon I guess.
    
  • Anyways, that means minor support heroes are still going to randomly die to abilities/spells/etc. cuz it really isn't terribly much protection.
  • Minor melee heroes are still going to be unable to actually do much melee-ing out of fear of getting squished...
    
  • Of course the skaven immeadiatly introduces an exception to look out sir, cuz GW refuses to actually give minor support heroes any sort of real survivability....
• His musket has a 24" range, so whatever GW said about ranged attacks being shorter ranged is apparently nonsense...

And that's it really. Basicly an entire article to declare "look out sir comes back"

 

Yeah, this Skaven model can pick off support heroes pretty well and at a relatively long range. Plus, he can give that feature to other Skaven sniper units. Ugh.

It is a cool looking model though.

 

Can't say I'm surprised. I'd imagine our Chameleon Skinks will get this ability themselves.

 

Honestly, I'd hope not.
Rules like this need to be rare (or preferably, just not exist...) for the new "look out sir" rule to be relevant...

 

I could see that as a possibility for our Dartpipe Chameleons. But I think it's powerful on this Skaven hero not only because he can hit pretty hard, albeit with only 2 attacks, but can grant it to other Jezzail units around him. In my mind, that makes it much easier to pick off support heroes. If our Chameleons have this perk, and if they are cost efficient, Seraphon players might field them. Right now Dartpipes are decent but still don't see much play because they're not as cheap as our Bolas.

I agree that it should be rare, but I think it's alright to have it in the game. It's good to have some threat out there for protected foot heroes. I just don't want it to be too easy to pick them off. Obviously, we'll see. I might be concerned for nothing. It depends on many factors; like points, ranges, the amount of foot heroes worth fielding, the amount of better things a Skaven player can field, etc.

 

I mean, minor support heroes tend to have 4-6 wounds and usually a pretty bad save, and there's plenty of spells and other nonsense that circumvent "look out sire" anyway. It's not like they're exactly difficult to kill even without stuff like this skaven.

And personally I just find it very lame that support heroes have to hide in the back to use 1 ability for 99% of a game while ignoring the rest of their warscroll.

 

Battleplans and GHB and stuff

They seem to be playing around with different scoring-schemes for different battleplans and such. Like a 10 point cap on victory points per turn in certain battleplans.

On the one hand; I guess it's good to prevent run-away games. On the other hand, once you've fallen behind that limit could be problematic.

O, and a partial show of the new "seasonal" rule. Which seems to be poorly phrased and just begging to be interpreted in ways that probably don't correspond to the intention. RAW its a bodyguard rule that can be used without the bodyguard being anywhere near the attacker. Additionally you could easily argue it triggers even if the attacker doesn't target the general they are guarding. He just needs to be in combat. Who wrote this rule?

 

New prosecutors

The wings look better than the old design.

Also, apparently abilities now have an equivalent to ward-saves where you can just ignore the ability on a 4+.
Hopefully it only working on "non-core abilities" won't be too arbitrary a division.

 

Endless spells are basically summonable units now.

On the one hand; I guess this is good. It allows them to do "regular" attacks, as opposed to mortal wound spam. Which opens up design possibilities.
On the other hand; they can now be simply destroyed (in addition to being dispelled). And they aren't exactly sturdy (quicksilver swords has a mere 6 wounds, a 5+/6++). So it's not like they take terribly much to be destroyed.

Sure, any damage they soak is damage that isn't put into an actual unit. But it still seems a bit easy to destroy them like this.

O, and needless to say, they don't benefit from any faction abilities or anything.
Which is a bit of a shame. Could add some interesting flavour to have interactions with faction rules. Admitadly, allowing that would probably be a nightmare to balance

Same for faction terrain. They can now be destroyed. And similarly, they also aren't exactly sturdy (8 wounds, 3+/6++ for the fyreslayer terrain).

 

A MSU of skinks is only going to score like 0.4 hits/round of shooting or something. So skinks still aren't relevant thanks to their non-existant statline

But yes, chaff that isn't called "skinks", and has actually functional attacks will threaten your endless spells. In fact, it might arguably be the best use of their attacks in a lot of cases.

Anyways, it's weird. Especially since the quicksilver swords don't even seem to have any special rules to help them get going. It's a fairly basic melee profile. It's entirely possible to destroy the thing before it ever gets to do anything meaningfull. Like why doesn't it at least have a "fight first" rule or something?

 

Spearheads

The spearheads themselves aren't that interesting, its just combat patrols for AoS. But they reveal some new (simplified) warscrolls.

Mount attacks now have the "companion" ability. Presumably to make it clearer what attacks are buffed by artifacts and such.
Cavalry is a keyword that exists now, apparently.
They reveal the Magister on Disc's spell, and it kind of confirms magic is going to be the exact same dissapointment it's always been, as all spells shown so far have had no meaningfull changes (aside from the endless spells).

The magister is better at melee combat than it used to be for some reason. It's ranged attack is still essentially useless.
Which is a shame. Had kinda hoped that the new skaven model indicated GW had realized that support heroes need to be given something meaningfull to do besides their 1 spellcast/ability-use per turn, and that melee attacks on a support hero are wasted. But I guess not.