 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 My co-hostess with well not like the mostest, but some he's got someist. It's Tom. Yeah, buddy. I know a little bit Yeah, yeah, the averageist Also joining us on the show very happy to have him the one the only the illustrious The very very great guy Scott the miniature maniac. What's up, buddy? How you doing? It's going good. Thank you for having me on the show. Very excited to be here It's a it's a funny thing that we're having you on to have this discussion in like the same week that the pre-order for So like great words. Yeah, it comes out. So what can we what can this be but divine providence? Okay? Absolutely indeed indeed Tonight we're gonna be discussing really we're gonna we're gonna just talk about iOS its strengths its challenges where it's got Opportunities Scott obviously made a video that it garnered a little bit of attention. It was kind of under the radar You might not have seen it. It's Yeah, it's just like it kind of snuck out there I was real only only the hipsters and then the audience probably saw it. Yeah But it yeah, I would say it generated some response from our little corner of the internet community here in a OS land And I thought it'd be fun to have you on and talk about it. Yeah, it did By the way, you're welcome everyone for the Soul Blight leak. That was a hundred percent me And also, yeah, I think for that video I counted three Different video reactions. I think I counted. Hey, whoa There was another guy whose name escapes me and then of course Rob made one Yeah, a little bit of a little bit of a reaction drove a little traffic. That's good. Yeah, that's good. Hey look It's it's all engagement hashtag content. So for sure But we're gonna talk about that tonight, but of course first the normal stuff Hey, the news. What's up? It's almost no news of this week. Quick. How about that rumor engine? How about it? It's a night net thing Yeah, right like it that fishy tail. I'm kind of excited about that probably some hair. That's what I'm guessing Yep, like flowing and floating underwater hair. Yeah, sure Like here's the question. I'm ready Scott I'm going to you. Okay. Okay. Is this a Seahorse tail So is it does it have to be Fantasy could this be a tear in it thing? No It's I'm convinced or we're convinced that it's I'd not that's definitely a tentacle. Is that what we're saying? I Wanted to be a night net thing because I think it'd be cool to be a night net thing And I hate I hate looking at 40k rumor engines constantly So that's that's my evidence out. Well, okay, so if this is tyrannid what tyrannid has long flowing locks Dude, you are asking the wrong person right now. I well Hold on Tom. I have an answer for you, but you're not gonna like it because I've googled this before So I mean like there's plenty out there Every it's like funny aside every time I google like I have to Google a lot of art for the presentations for this show Yeah, and Most of time if I just Google age of Sigmar art, I get all the normal stuff you would expect, okay? But if I Google age of Sigmar Skaven art it is some rule 34 stuff Oh, I know all over the place I've seen those models you've painted this yeah, I know I know what you found do they are like Is this some kind of extreme micro targeting or is this just like the internet? I don't know I don't know. Anyways, that's that's your events. You know what that is. That's your algorithm fine. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yes The yeah, I mean my answer is I want it to be Inaf. I think it's a seahorsy thing. Yes That'd be cool. I love how Tom was immediately like oh, I know like it was like oh wait, what okay? This is definitely that thing. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Cool. What else do we got? I mean, there's pretty much nothing else other than the thing we already mentioned I mean obviously books are on pre-order, right? OBR and soul blight we have them on pre-order now We'll be shooting doing those shows in the coming weeks. Yep. So Scott. Are you excited about the new? Vampire-ish model with all the bats. Oh So I guess when it comes to like which ones yeah, yeah, which which vampires I like the most I like the I love the Legion of Blood and I love the cast alive when it comes to Vircos and Avangory. I'm not super about that kind of vampire But the new updates to the rules had a lot of interesting changes that have me excited to try out like totally different lists than what I have been doing So that's that's awesome Good good. That's a win. That's a win like any time that they they push out new lists like that's a That's enjoyable. Absolutely. I mean it's frustrating to the people who have those armies, but you know Not here or there All right But then as well Yeah, I guess we don't have anything else doing that's it. No, that's all the news. It's super fast today Hey, because we covered like arcane home and all that stuff last week, right? Yeah, correct. Yeah, that's right We we did All right, so Let's talk about Well, I guess it did drop the day Whatever we'll talk about a show. Yeah. Yeah, that's fine. I mean we can mention it briefly Yes, we got a new we got a battle scroll with those appropriate changes for Rally and arcane tome and stuff like that. So I'll just say it this way. Tom. What did you think of that stuff? It's fine. No, like I like I think that they were perfectly acceptable in order to reel some of that stuff in Yeah, I'm not I'm not like it disappoints me Because I really liked arcane tome like as we talked before Every list that I wrote generally started with an arcane tome hero like which feels like a problem, right? Yeah, right Yeah, right, but now I just have a bunch of bad items that I don't want to take That's the problem Setting up our later discussions. Well, I went from having like a real choice to being like meh nothing really moves to me It's just a bunch of bullshit Neither one of those situations is admittedly great, right, right? And so it's fine Okay, it's fine. I mean what about the rally change or you were you not happy to see this I was very happy to see the rally change. I personally despise rally and I thought this was a very positive change I mean it depends on what army I'm playing right now. I I mean, it's fine like no like It's okay like I think that it was sufficient for rally or it should be I think they went softer than they could have because I will tell you if it was my personal tastes I would have knocked every four plus rally in the game to a five up period Okay, like I would have just said read all four plus rallies as five up and this thing period. Yeah. Yeah Do you I mean would it be too intense to just like say that like Any monsters can't rally but keep the rule the same as it was is that too much of a nerf because you can still like rally Dragons with this current rule am I correct? Yeah, you could get one. You could get one back theoretically I mean my ultimate argument on that because I've seen some people discuss it. I know Evan's big Chair I should say this is more popularly now you know he kind of talked about this a little bit on your stream and and My argument to that has always been who cares like good for you. You know, I mean like you're in 99% of the time you're rolling on one dragon So you're rolling one die from a unit of two and if you want to blow a command point to roll that and get that guy back One out of six times and then the one in six time. He comes back. I'm like, yeah, hey, man That's awesome. Congratulations. Like you spent a lot of command points on ever to get that's a commitment. Yeah one thing back It matters for like goblins, right? Like goblins is where it matters where they're putting like 15 models back on the table to three units Yeah, two three units, right because they can trip that rally right like where they just something like oh you super killed half my army They're back like that's one dragon coming back once in a while to me. That's like, oh, it's unfortunate Maybe it pushes a game more in their favor, but it like doesn't in the end win the game Where as just constant near automatic four up rallying of half of your unit to three units back That's insane. Yeah, that is just that's a problem, too for sure It's like it creates an opportunity for a feel bad moment even though it is a big investment You're totally right like and like there are ways to counter it like you could multi charge so that when they're pulling models It's unlikely that they can actually fully get out of combat. Like there are ways to play around it, right? Okay, that's fair. That's fair, but at the same time like for the general player It's a feel bad and I would agree with that. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, so so at any rate, I mean I was My answer was this the change was fine It's only gonna ultimately I think it'll only actually touch a handful of arms Like that like then read the rally limit the ten wound limit is honestly only gonna Truly affect like a handful like because let's okay. What what 15 snakes? Okay? You put a maximum of five back sure Right like mathematically They moved from seven Almost best case scenario like let's say you're a half strength unit. Yeah, yeah, like There's no almost no, I mean, I can't say almost no one was going from like two models back to 15, right? Like of course that did happen sometimes. Yes, okay, it cuts the wild swings. Yes, indeed indeed So I just it's it's fine like it was it was a fine limiter It but for me like it's just another mental rule to just add on to the stack of things you have to keep in mind Well, I look forward to When we just make stop doing this rally crap and make four plus five up. I would like that Or maybe just like not have rally we could do that, too. Oh, you know, hey, whatever grabs you For four four point out. All right, let's get on to some pick of the week. Shall we? Let's talk some pick Scott what do you want to share with everybody you want to boost up? What do you want to share out? Am I sharing a miniature you you are sharing a video a blog an article or anything you want to content? Yes, somebody's content you'd like to share. I have the greatest thing to share I'm ready. Oh, there is a content creator named chestnut ink. He is a French miniature painter And he's been working on a Batman diorama. This is not age sigmar. It's okay. Let's just go hundred percent. Okay That's exactly good stuff. I love you. Okay, he's been working on it for two years And he finished it and made the video about how how he made it and it's a solid like 16 minute 15 minute Video so it's very condensed you get to feel like you were part of that process So it's a good edit and the diorama is just jam-packed with all kinds of lovely little Easter eggs Like every square inch of that thing is thoughtfully created and has just so much story in it And also it's painted very well like it hits everything. So it's an amazing piece of art and everyone should see it I love this very good. That will be linked down in the description. Fantastic. And I had not watched this yet So I'm very excited. All right, Tom. What about you buddy? What do you got for whatever? I'm gonna be boring and yet Eminently relevant. Okay I'm gonna fruit. So there's this guy that released a video about a month ago Mm-hmm called Hey who? Um, and and it was titled is maniac trash at the game So I'm gonna encourage our audience to go watch that because that video may or may not come up at various points And so it would be relevant to have it in the comments below Yes, Vince we already talked about the various reacts, but that was one of them that I felt like Hey, what was fairly like even handed and in his response like obviously clickbait title But in his actual critique, it was a it was a benefit of the doubt Conversation, and I always appreciate that kind of tone Very good mine is going to be very simple our old buddy Stuart the iron guts man He's got a new tier list out for April 2023 Talking about some iron jaws and some other fun stuff. Check it out It will be linked down below if you love a good book ranking and who doesn't love a tier list We all love lists to your lists. We all love lists. Look Buzzfeed built like their entire business model on how much humans love lists Okay, so love a list and go watch Stuart's awesome video. It's fantastic And yeah, you can then argue with him in the comments about his incorrect choices and assignments of different books to different tiers So there you go in the current meta Okay Fantastic Let's let's move on gentlemen. Let's talk about some hobby time What we've been painting Scott you and I were talking a little about painting before the show what you've been working on man. What's what's on your desk? right now I am magnetizing my old wood elf army I'm at home and I'm painting at the office a model called Rosie She's a 75 millimeter model from a company called neko galaxy Very nice and these wood elves you're gonna use these in some one-page rules. I believe right so I believe that's the Gonna happen of coming soon on your stream sometime. Yeah tomorrow. We're gonna be pulling an OPR Which to me just feels like the simplified Alternating activation version of Aegis Sigma So it's interesting But I man I painted that army so long ago and then just really never got to use it Like they had a wanderer faction in a os 1.0 And it kind of stuck around a little bit like further into the game's release But I think now we're at a point where if you want to play some version of what else you have like what three unit options Maybe and they are or four unit options and they are in Citizen Sigma right? Yeah. Yeah, so they kind of feel like second-rate citizens in the game at the moment So I think that's definitely true Yeah, yeah, I'm excited for that for sure Tom you paint anything yet. You're working on anything. Why don't you paint? Uh, I built Like a Wood frame around my entire basement. I studied my I studied my entire basement and ran electrical this week Does that account? No, no good skills though Like it's hobbying ish like I'm building something it's terrain on on full-scale That's good like assemble a model in there somewhere. You know, you're not getting it You're not getting a break for me this week. No I picked up I picked up my I picked up my KO model. Does that count like I bought a model this week? Count his hobby. No, it's No, let me prove it like I really did not that well, I hear you spent money Look, I got them. I got my little KO gap. Oh, it counts now now. He's not lying counts. Yeah, sure exactly All right, very good Kevin Peter said does anyone believe we'll see wood elves return? Yeah in the old world I mean, yes, they'll definitely be like a few wood elves lying in the old world a hundred percent. Yeah, so Okay For myself Ironically, I'm working on this guy right here. It's just the Ranger. I believe this is still working on that guy Hey weeks later. Hey, look, I was working on I've been there was other projects in the middle that I haven't shared yet But this is my fun thing and I'm working on oh, man I should just grab a model and be like I'm working on this one If you actually painted him It'll look exactly like what this is doing. Yeah, sure No, this guy's a lot more progressed and he as well is gonna feature in a video upcoming And I've just been having a lot of fun working on textures and working on using unusual colors for stuff It's been it's been honestly quite a joy. This is obviously from Mini X Kickstarter Which I believe will be the last Kickstarter you ever run Yeah, I haven't said that out. I think I may have said that in a couple of places But haven't made that super public knowledge, but yeah Kickstarter is a miserable experience. Yes, there are just so many uncontrollable variables and I hate that I'm a control freak. So never again. I'm not gonna do that Yeah I It's funny too because you and I had a conversation if you remember back like, you know very early I was trying to give you like all my tips from running Kickstarter and stuff like that Now, you know, I gave you a bunch of files and things like that and I was like, no I still have my folder fantastic I was like but ultimately what I want to tell you is this will be a nightmare anyway, it's your life like that Was my I think final piece of advice. Yeah, honestly, I at that moment. I didn't know how right you were and No one has ever been more right about something in my life than that statement Well, it's like the difference between you can say the desert's hot But until you've walked for a day in the desert without water, you don't realize what hot really is, right? So yeah, or the old stick your finger in a light socket kind of thing like hey, don't do that It will hurt and yeah, okay, you know, sure. Yeah, then you do it at any rate All right, fantastic This guy will be done this week. So I'm very excited about him And then I've got I've got so many projects. I'm like, I'm so jazzed for man There's gonna be just some awesome stuff in videos upcoming on the channel. Get ready folks We're gonna get I'm gonna get real wild like I am so excited for some of the models that I that I have lined up So we're gonna get we're gonna get crazy. So, um At any rate with that gentlemen Why don't we turn to tonight's feature topic tonight's feature presentation? So let me go ahead and bring this up here The great debate ages, sigmar challenges and strengths Uh, we're gonna we're gonna talk about it. We're gonna talk about you know What's good about the game what's bad about the game what's good for certain players Psychographic profiles how things interact where the game has opportunities to improve, you know that all all sorts of stuff like that It's gonna be a wide-ranging discussion Okay First we got to start with a little I want to do a little level setting here at the beginning, okay? Oh, yes, let's do this. Let's hedge a bit. Yes, exactly So I mean the first things first to say as per always on this show, this is just us having a discussion We want to discuss some of the strengths and weaknesses if you have different experiences or value different things That's the part of the whole point of what we're talking about is that everybody has different things They value in the different games they play As an example to move it over to something else, you know a not a os game I love more time and think it's one of the coolest and most fun games of all time There is a lot of people who really hate that game for various and sundry reasons because of due to like Death spirals and the extreme randomness of it and things like that That's okay. They can not like it for that reason and I can like it for the same reason. Hey, that's all fun Like that's cool. It's good that there are different games that appeal to different people cool We want to understand where psychographic profiles intersect with game mechanics. I think that's a huge part of it And we want to talk about the ways everything could be improved Even if you think a os is great, you should still have a desire to have this conversation Like if you absolutely love the game and you are a fanatic and you think a os is like the greatest thing You should still want to have a conversation about how it could improve Because things can always be better and things can always be improved and you know things are going to have to grow over time Right and this is all just for fun. It's you're allowed to like or dislike different things. It's okay. There we go Okay, did I miss anything Scott in my in my level setting? No, that was fantastic Okay, all right anything you want to add you did okay. It's fine Yeah Can't can't give too much time. Okay. I'm starting. I'm starting to get it. Okay. Okay. Yeah I'm gonna walk out of this with a new method for talking to Vince. This is gonna be good for me Just supreme criticism That's all he deserves Absolutely, it's what it's what sharpens him and makes him better That's how our that's how our friendship that's our relationship Okay, so if Vince is that sword here, then you're the whetstone Tom, you're just keeping him sharp Is that how it is something like that? Okay. Yes. That was absolutely my god, Tom I've known you for more than 25 years that just occurred to me All right, so there we go So What do we love this is where I wanted to start because I know like Scott you and I had a little you know We've talked some since your video came out and you know, one of the things you mentioned was obviously when you're making a video There's lots of concerns and you said, you know, I maybe didn't you would have liked to have some more time Talk about things the game you felt were positive So I thought this would be a good place to start Let's just celebrate some really the the things about the game We all love or we we think are interesting or valuable and in those differences I think we can honestly find some interesting information because I think what you love about a game can be just as Instructive as what you think are areas of opportunities, right? So so I'm gonna let you take the reins on this like obviously you're we just talked about you playing the new soul light book and being excited For some of the things in it. You're still playing the game regularly as part of your escalation league So, you know, what about the game? Do you do you know, you don't have to say love, but you know, what about the game? Do you like even you know that kind of yeah, I know certainly things that I love about the game So when I made that video a lot of people or like what are your thoughts on this game? And I kind of I was like, oh, okay I can make a series of reviewing games that I play because I play a lot of different games I thought that'd be a cool idea But I felt a little unfair to AOS that I would then start saying things I like about these future games and not AOS So one thing I really love about AOS and we've discussed this before is how individualistic each army feels I love it when an army feels like they all belong together and it's my special thing and no one else can have it a Huge problem with the song of ice and fire right now is mechanic sharing a lot of units do similar ish things And you can kind of like if you need a certain thing in any army, you can kind of get it I mean it feels like Feels like a lot of things are shared so they feel less special and the same is true for like God tear You take two aesthetically different things and you mash them together and that's your army and I hate that I want that don't want the aesthetics. I want the rules I want the lore to all be unifying and also unique and an agent sigma. They really do that, right? So that's my first thing. Okay. No, that's good and it's interesting because I think that probably you know We've talked about this a few times on the show, but I think that probably comes out of a design philosophy That's very much clearly part of how the AOS studio works Which is they have this very like top-down design philosophy, right as though in top down just means you start from the Conception of the thing like I've got space lizard picture up right now, right? Okay. What are these things? Well, they're interdimensional ultra intelligent ancient beyond knowledge wizard frogs who've like genetically engineered a race of magical Lizard super soldiers and their dinosaur mounts, right? Okay, so that's the premise of the army Which is like wild by the way they have spaceships Battletoad gothics Battletoad gothic you cowards bring out that game. Okay. I just give me zechian silver towers in AOS liminal space fighting giant Sorian spaceships at any rate delightful. Yes. I mean we all want battle to gothic I think that's the thing we can all agree on but like they start from that top-down concept and then say, okay Well, what are the units that need to look like here, right? And how should they act and what should the rules be and stuff like that? It all flows back up to that singular concept, right? And so because they do that with every army you get a pretty unified feel of like the lore and the look and the rules of the army because all the rules are gonna writer-generated from Crazy interdimensional space lizards right as an aside How amazing would it be if they did? the What was the ship game? Dreadfleet Dreadfleet was the ship game. Yeah, but it was all Flying in spaceships in AOS. So like that's battle toad gothic tom. That's what we're talking about Yeah, but that's what it is Because see it's like battle fleet gothic was this I know cooler. I know cooler than cooler. Yes But yes, you'd have chaos spaceships and space ships and and lizard men spaceships gave it. Oh, yeah Yeah, Skaven would be up there with spaceships. Yes, of course Yeah, and squig and goblin balloons somehow goblins squig balloons. Yeah floating castle Sure, absolutely get get some like I mean vampires can survive in space. They don't breathe. It's fine They don't mind the cold no issue. Yeah, okay So no, I completely agree with that point. I think that's right. I do it is one of the things that really like I Think makes the game really interesting because there's this huge number of factions and yet they all feel often extremely different Right And and very much have their own distinct rules that has a that has a dark side right Like all design decisions it has a dark side because the dark side of that is that if you want to like Learn the game really well and play high at a competitive at sort of high competitive level That means you got to learn like 25 different Ways that armies are gonna work and function and the unique tricks they have and everything like that, right? Well, or at least the majority of them so like all these things and that's that's another theme of I think what we'll bring to The front is that oftentimes what we love might have a dark side that somebody else doesn't like All right, and so that's yeah, but that's good. Okay. Good. No, I love I'm gonna I'm gonna steal it before either of you get on it go for you painting bastards the Like the models are amazing in a OS. I know both you guys are gonna do it. So I'm gonna get ahead of you Like this is not this is not 40k, right? There's not a bunch of bullshit armies that all look the same except for a couple command models and weapons carried Like that's not what this is like and this goes to the aesthetics, right of like everybody having their own aesthetic But even more than that is that they're like the models are just truly unique and they're all over the ship You have tech on one side. You have crazy Weird monsters on the other you have like when I say monsters like dinosaurs, right? And then you have demons and just all the things, right? I recognize that two of the three of those are also in 40k, but forget that but there's also like fur Lots of fur and other stuff like that and so from like a texture standpoint from a terrain standpoint. I just like It's so outrageously diverse the model suite that like that's that's meaningful to me like As much as I'm a dork for like playing the game and optimization and all that other BS Like when I like what captures me when I go to start a new army often isn't the book It's often the month It's the army itself that I get excited about painting and collecting building painting getting a scheme in my brain To to put on the table And if the models weren't that exciting, right? If it was just a bunch of Marines then like it would just be real hard to for me to paint my third Marine army Sure. Okay. I mean, we don't all have to hit the the dark side of your thing, which is slamming on 40k I'm sure there's plenty of people in the audience who also play 40k and like those aesthetics But I do agree with you. It sucks. Yeah, exactly. Right. They can be wrong. That's fine Really harsh man But like I do think that AOS and the armies have really good models and really good silhouettes Like they do look cool from the centerpieces down to the line troops. It's often You know really just compelling stuff when you think like these the new Seraphon models that are coming are such a great example of this Like I've just been blown away by everything. I've seen the the redone Kroegers the updated little teachy-weeches skank riders on the little frilled Dinosaurs, you know, just look fantastic like all that stuff It just is so awesome and I mean I this is there's probably no more deeply personal thing like everything we're saying here might You know might land with someone else who looks at and goes I don't I don't agree I don't like those aesthetics, but I think even that person would have to admit that the quality of the sculpts is Really high like the models are extremely well crafted with care by by you know extreme professionals with deep experience in creating models that are Interesting both at how they look on the table and to paint And so to me that's incredibly valuable Which yeah, I agree. It's kind of one thing It's one thing to say the miles are amazing But like it's another thing to like I paint a lot of non GW stuff And when doing that you find a lot of miles that are not enjoyable to paint And so you begin to think about what makes a model enjoyable to paint and it's so much more than just it looks cool Like GW does so many thoughtful things and their design of figures in the 32 millimeters 32 millimeter scale that make them more enjoyable to paint just outside of the fact that they look cool in the first place Like they've been doing this for so long and they're so good at it They have so many just of these unappreciated details figured out that you really only start to Appreciate when you lose them. So like they are they are very ahead of the game and for that scale in a massive way And that definitely can't be understated. Yeah, yeah So my my thing I love That I'm gonna pick is my number one thing is something that is funny because it might actually Then flip around and be something that that maybe Scott you don't like as much. I don't know. We'll see um But my thing I love is look ultimately I'm a Timmy player I like big giant monsters doing big giant monster things And I love when I can take a big giant monster and go slam it into things and just below that thing up like it I love big giant surprising awesome moments in the game and so That could come about in a lot of different ways, but When we call AOS a Timmy flavored game I think that a lot of that comes down to the fact that there are these moments of like big surprise and that can just occur Sometimes that's because of dice rolls. Sometimes it's not the And and like I love that it facilitates that mode of play because like I look you know, I've in the past couple years I've I've embraced my inner destruction player and You know come to love things like iron jaws and stuff like that and you know He doesn't have to be the mega boss on maw crush or just taking the guy on foot You know you get him over there. He's got the destroyer He suddenly has this six damage weapon and he's just cleaving into people and just like lifting entire units. It's incredible It's an incredible moment, right? I love it. I love this massive mega boss. Just just destroying people Can I can I provide some insight though for that right like in response to that is you know One of the things that you name was it about being a Timmy game isn't just about big stompy things But it's about those unexpected moments and those yeah, yeah, 100% those spikes and like I did my thing And it's suddenly a shocking and meaningful This is what I actually don't like about the rally change oh Because it shuts off the spike because because one of like goblins don't like Before this was certainly true. It's less true now, but they don't have a lot of things Right Or they didn't before like I'm taking squigs out of the picture But if you're just doing like bodies on the ground, right, which is what we're most afraid of With the rally thing sure so like them putting bodies back is their big thing with those units because they're not hyper efficient combat Sure, they're they're largely just tarp and so their thing is actually like the cloud Like overrun mentality, right? Sure. And to me like that's what I don't like about the limit Like putting that limiter on there actually just removes or tones down their their peak moment if you will I guess that that that certainly seems possible, but at the same time I mean that is like and not all army Yeah, and like but again like the people that are often building like I'm not talking about incidental four plus rallies I'm talking about people that are building and leaning into that Like they've been that they've now had that Spikiness that swing which always had a chance to like swing the other direction, right Move away and that and that like so when I when I am lukewarm on my on my feedback on stuff like that That's why is is because inherently it's it's pushing against Some of this the the particular like peculiarness of that army, for example Um, because nobody else is rallying three units at a time putting a bunch of goblins Or a bunch of bodies back on like like no one else is doing that And so to me that's what that's what feels like a region and that's why I'm just like yeah It's a good change for balance. I understand it but Um, it takes away from the fun things that you like. Yeah, sure moments So, I mean and the reason I kind of head to the beginning scotton said that you know, this might be one of those things that you Uh, you know that this thing I love might be a thing you're lukewarm on or even don't like potentially Right definitely is because and I think that speaks to the difference of us I I think there's going to be a sub theme here What's what was the most interesting to me about having the three of us on the show? Okay, doing this show is that we represent in primary fashion all three psychographic profiles Like I am very timmy. Tom is very johnny and you are very spike Okay uh, and so Uh, because of that Right, it'll be interesting to see how the three of us react to the different rules because the things I'm describing We're like the dice just go wild and cost them incredibly unexpected result By the way, which is fun to me even if it's like not even if it's hurting me That's still a thing I enjoy Right And so which is and that's not like masochism. That's just like I like unexpected things happening at the table Are you sure are you sure that masochism? You know and but for the spike player that's masochism like that totally is. Yeah, right, right. It's so painful Yeah, yeah, and I and I get that right like and that's okay um You know this is like this this this happens in this can be seen in like all sorts of games Where anything like any kind of random effect happens Where like one person the table is like cool some big random effect. Let's see what happens, right? And one person the table is like I hate everything about this right and like you can just boom It's like one's a timmy one's a spike. You can just instantly call it out regardless of the game. You're playing, right? Now i'm all self-conscious about my fix my future fix I think I think a um one thing I want to specify and I don't want to get into the The negative things too yet, but sure it's a co-op game Like my opinion about what the game is changes drastically 100 sure. You know, is that fair to say? Yeah Oh, yeah, absolutely. You can have different profiles in different games. That that's absolutely the case or different settings, right? um like 100 that'll be true and I agree like to me Like we've talked a lot on this show about balance and and I do believe that balance is Important ish like it matters. It matters Balance is good for for people to a point. You can chase the dragon too hard and make the game worse But it but it is important In a competitive game when I'm playing a co-op game and we're all like, you know You're playing d&d or something or some role-playing game and one person the table like has an ability to do some crazy wild thing I'm like, yay He's on our team. Who cares do your crazy wild thing? How much fun is this? Right. I want everybody to do crazy wild things in a co-op game. It's more. So yeah, completely different different experience completely agreed Okay Uh, all right Um, great. Anything else we want to mention on the what we love you want to you want to do we want to lightening round? Just a couple quick ones rather than having some deep discussions like scott Anything else you want to you want to hit out there? I want to make sure I give you a chance Absolutely. Yeah, um, I love uh, I love commands. I love command trades commands and heroic actions Um, I think I wish the game would get out of the way of them a little bit more I think they're a little too limited. They could be more fun. Um, and not done poorly like uh, strategyms Um, but yeah, I like commands and that and stuff like that Awesome. Yeah, I agree. Command ability is good stuff. I had commands the whole all that. Yes with it list building Um, like if I pick up a book oftentimes, there's not one list Um, and I love that like I love that there's just a lot of interesting ways to play books But the way they're being designed now is not the way that they are being designed, you know, five years ago six years Okay, nice very nice very nice. Uh, My pick is going to be uh, Versimilitude what I mean by that are very similitudes. Sorry um, I really one of the things that I truly truly appreciated in the changeover between classic sort of fantasy and Uh, AOS was how much more things felt like the things they are and for the most part, that's true What I mean by that is like big stompy monsters now actually feel like that artillery is generally quite destructive often like Things feel generally like they're supposed to. Um, you know, you play Lord Bastion Carthalos, you know the sort of uh The the master of the uh of this Host of Stormcast, right? Yeah, the hammer you play that dude and you're like, yeah This is what like Sigmar's most favored lieutenant should feel like right like the dude is nigh unkillable He walks around he just smashes his way through anything if given enough time Like but he's slow to walk around like he just walks around the board He's he's just he's like the uh it follows, you know, just like he's coming for you Okay And and I just the horror reference. Oh, absolutely And like that's the kind of thing I really love You know, I love when a thing in the story feel then you play it and you're like, yes That is that thing. Um blood knights in your army scott are a great example of that I'm like when I think of elite vampire cavalry and then you play those guys and you're like, oh, yeah Okay, this is what elite vampire cavalry should feel like right there So potent and powerful and and hard to kill but also deadly like they're great that kind of stuff Yeah, exactly. Like I love stuff like that. Right. I love when a thing feels like the thing I mean, I make a boss on mall crusher. Yeah, exactly I mean, I know that stuff all seems maybe some people think that's kind of silly But to me that actually matters a lot. I hate when the game piece Feels like a papered-over collection of rules You know, like this could be any you could put this what I what I mean is some games where I play The game piece doesn't really seem to have any connection to the rules underneath it. You're just like, oh, okay That's just you had the rules and then you just went. Um that We'll call it that right. We'll just slap that skin over top of it Right and and that always just feels really unsatisfying to me. Like I want to feel like the thing is the thing So, uh, just a thing for me. All right anything else Uh, one last thing for me I love just aesthetically how high the fantasy is in aos like they just They they found the ceiling and they just sledge hammered through it and just went even crazier And I I love that aesthetically like it's it's great It's a great like comparison to a song of ice and fire, which is much lower Like I love having both they're both I think needed for for my enjoyment 100% I like I want all of those things to exist fantasy such a broad range of ideas and concepts and stories, right? I I love a classic like low fantasy down near the ground level gritty story, but I also love it when you've just got like You know gods and spaceships like we were talking about in fantasy too Like yeah, the world's big enough to have all of that stuff And that's that's I'm I'm glad that that's game my only my only pushback on that would be they're not going far enough Go farther you cowards Tom what else you got um So I've talked about list building. Uh, I would say that In the current version of the game The nuance and interplay between movement and counter movement and counter charging just the like the Like the layers of tactics that are present. Yep is is It's easy to understand, but it's very difficult to master Yeah, right actions specifically. Is that what you're referring to? Yeah, like yes, like all of that, right? Like everything from redeploy to all of those elements like there's just There's very few games that are actually playing on this level of Of interest so there's to call it a dance. I don't think it's inappropriate, right? Yeah, I would expand that out and absolutely say the the movement in general like ultimately age of sigmar Is a mobility base game like you win through the proper movement of your pieces. Okay. Yes, and Uh and like having your pieces in the right place at the right time doing the right things with them Making the right trades and so on and so forth and we'll talk more about that later when we get into some other elements and just the the nature of Because there's so much freedom in how you can often move with units You have a like if you have a hundred models on the table You really do have a hundred game pieces to some extent worth of mobility You have to consider because the way you arrange and array your units can actually be highly impactful In the way the game ends up playing out, right? So yeah, I agree that the the The interplay the the dance is a hundred percent Something that's so compelling to me to watch like oh if you move this But then you move your unit kind of like this as opposed like Doing this this careful mobility around the board like is actually really fun to me. Yeah, I agree Okay Cool good. All right Okay, well the time for niceness is over. No, I'm just joking. That's No, I this is this is exactly I want to keep uh, we're going to keep this train rolling So a lot of this from this point. I'm going to structure I structured somewhat somewhat To mimic Your your video scott like I kind of based the kind of the rest of this Loosely on the order you made some of your points. Okay, so well I I mean I modified some and I've got other discussion points and things like that But I just so we can get a chance to kind of I thought it'd be good to use that as a good structure to discuss it, okay One of the first points you made in your video was about list writing and sort of on rams and stuff like that and discussing how it could be really challenging to write a List for this game just because of all of the different Things that are part of your list apparently Uh, but aren't really spelled out in any coherent way Uh, you know, you mentioned like you start. Okay. Well, you know, here's the basic requirement You got to have a leader in three battle line units or something if you got a 2000 point army Yeah, but then also you've got battalions and then you've got all your various and sundry enhancements and then apparently there's a stupid triumph thing that shouldn't be there or part of the game and All this other stuff, right? And this is actually one of the places where you and I were most aligned when I was watching your video like I was cheering this on because one of my biggest complaints like we have talked on this show repeatedly About how currently the on ramp for aos is effectively non-existent Like I don't know how you start playing this game how you go from like zero to a player The book is very bad at bringing you into it The game plays very differently at low points. There's no easy way to ramp into it Uh, and and there's no simple or simplified Battle pack that's great for new players. It's just like here Dump they just the dump truck gets backed up onto you and it's just like learn all of this All right And I so like to me You know your your first point there. I I don't know you you Had kind of structured it as like I guess what you're Less weak weakest point weaker point. Yeah, because the first up there. We go. Thank you That's what I was trying to say But to me this is actually one of my biggest problems because I think this really matters for the long-term health of the game Like you've got to have a good on ramp for new players. You've got to make it like Uh easy for people to pick up something and start playing One of the things I was most excited about with the announcement of 40k 10th edition was they they're going to do like commander style pre cons and combat patrols Basically, right and that combat patrol is a viable way to play the game And all the boxes are balanced completely against each other all the rules are in the box all the rules are free You will go out you will buy this one box you will put together and paint this one box And that is your game you're done Right, that's it. You need nothing else all your rules all your figures everything this box Buy that box And I'm like, yeah, that's freaking great. That's how it should be right So that's that's the kind of thing I want to see but I don't know what like Uh, I'd love to see a similar thing for aos Um, so yeah, I guess I guess I don't think we have any distinction here But but but I don't but I don't know if I'm misstating anything at your point Right, so I want to let you talk about this as well on this particular challenge Yeah, I think actually they do They do spell it out in a better way in the ghp And so I want I want to credit that because I was a little Wrong about that but also to to further define the point when I was writing that I don't know if you remember vince, but like six months prior to that video coming out I like messaged you and I was like, how do you write a list for this game? Yeah, and I was like that was coming from a very beginner player perspective and like comparing it to other games comparing it to fantasy It's like, you know, they're kind of they're kind of straightforward and this felt very unstraight forward So like as if if the chat is out there and they're like shaking their head It's like, you know, this writing isn't hard and for me It's not hard anymore now that I understand everything I need to do If you really like wind it back to when you were first starting Like for me it was like it just was very confusing But now that I have it all spelled out now. I totally understand it. It makes perfect sense Well, the best way to write a list is to is to watch a content producer do that thing Right or read a blog on how to do that thing and that itself is a problem Right Because the game shouldn't require another third party tutorial Till I start playing the thing. Yeah, no, I we're not playing riffs Right, like that's not what this is. Sure Yeah, that's not good too crazy. But yes No, but I mean, so there's a sense in which If there is any place in the game where that should exist It should be either the core rulebook or the ghp, right? That brings all of those elements together and that's but in even the ghp Like I would push back and say that that's not actually true Um Because in a lot of these books you have subsystems that don't that don't cross over Right. Sure. I think about what is this special unique enhancement? How does this work? This says I get these extra things. I don't know what that means Right, like how many and there's no uniformity. How many of Sure things do we get right right and so to me like if there is any Sin here, it's in the lack of actual Intentuality and planning from the beginning. Yep, right um Because it can be done and it can be systematized But um But it just seems problematic the way that it currently exists Sure. Yeah, I agree and tom would never play a glitter boy. That is far too simple For for tom real rich players. I don't point and click. Yeah, real rich players use a minimum of free books to build any character Okay, that's that's just baseline. What are you doing with your life one book? Get out of here with that. All right um Okay, cool. Yeah, I mean, I think this is one where there's probably universal agreement between us Like I just want to see better direction better support for starters better on ramps Uh and and to make this a unified part when we did Uh When we did our review of the game like back at the launch 3.0 I was like this rule set every section of this thing you can go back and watch the video I was like every section of these new core rules. I'm in love with they're great. They're well spelled out Everything's numbered. It's referenceable. It's clean. I understand it. They have great like in the book They have these great like designer notes on the side often to help add, you know Plain like language explanations of things. I think they should do more of that by the by Um, and we're gonna we're gonna touch on one of those things later Because you had a later point talking about the difference in these in these wordings and I I I want to talk I am excited to talk about that part. So we'll get there talking about like how to like edit and lay out a rule book Yeah, yeah, yeah, and like just the nature of the words you use and stuff like that Like I am I am keen to discuss that because that was one of your later points And so that's we will get there But I loved all of it Okay, except the enhancement section which by the way is pretty important to how to write a list It's like a pretty major part of how to write a list and that section is to rash It is trash Okay, I I who played the game for two editions since day one of aos launching It's I guess two and a half or whatever we call pre 1.0 times. I don't know whatever, you know Um Had to read that section like four times to understand what the heck it was supposed to be saying and what am I supposed to be picking here? Okay, the the enhancement section of the rule book. Okay. I'm on section. Yeah section 27 for for for those following at home with their You freaking nerd you remember the section number Uh, so like it's just I I really really dislike it and and I have made it clear on this show repeatedly I think it's poorly constructed poorly assembled and nearly incomprehensible if you're not already on the inside if somebody else Pulls you aside and explains it to you in human language Where they go you get to pick one of these things and then one of these things And then if your book says you get an extra thing you can get you can pick one of each of those extra things Oh Okay, right Uh But anyways like but it's just it's a terrible. It's a terrible section and it makes it really hard because that's like Part of playing the game. You can't play the game without going through that section Well, not only that like other decisions are informed by that as well. So like battalions You ask the question like how valuable is it to battalion depends on what book you're in Because it'll depend on what what that extra enhancement is buying you Right Like that's a real big the big part of that decision point and like you have to make that decision on battalions fairly early on right Yeah, I don't want to get into the minutiae here of the like lack of order of operations to the thing But none of the like because like that can sometimes be a problem too around the margins But um that might be more for a bit later thing. But anyways, I don't know I think like again, this was one where I was cheering you on I do feel like this is a current weakness and something I hope gets corrected in in 4.0 Like this is one of my major things that I would want to see in fact if I had to pick one thing that would be my like My drop dead this needs to change in 4.0. It would be the on ramp and list writing ease like Because otherwise the game just bleeds That's it Right, and you know I wasn't that well, I wasn't as generic as you are generic But I think you you have a great point like the biggest subgroup of any hobby ever is always going to be beginners So if you don't make your product easy to consume for that subgroup you're missing out on just so many people So yeah, you're you're that's a good You modify what I said in a way that I totally agree with Well, it's kind of influence your back door as well Like how many people are actually exiting your game is determined by how many people are coming into you know Yeah, you don't want people falling off like five minutes into playing the game Right, just being like this is too confusing. I was like they were excited and now they're not That's a problem. Mm-hmm. Right So This is just a big pitfall to me Okay cool, cool Next section Uh All right, let's see here. I'm gonna I'm trying to time stamp all these so give me just a moment to record a little little time stamp action Okay Could I go back and watch this afterward to time stamp it? Yes. Am I gonna do that? No Uh, I'm gonna do it now gotta be gotta be efficient efficiency. That's right. Okay Uh Sean Lavery said unless it's battle tech then your biggest subgroup is 35 year veterans Hey, not wrong Sean, but god bless him. I love him. I love him I I'm gonna I'm gonna tell a very quick story here This has nothing to do with what we're talking about now, but you mentioned battle tech and I I do have a deep I'm like a complete lower nerd for battle tech I don't I don't care actually play like the game that much, but I love battle tech the the universe I walked into the battle tech room at nashcon last year and There was and they were they were setting up for their their games because they were doing a battle tech tournament Relatively small, but it's still some very clearly a good number of people who are pretty enthusiastic And the one dude was like explaining some rules things and the one guy was like wait wait, shouldn't it be like this? And the dude said wait, is this a challenge of leadership? You're supposed to do that before we leave the ship and everybody laughed and I was like This is such I loved it because that is such a deep joke And everybody in the room got it like they all got what was going on Like this is a like that's a that's a challenge That's issued with it by by the the clans and so on and so forth of who's gonna lead this particular assault and I was like the fact that everybody in this room is so deep into this thing That they got this like 10 levels down joke Right, and I was like I Love everything about this. I love all these these dudes are all great. They're all great Keep doing what you're doing like I love seeing gamers really have a passion for something and that's so that's just that's It made me really happy to see people have that much passion for something. All right Anyway, here we go Okay, so bloat and books You had a couple different points in in this section Uh, so, you know, one of the things you talked about was sort of the dispersed nature of all of the rules And uh over so many things as well as then some of the ways the rules were written So that's that's the thing I just mentioned before we can talk about it here in a minute But the first thing I want to talk about is this like bloat and books and rule sources and stuff like that Okay Yeah, so, uh I mean, let me ask you a simple question Yeah, do you think there are too many places you have to go to look at rules for how to play this game? Um, I think now that I know Exactly what I need Probably not but like getting into it. There are like there are a lot of books that feel like maybe they're important like uh Like to this day, I still don't even know what seasons of war are like thandia and that stuff like is that a ghp? I have no clue Um, and then there's obviously the ghp's there's a cold rule book and his army book So it's like now that I know I kind of just need the ghp and my army book. I'm kind of okay with that. I think Yeah, I think this is one. I'm probably harder than you on because I actually think like here's a great example That thing we talked about at the beginning of the show Yeah, right. I I appreciate the quarterly balance updates a lot Um, and I appreciate that like wahapedia exists like hey who doesn't love some good intellectual property theft, right? Oh, yeah. Oh, but I mean take that russian servers um but like I like I I do appreciate that there are these that they that these things exist and that they do these things Because it's good to balance the game like that's a good thing But at the same time, I don't love the fact that I've got to reference a repeating pdf and And like I if I want the points I've got to go To you know War scroll builder because that'll have the correct points or the app because that'll flow through and like the app is pretty good It's pretty updated. Um, it stays pretty current. It has most of that stuff in there But like not everything always all the time. It's it's pretty good. It's pretty darn close Um as as a singular source of of truth But like so we're still stuck on all these books and the books are just basically useless Can I get invalidated almost instantly? Throw out an idea. Yeah, sure. Like would it be the end of the world? To throw in one more page Truly like what this would take would be one page the equivalent of like a front and back of a page or a spread right with Literally a step by step guide on how to build this army First choose this then choose this and then when you get to that enhancement step Like a lot of this could literally be templated for stormcast It would be like choose a holy enhancement and choose a da da da like choose a mount trait if you have any of these mounts and like Like it could literally step you in in one additional page in every book You could have a two page front and back spread that would literally walk you through army creation And have all of your like, you know I'm I I'm some in some sense. I'm still on the conversation the prior conversation But I think that's imminently relevant for where you've gone with this, right Everything could be in your battle tone with one additional page on building an army and and pulling all that together outside of the core rules For like how to sure how to play your direct people to other resources You're saying like walk you through like in if you bought just that battle tone It could reference back to the to a battle pack and say hey go look at the ghp for this kind of battle pack Look at the core rules for this battle pack. Go here. Look at this do this thing Maybe but I mean I'm even saying from like an Sam Right like like I'm sorry. I'm still I'm still on the like go to one place for everything you need Front for an army like that should be your battle tone. And if it was one more page again I kind of jumped back to the prior conversation, but I think it's relevant for them You could literally have one page and have a step by step guide on like the seven steps You need to build your army with like page references for where your enhancements are and the decision points that need to be made Like you're talking about one physical page in a book Yeah, I well manzac already beat me to the punch, but would you like to have your mind blown tom? Uh, sure like old editions of 40k and warhammer fantasy read this as Fifth edition and before and third edition and before so the editions in the 90s. Yeah actually did this Um weird like they they they have that in the back of the book, right? But but my but my point is I mean that's my point is that for one page We could gain that functionality where we just point people to a page in a battlefield And in some sense like we just need one set of core rules and And a cohesive like battle pack bundles, right? Like if you want to introduce battle packs and expansions, that's fine But to have like a core or like two battle packs like the ghb should be that that thing for that space Yeah, yeah, I suppose. I mean I Like my issue here is partially with it like I understand they want to sell books books make them a lot of money. I get it. Okay um To me and and certainly there are worse out there like current 40k is much worse as far as how many things you have to carry around And and that's something they knew and they've addressed through um They've talked about addressing as part of 10th edition, right of like, you know This is you will they've talked about the spread Right, like this is the thing you'll open the book. It's two pages. That's all your rules for your army like right there That's how you will play that particular thing right um Admiral we'll see if they if they live up to it But at the same time there's also a lot better sort of takes on this sort of thing I think the the real opportunity here is And and we have seen a lot of movement this direction. So I'm happy to see that But just start from a better place and then you need to update and patch less later Right when this is a video game and you put a patch in it's invisible to the to the user, right? I mean, maybe something they thought was the case is now changing. They have to learn that right but uh But at the same time like that is say they don't have to like go anywhere different or do anything different Right, that's just like oh the skill tree is different now. You can reallocate your points like or or whatever You know In this you may be even you're you're potentially unaware of the change like I wonder how many players Out there of a os just don't even know battle scroll exists Like have never looked at or referenced a battle scroll and have no idea of any of those changes Do you know what we're talking about scott? um No, I'm gonna say no Yeah, I mean this is my point right so it's this quarterly balance update they put out as a pdf and like some of it Where possible right flows through to the app Right, I don't know. I alluded. Yeah, I alluded to this before right But like we talked about the rally changes and the arcane tone Like if you just picked up your ghb arcane tone does one thing But if you have a battle scroll, you know that that that rules text has been updated Yeah, yeah, I I'm aware of that um people I have people like kind of playing a west of my circle that Stay on top of that and let me know those changes as well. But um What's with the name sharing in in gwip like like the words war scroll and like all these terms seem to be Defining multiple things and that kind of makes it a little bit confusing. That's the very small nitpick I don't know if you know to go too deep on that one. Oh, no, that's just a marketing department Who wants battle? Battle scroll is the quarterly update war scrolls There are just everything else in the game Yeah, but that's just your that's just the marketing department in action As someone who regularly works with marketing they love having these kind of echoes of names throughout things like We'll name everything something scroll or whatever right like hammer this like they love that kind of stuff that way They know it's that way. Everybody knows it's in brand and it's like well. Yeah, but it's all incomprehensibly indistinguishable from each other So, uh, this is the old fight of brand versus identifiability. It's what got us storm I sure So like grave lords. Yes, absolutely Uh, could you sweat with undead? I've been fine Uh, or grave lord like one of those two like didn't need to be sure, but yeah, whatever dead people Just put there dead people, but it's cool. They're fine with it. Don't worry. It's all good um So, uh, manzak said he still calls battle line troops. We still make that joke all the time Back in like what were you playing like third edition 40k moment My buddy showed up with an army and it was just like all heavy And fast attack and stuff like that and we were like, where's your troops and he's like, what I've got to have troops So that's the constant joke whenever anybody asked how many battle line they're supposed to have um Yeah, I mean to me I would just like to see them do and we have seen a trend of this in The third edition so far. So I want to I want to give credit where credit's due every Book that's come out in third has been an increasing general arc of quality Especially the over the last sort of six months and stuff And when in regards to more or less every complaint I would make Better balance internally from the from the jump better attribution of roles and and things to do and that'll that'll come up Some later when we talk and all that kind of thing So I appreciate all of the work they're putting in there. It is valuable. It is recognized and I'm glad they're doing it um But at the same time I want to see them not have to make just you know Sort of as many FAQs and day zero changes and stuff like that I I still think that we're we're just too high on our to put it in my terms We're still just too high on our 7 1 7 2 defects that we're shipping with Right, like that's the that's that's ultimately my concern like we've got to we've got to push that quality up Right. Yeah, so yeah okay We shouldn't be having to patch things before they release Yeah, I mean or like it'll happen sometimes. I'm all like if it was once in a while like a read You know, even once a year a book had that kind of a thing. I'd be like, yeah, okay cool. Like it's humans, you know No, no process is perfect. No people are perfect. I get it right would uh, would you guys pay for a $5 a month app that gave you every book in the game and every update in the game Sure, of course Yeah, like if it was functional and usable. Yeah. Yeah, I mean like we're all assuming a good UI or something like that. Yeah Good UI UX. Yes 100% Like probably more my honest answer is they could probably charge a little more than that even um, you know Um, calm down here, Vince. So let's calm down, you know, I mean you got to price curves or price curves Okay, so like you can move up and down and and so on and so forth, but um but like, you know, that's Right now the sort of model that they have I get it. It's because there's a very established book market that has been shown to be a driving revenue source It's hard to look away from that Like do you want to be the manager that says like you want to be the executive who signs off on like, well, this thing is worth $12 million a year We think Think if we go this other direction, we can make 18 million But if i'm wrong, then we make zero I'm not zero, but last yes Yes, right like I'll like that. I'm being extreme to give the example, right? But like that's no executive is going to approve that We could just make two million is what you're saying. Yeah, sure. Like no one takes that chance. Okay Instead it's we'll definitely make 12 million and maybe we can if we can suck if we push them hard We can get up to 12.2 That's still growth or whatever Anyways, okay So that's my feeling on the on the on the the number of books thing I do think there I do think it's it's too many and I just I want to see it and mainly that's through supplementary stuff Like if it was here's the core book Here's your army book and here's the ghp. I'm fine with that. I'm okay with that. Yeah, those are my sources of truth What I would say just on the briefly on the app thing as a supplement to that is that um This is an aspirational hobby. We've talked about this before like the actual number of people that are playing warhammer Are not the actual number of people who have warhammer And if somebody knows that they're not going to get a game in for a couple months You know or like that they don't frequently play they're not going to be likely to subscribe to that app on a monthly basis Yeah, yeah, someone just said that william just said that in chat. That's a great point To reference the previous point of being a barrier to unwrapped new people. Yeah, that's totally valid Yeah, I mean ideally I think they're they're they're in a good place with one part of the thing Which is you know having all the aos rules free in the app where you can reference them and it is the full rule set Right, like it's it's all there. Yeah, which is good. Like I like that um The army books being kind of you know pay walled is like You know, I I'd like it if the books were seen more as like the value Where the value prop was I know something else besides just getting access to that these additional detailed rules, but Whatever, okay There was something else you mentioned in this in this section that I really wanted to discuss Like I am Super keen on this one. I am jazzed for this You made a point about wizard Oh my god. Yeah, okay Did people take you to task over this? Is this like oh, is this a thing? Okay, they took me to task because I said like you you don't need to write your rule book for a pedant And then everyone was like, oh my god He's calling me a pedant and it's like no you don't understand and I didn't explain it well But if you want to make your point first, no, no, go ahead. Go please you I want you to say how like what you Give the extra information because like when you're I think people who don't make content don't understand We were trying to cut a video together Uh, you can't say everything folks like you can't say everything you got to make a video It's got to hit a certain timeframe like Scott couldn't make the video three hours long, right? Like he's trying to make content to I don't know like pay a mortgage and feed his family You know, so it has to be successful and if he just like rambles for three hours Probably not gonna do the numbers guys. I just you know, it's kind of a requirement. Well So anyway, yeah, so but now you got the time because I don't care. So go nuts Yeah, I think the thing about the AOS rule book is that it's written like a glossary and not a rule book like when I Like I somebody plays a ton of board games and and games. I very often am the guy who's explaining the rules I'm sure people in the chat and also even you guys are that guy Like you're the person who who reads the rule book and then explains it to others And the way I always explain it is this is how you win This is these are the things you can do to make winning easier And then like then everything else just just tears from that Because that's one logical way to walk through explaining a game to me the AOS rule book is I'm gonna explain every microcosm of this game Like the the magic the gathering has like a great Teared approach to this they have an insanely long Uh rule book, but they also have something that's more digestible Yeah, I want there to be a more digestible version of AOS as the rule book and then a gloss reader reference For people who like need specification about certain edge cases. Is that is that fair? 100% and you made exactly the illusion that I was going to make too like okay good. Um Like I I like the cleanliness of the rules in in this current edition. Okay. I like I do like how But that's to say I respect again sections one through 26 I respect how clean they wrote it and I love I'm not gonna let it go 27 is terrible. Um And I respect make a claim at the launch of the edition like the most like you can't You can't misinterpret anything wasn't there a claim like that in the marketing poor jes bickham I feel so bad for that guy Like my god Yeah, he said one thing in one video and now he's going to spend the rest of his life having to deal with that Uh, that's unfortunate. Yeah, that is unfortunate. Um Okay So I appreciate like how that they're that they're numbered that they're clean I I I am a huge proponent of of what I call designer notes Which is like when you take a step away and an italicized text In the margin or on the bottom of the page or somewhere else you say Hey, look everyone. Let's take off the rules hat for a minute. Okay. I'm just going to talk to you like a human being Here's what I mean Okay, like we do this all the time in in the games that adam and I write for snarling badger A new game come in this june Um But like we I am a huge proponent of this right like have a conversation with your Reader in simple human language that explains what you're going for right? Like this is my intention. This is what I mean Like here's the legalese over here But look let's all just like let's act like human beings who use You know language to communicate and know it's an imprecise imperfect form of communication whether written or spoken And I'm going to just tell you what I mean. So you know And then you can act accordingly Right Okay, great And so I appreciate that stuff, but your illusion to magic is so perfect, right? The there are often like little rules inserts and things in magic product products that say like this is how you play Right those things are the Yeah, go ahead. You're the seven steps for the turn Right, and they're so simplified Yeah, right. This is what a planeswalker is how it functions. Yeah, sure But like the basic concept of you draw your hand you play some cards You you put you put out you're put up play mana You tap that mana you put things out on the board or play spells And then those creatures go attack and the first numbers how hard they hit and the second numbers How much damage they can take and for the most part this is what it's going to be and on some of the cards We'll explain if they have extra rules, right like This is what first strike means and this is what flying means and so on and so Yeah, exactly Now, but you're right explains the art. Yeah, yeah hidden underneath that Right like it like this this iceberg situation Definitely. Yeah, right is this unbelievably legally written rule set that explains things And you know, I play a pretty good amount of magic and I think in all the time of us playing Uh You know, like let me say this way in the past six months. I think I've had to reference that that document twice Okay for a situation that wasn't pretty obviously resolvable and again, we're playing this as a competitive game, right? like people are trying to win and Uh, you know and one of those was just an interaction between like five or six different wild things that comes up in commander games Because it's so off the rails and insane Uh, again part of the reason I love it, but I'm but like you can have a simplified sort of rules text and a deeper rules text like that that is doable You can have that you can even have that on the same page Like that is to say you can have the simplified version like section one Movement you move in inches or something like that like your model your model's move is how far they can move in inches Blah blah blah, right? There you go Something like I'm being over. Oh, it's hyperbole for simplicity's sake, but right Then you can have a section down below that's like All the intricate details of movement and then turn the page think of it like the way you read like tom This is your world, right? You read some academic journal or publishing publishing, right? And it's like this much of the page is the what the person is saying and this much of the page is their references and footnotes and corollaries and Other things that are needing to be there to justify the simplified version. They're saying up above, right? Yeah, you have to qualify it appropriately Yes right So, yeah, Mike again, he says vince explain banding real quick Uh, I have banding printed out and stored in one of my binders just in case I need to reference it The full rule section on banding alone I believe that's still section like 703 off stuff my head or something like that. Um, Three oh my gosh At any rate, um, or at least it was when I printed it out. Those things do move around sometimes Okay, so yeah, I think that there is value to that right Like you can you can split it up and I think that's ultimately that's how I interpreted what you were saying 702.22 a Darn it so close so close Uh At any rate, um I'm actually pretty happy with how close that is. That's that's that's I'm not gonna lie Pretty good. You should be proud. Yeah, you're in the neighborhood Uh, so at any rate, um Like I think you can make that split and that has to do more just as much with like Book layout and stuff like that like layout and design Right um Because it's speak in the normal simplified language Have the detailed explanation like it's important to have that stuff. That's not what you you weren't saying. This doesn't matter Yeah, I think I came across that way and that was definitely an editorial mistake that I should have caught when writing I should have been a little bit more specific So I think a lot of people took issue just because I wasn't I didn't say what I just said, you know five minutes ago Sure. Sure. Yeah, I mean I I heard what you were going after and largely agree like I love the detailed rules I love how clean most interactions are in aos like I a simple explanation of how much cleaner 3.0 is and plays Is when you were at tournaments in 1.0 and 2.0 It was pretty common to hear judge calls Where people would would call over a judge to to understand an interaction or to have a judge make a ruling, right? When I walk around at tournaments in most of 3.0 I really rarely hear judge calls And it happens still it's always gonna happen because there's always somebody who might be trying to do in something Shady or or you know something that's very very complicated. It's a complicated game with a lot of moving parts But for the most part most people play their games and never Result back to looking at rules beyond what their worst goals to remember like how many attacks they make right And to me that's a strength So it says there's it says we've got to the right place of cleanliness Right because things have answers. That's what's happening right people have internalized the answers It just means we need to like better do the layout to make it so again This all relates back to the new player thing. So it's easier to just read like a human And then as you understand now the primary loop of the game I'm gonna move. I'm gonna shoot. I'm gonna charge somebody. We're gonna have a punch up. It's gonna be a good time Right Now how do I get into the deeper rules to understand the unusual interactions that will that will come home there? Right Yeah, so okay Cool Good easy All right Here's I'll say one thing all of these things are forgivable for me like if if the like I don't I'm nitpicking with this stuff, which is why I put it at the beginning of my video like sure We haven't even begun to discuss the game itself, you know, right, right? I can totally forgive all this stuff very easily Hey, let's talk about the game itself then boom do it Internal balance. Oh boy. Oh boy. I am excited for this one Uh, I love their method for fixing internal balance with soul play just remove half of the fucking items like, you know Oh, sorry. I know I shouldn't swear But it's just like now your percentage are going to look way better because half of the options that were never picked Other than rousing commander are now gone. Um, so it's like, okay. That's definitely a method. I suppose Yes, uh That's that is a way to go. Sure. I mean just reduce the choices you get Reduces the the lack of whiffs Um Yeah, I mean internal balance has a lot of and you you sort of talked about a lot of different dimensions to this Right, because we could be talking about Um, you know unit choices and you showed the really nice, uh, meta watch article Um, uh, graphic that they that they showed And of like, you know The armies and the breakdown of internal balance and who's using what percentage of their scrolls and stuff like that, right? And I know they track data on deeper than that like they track data on item usage and command trait usage and battalion usage and Everything like they have incredibly deep deep deep deep data sets that they're that they're looking at to try to improve internal balance right And again credit where credit's due right up top. I think this is a thing that has been Absolutely on the upward trend like recent books Absolutely have better internal balance than older books Some of the most recent books who've been reviewing, you know, I'm looking at the the units and I'm like, oh the you know Wide selection of units are takeable all have defined roles that I could see taking these You look at something like corn you look at, you know, the these kinds of books. You're like, yeah, absolutely I'm I'm in for a bunch of this stuff, right? um Same for the artifacts and and and command traits even there they're they're often getting better at making like Not one good one and five not good ones to be generous right and uh Sometimes that's due reduction of number, but often it's just been, you know, they They just honestly made better compelling options um my main issue with this has always been That That they didn't focus on it enough. I'm glad to hear they finally are But boy, oh boy, is this is this an opportunity area for me like I I think again, this is one of those where I was like, yeah right on like Yeah, I I don't I don't think I have any any pushback on on a point you made here Well, my one of my least favorite things is when you look at a well actually that's not true I'll make one minor pushback to a thing you said Which is not a thing you actually wanted. It was just a reference out. You were making Uh, you you talked about like worm or fantasy having points and stuff on items Which is definitely a world. I don't want to live in not that you were advocating for that world. You were not Just an example Yeah, it's just an example of like another balancing mechanic that could help to to sway the way you you sort of cost choices. Sure um Because like I don't trust them with or just give us Just give us compelling choices. Sure. I don't trust them with unit choices I'm not about to start don't don't start pointing more things That's just that's just more chance for things to be pointed wrong and more pdf battle scroll updates I got to get every three months is now Arcane tome goes from 35 points to 45 points or whatever like no, please no um So at any rate Like To me the problem here has been one of philosophy and development and this has been the thing We've we've lambasted on this show lots of times um I think it actually is unachievable But not easy task to make three or six items or three or six command traits or whatever that are all Compelling They've done it before especially with some of the more recent books, right? Like it exists a good example Um, bisa chaos is a pretty good example. Uh, I think out of that whole command trait and artifact section There's maybe like one miss in both groups Right out of so like five out of six are good and in both of them Like I go I go ban. There's an army where I would make a list and take that thing Okay, so like it can be done um to me The issue is you got to start with the philosophy of These things need to be Roll slash play style enhancing So what I mean by that is like Every army has some number of ways it can be played, right? Like Generically speaking like okay, this I could do a castle build. I can go do a You know like an alpha melee build. I can do a shooting build like these are builds, right? Like whatever. Yeah And If you align command traits and items in some way to those things that enhance or open play styles up Or play modes or unit choices then those things become innately and immediately compelling Right to somebody who wants to play that thing Okay So like this command trait allows this particular unit and there's the only way to do it to become battling So hence it can be double reinforced now and you can take you know A bunch of them in your army and have it fill a slot And if it's an unusual unit and if you want to lean into that it can do that But it's locked away behind this command trait. Okay, cool for people who like that unit Ta-da, they're suddenly a road. They're gonna find that command trait compelling, right? This other person wants to play like have a super melee smashy hero at the lead of their melee army Right Cool. Okay, great. Here's the item that does that Right. Here's the item for the person that wants to play a castle build or so on and so forth whatever Right, and if you take that design principle Then it's just a development task of making sure that one of them isn't like wildly overbalanced Right or overcooked I should say underbalanced So I think that's the the main point we're making or that that I've always made and that that they're missing out on Uh question. Do you think there are enough play styles to the point where Different armies aren't going to feel the same if you have the same play style of both and you build them toward that play style It's like oh, this is the tanky version of storm chaos and the tanky version of vampires But mine have fangs and yours have golden armor, you know, like is that a problem? Oh, it's such a good question That's such a good question Because I you've got to be careful with this, right? So to me The answer is yes, you can do that because Amongst those play styles, there's actually a lot of different ways to execute on that concept, right? And at the same time not every army should have access to every play style Right. It's like that price is right moving like that red band game where you're like trying to get the you know I'm saying you get it Like yeah If this is the total sweep of all play styles an army should have like a band Where it moves up and down and it can play in some amount of that space or or something like that And then, you know, you can have variants on a theme like And and this is the same thing and like let's go to let's go over to video games, right tanks So I often in the history of me playing games to play tanks In video games in like those kinds of things like I like the tank role, okay Now if you play any kind of video game where these sorts of roles exist You know that there are lots of different kinds of tanks Out there in games, right? Like there are uh, you can have like, um You can have like a not as defensive but but you know has like an attrition tank where you can do some reasonable amount of damage, right? So You can have an evasion tank where they're relying more on like not getting hit at all Through various methodologies to to tank, right? But when they do get hit or like stunned or conditioned They get clocks, right? You can have just like a straight up Uh traditional like storm cast tank where you're relying on damage mitigation purely, right? Where you're just Hardcore damage mitigation, right? But you but there are certain enemies that will just hit so hard You can't mitigate them Right and and so every one of those has some particular kind of answer, right? And and and also some particular Thing, right? Yes. Hey woe mentioned like self-heal tanks another great example, right? It's like pallet and death knight warrior and world war craft kind of thing, right? Yeah, exactly And I think in the same way you could have like, okay, this is the army that wins through attrition But how do they get there? Do they get there through restoring models? Do they get there through just being very hard to kill? Do they get there through, you know, being very evasive? On like you charge them and they believe Right, they just they have an ability to just bounce, but if you catch them, they just die Right, so like there's I think there's lots of different ways to to to execute on all these themes and it's about finding the The execution of that theme that's correct for that army, right? Like if storm cast were acting like evasion tanks I would be like wait, something's not right here. You know, this doesn't make any sense to me Yeah, okay. That's a great as a great analogy and totally my board. Okay, cool so I think that the the when it comes to internal balance. I think like I said, this is really just a development thing I mean, tom you've been developing for me in the games. I write for a long long time And we've talked about this before but it's probably worth mentioning here. Tell me tell the audience about what you do When you develop on stuff that I write like what are you doing to the stuff I write? Yeah, so basically what I'm looking at I'm looking for The parameters so the the the normal operating assumptions of whatever the thing is right so like if this is um So let's say that I'm testing hypothetically the tank right of something of some game What I'm going to look at is I'm going to look at the standard range of assumption, right? and then uh of like normally the let's say there are 10 decision points towards defensiveness that can be made Most players because of like cost benefit analysis are going to be in like a standard deviation range probably of like four to six So I check that and make sure that that's functional But then the next thing that I do is that I go in like what's the extreme versions of these things So what are the skews? That just like does the game break when you stat even if these things aren't optimal normally Does whatever it is break when you push outside the bounds of normalcy And if it does like do we need to bring in those limiters, right? um To in order to make sure that the game itself doesn't go off the rail um, and and that that metric is can generally be tested in almost every direction whether it's damage or defense or Mobility or any of those things so what you're almost always looking for are skews in those environments You're looking for things that will cause the game to go sideways And so in early aos not the current edition, but in prior editions the skew was the battalion Okay, if you wanted to know what would break the game in second edition First and second edition aos it was battalion And so when I cracked a book the first thing I went to is battalion Because that's not something that they could easily balance or evaluate the secondary and uh tertiary consequences And so if you want to know where the really broken stuff was it was in the rules But uh, you know for any given game there's going to be Like you're kind of your mean that everybody's gonna live in and the skews and the skews are often where the game's gonna break It has to be fun in the mean But it's the skews that you need to like dial in so that the whole thing just doesn't go off the rail Is that what you're talking about? Yeah, exactly what I'm talking about. Yeah, it's perfect. That's great I mean It's funny because if you look at the internal balance chart that that meta watch had and scott i'm curious as to to What you think about this? Because like this is one of the places where it deviates from something like a video game, right or whatever in that You mentioned like the cutting of command rates to help internal balance, right? Like he said, oh, they just took a list from six to three or something right There's a lot of armies where we could drastically improve their internal balance if we just took a bunch of units and threw them in the trash Yeah, right like the road stuff a bunch of war cry stuff. Yeah, absolutely Yeah, I mean we could just like we could just even just duplicative units You know cities being like the great example of this and they're getting a whole redo So theoretically some things will be retired, right? I imagine that army is going to be completely reinvented but like The nature of some of these armies is that They have, you know 50 60 70 80 war scrolls Well, how many different variations on hammer can you have? You know what I mean like there there does come a limit where where sanity comes in And it's the problem because people have those models and this is one of those places where in a physical game where people have physical models They've invested in and paint it and love You run up against this challenge where like well the right answer for balance is We just got to cut some of these units. We got to get rid of some of these things, right? And But that's the wrong answer for a lot of people who are collectors and don't want that to happen So that's it. They're like, how do you see that? Do you see that as being a challenge? Or what what do you think about that in in a game like this? um So at at the current stage that we're at in a sigma that is an issue people will be upset by those kinds of cuts But like i'm the kind of person who does not care at all about proxying Like if you don't like Judicators and you want to use a different model just tell me they're judicators and we're we're golden Like I don't care like use the thing that you think looks awesome As long as it's still like, you know, kind of the the army we're playing storm cast then makes a difference to me Same base size doesn't affect the gameplay It's gonna make you happy like we just need to have that beginning social contract and we're good Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree I almost wish some of the times like and this is something I don't know if they'd ever do But I wish some of the times they would just like put multiple units together Into one entry like one war scroll entry and then in the pictures just have multiple pictures of the units Like it could be any of these things cities was always the classic example of this and now it's getting redesigned But I would have loved to see one that's just called like I don't know You know auxiliary troops or elite troops or something like that. I don't I don't care right like call whatever you want and it's like the picture is uh human greatswords and uh dwarven hammers and dark elf Uh executioners or or you know, whatever like all these things that just are like almost the same unit But one is clearly slightly better You know just in some circumstances like you can get better rend here. You can get mortal wounds here Like yes, just let's like make them one unit. That's the elite unit Let people mix and match or run whatever they want. They're all the models are still valid Right, it's just you can even have a complete mixed unit have a great sword standing next to an executioner next to a dwarven hammer That's the whole point of what this story is supposed to be about anyway. That's exactly. Yeah, that makes sense actually Right like isn't that the point these people all live and fight and die together. So like, you know, I don't I don't know man um It's like when you go stand on the wall to to reference your song of ice and conquest fire war game Uh, you know, like if you're one of those it had to come out Had to get you once uh, you know, but no like if you if you what is what does it take the Take the black whatever isn't that what you do? Yeah, whatever. I don't I don't I've literally completely blanked that show for my Mind because the last season was so bad. I all knowledge of that has faded Everything other than the scene with the hound where he's eating the chickens. That's it is the only scene of that show I remember so in my mind. It's a perfect show It's because he's it's because he says that those lines Correct, correct. That's it. I haven't even watched the show. So you're doing better than me. Hey, there you go but like Uh, you know, like that was a bunch but the point was that was a bunch of people from different houses Who all got together and defended right they're all together on the wall because they know they either do it or they die So like hey same thing with cities. Yeah, that wasn't optional. Like that wasn't I understand that I understand that Yes, I get it. Um But like all of those things could just be one scroll with one function one weapons group one simple roll and just Have a good time folks use all your models. Nothing needs to be retired. Nobody needs to be sad But we can all use our models and have fun uh There you go. Like that's Uh, that that's what I think there. So Uh, and that would help internal balance lines probably the way to like Walk that line Right. Um, because I do think this is a challenge. This is an issue Well, so you could be like so the that could be named like the um, like the shocked troop infantry Or something like that all your great Yeah, I mean you give him a fun name like, you know, it can it can be Like they could have a cool gw unique name, right? You know, that's cool. I'm fine with it. You know, they can be like whatever their imaginary silly name is. That's fine. Okay Uh, I can't even think of like an imagine I was like watching the Yeah, you cut out there, but yes, um, but yes Okay, um So Assistant ref said watching this 15 minutes behind But I'm gonna be sad if Vince doesn't mention the rod of misrule the internal balance section I mean, it's a so that's just a great example of how not to write that stuff Like I didn't say every book recently was a banger. All right, like Boy, oh boy. Do they still miss sometimes and and this is my problem, right? Like I do think scott you hit on something really real here And it it's there's no silver bullet to this It's a It's a systematic change that has to be made in your philosophy in your development in your execution right, uh To to to solve this problem Without pissing people off Because you you've got to again you got to pay attention to like that These are real models with physical things people spent real money and more importantly Real time and investment in painting and putting on the table It's it's more than just like buying a magic card or or making a dnd character or something like that, right? Like you there's a lot of work to get an army together Uh, not a small amount of effort like anybody who's painted a 2000 point army as a hero in my book That is that that is work to get there It's interesting actually how Not that you kind of say that like how that changes the way you you handle the game that people invest so much Timing because we talked about this on on the podcast Have some of plastic where it's like you play a video game like Hades or Hollow Knight And you play it for 50 hours 80 hours and you're done you move on it was a great experience and you remember it But when you pick up a miniature war game in your head, whether or not this is true You are going to play that game for the rest of your life and that's not true That's the way you that's the way it feels, you know, so it's like you gotta you gotta handle that with care Yeah, and that's one of the reasons that I I there was a thing in uncle Adam's recent video We can use this to sort of transition to the next one, but It's the next topic But there's a you know, uncle Adam did is like 60 second interviews on the future What what do you see in the future of wargaming, right? Yeah, and I I do not remember who said it So I'm I'm very sorry that I'm I can't properly attribute this quote, but the his statement was like the the The models are the uh the the system like that your nintendo and the games are the cartridges you just slot in John Sutter. Oh, thank you very much. Fantastic. Excellent. Uh, I'm glad you remember who it was. I really loved that Right. Yeah, like I want to be able to like when I get models I I too love a lot of different games And I want to be able to use them in a lot of different games now some things are very specific and you know, whatever That's fine. Like I get it. It's not like every model can always work in every game ever I'm not trying to be polyanna about it, right But that's why I like a lot of skirmish games and stuff like that because you know, you've got your These are my little space shooter guys. I can go use them in Like, you know a game that adam and I write but you can also use them in five parsecs from home You can use them in space weirdos. You can use them in 40k. You can use them in kill team Like man, that's great. What value, right? Like that's how I want to think about the miniatures, right? And that they have that kind of value Yeah So, okay Cool All right All right next up Gameplay and strategy is what I call this next section Okay, so things in here you talked about We're and and this one will be an interesting one because I think this is probably our strongest point of disagreement Yeah, so far we've been this has been very pleasant and I think now it's gonna get sweaty and I'm ready Okay, okay. Yeah, I mean that's what's so funny about it. A bunch of people are like, oh, what'd you think of what many acts said? And I was like, I don't know. I agreed with most of it. Like it's the same stuff. We've talked about on the show You know, like I don't know what you're talking about. This is all stuff. I've been saying for years I'm glad he's on board like yeah, let's do these things Okay so, um Tell I want you to restate Because I don't want to I'm not gonna put any words in your mouth here since we may have disagreement The point you made about like battle plans This is in the like your your kind of pushback was on flat gameplay, right? Was I think what you actually called this particular section? Yes, and so go ahead. Give me your give me your sort of breakdown of how you see this point and feel free to be as As Lookuacious as you'd like Okay, um, I think Honestly, I think scenarios and battle plans are a crutch Um, I didn't say it's in the in the video, but I'm gonna I'm gonna say it now I think if your game Can exist without something that like maybe mixes it up Um, every every time you play and it feels the same then your game is bad Um, I it doesn't mean that scenarios are bad that battle plans are a bad thing And I love them when they spice up the game But I want to be able to play your vanilla game a thousand times and have it feel different and unique each time And there are there are games. I think dude is very well. Um I know I mentioned guild ball a lot, but I love guild ball because it has two goals at all times You are trying to literally score a goal and also trying to kill the opposing team And the interplay of both of those goals at the same time to win the game They both score you vp's just how you win Is is very compelling and like there are no battle plans There are there's nothing like that in in guild ball and every game is fun and unique Um, so that's kind of one thought and I don't know if you want to stop there Or if you want me to restate my point from the video Oh, no, let's let's let's pick up on that. Let's let's hit on that a minute because yeah I will say I fundamentally disagree with that. That's fine. Um, I like and to me the reason And tom I'm interested for your take on this as well like I I understand the point of view you're operating from there but to me the Like there's the primary loop has to be compelling So if if that's what you meant alone sure, of course, I agree right like that is to say you can't rely on a battle plan to make the game Functional or whatever right like I think I think war cry relies on a battle plan to be interesting And the situation that creates is that when you Roll or draw a bad battle plan the experience is bad and people are like, oh well, you just didn't get an interesting one It's like that that shouldn't even be a problem. So yeah But at the same time to me so I'm a I was a big starcraft player for a long time Love me some original recipe starcraft all threes, baby. So um the uh and and to me the You know starcraft you could say was a I mean, obviously this played at extremely high competitive levels. Like I was never that Great at it. I mean, I was good enough to beat up on most everybody I knew but I'm not like There's I'm sure some 12 year old in korea who would just like beat me before I even had my first marine out of the barracks, right? and um, but like the maps in that game often Really drastically changed the play experience of the game, right? Like where the resources were located The sort of verticality and blocking terrain where you had to move and you know What units could be set up in what numbers and what areas and so on and so forth? Like the difference between playing starcraft on a largely flat map uh and playing on a map with like a lot of You know sort of hills and changes and abundant resources versus Not, you know, not a lot of resources is hugely different, right? It completely changes the experience and I I value a lot the the Dynamism that that can bring to it. Okay um So to me it's not your your primary loop has to be compelling But battle plans should let your game breathe and or scenarios or maps or whatever we want to call it, right? That the Myriad things about that there's ways that this concept could be expressed um, I It is Yeah, just let me say this i'll finish my point then go ahead is that it lets the game come into full expression and Feel very Different in a lot of circumstances that will that can that can almost become perpendicular To how you would normally experience the thing this thing that's very good becomes very bad Right and I value that in what and how it can flip an expectation on its head. Okay. Go go tongue So I want to bill on a metaphor that you invoked or an example you invoked which was starcraft Yeah, I like weren't familiar with starcraft um The maps and you kind of touched on this briefly And the resources particularly the resources like where resources were Created incentive structures that forced you to to play and build differently right That is functionally what battle plans are Okay, so the reason why starcraft was always a different experience was because Resource structures were not predictable Yeah, right. Well, you weren't you weren't deploying in a largely flat You know flat thing knowing your enemy was somewhere on the fog of war directly across with Uh eight pieces of terrain and you know between you and them right like that's not what it is But actually the incentives that were baked into each of those maps Were the equivalent of what scenarios are in a way sure By the way, people are asking what I made and starcraft and the answer is very simple. The answer is fire it up That's the only answer that you ever need to give so Okay, uh at any rate That I like so so I think we that's different opinions there, but I get where you're coming from is what I'll say, right? Um, yeah, anything else we want to touch on that? Yeah, I think we agree. I think you're right the gameplay loop needs to be compelling and As far as the starcraft map analogy goes Uh to a beginner a different map is not going to change the way the game feels but to a seasoned veteran It changes it insanely, so What about so in my opinion you guys are seasoned veterans So battle plans probably change the way the game plays fundamentally to you battle plans to me look very similar They feel like you moved the objective from this point to that point whoop-de-doo. I don't care Um, so but that's okay. Also It's so significant like I know it seems like subtle, but like it completely changes a tactic I totally I I totally get that it doesn't it doesn't feel that way as a beginner Um, but like so there are other scenarios like here's an example Um, like what if I don't know this this is kind of a bad example, but I'm trying to express something Yeah, what if like the first person to swing in combat on any given turn awards their opponent one vp It's like it's I don't know how you would play around that But this is like a version of a battle plan in a song of ice and fire Where it's like the first person to play a model on the tactics board gives the opponent a vp It's like holy cow this now this game that we both play Like the first couple turns that game are a little bit solved sometimes But like when you make that change to the game the game is completely different It changes it so much and it's so it's so obvious the change is so visceral It's not a subtle thing, but it still makes the the game so interesting and compelling So you kind of get the best of both worlds a beginner sees how this impacts the game in a significant way And it also is valuable. It's it's compelling Like I want to try that version of the game out instead of it being subtle Like I don't think that's like better than than what you guys enjoy from battle plans But I think that's my preference for like a scenario in a game and how it should affect the gameplay Does that make sense it totally makes sense and and and actually so so Here's a point where like, okay So point of disagreement and big point of agreement. Okay, so the battle plans like in the general's handbook are wildly impactful on on actual gameplay, right? But it's the same it's the same thing that you said, right? Like when you're when you're you don't realize the difference on the starcraft map until you're you're into the The nuance of it and you actually see how Much it affects your mobility and stuff like that and and where you need to go And how much that's going to allow your troops to then interact with other units and how it'll affect your trading and so on and so forth So like the difference is absolutely huge, but but It's huge once you've crossed a threshold Of skill like to return back to the non controversial starcraft example If you put two newbies on almost any map Sure, right Like there's they're not gonna it's they're almost not gonna play any differently. They don't know they're gonna be like Grabbing they're gonna be mouse drag clicking. They're like they're they're they're a little Guy and moving them over here. And then, you know, like mouse selecting What they want to build Like watching him run across like they're just they're just having a great time clicking buttons and doing things, right? Like a gross mouse selecting things in starcraft how to how's disgusting at any rate Like but the point is is that like they'll to them Those maps which which every sort of skilled player would agree or like whoa, that's wildly impactful, right? But it's not to them It's not to them. They're just gonna slowly kind of creep out. They're not gonna run out and like try to cut off resources Like they're gonna try to build 34 battleships before they go attack Okay, that's what you're gonna do Right Okay, so Like to me this is actually a failure of vision on the part of What battle packs could be Because here let me flip into the point of agreement with you. Okay Your idea there about like a bonus point in this thing. Yeah, cool. That's like, let's try that Let's try a hundred things like that. I have no issue with that, right? Now for a tournament for like very tight tournament play, okay, like in an event battle pack Maybe some of those ideas would work. Maybe some of them wouldn't Okay, I don't know But I don't want to constrain all battle packs Or all battle plans To just what works in events, right? And yes, so like you said earlier, I don't even know what season of war is Right So season of war is a narrative expansion And it lets you it lets you play through it has a whole distinct series of battle plans That honestly act a lot like what you're talking about Because it has like unique battle tactics that you can only achieve in that particular scenario that that like scenario grants And it's like the first person to do this thing gets two bonus points Right And stuff like that. So like because you're playing through the narrative experience of Thaundi or wherever the heck we were whichever season of war right now. I don't remember at this point Okay but like, um But like that That did walk through that to me the advantage of the battle packs is because we all agree at like a certain level of skill The battle plans that have a high amount of sort of randomness or other potentially unusual elements And it doesn't have to be randomness because I don't think you're the biggest fan of randomness But that can be an element of it, right um Those can have a home There can be battle packs with different ideas different concepts different Things going on like very orthogonal goals and like we'll talk about battle plans in a moment Which sadly we're gonna have to or battle tactics. Sorry, um, which we're gonna have to move back to a point of agreement. I'm sorry, uh, but like Uh, I I wanted to disagree more, but here we are Yep, but like the the flaw here in my mind is Hey, why wouldn't this be the event battle pack and it looks mostly like the ghb And it's got some pretty tight Pretty like variations on a theme hold objectives move places kill models, you know That standard stuff to do for a tournament because theoretically at the higher end of skill those things will make huge differences And are perfectly valid and people want predictability and stuff like that when they go to a tournament okay But then also we have like other battle packs that do other interesting things and open up different ways to play and explore Light with with options like you were just talking about Right, right and so like we those can just be different battle packs Here's the battle pack for this thing and it has these five or six Or six new battle plans that that explore some different ways to score and conquer and have your armies doing Unusual things messing with terrain in different ways giving but you know like you the bonus points Like you said or like if you're general you kill the enemy general you get some bonus points Or you know, whatever just like you can think of a hundred examples You know, I don't want to get I don't want anyone to get hung up on the examples And that's the problem with this right you give a single example and people want to like immediately laser focus on the thing And it's like the example doesn't matter. We're talking about the concept Right Because to me that's the way to execute on that like that's what I heard In your head like what you want is If we're going to use these battle plans if that's going to be a thing Right, then use them fully explore the space Right and and create a really varied experience Right around. Yeah So yeah, that's kind of it to kind of go back to what the original point was Basically my argument was that Everything in age of sigmar seems like it boils down to Scoring five points a turn and if you can't score five points a turn with tactics Then controlling points, then you're you're falling behind and it very often isn't too difficult to score five points a turn um, but that that that that feels like the state of the game and everything everything in the game points to Scoring points and then then a big way you score points with tactics with objectives is killing people And so you kill people that are on points that you that are contesting the points that you want Your tactic is to kill a person your tactic is for your hero to kill a person and it's just like okay I'm just going to face roll and that's going to give me my points because that achieves everything I want My tactic controlling my zones though that seems to be the important things and the majority of the tactics are In some form murder murder by a piece of terrain kill with a hero kill with a unit kill with a sworn party guard unit It's like it's it kind of just seems like Like that it's it's just in plain sight and so it seems just so So not nuanced. I don't know what the term for that would be um, but uh, but yeah, that's what it feels like at least I gotcha. I gotcha So I want to say a couple things that I see some comments that are worth Ryan Gaugh said Even most casual players will always want to play what they perceive to be the most balanced battle pack Well, first of all, Ryan, I don't know about that. Do you have some survey data? I'm not aware of On that because I'm not sure what most players want to do. Um, I think most players will want to play, you know What they perceive as fun battle plans And if it's true that most players perceive that as being the balanced thing then sure you're right But that's okay Just because most players want to do it doesn't mean you still can't serve other people who want varied experiences through additional products offerings and and and rules like That's fine. Like you can you can play around in the space without it. It doesn't need to be for everyone That's the whole point. Why not serve your whole audience and grow and expand your audience? Right. I don't care if 60 or 70 of people want to play what they perceive is the most balanced through ghp Great. I want to like good. Those exist. Those players should be happy I want to take care of them for the same time I don't want the other 30 or 40 or whatever the number is to have things that they find less compelling like why not both I don't I don't think there's a we're not talking about an either or statement here. That's the whole point You can do both you can have everybody win. This isn't hard Right, you can talk over it. Yeah, you can just talk over all this and then like, um Secondly, it's interesting on the five point thing because That is perceived like most of the perception that I've seen especially from the the tournament crowds This is certainly anecdotal right, um Is that people now have reacted pretty positively to the fact that scoring has gotten so constrained Okay, one of the interesting elements about previous Uh battle plans in older editions where they were much more swinging So like round one and two you could just run the score way up to the point where it would just be impossible for you to come back and lose So because now you're very capped at like most people are getting three to five points You remain within striking distance later into the game theoretically right So that's interesting. I'm not sure you're saying like, oh, I want it to be wildly swinging in the point I don't I don't think that's what you're saying. No, I want the strategy to not be so transparent like it's just like Oh, okay I get points from scoring objectives. I do that by killing opponents My my my tactics are about killing opponents. So it's like I'm just gonna kill people like it's so it's so obvious that it feels Just like the game is disrespecting strategy Um, which like you two guys are a testament to that being false That's just the way it feels. Yeah, I got you. I understand. I totally I like I get what you're saying 100 and To me This leads on to the next thing that I wanted to discuss in this little section Where which is the you pointed this out and again, this is the the huge Huge failing. Uh, we'll see what tom thinks about this. Um, I hate the way battle tactics are implemented We've we have lambasted battle tactics on this show quite a bit Um, because that's the opportunity to fill the space you're talking about Right now battle tactics are far too aligned to your primary mission in a lot of cases now The army specific battle tactics Are often not they sometimes get weird and wacky But I hate army specific battle tactics because then it gets Theoretically very easy to just get your battle tactic all five turns again And then we are back in the same position, right? Where you're just like, okay, now we're all just scoring five points Uh, so there should be some back and forth and challenge to getting it But I would love it if battle tactics were often more Orthogonal goals to what is actively going on in sort of the middle of the table When when we wrote schemes for Nashcon many years back right, um We made them one of the focuses was to make them Very different than what you were trying to necessarily do So that means you had to have totems in first edition aos Yes, I one of them required a totem or a banner in a unit. It was not that hard time. Um, okay But yeah, like The like schemes one of the differences of the way we did schemes by the way was they were activatable once per game So they were a thing you were trying to score for a bigger amount of points But you only did it once per game and they were hidden information function functionally. They were grand strats But they were hidden information There was it was hidden and you chose it at the beginning of the game and like that uh And like the way that worked was they were often win for losing like you are trying you pick a specific hero And you have to get that guy killed Your own hero your own hero not theirs yours You got to get one of your heroes killed right because he's a he's a spy Or something you have to touch all four corners of the map with different units Right that is beautiful That that should be a battle tactic, right? That's the kind of stuff we wrote into the schemes and I loved that like I look i'm tuning my own horn here But like I really loved what we put together because it did make you play Like differently you had to make real choices of like do I try to go after this primary thing? Or do I try to go do this secondary thing and that became a real choice you were making right? Yes That's so right now. It's not a real choice. It's all just an alignment And by the way, vince you said you wondered how I was going to respond. You clearly haven't been paying attention for the last I wondered how strongly you were going to respond. Yeah, like over the last 18 months where We're like, you know, what was the one thing that you would change about third edition battle tactics? That's been my answer since the beginning Like truly Like I've had a bug in my craw because I just hate the way that In every aspect that they touch the game And what they're not doing what they should be doing and what they're not doing Um, and then on top of that you throw in battle town battle tone battle tactics It's just it gets rough Get out of here And you know the funny thing about battle tactics to give them their due Okay, is that there is a a cohort of people again. I don't know how big it is of the total aos player base This is one of those things I really would like to do a survey on sometime but um You know the the the nature of the Battle tactics that there is a cohort of players who really really love them Who really like the way they're currently designed they're currently implemented and likes the fact that there's sort of this constant push and pull And this it's you know, you can deny them on on some occasions, but it's tricky You've got to really you got to really be a clever Careful player to like sort of deny your opponents battle tactics like there's a straightforward thing They'll try to do I you're going to announce what you're going to try to do I'm going to react to that accordingly Like I can kind of think what you might be trying to do on the next turn And I'll be I might set up for that a little in advance And I I don't want to do a disservice to that group of people who really enjoy that that that play in that experience, right? I just wish it wasn't this sort of default Um, I would like it much better if there were if again In certain battle packs this battle pack over here for events and stuff they use battle tactics may be pretty close to how they're um, they're they are Implemented right now But this battle this battle pack over here uses more like what we're talking about with schemes with sort of orthogonal goals And and stuff like that, right? Where it's not just like there's not just win-mores. It's not a line stuff You're trying to do different things. It has catch up mechanics would be a great thing that like that's something that Doesn't get discussed a lot, but like this is a great place. You would put catch up mechanics in there Um, like not a term we've discussed often on this show, but it's something that's a huge part of game design Right in these kinds of competitive games Um To put that in simplest terms for everybody. What is the catch up mechanic? Um the blue shell The blue shell is a catch-up mechanic like that's Boo Eat it, you know, here's a question for you for you two guys Which you would you think would you call ages sigmar the mario kart of racing games? Sorry the mario kart of miniature war games. I get what you're saying I want to hate that But I think you might be on to something there. I've never thought of that analogy before But like it's not my idea, but I heard it and I was kind of like, huh, okay Yeah, I don't disagree with it. Honestly. Yeah, I think you might be on to something there That's like every part is is distinct and has it has its own flair Like every every every unit like they're very different than the others Yeah, um for armies and it has general mass appeal. There's some real subtle nuances with the tracks that you can really exploit Yeah, um Known how to, you know, take your corners doing the fundamental fundamentals can really change gameplay. Yeah. No, I can see it Yeah, my uh Uh, yeah, absolutely. I was uh, my favorite version of mario kart is obviously double dash and my team was peach and diddy Uh in a medium-sized car because they're not peach. Sorry daisy and diddy because then when they would switch She'd go hi, I'm daisy and then he would switch in and go. Yeah And there's I'll just do that all race all race just constantly You know, it's psychological warfare on my opponents. Um At any rate, yeah, I think that you might be on to something there So like I want to see battle tactics preserved for people who like them because I think there is a lot of value there to that Kind of concept, right? And we could we could have minor like implementation and execution Changes in the way they're done. Even in normal implementation. They could often be more orthogonal. I think which would give a better experience overall Uh, but I think there's also other modes that we could certainly have a uh, uh Like an expression of through these other Battle packs like again, it's just it's a lot of this to me comes down to like Wanting to see a more varied experience to serve a wider audience Like if this game because of what aos is meant to be it's meant to be the biggest fantasy game in the world, right? That's what they want Right, like that's on a white board somewhere in in nodding them. There is a thing written that's like Aos equals world's greatest fantasy war game, right? Like that's what they want I'm not I'm not making a factual statement here or claim. I'm saying that's like that's got to be their internal north star right And if that's true Then this kind of variability to make sure that the largest amount of people can have the very play experience They're looking for and derive psychological utility Feels like the right way to go I don't know Maybe i'm missing something but that's that just feels like the the the place where they've missed the trick Right, I think honestly. I think on this point. We agree. I think we we like tactics We just switched they weren't they weren't so aligned with the main strategy of the game the idea of them is fantastic I I agree with that as well Um, yeah, conceptually we all love the idea. Exactly. Yeah And if they if the tactics were all like the one you said like ever you got touched the four corners of the map If they were all like something like that The gameplay would not feel flat to me anymore. Like I feel like maybe um, so Maybe but here's the difference scott is if if every game You had the same X number of tactics and one of those was touch the four corners I I would argue it would feel very static because what that means is that you're going to touch that four corners every game Right, and I think that that's where the pushback is for what vince is talking about here Is that the way that those tactics were designed is that they were they were weightier and you did one per game Rather than doing five per game Okay, and so they were more orthogonal And the decision point was weightier a decision that you had to make before the game started Okay, because again if everybody had to touch all four corners as one of their options They would build their armies such that they can do that easily Oh, I mean that would be a thing you did on one turn of the game not a that's what i'm saying Yeah, but if you but if that was the case if if every game you had to What that would mean is that there is suddenly Your armies in the build process is always going to build in such a way that you can always Every game touch all four corners easily Sure, right and so incentivizes certain types of builds and certain types of play And what I would argue is is if that was the case you would still get as wrote Of an experience as you're currently getting now Which which is why we designed the things the way we did where you got a random selection went for one per game You couldn't predict what you had and you could switch which one you were using game to game And they and they relied on they pushed and pulled in lots of different ways on on your list building, right? So you didn't know what you were going to select from like there was a broad list of 25 You got seven you had to use five over the course of the tournament, right? And so that kind of breakdown Prevented that sort of repetitive action from happening, right? Right, and and so like you can again, you can design around it But you're absolutely right tom. You've got to think about those secondary and tertiary consequences, but Conceptually, right? That is just the example like having a thing like that as part of whatever this broader suite is Is highly valuable and so what I'm but what I want to make sure that our audience and and scott is hearing though Is that I don't think just adding that kind of tactic solves this problem of rotonous Because it just moves the bar if you have to do it everything if they just made it So it was like, oh the new eight battle tactics includes that one. We're not saying that silver bullet solves all the no Because what it does is it actually Creates a much narrower bucket into which some armies can and can't perform Right if you're having to perform that every game so and because In the very variation of the battle tactics what you're doing is as vince said you're you're you're Stretching what army composition looks like so that if you design an army a certain way Like if you skew any one way and you get one of these battle tactics, you're not going to be able to complete it Right and so it forces you to have kind of a toolbox thing where like Yes, you're going to want some teleporting units But maybe you don't go with two teleporters and set up in two corners, right? You do one teleporter one high mobility and then you can do the setup So if you do get that you can do that But you're not skewed so far that way that you have to be able to reproduce that action in every game you play it Absolutely, you want to have sort of compete like you can have competing orthogonal objectives that can pull on lists in different ways Absolutely Yeah feels it feels when described in that way this issue feels unsolvable With the way they're current designed. Yeah, that's your problem Right. Like this is the drum. I've been beating for the last Is that as they are currently designed what they do is it engineers a gameplay experience that you have to replicate with every army And it makes every game almost feel the sub game is identical in every game Okay, so you're saying it needs to go entirely it needs to go entirely Interesting interesting because this because what it is is it functionally they have replaced secondary objective with the the the battle tactic Like design, but the problem is is what they've engineered as a subsystem that Replicates similar gameplay in every game you play no matter what scenario here And to me that's what's causing the problem So what you need is the secondary objective system that doesn't force mere gameplay in every game You need to actually stretch your your army design in Right and again, that's all so that is all solvable stuff like you can yeah Sean mentioned kill team 2021 Which initially tried to solve this by having semi random secondary objectives You draw two secondaries at a time But only be able to use one of those two help devoid the same secondary. So you're drawing from a random deck You're always having two you can go at you pick one of the two to try to achieve You know so one and so forth, right? Yeah, and like literally this is what I've been arguing about for 18 months Yep, and and so you don't have to like By the way, tom when you get super loud your mic is gating you out like it's going to stop you from from yelling So I just that's it cuts you off Just my passion less passion. Yes. I understand um, and so like I do think this is solvable I I think you can take strip it to the studs to solve it But like conceptually there there is a way to implement even a you achieve this thing once around There are many ways you could orient on that the kill team thing is a good example But there's there's 20 other examples from other games of like floating Generated secondaries that pull on list building in lots of different ways You do it once a game and have it be a high high risk high reward type of item Where it's gonna, you know make you act as a it could be a big catch-up mechanic. There's lots of different variations On this concept. I just think the current implementation is is lacking But as an aside oftentimes spikes actually love this the most Because What every game becomes is how well can you reproduce the dance? Every single game and everybody is being measured in inches Right as to how well you can reproduce that rhythm of battle tactics without dropping anything So it leans towards a certain type of play style who wants to get the perfect game um, I feel like you can Almost, I don't know if I could make a verb out of the word generic but genericize any game To make this an issue in any game. It's like you have objectives That are the same game to game and you're going to write a list to accomplish these objectives That doesn't seem like a problem when you like look at it from a 10,000 feet. That just seems like the game Right, right. No, I think that's true I think you can zoom out so far as to make this a sort of nonsensical argument And that's why I think that this really like this one does More than many the devil Lives in the details, right? I think the execution on this really matters. I mean You know And I think that's often the case like conceptually. That's why we all said hey the concept of battle tactics of like this Floating secondary thing you're trying to do that isn't necessarily kill your opponent that scores you points, right? That's I guess in a sentence conceptually what a battle tactic is, right? Uh, yeah, great idea, right? Like everybody's like, yeah, cool. That sounds good That all sounds like a thing that should be part of the game right Fine, but then like how you execute on that matters a lot, right? Because you can you can have good or bad execution of that concept that can rely on that can result sorry in gameplay feeling more static or gameplay feeling more more varied and Uh skillful skill testing. Okay, so cool. All right, good. Uh, hey by the way and as Good as you're saying don't forget to hit like people. There's so many people watching And not and not all of you are hitting like just hit that button. It's so easy Subscribe if you haven't already look for fun nerdy unbelievably deep dive discussions like this. It's believe me There's so much more to come Go ahead. Yeah, and as you know as people in the comments have kind of highlighted I think now that people still enjoy chess like that's okay. Like if that's your game, right? Like who want that rope game of inches? Right of the perfect dance Like some people enjoy that and want to master that and you know what awesome, right? Like more power to you but that's But not everybody likes that, right and it leans towards certain psychographic profiles Yep, um and and those battle titans are leaning towards a certain psychographic profile and for some of us that's just not fun Yeah, that's totally fair. Yeah Now there was one more point you made in this in this section. I think it's worth sort of exiting out We get our last point of discussion here in this section and it was about uh Sort of smashy smashy Uh, yes of the game like aos is a very deadly destructive game, right? Oh, yes You you set up for your your move you come in you blow their unit up and blah blah blah Are you either your do or don't if you fail then your unit explodes and so on and so forth, right? This this kind of back and forth thing, right? Yes. Okay. So and and oftentimes, uh This can so there's two things I'll say to this That I want to get out there and then I want to I want to get more of your take on it. Okay. Um One is that And you know, I I'm I'm opening a door here, which I'm going to regret Uh, but that's okay Is that that is very much the case at lower points games than it often is at 2000 point games? Uh, and but the that's there's a whole separate discussion We can discuss the 2000 point game controversy in a moment. There's a lot to unpack there Okay, I I only wish it to say at this moment The only point I'm making is that when you go down into the lower points that will happen a lot more Uh, often than it will at And it won't have the same impact. Let me say it that way in a 2000 point game. That's that's what I actually mean Um, because you'll still kill things and blow things up. It's just one of the same impact on the game I totally agree with that and and the point is that this the issue is the exact same at at 2k points You just have more stuff that can die and that that is the only thing that makes it different And that is a problem that is bad game design Everything has insane kill potential And that and that means that I need things in my army that is express purpose is to die And that's that feels like A kluji mistake. It's like we wrote we wrote the rules We we floated it out into the universe And all of the gamers were like wow I need something to protect my units that I want to actually do something So I'm gonna put this meat shield in front of it so that it can die first so that I can still play the game that that sounds like a band-aid to a A uh a side effect of design that was not intentional. That's what it feels like to me at least Yeah, sure. I I don't think so. I think it was absolutely intentional just because I mean aos has always had Fantasy warhammer fantasy has always had chaff like if you didn't play chaff and fantasy you were dead in the water Um, like as a side Uh, it it historically maps to you know war to sure. It's put the archers out in front or whatever they can die Yeah, like you had chaff like yeah, you didn't put your best warriors On the front line like that's not how this worked But but I don't care about any illusions to history like sure That's fine a game can can mimic real world sort of fighting or not and that that Has no value other than if you like that thing if you like that thing and it doesn't mimic it Cool than that has value to you, but it doesn't have like some intrinsic good game bad game You know direction to it, right? Um, but like if you value that kind of thing cool, that's fine. There's nothing wrong with valuing it I'm just saying it doesn't immediately put your finger on goodness. Um The Aos is designed and certainly fantasy was as well As a trading game Right, uh, where like the point of the game Is not actually to Not lose pieces like you're it's like chess chess is a trading game as well Right, like you you can't win a game at chess without trading pieces like chess is the most classic trading game in the world right Like you're trying to ultimately sacrifice pieces that are of lower value to capture pieces that are of higher value of your opponents That's I guess the most simple dumb explanation of chess in the history of the world, right? Um, that's certainly what warhammer fantasy was and what aos is now You're trying to bait your opponent into basically wasting their impetus power charge mobility hammers, whatever on lower value pieces Uh, so that you then secondary attack tertiary attack setup situations that then put those pieces out of the game Remove them kill them weaken them Blunt them or they're the the impact they can have on the game. All right. That's the back and forth It's the the tempo of the game right As an aside, this is also why Oftentimes rain shootings disproportionate because it actually ignores that Target selection like that tempo that exchange because it chooses what it wants to fight Not what the chat walls you put out for Right, exactly. So like shooting can go to the top of it Hence it's an eight power flying units hence have a lot of power, right? Because they can often jump chat lines or things like that Like there's there's lots of interaction to be had here with how these these components go But it does when when you decide to make a trading game And have like hammers and anvils because it you know, not everything kills everything Right, like there's plenty of stuff that's pilipistic if you just have chat You know, they don't they don't kill anything your anvils don't kill anything oftentimes if they're just hardcore anvils, right? um And like that's fine. That's their point their point is to be able to take a charge and live right there They're the other alternative to chat, which is like I can just push the anvil out there I can push out my 15 hearth guard berserkers not those actually do kill things, but nonetheless, I can push them out there and go You know, this unit will just survive right and I think that's fine. I think it's fine that For a game to be designed that way I think that a game doesn't have to be designed that way. There are also plenty of very good games that aren't trading games Right, like that's there's you can still have you can have strategy in a trading based game and strategy in a not Trading based game like that that is actually doable Right, both things can be true Okay But one of the consequences because all decisions in game design have consequences in my mind is that when you say For this game to function as a trading game and to feel like it's supposed to be feeling Then you're gonna have to have hammers anvils something mobile chaff Some hero guide a buff and tie it all together whatever right like, okay Well, that's some number of units that you have to have and all those cost some number of points And like in smaller point games you don't necessarily fill all of those buckets right and the The easy thing to take at low points games is often just a lot of hammers Right that kind of becomes the incentive and then it just ramps to like a million because No one has chaff and everybody's just like smash smash smash back and forth So the game Consequentially does just play more poorly at less than a thousand points. Like it's just true I you know, I think that is a real thing um You know and and and obviously plays optimally At 2000 no, I don't think too like a lot of people have said like oh 2000 is the only thing It's this golden mean Uh, I play a lot of 1500 point games a lot like most of my weekends are actually 1500 point games. They're great games That's enough like you have enough points at 1500 to still have the full experience I never feel like we aren't playing a full game. I have chaff. I have All the units roles filled like I can do it So it's not as though it's like 2k or bust But there is definitely a point where it falls off and just kind of stops functioning Right, so that's what I would say Uh, I don't know scott. I'm gonna throw it back to you. What do you think about? I just went on quite a ramble okay, um, I think uh I think when you equate it to chess where a A piece takes another piece and it's a binary reaction. Sorry. Uh, it's a binary, uh interaction Like your whole piece just died That's kind of like in aos when like your whole unit just got annihilated by my vampire lord unsomely dragon um So that's an interesting way to think about it and that's definitely new to me and I but my my maybe pushback would be that You can have a trading game that doesn't involve losing your entire unit And and my most interesting, uh, experiences in aos so far i've been playing against um Uh, sorry the nergal warriors of chaos faction that name has escaped me for some reason right now Very fine the bag of cannon durgle. Yep. I got you exactly. Thank you playing against, uh, playing against that faction because they are so Tanky and not super killy at least when the in the small point tools that I've been playing and so classic classic attrition army Yep, they they work you down Yeah, so I'll hit a unit. I'll kill some, you know, the you know, the the respond in kind and it's very interesting I actually the first game I played at 500 points was against Magikinem nergal and it was it was so interesting the game had so much movement Um, and the the battle reports out there if you want to watch it on manyx backlog It's the first it's one of the first videos on the channel and that was so much fun And the question I posed was can aos be interesting or fun at 500 and in that case the answer was yes And I wasn't killing whole units like I still had a unit of blood nights I was getting buffed up with rousing commander and like all these amazing things And I you know, I was hitting things hard and it was interesting. It was compelling I wasn't so like that's still to me is still trading But i'm just not i'm just not annihilating everything in one in one swing, right? Yeah, sure No, no, I get you and I think this is where it very much comes to like for me This is a and I kind of alluded to this very early in the show Um, to me, this is a huge strength of the game, right? But I I completely get the point of view you're coming from right and part of this might be like the Part of this can certainly rely result in army choice because as you mentioned like oh nergal That's interesting kind of how that's working and stuff like that, right? So like certain armies will have certain play styles that can they can lean more into what you're talking about like to me This is one of the I love going into a unit like when I attack unit. I don't want to leave anybody standing I want everyone. I mean neither do I I want to kill everything too It just like, you know, just feels a little bad because it feels like everything is so important Like I'm going to annihilate this and if I don't that was the expectation And I am like now behind in a significant way. Sure. I mean, I don't know and that's you know, it's it's funny because I I do think it's interesting when those things play out when you have to use your hammers in different ways Like I had a game against just one of the absolute best players in the midwest several years back at at an event and he was playing fire slayers and I was playing my slinish slaves to darkness and I ended up getting in a fight with His earthguard berserkers in the very center of the table with archaeon. Okay So this is this was like archaeon backed up with a keeper of secrets who came in behind So it's archaeon and a keeper at the time. This is like this is the height of that that sort of nonsense, right? and fighting like the worst Most tankiest attrition anvil that ever existed right like the unit that cannot be killed So the two killiest pieces in the game going at the unit that cannot be killed right the irresistible force and the immovable objects, right? and We had like so this fight just happened and it read on For like the game Basically, right it started very early and just the game the center of the board was this fight So the actual game became us using all the rest of our pieces that wasn't that Because those those were just locked in and I was like slowly weeding him down and probably going to win the fight But it was going to take until like turn four or five, right? So it was how could we use the rest of our pieces? In the best way possible to actually decide the outcome of the game, right? So I I totally get where you're coming from there Because it when you have some of that back and forth and have to use your pieces in these In these different ways where it's not just like a kills b But then x kills a and then I kill x and you know, whatever, right? Like you get what I'm saying, right? Um When you like that that's a perfectly valid way to play and there are some armies that do that completely right, um But there are some armies that I think do play that very very differently and that's I I like things that that actually smash through and try to win but I also like armies like Skaven, which very much don't work like that, right? It's it's Skaven often played by like death of a thousand cuts Where yeah, sure like there there is a hammer or two in the army that like if they get the right charge on the right unit They can Explode it But for the most part you got to win through like working down working down working down, you know picking them apart Right, like like just trying to hit the pressure points constantly You know and so I think it it it varies a lot by the army and the experience and what that individual army Plays and how it plays some armies are better at just doing the I explode everything you've got but then I explode style Right Yeah, that's fair and maybe it's just because I haven't experienced a lot of factions in the game yet Just the ones that are in my escalation league But it feels like every army I'm playing other than megan and nergal has like some big alpha strike thing They're trying to do And like maybe at one to three points in the game and if it doesn't work out It's it's awful and if it does then it's awful for me, you know, it's just like sure very swingy thing It sounds like those are also like sub You know 2000 point games like right like that sounds like because again that is how that point level plays And that's just a design flaw in that sense Yep, just a bag of hammers Yeah, get out the bag of hammers It's hard to go wrong with a bag of hammers. You throw it someone it's it's a bag of hammers. It's great Who doesn't love a bag of hammers? Okay, cool Um, good. Well in the essence of not losing our minds, let's move on to the last topic the place where we will have the biggest disagreement Let's go all right Randomness randomness and psychology Okay preference We All right. We're out of here. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah. No, I mean I hate that that is the answer right like that is what a lot of this is going to boil down to Okay, um Randomness, you know, you you talked to there's there's a lot of different Again, we'll split this up and just because you mentioned different sub elements and some of them. I actually do agree preference In toleration Yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah. It's not just what you prefer. It's also what you can tolerate. It's a good point, tom The the needle doesn't just up up here in the positive. It's not a binary, right? It can swing down. There's a scope in the negative too Okay, some of the things I pulled out of your video that I think I want to talk about in this section Rolls for rolls for rolls Okay, like an abundance of rolling Yeah, um, and and the associated chances for lots of things um prior roll You know and like how much of the game's outcome is determinative by Randomness, right? So like you you would kind of just picked a random number that I'm sure you kind of just picked out of your head That number was 15 right of like this is how much of the game should be determinative by that Okay, and so on and so forth, right? But in general this all rolls up into the broader category of sort of randomness, right? um Okay So I want to get the agreement part out of the way first I guess I just we we got to get it out of the way because you you made a really good point Which is a thing that drives me Absolutely wild in this game Which is rolls for rolls for rolls one of my least favorite things We have lambasted it on this show multiple times Please stop Please stop Please stop like a spell where it's like you cast the spell Then you roll higher than their bravery then on a four up then they take some random number of wounds How many dice do I need to roll before we get to an effect? Screw you screw you. I love rolls Like I really you know, you're not even right now. You like that. No like but again I like I'm okay with us rolling a hundred dice and having no game state change So like I don't mind and then as an insurance player Like I was the guy that had re-rollable saves double saves when that used to be allowed Right where Vince would put everything in and I would remove like one model from a 30 man Maybe yes, like I hit him with my hardest hammer and he moves one guy out of 30 people And I'm like, oh, this is really fun. This is really fun And I'm like I'm like sweet. I'm in like let's do this I can do this all day, right? You know you say that tom, but you don't love those kinds of spells. You don't use those spells You don't use spells that are rolls for rolls for rolls for rolls Like I see that as different things those those two examples like one is like i'm the player I'm experiencing the negative side of that and the other part is you know I am buffing my unit to make it more tanky to re-roll armor saves that feels a little different. Maybe Yeah, this is just like the base mechanic of the thing absent choices is requiring 50 dice right That i'm less interested in that and i'm more interested in reliability and roll what I just described to you of the re-rollable saves double ward save Is reliability for toughness with for durability I and I care which is very different as well And I'm talking about the complete opposite side of that because this is the this is anti reliability Right, but my point is I think everybody hates this Like there's just a section of like spells that'll do this a lot with artifacts too Where it'll be like once a game you can roll a die and on a three up Then you get to pick every unit within three inches and roll a die and they take that it's just like oh my god stop Why why are you like this? You know meanwhile the artifact is just in the back seat being like You know just like Like that kind of stuff is just nonsensical and they need to quit it like just Stop just stop like a roll for something is fine. Okay Cool, like yes, this is a dice game. I rolled to do the thing. I would now like to do the thing We've that's it next Right and like You could have a roll that has a secondary roll If it's just like now roll for damage, of course. Well, sure that's going to be a roll for a roll, right? That's fine. It's a random amount of damage. I get it, right? Um, or it's like a roll for an effect on the backside. Skaven who are on this thing That's why by the way, I put Skaven on this picture because this is a very classic thing Like you roll to do your thing you do the thing and then you roll again to see if it hurts you Did your unit explode or blow up or take damage or something like that? Cool. That's fine. I don't mind that That's fun. Right. What a neat thing. I can kill my own unit. I love that. I love blowing up my own unit It's hilarious. Okay Like a risk-reward mechanic. Great. Okay Fine there are so again, but it can just get nonsensical and you know it when you see it. So please stop. All right We all agree that I get out of the way. All right okay Now let's talk about the stuff we disagree with because uh I like that a lot of things in the game Happen on a roll and are not reliable Uh, what I mean by that is like you gave a couple specific examples like you mentioned the The writer's ruin thing I think uh, and then you also mentioned like roar and stuff like that Um, I like that those things are random Because it does mean that there is a chance that they fail and that they don't always work and that they're not reliable And that spike can't just come in and ruin my game By doing all the most reliable things all the time and sap all of the randomness out of the game um I you know like all of those things are Are valuable to me because they do provide For variability in experience But I understand that at the bottom of this is probably psychology Right like I am very tolerant of randomness. I am very tolerant of wild effects You know scaven was my first army. You got to love randomness deeply to want to play scaven uh, and and so like Accepted that I am different than you and you have a different tolerance slash preference for this thing right Yeah, I think I think we can really boil it down to that and I think you know furthermore I think it's really a scott problem and let me I didn't explain this at all in the video But I have this this need and I don't know why to understand Where someone is coming from and so when I when I if if everyone that talked about aos was just like Where's having fun? You know where it is crazy things are happening. It doesn't matter like who cares? I'd be like, oh Okay, but the perception that I get from aos and maybe it's with people that I hang out with is that it's a Crunchy competitive game and I'm like, oh, that's what it is Okay Now I'm going to treat let treat it like that and think about it like that and then I experience all these things that Feel like they undermine the strategy of the of the game This you know the spikes of the game, which is like for me what a crunchy competitive experience is and it's like wait a second like I You know, I lost because because of like xyz factor that I had no control over and that's like that's like the ultimate Competitive game sin to me, right? And you know, of course, I'm assuming things, you know, like I probably lost for a number of factors Um, but did does that make any sense when I'm coming from on that? It does. I mean it it it completely does make sense. I so And and let me use that to segue into a point here You had mentioned that like the determinative factor in games shouldn't you know, like again, you just threw out a number I'm not saying you're like, you know going to the mattresses over this was like 15 percent, right? um and Should be determined by sort of randomness of the of the victory or you know, whatever like again I please don't people get hung up on that number. I'm just using it as a baseline to sort of to make a point which is um Like we know from statistical modeling that where What you experience How much randomness effectively impacts the game? Is almost completely determinative by your point on a skill curve Okay So at the low end of the skill curve and the high end of the skill curve We did a whole show on this basically Randomness has almost no impact on the game Okay, and you see this because there are there's a cadre of tournament players That will go to a lot of tournaments. They are extremely high-skill players They play very competitively and they're in the top 10 at every tournament they're in Okay, like that if if randomness was having an outsized effect Those people wouldn't be five and knowing every tournament they go to it just wouldn't happen Right because they would they would have lost to randomness But Caleb wolters is going to go 4 1 or 5 0 with his inch Every every time basically from now until eternity All right, because that's just the level of skill. He's at Okay, it's a question of does he beat tom in round five or does he lose to somebody else who's a better player? That's the only question, right? See what I see what I did there tom. See how I got there. I got you. Um so like At the low skill they lose because they just don't have the skill to actually outcompete their opponent right that like randomness They could randomness can't save them effectively at the high end. It can't hurt them at the low end It can't save them now the interesting part about The skill curve is that in the middle section Okay Like let's say You're a I don't know let me just make up some random term for somebody who would be In the middle section and want to play like a relatively competitive game But even though they were actually a casual person, I'll just pick I'm just going to put some words together here scott Okay, just again. They said I'm just grabbing this randomly Uh, what if you're like a so-so pro for example? Oh my god. Yeah, people took that term and ran away with it in a heinous way I know I know and I had to give you that big build up for that I could see you just just just slowly dying as I built that but like No, like in the middle ground of skill and I totally understand your point because it's the same three levels I always talked about with with like magic and back in the way and stuff like that, right? Like you've got this very broad cast of people who are just players You have this cast of people who like understand the game well enough to play competitively, but can't like Like they're not lsv They're not Gavin very they're not somebody like that right who like when you draw it when they you draw your hand They draw their hand you play your first card and they're like I can tell you to almost a 90% certainty What the other six cards in your hand are? Yeah Right, that's a level of skill. That's like at the very top end Right, most people occur in that middle bucket, which is like which is all you're saying Right, like you don't treat things completely casually in beer and pretzels But you also don't have the time to make this your entire life Exactly. Yeah, like I don't actually I don't even understand where the issue with the term came from Maybe you can explain it because obviously if you look at anything in a vacuum and you just look at the word pro Then I'm an idiot. Of course. I'm not a pro, but like if I if I give it this this delimiter Where does the confusion come from? Like I see everyone in chat is going off right now I actually need to realize how much of a thing that phrase was I thought was just like a little thing that hey will mention you had an issue with but like To me it was like it was you know, I just I thought people were just looking at it in a vacuum But like what what was the deal with that? I'm confused Uh, it's a funny sounding rhyming word. You accidentally made up a very catchy thing. That's it. Yeah I mean, it's uh, it's actually a term me my friends use we made a youtube channel about because we're all tryhards We everything we do We want to like be the best we can with the time we have invested and so we call ourselves so-so pros but like um And they're I never meant to to imply or mean that I'm any kind of professional just that no, of course not a casual tryhard I totally got what you're going for. I think I think everybody just thinks it's funny, right? Okay. Cool. Yeah, it just sounds funny I don't think anybody's I think that's actually where a lot of for example players who watch the show probably are Right, I mean, yeah, yeah, of course Couple cars. Yeah, because like yeah, I mean you just accidentally stumbled upon something extremely catchy and funny sounding like there you go Right So but to me like in that so to return back to my point, right in that middle moment. Yeah, yeah, this was your slap shop moment Scott, this was it. This could have been your slap shop Uh, like oh, there's there's a video for you right there scott. How to be a so-so pro painter I say just go for it. Um, let's do it lean into it. Um, okay So in that middle part randomness actually does have a very high impact on the game So what I mean by that is at these two ends the skill curve It's way below your sort of 15 percent number in the middle section of the skill curve It's above your your number Does that make sense what I'm saying there? Okay. And so like so it's interesting because people will experience it quite differently depending on where they are on sort of the learning curve of the game and their own sort of Experience capabilities blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right Uh casually competitive said all by a so-so pro beanie hat. There you go. Like this Scott this has merch written all over it my friend. This is like This at uni buddy. It's a goldmine. You're sitting on absolutely like this is you gotta you know turn that that frown upside down This is this is a money-making opportunity for you, right? Hey, whoa said copywriting the merch be right back get out of here. Hey, whoa, it's mine I mean casually competitive is the same thing. You know as someone said Uh Someone said see that doesn't ring that doesn't roll off the tongue with the same rhyme. You just got it Go-so pro is punchy. Yeah. Okay. I'm cool. I did not know this Yeah, man. I agree. I'll buy the I'll make an apron. I'll buy it so so pro painter That's that's going right on an apron. Like I'd be good for that. I'd be in Okay. All right, sounds good Um Yeah, so I like that that's what occurred to me when I was listening to the the the discussion of randomness, right? Is that one there's a psychological element to it like we discussed but two different players will experience it differently Like so as a competitive game played highly competitively. Yes, randomness has almost no outcome on the overall effect of the game Right, it will be extremely Determinative by You know player skill, right? Um, but in the middle it will be highly determinative Effectively and so that's an interesting place for the game to be right that's challenging and that comes from that timmy swinginess of the game I think Interesting. It's it's so interesting the I want to watch that one hammer weekly where you you show that the game's Randomness which seems like there is just it's just a disease in every part of the game is somehow I mean, I guess if you look at enough games and and analyze enough games, you will see a definitive trend But I I I want to see the the math in that in that episode. I'm looking forward to it. Yeah Yeah, it was really great It's um, and you know, I'll I'll see if I can dig it up and I'll link it down in the description So other people can go back and watch it too because it was just it was really fun Um, and and yeah, it's it's interesting because I mean you see it just like I said You know the sort of proof point in the in the pudding Is that you have this cadre of players that are consistently 4 1 5 0 at the top? Again, that wouldn't be possible if the game had a high random determination They would just accidentally go lower sometimes right because if it was being like 30 Determinative then that would mean they just sort of accidentally lose some 30 subsection of their games, right? They they couldn't scale their way out of it, but they don't you know They lose 10 of their games or something or 5 percent, right? um Okay cool Uh, and you know what this all comes to You know, I mean we're talking randomness. There's a right. Oh, maybe that's right. We got to talk about that priority role You know y'all didn't out there think we weren't going to discuss priority okay uh Dude, let me just say the the the day I heard That people actually like the prio role. I was just like I was blown away Sure, and then I and then I asked you I was like I was like do spikes think that everyone thinks like them and you were like Yes, and I was like, oh my god. Everything makes so much more sense now. Um, but yeah, let's talk about prio Yeah, man I mean so I you know rob made a very nice simple graph in one of in like his response video that talked that was like the sort of game turn experience right the sort of variability of uh of a You go I go game versus the alternating Uh prio or versus the prio role game and like the sort of permutations of how it can go um But the prio role Which I deeply love deeply Okay, I love it for a wide selection of reasons I will cover these very quickly because I don't want to monopolize this conversation Sure one it One of the most valuable elements in game design is how you choose to use suspense and surprise Okay, the moments of suspense and surprise are what creates emotional investment and attachment to a thing And you can see this in different sports. So like soccer is a game of extremely high suspense Right and extremely high surprise, which is one of the reasons it's like very I probably quite popular world over right by high Think about how many times are they like driving driving driving driving down like are they going to get are they going to get it? No, okay going back. Uh, no No, that you get games. They're like one to zero. That's a soccer score Right and that's because like the surprise moment is they actually get the goal The suspense moment is all this driving back and forth. You know the fans live in this constant state of suspense right Whereas other sports don't have that same kind of thing like Uh, basketball doesn't tend to have the same amount of suspense Oftentimes, it's a lot of just back and forth and you get two points and then they get two points And then they get two points and they get two points, you know like until somebody gets on a run right somebody does like Oh, it's a 12 to run Or you know, whatever. Okay, but it has moments of of like high surprise like high high high surprise Buzzer beater shots, right like miracle three-pointers You know like dodging a defender and and dunking like these are all moments of just like high surprise when they come out of nowhere, right? um, okay That's all I use those kinds of analogies just to make things non-controversial AOS has And and the priority role itself generates a moment of both extremely high suspense because you know it's coming Right Right, but it doesn't generate a lot of surprise. It's a moment of suspense You know, there's only two possible outcomes like you're gonna win and get the and and and have a choice or i'm gonna win and have a choice And and that could result in double turn or not The surprise moments come from the rng that we talked about here, right? Like that's the I swung in I rolled a lot of dice They all turned out really well and your unit evaporated or alternatively you rolled really well and your unit just went Nope, we're still here By all accounts like to the 99th percentile you should have killed me But we live beyond the third standard deviation now what you're gonna do Right, like that's a moment of surprise. Okay And to me that suspense of the prior role every time just really adds a lot to the game emotionally Okay, so like i'm not talking about any game consequences right now or anything like that, right? Because i'm just talking from the emotional state Now game wise it can be a catch-up mechanic It can also be a beat-down mechanic right because that can happen you can get You can be on the back foot and then get doubled and then stuff like that But it influences and makes a lot of it flows out to a lot of choices how you build your lists How you choose to trade how you move like it adds a lot of skill testing to the game which I enjoy but but Even I will admit it has a dark side because it is an extremely skill testing element and When it is very hard for new players to navigate for even casual players to navigate right Because when played as sort of straight games it can oftentimes be just like a I roll I won I got the double I beat you down now and that's it And that's how it can often shake out right because extreme high skill testing mechanics when not utilized become Um Loose can become gotcha points lose points for other players Right, and that's the challenge with it ultimately Um, it is one of those things that's legitimately like yeah Sometimes a new player will pull out a win because of it or something But it can also be something that can just beat them into the ground and make them feel like they lost Reasons that were completely out of their control that absolutely will happen So it's a mechanic that I love but that has a heck of a dark side Okay, which I which I must be honest about but I wouldn't want to see it go away from the game Um in its current form So there you go. That's that's my defensive it Uh, okay, but yeah, I mean Yeah, I suspect I know where you're coming from but but what do you think like what's your I obviously you're not a fan But spike's not not a fan of this sort of thing in general But do you think it's like what do you think I'm trying to unpack that? What do you think it you know gets you about it? What gets in your crawl is it just the randomness or is it something else? Um, well, I think it's just the swingy nature of the game in general and that compounds it So in in any given miniature war game there are outcomes that determine the larger outcome of the game winning or losing and An interesting metric to discuss is like how many outcomes determines a win Is it five is a 10 is a 20? And different games will have different amounts And my preference for a game is for it to be 20 25 outcomes not talking like I I made this strategic choice to make this one very big moment more likely to occur for me That's not i'm talking about i'm talking about I went for a thing and it was good or it was bad Okay, like after dice rolls Like how many of those moments add up to a win in age of sikmar to me It feels like it's a little bit lower on the spectrum And other games are a little bit higher. It's like a dice roll, right? If I roll one d6 looking for a four up um That might happen it might not happen if I roll 40 dice looking for a four up I'm going to get closer to that average of half and half more often than not So if I amortize my opportunities over more uh more decisions Then the outcome becomes just naturally more balanced even though we're using dice to play the game um And that's an individual experience. I don't need to look at a thousand games to see that on a graph I can feel it in one gameplay experience So aos and the prio role All just feels very the whole game can feel swinging like uh the game comes down to three to five decisions Sorry, three to five outcomes not decisions. I understand man outcomes. Yeah, because you can make a decision But it doesn't manifest into an outcome. I get you right. Yeah, so that I think that's my ultimate issue with with prio It compounds an issue already that already exists in the game in a massive way um Yeah, okay Tom what's your take? I like priority. I always have I bet more like what do you what's your take on what scott just said, but sure, that's fine That that's um, I would say that I don't think that it compounds it that's not been my experience, but I think that I think tom loves dead air No, so like i'm so i'm thinking about you like the thought you said five to six possible outcomes um if we didn't have If we didn't have random priority The outcomes would almost be wholly predictable So that's a great point. Okay, and and maybe the idea of not having prio in the current version of aos Is going to make the game worse and I can definitely concede that point But if we if we're talking about prio in a vacuum like the idea of not knowing who's going to go first In a game where I get to activate my entire army Like that's that's what that question here and you know Let me throw this out to you guys. Sure since aos one to two to three every version of the game has Slowly increased the amount of interactivity That the opponent gets on your turn right even in this current season with heroic actions You get two heroic actions if you go second. It's like, okay We understand that maybe not winning prio Feels like you're losing an advantage So we're going to give you this minor comeback mechanic and then now we have reactions I can move on my opponent's turn by spending a cp to me Seeing these things get slowly rolled out into the game implies that the developers are trying to Push the the envelope toward the opponent to give them more advantage when their Opponent gets to gets to play because it is it is so so valuable. Is that a is that a thought that's worth having? Yeah, no Oh, good. Good. Go ahead. I say I I I learned under the vent school of thought like you always give priority away always Unless you're going to win the game Right that makes sense. Yeah Like and so it's funny to me that the all these incentives structure Can you to compound those? And it's only reinforced that thought Okay, that's fair right. It's like I'm giving it away unless I'm winning and I'm also receiving the benefit Right, right. So now actually like it's created this cute thing where It's only ever the right decision to give it away unless you win the game And that's like to a 99 surety. You're sure you're going to just clean it up this game like you will take You you plan and so like as you build You plan to give it away Right, so unless they force you to take it You've already planned on letting them have that next turn um And so but I think it's a mindset Right, like I think that that And so I don't know that the incentive structures are actually um It's what I would say Yeah, I mean, it's no I I think I mean you're right. It's I don't think Okay, so I gotta I gotta sort of organize my thoughts here Yeah The Dead air Yeah Appreciate it. It's not as long as you we were um They nature of the number of Outcomes that are determinative I think is another one of those things that increases The higher up the sort of skill curve we travel, but that isn't a defensive of the thing Okay, because that doesn't necessarily matter Most of your players don't exist at that point on there So I do agree with you that oftentimes in AOS there is a lower number of outcomes like as as most players experience it Right, there is a lower number of outcomes that are determinative of victory. Okay Um, so I think you I think you are correct there and seized on on on a truth Okay, okay Um, I think if you're talking about extremely competitive players, there's Uh, you know, then it comes down to like lots and lots and lots of decisions Those people are making, you know dozens and dozens of decisions that are determinative of the outcome because they they are so Very skilled, right that they're trying to capitalize on the smallest flaw that they're they're they're making almost no mistakes Their units are almost always in like the most perfect position Right, their casualties are pulled in the most perfect way like like they're not creating They're making a ton of decisions that are making it harder for their opponent to to get to be victorious Every time they move every time they pile in every time they pull a casualty They're making decisions that are their outcome Determinative some have right on this behind them some don't but they will that will influence their opponent's chance of winning the game And in a material way Right and by the way their opponents doing the same I know right and I on I understand that and that I guess like in that that exists in every Literally every miniature wargame and it's almost uncountable like the amount of Things you are trying to do to mitigate risk in a game And I was trying to think less about those small micro decisions and more about like the actual Like I rolled the dice now after all that is said and done And it either happened for me or it didn't like those moments not not the small decisions No, absolutely, but that's what I'm saying. So so let me let me let me restate this real quick Okay At the way the way most of the people who play aos would experience it those micro decisions are irrelevant Okay, because the the big outcomes the dice A silly decision they made of how they moved to you wrong or chose a wrong unit to charge Those are like hugely determinative, right? So for them The big decisions they only that they're making decisions. I'm trying to use your words I think your word is better the the big outcomes those those three to five to six to seven moments Whatever we want to say somewhere in that range, right? Those are determinative of the game Okay, what I'm saying is though like it doesn't matter how they pile in or do those small things It's not going to save them. It is an immaterial decision for them and an immaterial outcome okay However at the higher end what I'm saying is that they don't get any of that big stuff wrong anymore All of the big decisions are automatic. They're always going to move. They're only going to charge the right unit They're only going to make the right trades. They're you know, I'm saying like all of these things aren't outcomes anymore because they're basically just automatic You know, if that follows what I'm saying So instead the micro decisions for them become highly impactful because it's the difference between Me doing a tug of war with like 1980s Conan You know Arnold Schwarzenegger like at that like I there's no like way I can plant my feet Or get myself positioned or hold the rope that's going to let me win that that tug of war. I'm going in the mud Okay You understand understand but like Arnold against Arnold Right like two of them It's going to come down to a bunch of tiny things that determine who goes in the mud those become Material in that moment. Does that make sense the difference there between? What I'm saying I I don't think it necessarily does because in in Arnold's case There is no RNG and it's all skill-based. So the the moments in the game that I'm referring to are it's like I have made this like for instance, uh charging Of a nine inch With uh, so like boards, you know, yeah, sure if I am playing cast lie dynasty And I want to drop in from the the the shifting keep and charge some of the nine I have I have options to allow me to re-roll my nine inch charge Sure And so the odds for me to get a nine inch charge with a re-roll is like something like 60 something percent And it's like I have made the requisite choices to make this outcome better for me There is still a 32 chance that I will it will not work out for me. Um, that that's one of those moments I don't land my charge. I stand like an idiot and then I die or like whatever something like something like that So it's like sure I can't I I can't do anything more to make that a better chance for me. You know is that you feel that It does so let me tell that story again, but from the point of view of what I'm saying of the of the curve Okay, okay, so up the curve. They're either going to a Never use that mechanic Okay, because it's unreliable Right, so they'll never drop Unless they unless they've pushed it to an eight seven five re-rollable through some combination of choices If that's possible, of course, of course, right hence lowering the percentage of failure to near zero, right? Two they will have a backup plan available like they'll drop from nine But then also have a like flying chaff unit that can get in place or a different unit that will auto land the charge And this is just a bonus Okay, so they're not just standing there waiting to die They had like a plan bcd associated to that nine inch charge that makes it so that's not the lynch pin of the plan They weren't even if they fail that charge that unit isn't sacrificed Right, and like they're not going to be they're not going to be chumped charge Is they've set up something else To to soften the failure of that charge Right, so they'll they'll they'll take other steps like that's what i'm saying. They'll Those kinds of big things just don't don't happen They don't like bank the game on a nine inch charge. They would never do that Right, i'm not thinking the game that that's like one of the five outcomes, right? That's sure so not not the whole game relies on that one thing But like, you know, it's one of the pillars Yeah, that's what i'm saying like they'll just avoid that as a pillar They'll steer away from that right because why put that much risk like that's that's higher than their risk tolerance effectively becomes right So this is very cagey Back and forth ballet thing is what ends up happening where you're trying to always pick the sure plays right now At the same time you ask me all drop and pop baby, let's go all roll all the nines like let's do it But that's because that's me and i'm willing to just let my units hang out and be like well If I don't get this i'm in trouble, but who cares right, but that's again That's i'm not trying to play one i'm i'm not that skilled a player and two i love those kind of random things Because vince wants the experience Yeah, yeah, yeah exactly and and so he's going to take that risk because the payoff of him getting it is going to feel way better Than not playing it like that not playing that hand. Yeah, like yeah, I lose it. I'm like, ah, that sucks But if I get it, I'm like, yeah, like the the hi i'm daisy. Yeah I know just like his his adrenaline spike is way higher. Right. And so he's going to dive into that. Um Yeah, so but his but his risk tolerance. This is why I said it's not just a factor of like preference but also tolerance Right And so like that's you know, they would use the castle. I think the drop To drop in on a back unprotected point Right, like that's going to be the play they use that kind of a thing for or something like that and nothing else Like they're not going to drop it for a charge where they're relying on that unit to deal damage You know, they'll they'll take three end charges or something like that right and so on and so forth So That's you know, that's just that's what I mean when I say the decision the more micro decisions become more material Right because they just avoid making higher risk decisions If that well in in those they can lead to higher Higher stakes outcomes. There we go set a different way those decisions that look like decisions to you Are not decisions to them sure Okay, because they look at that and go no, I would never risk Like that's not like that's not a viable move for how I would play Rather though they would use that ability way Rather than just yolo it But I but I do think you've still hit upon and I want to return to it because it's really important, right You've hit upon a really really important point there Okay Which is that You're absolutely right on the uh Like you're absolutely right on The again most players exist within that space And so most players are experiencing the game where that smaller number of things Is determining the outcome right like you're absolutely right and that is a thing Right like and if that's not the experience you like in a game That's rough Because that means either you have to choose to like no i'm going to make this my life's mission To move up this curve to like this really high level Or i'm or the game is going to be played in a way that honestly isn't very rewarding to me Right, so I like I don't think you're wrong there at all As far as like putting a finger on truth of of that I think you're absolutely correct that aos is a is a game where In fact probably for most players, yeah three to seven decisions decide the outcome of the game I think that's absolutely true And how many games do does an individual have to play theoretically to get to the point where that is not the case Uh, you know, I don't know I've always like I mean obviously There's a whole lot of research on like what it takes to skill up and how and things like that and and I'm sure it varies person to person and based on their innate tactical sense And how much time are they willing to invest watching seasons of war Watching tactics videos and then doing whatever, you know, like They that's why I'm I'm wishy washy on it. I don't know like there's some amount of probably some small amount of innate Logic that you have to have and then some Amount of just like trained Skill that you have to build that's this way heavier. But but I my suspicion it's it's pretty heavy Um, I don't think it's small. I'll say that like I play quite a lot of Of warhammer but quite a lot of age of sigmar and I don't count myself in that group Like I don't I'm I'm not Jordan. I'm not Caleb. I'm not Gareth, you know, I'm not these people You know tom guan like there's like I could list 50 more people I haven't talked about who I were like sort of you know, these People I recognize is like they top 10 every tournament they go to there's some of the best players in the world And I'm not in that group Yeah, but the thing is I've watched Jordan play on seasons of war and he has lost the game to prio He invested in a strategy that had had him winning He lost and he got blasted off the board by scaven rick playing scaven But it like still happened to him. And so I don't I don't I want to say like an example I'd love I'd love to be at a tournament and watch top table play And like almost like ask them why they're doing everything they're doing it would never happen I would never be allowed to do that, but I want to I'm at the point now in my Career where I want to like pick people's brains in the moment Ask these micro choices like see why they're making these things. I just I'm not I am not seeing the matrix entirely I hear what you're saying. It makes perfect sense and you're right about the charging thing with nine inches I totally get what you're saying But like as a game as a whole I'm not I'm not seeing the matrix It doesn't like when I played a song of ice and fire that game was immediately competitively Tactically enjoyable like it was like I didn't need to play the game of bazillion times I had fun immediately, you know, and so it's like I have to play more games than vince to enjoy this game as a spike like Oh, no, like that's that's not worth my time. You know what I mean I I completely get you garret. You are a great player. You shut your mouth Um, I knew he was going to take an issue with that as soon as I listen in, but I know how good of a player he is Um, what so let me say a thing here, uh come to nash con this year with us Uh, hopefully jordan will be there again. I'm pretty willing to bet that like somebody up at those tables Uh, we'll be willing to let you Uh, actually sit in and watch and ask questions. Let me just say that's a very friendly group These people are much more friendly than you think But like if you can watch a game with like any of the trant and ellie brothers and and like That's that's going to be just a great moment right there. Those are those are there They're like incredibly precise unbelievably skilled players. So, you know, there you go Okay, but but any rate, uh, yeah come to a tournament with us, man. It'll be good. Hang out. It's a fun time We can go in the battle tech room and harass them Uh, also and just to to to clarify something I do not mind losing games like I cut my teeth playing fantasy losing to every player in that store It did not matter. I loved I loved playing that game. It is not it is not about losing or playing a faction That's hard to learn because it's about playing a game that feels like it's undermining the strategy of the game That's that's what it is. Yeah So what I would say just briefly just like you talk about jordan like pitching a game on on priority Yeah Like i'm not saying that this is the case But when you're creating content, right, you're creating an experience by Hey, and like when i'm at a table On round four or five. I'm making decisions based on what's most likely to put me on that podium Like i'm not making decisions based on what's going to do from a viewership standpoint. What's going to be more enjoyable? Right, um, and I know that sounds like a very like weird distinction um, but I think that's right. I mean, I'm sure he doesn't play the same way for for uh, Every bat rep as he does when he's on table five or table one round five when I throw dice with vent The game that i'm throwing dice with is very different than the How I get experience at an event because even the list that i'm taking and stuff like that It's just a difference because of the social contract that's going on I know that i'm doing something different, but this is not what i'm trying to generate this type of experience All right, um, and so I I don't know if that's the case But I would just from my experience in knowing people on those tables uh very Now let me just say this and I'm going to bat now I now they said that I'm going to back it up Okay, like I'm going to back away from my premise to say that There are also moments where I will find myself because of the sequence of things or because of like dice rolls have skewed one way where like it's pushed me so far Outside my planning that I have to bank on the double turn bust Or whatever right like sometimes that is your comeback mechanic right we've talked about you know We've briefly talked about this like sometimes you just have to roll the hard nine or you have to roll That priority or you don't get the game right like you look at it and you go Okay, if I don't do this I can lose a slow game of attrition If I go for it I have a chance to win right and sometimes I like Some that is what often will determine the difference between a five and oh event in a foreign one Is making a making a roll like that Where you just don't have an option and you have to gamble But we're playing a dice game right like so that will occasionally happen in a five five event of like five round event You're probably gonna have to one game is probably gonna be tight and you're probably you might have to gamble Yeah, and so I guess to to continue this conversation. I feel like when gambling The the percent that the gamble Wins me a losing game should be Lower than what it feels like it currently is an aos like if gambling is winning prio That's not good enough. It needs to be 15 percent chance that this is gonna work out And if it doesn't like I lose like if you're losing you should lose Like period like you should it is but it is dice game So I just want to push that percentage more We don't really mean if you lose you should lose period what you mean is like Barring a catch-up mechanic that has the chance to come back whatever low chance that represents right like because we talked about that So I I didn't I didn't want you to get yourself in trouble there because I know sure. Yeah, right, right? Yeah, but yes percent than a than a prio roll and maybe you're not saying that maybe maybe you're seeing more than that As casually competitive has pointed out in the chat. I've had a go try God's not kill it like that happened Mathematically that should not happen. It definitely happened Right, and so so sometimes like that happens and you just have to punt right? You have to figure out a way to make it make the game work Yeah, yeah, yeah, and so like My so my point to all this is I think there's something worth very much exploring there because I like One of the things I really value about aos just to return to this and we should we should bring this, you know sort of To a close here. We've had this is a good discussion Um, I know it's late. Um, you know, one of the things I really value is I do think there's an incredibly high Skill ceiling like there's so much to practice to learn this game is so varied each experience can be extremely different and challenging in like a million different ways, right? and um And I value that a lot, but I think at the same time we We have to also understand the downside of what that means when the skill floor Becomes very high Right or when certain things can become very outside has this sort of outsized impact And I think it is the nature of aos that it is a very Swingy game that can often especially as most people experience it rely on a smaller number of decisions And some things like the priority role especially for for the vast majority of players Will be highly impactful and it's you know to sit there and go well I don't have that problem. You know, I always know how to react to it Or I always set myself up fine or blah blah blah like good. I'm glad that's cool Like I'm glad you've you've You know unlocked those those types of things, right? But there's a lot of people who are playing who don't or who might not continue to play because they don't like that experience And sometimes maybe that's good. Maybe that's just not the game for them That's okay. Again, like we said at the beginning certain games can be for different people And those tolerances are going to be different and I like having a wide variety of experiences But I think we have to admit that it's the reality of this game that those things are true and That that means there's going to be some group of people That just this isn't for and that experience isn't rewarding to and there's like you mentioned Uh, you know a song of ice and fire how it just kind of like it clicked into place Right like the the it and and that didn't mean you won every game to return back to your point That was the whole that's not what's being said just to be super I'm still losing. My faction is terrible, but I'm still losing constantly But I love it. But it had to do with like you feeling like you understood the decision space Right and the decisions were in the right level of tolerance of randomness to you You know the things like that right those things hit the right Mark whatever those are on the spectrum for you to be like, yes This is the puzzle piece that clicks into place for me Right and there's nothing like innately wrong with that Uh It's just it's just like that ultimately like is going to come down to Your psychological utility and how it intersects with the the game mechanics, right? but we but but we We can also be aware of that and hope that you can sometimes design around that like you can Speak to that in some ways and minimize its impact and stuff like that Which I think is ultimately what a lot of those like go second get a bonus Mechanics are trying to do right so yeah, yeah, right on trying to do but maybe according to tom Only exacerbate the problem. It's sure sure. I guess it depends on where you're living. Yeah, exactly All right, well good. All right, man. I'm gonna give you the last word scott. What else you got anything else you want to say? Thank you to the chat for being so awesome and and uh, you know like It's very easy to have someone come in and criticize something you're passionate about and respond with hostility, you know and You know sometimes in this whole episode of me criticizing the game It felt like that but at no point in this experience either with the chat or with you two guys You're both lovely hosts as it felt like that. So thank you for making me feel welcome. Thank you for making me feel like my My critiques are heard. It's really valuable. You know, it's not easy to do Yeah, yeah, that's it 100% man. I'm I'm very glad and like I said, I knew the show was going to be from the moment I said I wanted to have you all I wanted to have you all because I just wanted to have another excuse to To to just like rail and all these things that you said that I was like, yeah, gosh darn it. These things aren't wrong Let's get these fixed I get to bitch about tactics more. Yeah, exactly Yes, absolutely Obviously, I'm sure everyone knows miniac his channel will be linked down below If you're not, I mean, what's the matter with you? And of course, we've also got a shout out trapped under plastic Uh, the my one of my most favorite every other monday experiences always look forward to a good trapped under plastic episode scott and john are both Truly wonderful fantastic human beings that I am honored and blessed to call friends I I'm a much better human for having a friendship with both of you So I want to thank you for coming on. This is like it's not an easy thing when you make a video that there's plenty of spicy people Who wanted to come at you real hard to then come on like the aos show Like oh yay, that'll be fun Um, so thank you for doing it and it's been an absolute pleasure and a lot of fun So thank you all for watching. Hey, if you haven't hit like yet, guess what you can do? You just hit that button It's so easy. It's fun. Click buttons. Just click all those down there Subscribe if you haven't already for more fun content next week Will be the obr show We will be reviewing a siarq bone reapers first and then we'll be doing soul blight the week after that Yes, tom, you'll get soul blight suck it tyler Obviously, it was the correct alignment to give tyler obr I mean think about tyler's personality and tell me he's not just like He would be part of catechrose's legions for sure. Um, I mean you'd have the scroll just like taking off the yeah Yes, uh, thank you carcid. I will make a note for myself on the skill versus random To link that down below. I appreciate that. So thank you very much everybody. We certainly appreciate it If you want to support the channel, there's lots of ways you can do so Uh, of course, you can share this with your friends And all that kind of thing, but you can also join the patreon that's focused on your hobby and taking your next step On your own personal hobby journey. Um, maybe you want to be a so-so pro painter Well, that could be a way to take that step. Uh, I look forward to the new copyright I look forward to the new bright rolling out. Uh, but uh, but as always, thank you scott. Thank you tom Thank you audience as always We'll see you next wednesday As I struggle with the mouse. Bye everybody