 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 is my co-host Tyler. What's up, dude? It's I'm bopping Yeah, we were talking about it before show. There's a lot of energy tonight battle tactics talking about this has got everyone Hyped up because this is it's finally time. We've been dancing around this subject for too long So tonight we answer the question are battle tactics good or bad also joining us for the first time on the show It's Nick. What's up, brother? How you doing? Howdy? I'm doing great. Happy to be here and I'm super excited about the amount of passion that people are showing about battle tactics and the The grenade you've unleashed I will get into it for sure. This is gonna be a a real high energy show for sure So tuck in everyone. This is gonna be fun. I look forward to a lot of your comments in the chat I look forward to people voicing the exact opposite opinions one right after the other. It's gonna be a fun time By the way, Nick shout out on those awesome cabinets behind you love them. That's such a great background Great-looking cabinets that that that's set up. So dig it. Tom has very similar cabinets So basically what I'm saying is you could just replace Tom and I don't think anyone would notice and it'd be fine All right, so Tyler let's start with some news buddy. What do we got? news Everybody's favorite segment rumor engine. This is actually potentially maybe possibly an interesting rumor Engine image right so these little dots on Let's see. What are those dots? There's a lot of bumps Linesh. Okay I'm staring up and I'm thinking slithering and I'd seen them on slinnish before yep Maybe a war bands maybe what we thinking I assume some kind of war cry Like we saw I assume some kind of war cry war bands But I assume and I'll tell you why I think that we saw the other little leg plates Which could have been either dock or slinnish or something like that before and I think those two are the same image like the little leg The fancy leg grieves I think this is the sword to that particular character or somebody in that that war band the reason I think it's so nice. It's pretty simple. I suspect in this season of war cry We'll see some Some more God aligned war bands at some point. I know they weren't in the slaves to darkness thing We saw it could also be underworlds like the next season of underworlds. I would also vote that So either of those are certainly possible But the the point being is that we saw the nergal aligned war band So it's not that beyond the pale that sometime next year After the slaves to darkness book is is gonna come out that we get a slinnish war cry war band Or that we get another slinnish underworlds war band or something like that There's the outside chance that this is a kind of a dark elf Themed sure band or something along those lines slinnish has a lot of those same influences Yeah, they also like the same like leather gloves. They'd also there's a preview There's a couple other old dark elf characters that have these same swords. They use the same grieves So it wouldn't be that shocking to also see it finally be like the The if we predict Umbreneth every single time eventually will be right and we can go called it You know, even though all the people who say it's gonna be Umbreneth have said that about 15 different war bands or armies And it's never them, you know They are the lupus of Sort of rumor engines at this point, but could be certainly they they always remain ever the bogeyman. I Agree. All right. Cool. What else it's one of those two things though I feel almost assured and saying right like it's it's cool. So could be a good warband. Good-looking warband Okay, we had an article this week on organized play returning Starting with warmer 40,000. So sounds like the organized play kit for them is on its way here pretty soon We'll support up to 32 participants and have secondary objective cards We're gonna get some apparently fairly fancy mysterious terrain tokens. Yeah Personally, I never use but whatever and We've got some nice trophies on the way Certificates, what else did they have here? I didn't see let's see just a few weeks later. So yeah, whenever this new Think they're gonna launch it for all of them. They talked about kits for everything 40k a os Warcry underworlds like the whole kill team the whole shooting matches is getting these right and yeah There's these like they're these all-in-one packs that the stores get they'll send one out I think those stores can get more But it has like, you know stuff to facilitate running organized play events in the stores. So Cool, well good glad to hear where we're you know, the world is healing I guess so Look good Yeah, cool looking trophies. I don't know how I agree with you Nick How often do you use mysterious terrain like that the current pack of six? yeah, we we've done it a few times and Didn't really like it was either incredibly swinging if you get one of the pieces that matters Or it was just clutter that we didn't want to deal with most of the time. Yep same It's a problem. They like we've talked about this that they should ever we did a whole show dedicated to redesigning The the mysterious terrain and how to make it actually like interesting And yet here we are and meanwhile they added some great terrain rules that don't get used impassable Obscuring garrisonable nobody seems to use those at all Right the actual good terrain rules that could that could formulate interesting competitive play and should be like in say an Organized play pack that comes out or something like that, which again 40k does have that thing. I'm not sure why a OS doesn't so Yeah Okay, cool by the way that also lets them do updates specifically to just organize play and not touch all of match play necessarily which is also an advantage But at any rate cool beans. What's our next news item? It's what dwarf 477 got previewed this week Cheetah courts are getting their Tom celestial and get a new war scroll for the charnel throne faction terrain and Nick you mentioned they're gonna have a rogue action. You've heard Yeah, I'm okay. It was one of the things listed. Okay They called it a hefty update whatever that means we'll see the fact that they're getting their terrain update You never know then right right to be the most impactful thing ever could be nothing a Single I mean I don't have a lot of faith in a single heroic action could be cool You can do a lot with a rogue action if they wanted to It could be like use this heroic action And if this hero still alive at the end of the turn you win the game like that is a valid rule you could write I don't think they should do that But you know never underestimate I suppose But you know, I mean we the basic ass update was mostly them updating a piece of terrain and I would say it had a pretty big effect so Who knows I guess we'll find out So yeah cool stuff FEC We knew there was no death books on the way basically for a while anyway, so This is not surprising at all Now the item that we didn't have on the list, but whilst on my mind I saw Las Vegas open tickets are Available, I'm not sure the status. I'm sure they're going quick, especially for the championships But anybody's interested my check and see if there's any steal available. But yeah, obviously one of the big events every year Somehow it's only June and already we're getting our event tickets for July It doesn't doesn't time fly living in the future. That's great I hope LBO is gonna be a great time. It is the one big event of the main three that I do not go to and I but it always seems like it's fun. So Good stuff. All right Well, I guess that brings us to the end of the news fast and easy. There we go Hey as we transition to pick of the week Why doesn't everybody hit like? So, yeah, the more likes you get the better the FEC update will be there you go so Next of the week, right the pick of the weeks section of this exactly so Tyler start us off with all your infinite picks Excellent awesome weird knobs. They are an amazing gaming club Austin, Texas They just had their smash and bash over the weekend look like an excellent event Love the pack that they put together. They streamed their games some of the games on Twitch So folks are interested in checking out some of those a chance to watch a little bit really good. That's on On their new channel on Twitch This cast is a new podcast hosted by Alex Q Darren Watson and Owen Jackson. It's an absolute right. They're talking about their experience at a os worlds I think they're gonna pick a topic to focus on each episode Talking about like players psychological profiles Deployment strategies a lot of cool things. I've got plans. So listen to that episode. It was fantastic and Then the dyes cast we might have one of the hosts here at an F and knight haunt was The second to last about a report that you guys did Nick was excellent. I really like the conversation that Justin you had at the end of the game particular on in terms of knight haunts and what we might have to look forward to and get excited about in Terms of some of the the knight haunts a little bit of sarcasm there Not me just a little bit in terms of the the knight haunt play style or some of the play styles I mean, I think it is a pretty incredible book. But yeah, they're gonna be I think we probably have a pretty Notable noticeable impact on the meta For sure and it's a it's a very diverse book I think you can lean a bunch of different directions even though a lot of the troops feel samey You can lean in some very different very compelling directions in that book and I think it is gonna shake up the meta Yeah, I You know, I agree as we said on our show I think it's it it continues the strength to strength of most of the books in 3.0. Honestly All right, Nick by yourself. What would you like to share out with everybody? I've got two picks of the week My first is cubic shenanigans with their their local to us. We're in the Milwaukee area and they're in the Milwaukee area as well they just had a great podcast for The knight haunt Battletome review and they they both know knight haunt really well Brendan the Lord of Death has played knight haunt for forever and Dan has been a knight haunt player for at least few years as well So they did a great dive on it and their upcoming episode Which should be out tomorrow is on their experience of thought war. So I'm looking forward to that. Oh, nice Yeah, and then my second pick is mefs rantathon Raising money for mental health awareness. It's his I believe third or fourth year in a row doing this He has a ton of guests on great conversations around warhammer around mental health and around other topics in the gaming community and It's it's awesome to watch He raises just a tremendous amount of money for the charities that he supports And I would encourage everybody when that is going on to check that out. It's July 30th and 31st this year We donated last year and we're donating again this year on behalf of the channel We're putting out a full gets army if somebody wants to get him to get wow, okay gets really the poster child of mental health and so We're leaning into the theme there and Like I said, it's a it's a great cause and everybody should check it out. Yeah, I get excited. It's gonna be a fun time as always You know year one we got muppets evolved to the role-playing game So just on an offhand joke from the rearling one screw, you know, so lots of thoughts of fun things there Who knows what will come out of it? in years to come All right, my pick of the week if if this battle tactics talk isn't enough tactic talk for you Then you should check out our good buddy Rob The honest war gamer who had his a OS Monday show also discussing That and that is linked Down below all of those are linked down below Because everybody was responsible and sent me their links in advance. So thank you both And so everything's linked down there. Check it out in the description All right, gentlemen with that let's turn to uh Let's turn to a little hobby time. I didn't do any hobby. Leave me alone Stop a little busy by helping out somebody a good friend you were you were doing a lot of work That's not where I want to start my time. It's not I understand you didn't pay anything. That's fine time I'm not gonna beat you up over it. Here's my question My question is not that we're not we're not in the you're painting stuff yet The question we got to answer that the world wants to know Tyler. It's how many units are you currently committed to? 11 that's that's still the number the 11 is the note. Well, are we counting? Polkastros offer We're not counting polky. Okay. If that's a real offer So Anthony Polkastro offered to print five tables If I paint two Inumum size units, I don't even know what that number is It's probably something like 50 probably of the worst war scroll in the entire game There they should not exist. You should go around. They should be rounded up and burned I think that this is the one unit you could you could you know, it's it's a good cause skanks Skanks. Yes. This is this is the hill you want to die on skinks. Yes Is the hill that I will die on cast with season of war is right there with me any any sensible human being is right there with me Anyway, I think I mean that's a pretty good offer. I guess It's five tables for two boxes of skinks. What are you going to do there? So, uh, my point is that the terrain challenge is still on to to help tyler build up the terrain collective Uh, so don't forget about that. So if we if people can donate if people donate a table worth of of Terrain then tyler will have to paint things and that's all fun And we want tyler to at the end of this have to paint at least two armies or one really big army um Tyler I saw many wargaming. Dave shared out his how I got to 144 000 points of chaos baseball. Yeah, yeah video Uh, so I feel like we can get you there that same like we can we can get you to that point A couple years from now. You'll be you'll be doing the same video All right, but no problem. Nick. What have you been hobbying on? What's on your table, buddy? I'm working on legion of the first prince right now. I've got some nergal stuff that I'm doing Some plague bears on the table. Nice so, uh Getting those table ready got a couple tournaments in july and uh way too much of it is still gray. So I'm working on that Uh, nergal is fun to paint. I will say that so, um Yeah, absolutely My hobby time since I can talk about it this week, although this is the same thing I was working on last week has been a little bit more involved in a big project Uh, and that is this that is the kratos Super heavy battle tank or whatever it's called. Oh, wow something like that Um, doesn't matter. It's a 40k tank thing 30k tank thing. It's available in 40k now as well And I'm trying to take this up to a competition quality and make a video out of it So this might be the most Involved video I've ever had to make Uh, just because of so much detail But uh, yeah, this thing's awesome and I love it. I love tanks. I love cool vehicles And uh, you know back and so this is just a fun chance to paint it and do some fun stuff with a The imperial guard color scheme. So yeah, there you go. Should be done with that. Hopefully in the next couple days We're getting in we're getting into the home stretch Uh, awesome. Well, thank you very much. I'm I'm very excited about it. It's coming out nicely uh, so Let's uh, we're gonna the video will just touch on a million things like as far as competition vehicles go. So uh, you know painting yellow and detail weathering and Everything just everything all at once everything everywhere all at once All right. Well For the I you know what I feel like if you're watching right now for the quickest run through our first three segments In a long time 18 minutes. What am I doing? This is terrible. All right. Oh, yeah, my friend. We're we're we're good But this leaves us more time for discussion. Let's get on to the battle tactics hit like For zooming fast, but still covering all the relevant items and let's get into uh into the battle tactics Good or bad Okay, so Here's the question. This is a new mechanic as of 3.0 All right, so we've been playing with these now For about a year and Tyler and I were talking before the show about getting a survey together about people's general feelings in the world after a year of 3.0 on the various elements of the game and um The question arose to me of this particular mechanic of are they good or are they bad and The challenge that I keep running into Is Tyler when you posted your question day you said hey, we're going to talk about battle tactics Give me some ideas For you know, what you think would be cool battle tactics, which like one person followed the assignment Everybody else Was like battle tactics are horrible. They should be thrown into the sea and forgotten buried into the ashen of history Forget it. Okay. They're terrible and then uh No, it wasn't corn c1 red gun. It was fec. It just that was there was a corn guy on the cover for 40k world world leaders um the and then So that's one site and then you had other people who are answering that were like battle tactics are the greatest thing ever They changed my love face of god and I was forever changed Like sol on the road to damascus. So too. Did I now know the truth the light in the way? um So that's yeah, is it there's a bit of a Spectrum I think is what I'm trying to say and how people feel about them So we're going to try to cut through the noise and uh and get to something and get to like What is actually true about them? Aaron thomas I haven't played aos. It's a long time. What are battle tactics? Is there a 40k analog? Well Aaron, I'm glad you asked let's talk about those Fortunately, I included an overview slide So they were introduced in 3.0 with the goal of adding a second tactical challenge or and orthogonal goal to your objective capturing Effectively, there are a thing that you decide at the start of your turn each round start your hero phase Amongst doing other start of the hero phase things you have to choose a battle tactic And that's going to be some set of some thing you are trying to accomplish that round Uh, we will show some examples of these later as we talk through some of them that are there and use in the current battle packs Um, but effectively they're like a quest. That's how rob said it and I like that idea. That's kind of the concept Right, it's this little quest you're going to go on conquer this objective kill that hero destroy that unit something like that right there You just gave a vastly better explanation Of both you've touched on the what as well, but the why I mean, it's an old chestnut, right start with why so I look back at the core book And the general sandbook and there was almost no why given for why we're doing these things in the first place Sure, it's like a very small amount Really on in the general sandbook battle pack section before you get into the breakdown of the battle tactics I think that's been part of the problem for a number of folks is the lack of some grounding some context To connect, you know with their sense of why they're what they're supposed to be doing in a game Why are they're playing the game their sense of realism? You know the story the perception that shapes what their army is supposed to be doing yada yada yada So anyway, I love what you just said there Well, good. I'm glad And to Aaron's last question the 40k analog here would be secondary objectives Yeah, yep So these are not part of the core rules per se By that what I mean is 1.0 through 28.x. I think it's 28.2 I wrote 0.0, but that should say 28.2 like that is a the numbered sections of the core rules There's no reference to battle tactics in there. Okay However, it is part of the core battle pack that is on offer in the core rules And as a matter of fact if you just look at the core rules like in your app The first thing you're to see is battle tactics and it will take you to that list of six that are in there The basic battle pack that's in the core rules introduces six battle tactics the ghp-21 battle pack introduces eight battle tactics These are mutually exclusive battle tactics themselves are theoretically Derivative theoretically we'll talk about that more in a moment of the battle pack you're playing under so for example Season of war thandia introduced a new battle pack We've talked about the battle pack technology and why it's so powerful because you can say because when you use a battle pack you can change any expectations from the core rules Right and one of the things that the season of war thandia did for that sort of narrative arc of five games you play Is it said hey, there's new battle tactics And they focus more on doing stuff with like the incarnates and playing with the various things that are happening there In fact some of the scenarios In season of war thandia introduce mission specific battle tactics relevant to that particular mission you're trying to achieve Right, but it's all derivative of that particular battle pack. So um, which is I have no problem with and conceptually makes perfect sense Here's the structure you're playing under the battle pack Could be the standard matched play when we use into the ghp Could be a core one could be others like we mentioned that everyone's like season four and From that derives the things you're trying to accomplish in the game okay uh These have also been found in all new battle tomes and in the white dwarf tomes celestials That is another place where they can at least least controversial portion of this Certainly no issues there whatsoever We're not going to completely gut and disassemble that in just a few moments uh But yeah, the basic idea here is Uh, those are army specific battle tactics is what's being introduced. So they theoretically then Fasten on to any battle pack you're playing Because there's no other rules that would guide them So now like if you were using the very core battle pack You would have six plus whatever's in your army if using a ghp you have eight plus whatever's in your army and so on okay Okay so Um, that's the basic idea here anything I missed gentlemen in the overview Oh, let's see Yeah, it seems pretty solid. Nick any thoughts? They are part of the the core victory condition of the game Right because they do give you victory points. So it's important to understand that they aren't um, They aren't an optional thing to do. They're not giving you an extra benefit They are fundamentally part of what you're trying to accomplish. That's an excellent point that I did make Yes, these are a major part of the scoring mechanic. Yes, absolutely Yep, okay cool Uh, tyler anything else you want to hit here? Yeah, like I just got Critiques in my head about them, but maybe I can hold off. Oh, we'll come to those don't worry. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so But no, yeah, that is a good point And we're gonna touch on like I said, this is good or bad. We're gonna touch on On the whole panoply of the experience here Okay, yes, sorry about the dog barking one of my dogs is very mouthy and decided that apparently Something was a problem um All right We're just going to take a look here at existing battle tactics Um, these are the best versions of these I could find. So here we go. I wasn't going to retype all of them Um, we have as I mentioned some in the core rules and some in the ghp 2021 I didn't grab the season of war thondia, but as mentioned those also exist there These are all the battle pack derivative ones Um, I think most of us have forgotten that the core rules ones exist Uh, the first couple games I played were actually under the core rules battle pack. I didn't hate it Uh, at all I actually kind of Kind of like some of these Um, that that aren't present in the ghp 21 For example, like secure the center is a really interesting one. I think the control six inches Of the center of the battlefield effectively sort of making a quasi new objective in the dead center of the battlefield And then you have to suddenly control that Which often by the way, there's it is not where objectives are in many missions. There's no objective there in many missions So that's kind of an interesting thing drawing you away from the objectives There's some similar ish stuff, uh, and so on and so forth Um, there's less in the core rules only six compared to eight obviously the ghp also introduced a bunch of other Season specific stuff, which is useful to talk about You mentioned their worth points the sort of base conception of these in most Uh, the way that most Battle plans are scored is that they're worth two points every time you complete a battle tactic Um, and when you assume that sort of three is what you're getting from the The objectives that sort of makes an in simplest form that makes for five rounds They're 40 percent of your potential maximum score each turn, right? Theoretically now of course with the ghp 2021 what we saw was because it's a monster focused year Uh, we saw all this addition of like if you do x thing with a monster You get one bonus point and so on and so forth Okay, um as as as well as obviously this this larger battle pack of the ghp introducing the kill a monster get a victory point Which is not a battle tactic, but it's just you know to also balance that out Uh, okay What's your what here's what I want to do on this one? nick From either of these two I don't care What are the ones you like and why? Like why do you enjoy them? My favorite is savage spearhead And it that goes into something we'll touch on Probably later in the conversation But I like that savage spearhead often involves an opportunity cost in the way that the others do not You are often doing something that you wouldn't otherwise do in order to accomplish savage spearhead Uh, and many of the others are incentivizing you to do something that you want to do any way to further your game plan So I like savage spearhead Yep Okay, tyler you got it. You got a hot pick Oh, yeah, I really like that answer. Yeah, there's let's see. There's definitely not enough of them along the lines of what nick just described In terms of I think aggressive expansion Isn't too bad. I like the Idea behind aggressive expansion the name often isn't appropriate, right for how you actually do it sometimes, you know savage games you're Picking the one that's on the border of your territory and then you're picking one in the middle, right? You're not I mean semi aggressively expanding. I suppose So yeah, my favorite is like feral 48. You don't even have to move it all completely that one. That's always fun Well, doesn't it it has to be I think for a foray. You cannot do it because for a foray is split down the middle I believe Oh, maybe maybe this territory is in the middle of that one, but there's someone where they rest on your line being the point Uh, definitely. Yeah, you might be right on the territory split on that. But yes I do like the idea behind aggressive expansion. Yeah Yeah, I mean, it's two objectives. Yeah, sure. I already mentioned mine. I like I really like secure the center Again, because it's much for the much same reason you mentioned seven spirit It's causing you to move to a place in the board. You might not be otherwise motivated to move to right Which I find interesting I like when they're sort of force it pulling your army apart or asking you to move in unusual ways Or to places where it's sort of other natural you you're gonna you naturally gravitate towards objectives, right like the That's where that's where that's where armies tend to move and have fights is over objectives Of course, that's not too surprising or weird, right? Okay um Which one do you like the least nick what what of these do you like the least again pick for many It's a little bit of a hot take, but I dislike conquer. I think the most okay. Okay. Why so Because the the core mechanic of the game the core victory condition of the game is taking objectives and in Doing that to get an extra cookie in the form of a battle tactic It doesn't change your game plan in any way. You're going to do what you're going to do It doesn't create any incentive to play any differently It creates an extra punishment if you fail at your primary objective and so I I don't like it as what these should be in my opinion, which is an alternate goal Or a quest as you mentioned it. Yeah, sure It it doesn't accomplish that Okay, cool All right, good stuff. Yeah, so like the point being is it's a bit of a hat on a hat, right? It's it's incentivizing you theoretically to do something you were already wanting to do which just takes some objectives, right? Okay, cool Tyler Yeah, I mean it's an obvious one, but ferocious advance Sure, of course the majority of games that I played at 3.0 Not only am I often picking that one my opponent is picking that one too, right? So we just have a hold hands and run a good old time both of us that first round And then we move on so now as we get into this I think There's something to be said about having a battle tactic It is viable Across the majority of factions. It's just a question of to what degree is it viable? And this one is far too easy, of course in my opinion Yeah, oh, yeah, not a not a fan Specifically viable in turn one, right turn one specifically. Yeah, sure For me, it's going to be monstrous takeover. I hate monstrous takeover so much I hate that it's just you sit some monstrous fat butt on an objective that you already control like buried in your territory under no risk They're not taking over anything. It should be called monstrous sit in a place Right Um, like it's just if you've got a monster. It's so autocomplete Right, uh, and and I think that gets to um You know a couple of the different challenges that will eventually identify here We're kind of hinting around the edge of them But I thought it would be interesting to start with what we like and what we don't like and then we can kind of You know, let's let's dig deeper into that right and figure out Uh You know, what's the root cause on that stuff, right? Well, again, Vince a lot of this I feel I mean, maybe it's just me I'm curious you guys if you only push back on this idea, but I I've really felt the lack of context Or why we're doing these things in the first place Sure that that has had a big impact on people's perceptions The stories that are going on in their heads when I said earlier, right? If we had more context grounding understanding of what these things why these things exist what they're supposed to be doing Some of the it often seems like the company the studio is still hesitant to give some semblance of Intent sort of design intent or design understanding behind some of the decisions That if you had a little bit more of that you could understand the contours Of of these things what they're supposed to look like are we supposed to be dealing with so their secondary objectives? Does that necessarily mean that most of them should be orthogonal To the Coordination of what we're doing on a battlefield. There's two levels to this You're talking about the meta explanation of why we're doing this, right? You could also just get down into the level of the game and say the why we're doing this like why do I care? Why is it making me win this fight that three idiots held hands and ran forward together? And then out of even moved right like why am I now closer to victory? Right. Yes. What has actually occurred here or if I'm not closer to victory Maybe that's not the thing. Why am I closer to achieving whatever goals I had as an army? I've heard this from so many players Over this first year with 3.0 That these things take away from their realism the story the perception that they have How this game is supposed to be played What their army is supposed to be doing on the battlefield so on and so forth And so yeah, it like it doesn't happen to me personally, but it seems to be a thing for a lot of people Yeah, I I agree. I agree. Um Okay, so the I feel like there's two levels of lacking explanation here, right? We just we were given this very gamey tool okay And then and and there's a lot of good and bad to it But it's hard to seed it mentally now some people have more problem with that than others right for some people It's it's not an issue Right for some folks It the game is the game rules the rules. It's just construct, right? I'm not I'm not really trying to You're not ruining my immersion man because there's no immersion to it, right for other people. This is more of a prickly issue so that's certainly like You know has got its own own things going on and and cw. I just want to make sure we're not I'm not talking about realism Right. I'm talking about versimilitude There's those are two very different things right and Versimilitude often matters a lot realism doesn't like you can you can have like Chain swords in 40k are the ultimate example of this like that's the stupidest thing in the universe Okay, like it makes no sense whatsoever put it I take it back There's a even dumber thing a guy with a chain sword on a motorcycle Okay, like that is an insane thing that you would use in a battle With where people have like laser guns and cannons and stuff right like that makes no sense But it doesn't matter. It's not realistic, but the versimilitude of the world It makes perfect sense Because the weird rituals and the the nature of the world and the grim darkness of it and the themes and all of that Right, so it you don't your brain doesn't get stuck on it, right? That's what I'm speaking toward. Okay Uh, all right Let's talk about the good Okay Um, just time stamping us here All right, sorry about good stuff This is what I consider the good stuff I'm open to to if I missed anything Okay idea The idea of the thing is good I know that sounds silly, but I really mean it The the concept of the thing of a second dynamic layer of interactivity and goals that each player can reach for You know separately from the main thing they're trying to achieve I feel like is really good. That's a good concept Right Because again, we're not talking don't worry about the implementation Let's clear our heads for a moment of whatever battle tactics you've seen if I was just proposing the concept I think most people would be positive on it because it's like hey, even if you're losing there's still stuff you can do Right You can still get in there and and and get some points you can be achieving something that's toward victory or towards your army's Goals or however you want to frame that Right So, um The you know it creates One step toward an alternate wind condition, right? It's it's not a full alternate wind condition But instead of your army Uh tabling your opponent and controlling the center objectives You can in theory Uh, if this system was orchestrated such you could build an army that just focused on hearing these denying these And try to get a victory that way right in an ideal world Yep Okay Tyler uh Conceptually Yeah, on that first layer. So I was talking with both of you this week about this layer And how this is probably a show into itself in my mind Where we could have an entire show exploring different potential Wind conditions systems for aos, right? Sure. He had I was talking with both of you about warmer fantasy battle I did the usual 20 year gap Between playing but I hear all the time about, you know, mostly as I understand it The wind condition there was killing your opponents and whoever did that better wins the game Basically, I mean again, there are there were Itc and swedish comp and things like that that would lay over that in interesting ways and create various other stuff But yeah for the most part it was just kill your opponent better than they killed you Okay, so that's one version of a wind condition at context in which you can play a game like this Another is 1.0 and 2.0 that we had where broadly we're orienting around playing to control the tokens get the gold as rob and and gang always say and The third 3.0, of course is out of this other layer. I mean we had various Versions of 2.0 where like Nashcon we added schemes, blah, blah, blah, but yeah, that was the basic of it So anyway, I think that would be interesting an interesting show Maybe at some point then to kind of look at a was through that lens No, you're absolutely right because like, you know, one of the things Sean just mentioned in the chat is That like right now they feel like they're still contributing in the same way no matter what's going on because they're just more Victory points in the pile Right And if you look at how schemes were implemented at Nashcon when we when we built those and and david ran them The way david implemented them in scoring Was they didn't contribute like the scheme did not contribute to your your win of the game Right, they were two completely separate columns You could win the game that achieved some amount of points and you could complete your scheme Which is which is different because a scheme was one thing you were trying to do over the course of the whole game And it was like a It's more like a grand strategy. Yeah, which I which I purposely left out of this discussion because There's only so much we can do here But like grand strats are are a totally different thing We might do a show of like why grand scratch that should why grand strats should just be schemes, but at any rate the um You know, they were and they were also hidden information like your opponent wasn't aware of them Right, and so they were trying to guess like what you're trying to accomplish But they were worth big points if you accomplish them not toward winning the game towards your score in the tournament Right, so they were almost by necessity a competitive play Punch out right because they were used to create differentiation and scoring and stuff like that, right Whereas this is yes just adding on to the layer, but that wouldn't be necessary Which is what you're talking about, right? We could imagine that battle tactics Imagine battle tactics didn't add any victory points whatsoever. Okay, that just wasn't a thing they did Imagine the battle tag imagine we got a new battle pack That said something like this um As part like we got a battle pack as part of an organized play tournament Okay, that's where this would come in an organized play tournament pack And it said, okay you this game scores per the game scores objectives and whatever else is going on You don't get any points for battle tactics Instead what happens is at the end of the game if you complete more battle tactics than your opponent You get five extra points on your on your final score whatever that tallies to for the game, right? So like if you get 15 points for winning A major victory you you get to 20 if you win also the battle tactics thing Right, but but they're completely moving independently like the person who lost could complete more battle tactics They get five points the other person gets 15 that could also be the way it shakes out, right that would be doable Right, but that's not how it's currently constructed But the framework is there and that's what i'm saying the framework of the idea to me is really good Right Um, I think at the idea behind it are also creating additional skill tests Is good right Um Like creating additional skill tests in the game to help separate players and and create that more skill testing environment Can you complete this thing? Again, this might be more theory than in practice, but nonetheless, it's there, right? That's the idea of the thing It does. Yeah. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry Some interesting list building decisions come out of this or could come out of this Right now, it's just do you include a monster so you can take monsters take over But if battle tactics were constructed differently, you could have incentives for different list building considerations Yeah, absolutely We'll talk about that a big way because some of these like army specific ones are very very involved in that But even obviously the general ghp wins. How many times did you like go? Did you think well? I should probably have at least one monster in my list Right I mean that that right there is list influence is like list building being influenced by battle tactics, right? I think from a tournament play perspective It is pretty important because it can do things like be used to separate scores Um, it can be used to to create, you know more differentiation amongst the individual Players who were who were both who are all two three or three two or I shouldn't say I guess that's the end of the game But you get either way you get what I'm saying at the end of the tourney You go what I'm saying right throughout the course the tournament It can be used to not only create separations of scores round to round, but also game to game You know so on and so forth Nick did you like the vault and you're welcome to say you hated it Did you like the vault wars scoring system? Of course with how we did it where we did have additional Points that you would get for your battle tactics that you completed and your grand strategy that you completed to add to your tournament point score I did overall and I liked that you didn't include the faction specific ones. Those were just Straight off. Uh, no faction specific grand strats or battle tactics. Uh, but then yes just having Uh, in addition to your winter loss the differentiator then between you and I maybe both had a win But I got more battle tactics. So I completed more of what I needed to do during the game Then I would like that incentive structure. I think better if the battle tactics were not so tied to um, tabling your opponent and controlling all the objectives, but Uh, in general, I like that idea a lot Yeah, where the rubber meets the road here is where we're going to get into some some issues for sure And you're absolutely right gareth. You're not wrong brother Um, like I you know, I when we when we had you on the show I I praised your scoring system for using this stuff. I think it's it's well suited for that competitive play I think you guys built a good pack, but you built a good conceptual pack that could obviously be expanded Yeah, and I know there is other differentiation out there Okay The last point I'll say is it does theoretically allow for counterplay right and stopping your opponent from achieving their battle tactics Like it creates a secondary sort of quote-unquote mini game that's happening that's not intrusive on the normal game It's still using the normal mechanics of the game and here I just I grabbed it slay the warlord Because this is a pretty obvious one right like in my opponent's turn if they call slay the warlord. I'm like Okay heroic action finest hour Like I'm a general like instantly You know Like that it just might as well be the the windmill slam response anytime someone calls slay the warlord you you findest hour that general, right? um So It's like there that's a very simple example of counterplay, but it's there Right and and I think well when we again where the rubber meets the road and where we get into the challenges That counterplay isn't always found right and and that can be a challenge You know so so this is kind of what I see is some of the good stuff and there's good stuff here The the people who praised these in your twitter mentions there tyler They were big fans of them right and For reasons that are listed here and probably more right like they enjoy the skill test the choice They enjoy having something else to achieve right all that kind of stuff Like there's there's a lot of good things that are theoretically being derived from this experience right Yeah, I was looking at a tweet here I think it was from lens 10 It adds a layer of strategy to the game that rewards you for planning how to get points for all five rounds While also allowing you to deny your opponent beyond just killing things and holding objectives and I think that's a great summation Certainly have a lot of my thoughts and yeah enjoyment Generally have loved this system. It's been my favorite sort of game system 3.0 This piece of it, especially compared to 1.0 and 2.0 where we've had This additional layer get added on this third layer. We're killing things We're holding tokens holding the gold going for the gold and we're achieving secondary objectives built into the game Makes a lot more dynamic and sting especially when you combine it with whole one whole two Hold more, you know a second earlier. We've discussed this fence, right? We have of Three buckets in some ways with these mission scoring. We've got A knife to the heart style nick made this point earlier today with marking territory Very different win condition, right with how that one works You hold all four or if you burn one and you hold all three you win the game out, right? So that's one bucket you've got the potential for major differential in scoring veins of gur has 15 points available in round Five savage gains can get carried away sometimes and then you've got the whole one whole two hold more, right? So and you know how these things interact with those different buckets those categories I think is an interesting conversation as well in terms of the you know The impact differential that they can have within these different types of missions Yeah, yeah, I really really love the system Yeah, I mean there's a reason marking territory is the least played And sure Scenario in all of aos as near as we can tell from the tournament data Certainly the least common one that ever shows up in tournaments. I can say that with with complete assurity It's probably the one that battle tactics matter the most because you're typically going to draw on the primary condition there and Often going to it's going to come down to who got more battle tactics completed. Yeah Okay Let's talk about challenges because what the question we want to answer here is how well does this concept hold up Like a lot of the good things I talked about And I think they're good things But we have to say now we have to take it down to the level of reality Right, because they a lot of them are like conceptually it does this conceptually does that Yeah, and some of the times it does I showed you a tactic that I think is interactive and skill testing Right, like when you call slay the warlord is a skill testing thing if you ever call it, right? And and there is there's clear interactivity there Now I bet a lot of people just never call slay the warlord because it's one of the hardest ones to do because it is interactive It is they do have counterplay Right, where you where you do it to fish out a finest hour You do it deliberately to to try to fish it out Sure, so that you're better set up to In a future turn kill what you're what you need to kill. Yeah So I I really enjoyed there was a story that Nathan told in the Monday show about battle tactics That it was his turn and they were coming down to it And he realized that one of the opponent's only battle tactics they had left to utilize was broken ranks Okay, like that was basically the only battle tactic they could still use And so and he only had one battle line unit left in his army his our boys Everything else he had was non battle line So on his turn he charged his our boys in and got them to within fighting distance of Some big really destructive monster hero. I do not remember who he was playing so I apologize But effectively someone who would definitely lift an army or a unit of our boys. Okay And Forced the guy to kill his unit off turn Right because it was a single hero monster The guy had to fight you can't fight with less than all your weapons Right one ard boy was in range of with it was within an inch So there was not like, you know, he couldn't not pile in he couldn't not swing with all his weapons He could hope the dice were bad That was basically it and he lifted the unit of ard boys in his own turn allowing him for no Battle tactic then on on his turn right because now he effectively suicided his unit To then prevent it to counter playoff broken ranks. I love that Right that's interactivity like what a great skill test that was Okay But are these the set we have? Skill testing to you know with with the eight we've got like I have ferocious advance here because we talked about it already Right. It's it's just silly I think when it comes down to it and look this isn't too surprising Are these a skill test ferocious advance? Obviously not I Get out of here. Okay. Do they allow counter play? I have monstrous takeover as an example, but many of these don't allow counter play Right. I could have just listed ferocious advance again right um like Almost anybody's gonna find three units to run if that's what they need to do Okay, or or whatever I mean even like nick you you're point about conquer even conquered a lot of the time in my experience Not I mean Yeah, sometimes someone might get a cheeky redeploy or something You may not sufficiently wipe out a unit You should have wiped out to have more models on that objective blah blah blah But you know for the more often than not you're able to control the variables and get conquered when you need to get it Oh, yeah, seems like Yeah, I mean a lot of these aren't skill testing and aren't allowing counter play and I think that's the challenge That's not to say the whole list is bad It's not I'm saying that we've got problems in the list And we're going to compound the challenge that that creates with the next question which is um Sean said bellicor does give you counter play with ferocious advance Fair point bellicor is an answer to a lot of things um and uh Do they create a separation of scores? Here is my ultimate argument This is ultimate that it comes down to because this seems to be their main concept with it, right? On top of everything else like it erase all the rest of the meta layers They seem to want this to be a main scoring mechanic that is having you doing something else besides fighting on objectives, right? What else could the base root purpose of this be? All right And If we're if the closer we come To both armies at the table being able to complete five tactics without interactivity the more pointless these become Right and and by the way, I would bet the average like I would bet that if I looked at most tournament data and cut to the top Half of the tournament Most people are going for four four four five or five four five if they're doing their whole blah blah blah whatever, right? I mean who who aren't dead Like right Like unless you get tabled and just you can't complete any more tactics, right? That's that's the only thing really stopping you for doing it The average should be in a five round game like of games that go to five rounds The average we should be aiming for should be you're completing three out of five like if I just averaged everything out Right and I'm not I mean like non-tabling situations because then you'd have a real differentiator on your on your hand Right because then getting to four or five would become the stretch whereas falling to two or one Uh would be the the oddity out Gareth says he's run that data and I'm correct. I trust the economist Right And so The the issue I have here is if if literally both players Right Can just sit there And just do their five Yeah Without interactivity or risk Then these are pointless. It's just it's just literally pointless bookkeeping These are adding nothing Right. I'm not saying that's the world we're necessarily in But I'm saying that there's some armies that can absolutely do that right now They can just go five for five. No interactivity. No action like as long as they aren't tabled They will complete all five tactics Regardless of who they're against or what their opponent does or activates or casts They can just do it And that eliminates all of the interesting list building options to make sure that you're really good on battle tactics It eliminates all of your counterplay options. It eliminates all of your strategy to Uh get yourself in a position to complete them because so many of them are gimmies You're probably going to get there as long as you follow your game plan So many of them are gimmies You're probably not going to be able to stop your opponent unless you're one of the specific things Yeah, one of the like very unusual weird things like a bellicore type of thing. Yeah Right unless you have one of those specific tools to deal with this You just kind of accept that your opponent is going to get them Occasionally, you'll have a great moment where you can play into the strategy and deny one And it feels great to deny a battle tactic, right? Yeah, sure redeploy or or You know, even just getting the lucky on rolls. It feels great to turn that off But in general, you expect your opponent to get them. You expect to get them All of the other creativity goes away Yeah, and that's the problem already our anchoring on these has been reset incorrectly, right? We just expect to get them You're shocked when a battle tactics dropped Right, it's the unusual situation which the closer that is to true Again, the more pointless these become like we're reaching the asymptote of pointlessness Right and um You know, so uh tidings said that this is like the kind of reasons and things we just talked about is that they could use this to balance armies I don't disagree with that tidings. Um, we talked about that before how you could make an army that's kind of like worse At the game meaning like they don't really have traditional like hammers or animals or not good fighters or whatever But they have meat Strengthen the battle tactics space, right? So it's harder for them to like take or hold objectives But they're really really good at battle tactics. That would be cool space to explore But that only works if everybody's not just going five for five Right, if everybody's five for fighting then it's it's irrelevant Right, and this is the space that legion lives in right now is that they're they're not better than anybody else at Getting battle tactics, but they're better than everybody else at denying One or two a game if you've got kairos and bellicore and that's often their margin of victory This is the world they live in and it's a great spot, but at least one army gets to play in that way, right? Yeah, um And I really Do not like like there's another challenge that we haven't hit on here, but I but they're they're it's in both of these things I really hate these weird specific unit type Bonus points Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah Like if the game first of all we're just going to take prime hunt the prime primal hunter Whole thing and jettison that directly into the sun Okay, because that is obviously bad and I we did a whole show on it and that just skews points all over the wackadoo place Um, I'm happy that it stopped some skew lists. It helped no one who was already weak So come back to me like I'm super glad that the rich people Instead of driving their rules Royce got the lambo out like cool beans, I guess I don't know what that matters to me as a poor person. Okay. I'm still over here in a beat-up 85 Chevy trying to hope that like I can you know get this thing out one more time okay Yeah, I mean, it's uh, yeah, we may have some difference of opinion, but I hear what you're saying. Yeah Yes, I think it has had a meaningful impact, but we can debate around It's had a meaningful impact on stopping dragons from being a force in the game Which I guess if that was your if that was your benchmark, we did it Unfurl the banner mission accomplished. All right, so a little more a little more than that, but yeah You're right. It might be a little more I will use your words exactly to agree with you But regardless of all that The the bonus points on these are just way too heavily skewing especially when they show up this much Like I know this was our first shot at this in ghp 21 But I really hope when we switch to horde meta in ghp 22 I don't see five of these that are that are Similar where it's like reinforced double reinforced units or something like that, right? I'm gonna be like, oh good lord, you know That's still probably better than just monster, but but here's the sniff test, right? Imagine if it replaced every instance of the word monster With totem How happy would you be about these battle tactics? How skewing would they be? right And and that's the point they could pick on any keyword they wanted And this it was so strongly skewing and the bonus points to skew the score in such a big way Right because they just easily allow people to start creeping in ways that doesn't necessarily Uh speak to their the quality of what they accomplished Is there a drop date for ghp 2022 yet chris? No, although we should be about a month away assumingly Like normally it's the last week of june first week ish of july second week of july like it's in that sort of three week period So assumingly we're about a month away, but who knows okay, so um So anyways, I don't like the bonus points nick tyler I don't either. I think they they're they are too big. It's 20 of your score in a typical turn if you go hold more and And you get your battle tactic then it's 20 more points. That's a lot of points and it forces It rewards a certain type of unit, uh, which limits your creativity and list building Yep, you're you're disincentivized to run a list that has none. I wouldn't mind it if there was one right Maybe two if it was soft Right or very hard to achieve Right that had like a lot of interplay Okay, like I wouldn't mind the second one being like on slay the warlord You know one of the toughest ones to achieve But if there's like one that's like oh with do this thing with a monster you get a you get a bonus I'd be like, okay cool. There's one battle tactic. That's not incredibly warping It's one point over the course the game the problem is when I can run multiple turns Just going bonus point bonus point bonus point bonus point cool Or if the bonus point was for doing it with a type of unit that's inherently bad at doing that thing sure You kill a monster with a foot hero Yeah Sure. Yeah, we'll talk about some of those Okay Uh, all right anything else. So this is sort of the base challenges, right? I don't think our current list Is really doing as much skill testing as we would want there's some but not as much as we should want I don't think there really is allowing as much counterplay as we would want And I don't think they create a separation of scores or at least we're definitely on the road to them not creating A separation of scores, right? Like that's the end of the like I can see that I can see that that showing up on the mile marker, right? Like it's you know, 20 miles ahead No more separation of scores. You know, I know that's what's coming up Okay Uh, and I agree with you cw this like yeah for for talking about armies that just don't even have monsters I mean it's just it's wackadoo When when that much incentive happens on it where armies just don't even have this unit type present You know like, okay I mean just to say one thing that we haven't explicitly mentioned yet is that We've we've talked about this before events but where A number of these battle tactics are kill oriented, right? And of course all else equal You often have to do less work by killing from range than you do in melee You lay you have to complete a charge potentially you've got to deal with a potential redeploy You you just more variables could interrupt your capacity to achieve a battle tactic whereas There's 2.0 was dominated of summer 2020 And on up to july 2021 2.0 was generally dominated by range damage in the meta. That's mostly what we had for a long time The more kill based battle tactics. I mean, I just want I want I want to Measure twice cut once this the more kill based battle tactics. There are the naturally more powerful shooting is Yeah, it's I mean there's some other variables that are going on like Nick you brought up terrain roles that contributes to it as well I think in the nature of what we've seen over this first year this first season, but yeah, generally that seems to be a clear Yeah, clearly what we've seen from this first season yep I'll add one more to this list and that's that they don't Change your game plan in a fundamental. Ah, okay. The the opportunity cost for all of them Oh, well For many of them. Sure. We can say many of them. Yeah, is no right Yeah, I'm going to be trying to kill my opponents models. I'm going to be trying to take objectives six of the eight Reward me for killing models and taking objectives. Yep. Yep Very very good point. I like that a lot All right, let's talk about battle tome battle tactics. That's right folks. You knew it was coming Here we are. The time has come By the way, battle tome and Like we'll we'll handle tome celestial in a minute. Okay Um All right, this is where it all falls apart. This is where we go fully off the rails in my mind Okay And I I say this all the time on the show and I want to try to unpack this Because I think this is really important And I don't think the people who are designing this game understand what they're doing with this Like I don't want to be mean They're all great people and they're making a great game This has been like 3.0's books have been the best books in the history of aos But this is bad. I it's really bad Okay Because they're they're actively destroying a system with a lot of potential by including this crap All right So Here is murderous ploys out of daughters of king Okay, I have separated them into two categories that they were nice enough to separate them for me effectively Um into amazing and crap All right, and so to just read these real quick for everybody Here's the left side ones clash of arms You complete this tactic if three or more friendly units make a charge move this turn If two or more of those units are witch elves or sisters slaughter you get an additional victory point Okay That's a amazing slash crap. The first sentence is fine Second sentence is crap. I'm just saying. No, I mean amazing like for for winning the game, right? Like Actually bad These are bad for the game I'm saying they're amazing for what you're trying to do as far as like if you just took this solely at face value Right if you weren't digging in that's incredible right, um I mean of an additional victory point. All right, okay. I I think yes for charging with your chat units or whatever No, no, no, no. No, I'm saying at the prima facie level. They're just amazing and easy to complete Right. I'm that's why I didn't use good or bad right because that's that's what I'm saying here Cruel delight you complete this tactic if two or more friendly canary units move using their fire and fight ability Or fight and flight ability this turn which obviously you're just going to use the ones that do this automatically The two heart render units because there's no chance for them to fail So okay, cool. So basically just activate two units of canary and shoot with them. Got it Okay, cool beans And then which by the way has almost no counter play whatsoever since you can drop them from the sky and activate this You can't even read a play away from it. Yeah Okay, tie to blades You complete this tactic if there are two or more units from your starting army Holy within your opponent's territory at the end of this turn. So the The same thing that already exists base, but now with a kicker bonus point if it happens to be witch elves So now you get like savage spearhead again, but also with bonus points So just do that twice, right? Okay These are these are Quote unquote when I say amazing. I just mean like if you're just trying to get to five. These are amazing to do so Because daughters can just do five like none of those basically have any counterplay All right, like I'm just going to do them. I mean, maybe you redeploy away from me with one unit Okay, but all I need to do here is get a charge. Remember I'm plus one to charge in turn two So I can't even fail three inch charges in this army Right first one scissors slaughter can just hang out outside of three. They don't have to necessarily charge Well, they have to charge because you you have to make a charge three more charges So means you can't use your fancy scissors slaughter six inch pilot and crap, but still right Whereas the other three executioners cult do a nearly impossible thing hatred of chaos useful only if you're in a specific sub faction and you happen to be fighting chaos like Okay And then unexpected attack you complete the tactic of a friendly shadow stalkers unit uses its shadow leap ability And then makes an eight inch charge Fantastic great. I say eight inch because they should set up nine inches away and again. I'm assuming the plus one to charge Um and shut up with cogs tyler. It's not real Get on my get on my head Vince. Yep. I knew where you were going um so like It's so incredible that these are that these two that That potentially a single human being wrote both of these that all six of these right because what this says to me is You had three ideas and then you ran out and we're just like, I don't know Let's get crazy because there's no way you would ever Pick the other three But yet those three on the left you're using every single time and you're using it to race to five Like if you're playing a daughter's army and you don't get tabled and you don't go five for five on battle tactics I don't know what you were doing I don't know what you were doing Because you easily have five now that you can complete without any kind of interactivity or risk That are going to fit to your point nick that fit completely within your existing battle tactics and strategy Right like what you were going to do anyways to win the game I was going to charge you and try to murder you with all of these stabby ladies So why not do that and get three points? All right Well, I was gonna I would just like to oh real quick one. I just had one other quick point. I wanted to make on this which is Your your comment about you know Having interesting list building decisions to make My list My daughter's list, which is just a list I built of the things I like Okay, and what I have painted I in no way like I obviously wrote that long before I ever read these Okay, and really paid attention to these and you know what I could do all three of these in a heartbeat No problem with my snake list Every time and I get the bonus points on most of these great The only thing this might change in your list is that you maybe run heart renders Where you didn't before to guarantee that battle tactic, right? Yeah, I mean I mean in the new book you're using heart renders all the time anyways Because they're like so much better than lifetakers, but sure Sure So yeah, I mean Little to no interactivity three are completely worthless easily push the army to five to complete without a challenge Right, but there's a second problem here that I really want to hone in on on the counterplay thing And then I'm going to shut up. I know I've been on a rant here When all we're dealing with is the ghb 21 The part of the idea of counterplay is I need to understand what you're doing and what my army can do against it, right? When somebody calls slay the warlord, I know there's a set of things I can do against that, right? Like I can announce which I've talked about I can do finest hour Um, you know gareth mentioned earlier in the chat like if I'm corn I might spend some points some blood points to just like move out of the way To make it harder for you to get to and then redeploy away from you again later Right, like there's counterplay there and I know that because I know the base eight I've played with them plenty of times, right? And and eight things is a reasonable number of things to know Okay The second we put these these battle tome and and tomas celestial um items in there We go from needing to know eight to needing to know roughly a hundred impossible Impossible you're you're thought about what counterplay you have against those starts the second They could they say this is what I'm doing and you go, what does that do? What do you need to do to do that and you make them explain it to you? And so even if these did have viable counterplay you wouldn't be able to do it because you you don't know it exists Right, you never thought of it before this moment, right? right right, um And and so I just uh, I like I cannot understate that problem, right? um the I would rather have Like let's let's ask this question. Please if you're if you're watching this here's what I want you to do in the chat Tell me which one of these things you want you can just put number one or number two ready? Here we go number one is A small tight list of six to eight battle tactics that are shared Amongst everybody and that's it. That's the only list we get and that's what the that's what we all have to play with okay or two A list of around a hundred Sorry, that's small list being well designed functional and meeting all the requirements or a list of a hundred that you will Probably in many armies just go five for five with but have no counterplay no skill test whatever So option one or option two, which one? Which one's better? Okay, and and I say that almost jokingly like of course it's number one right Because what we all want is a small concise list that actually plays well that we can know That meets its purpose Right like it's not hard This is easy stuff Right, I think nick had an interesting perspective. I don't know if now's the time for it But in terms of an alternative to what we've been getting nick you want to take it away I think there is A little bit of room for a gray area in between these You asked me in our our conversation earlier You know, is there anyone who likes these and or likes the idea of army specific battle tactics? And I said I actually do like the idea of that army specific battle tactics Not this implementation of it at all. This is a terrible implementation of it and uh, either meaningless or Trivializes the entire system But I think there is a way that you could do this in a really compelling interesting way that would further the goals of the game Provide some a balancing lever and be A great part of this. I think if every army Had exactly one battle tactic That was heavily themed to that army That fit in both the the narrative of that army And the the flow of the game in a way that provided opportunity cost That was a reliable battle tactic But something that you could explain to your opponent before the game and that they could then counter play in the same way that we explain The a handful of other things Not a list of six that they need to keep in their head, but one that fits the army Then I think there's a great opportunity for this And by opportunity at cost. I mean this has to be something that you are are giving up In order to complete sure Sure An example that came to mind when we were brainstorming about this is if you If there was a battle tactic for blades of corn for example that said you complete this battle tactic If friendly slaughtered peace priests within three inches of the skull altar Did not pray in the last turn or your or this turn Oh, sure. Yeah where it's actually like Like It's actually forcing you to be sort of like acting the way you might not want to yeah, yeah You're giving something up in order to complete this and I think that's Ideally the best way to get to that 60 completion I don't want to complete 60 of my battle tactics because I failed roles 40 of the time Yeah, right where it's just this random swingy thing I want to complete 60 of them because the cost of completing the other 40 percent was too high Yeah, it's good. That's a really good point. I could see that I that as a compromise position That's like I have no issues with that. Okay I think it would help to make armies feel distinct from one another It would help to lean into them themes of armies and it would it would enable Like someone mentioned earlier one balancing lever sure Um gen s said I like the idea but one seems tough to make thematic when you have armies like gits There are three armies in one. I don't know gen. Here's my gits battle tactic Uh get a unit destroyed this turn seems like everything in gits would be really good at that And I I'm not saying that jokingly by the way. I mean that a hundred percent seriously Okay Like sure Moves 15 or more models to battle shock this turn Like there's well that might be too goblin-y focused right whereas just getting a unit destroyed Your squigs and even your trolls and your goblins all die pretty easily Like it's kind of a hallmark of that army Okay So You've got way too many here to keep track of Uh instantly you create a lot of swinginess right where You just either allow the army to easily go to five and complete it or or even a different case where there's just you get a bunch of Bad ones that are stupid or completely random. Let's let's talk about that Uh, let's talk about worse in a different way Okay, so here I've got the orc war clans Right where you've got one generic time to get stuck in Where it's encouraging you to in the first or second turn effectively alpha strike your opponent Okay, move your entire army to within 12 inches of them Now there is an interesting mechanic on offer there of you can use this only in x or y turn That is a lever they could pull on more to make things kind of to do something interesting I think there is value in that particular game element of like only in this particular turn may something be done I would love to see that played with in the base ghp battle tactics. I think there's value there That playing But so that's your generic run at them with your whole army, which by the way Obviously like iron jaws are way better at than cruel boys who want to sit back and chew chew. So it's still not truly generic right but okay sure Get everybody within 12 inches. It's just a wild battle tactic Um, and then everything else is army specific Right like wait for it lads relies on big wall and I understand big walk and actually reach into a couple of these depending on what's going on Maybe but whatever. So it's like wait for it lads. You got to have a bunch of wall points only in big wall Squish to puny gets is for for iron jaws Uh killed a big and is bone splitters take that suckers is Uh, both very very very bad and specifically cruel boys just continuing on why cruel boys get to be the butt of every joke in that book Apparently and then destroyer of empires. You can use if you're running crag dose like Jesus Pete's This army has effectively only two choices For the most part I understand that again big blah blah blah but like Uh, and most are quite bad Right, you're you're not getting anything here like the world of difference between what got printed in dock and what got printed here Is couldn't be farther apart and neither of those are good Right if these are to be useful we wouldn't want either of these worlds if we're gonna print them Right and that's that's what how most of these shake out They're either way too good and autocomplete without interactivity or way too bad because Spoiler alert. It's really hard to write these Yeah, that's it. Yeah, I mean that's yeah, I was sitting down today trying to yeah work on some and talk with nick Yeah, it's it's a challenge. I mean nick, you know This when I look at a lot of these faction specific battle Tactics, it just feels like the amount of effort that went into them was quite a bit I may not be saying this in the right way, but generally there's a there's a noticeable different feeling I think one can easily get we're looking at the specific ones as opposed to the universal ones The universal ones are generally better. They have issues, but these I guess nick your thought would be that well just put more work and to try to make these you know, if you're just doing one right you've got one shot one target and Put more effort into making that one work As a universal battle tactic for that faction force of another whatever right But you think that seems like a reasonable A goal a reasonable target and that that would Yeah, I don't know like I'm not Not sure if that that's a better world I mean certainly a better world But is that still introducing too much potential for just still a net negative as opposed to not doing that and just keep it focused on the universal ones I think ultimately they've they've proven that they struggle with balancing these and so One ideal balanced one Is is what I would prefer, but if they can't manage that then not having the Right specific ones is a better solution than What it currently is I think the the balance when we talk about the ones that are good What we're really talking about is that they Are guaranteed to complete and I don't have to Give up anything to do them right those the two things we're talking about That's our benchmark of a good thing anything else is garbage if I have In terms of like quote unquote good not good design Good like I'm going to use this right it gives me power. Yes The strong ones You're not going to fail them ever Or under normal circumstances And you don't have to give up anything They're just something you're going to do on the course of things and I think it's I don't want to play around with the consistency I don't want to have these be a random crapshoot of whether you succeed or not I think the the change that should be made is What do I have to give up to accomplish them? And I think if they approach those book specific ones and the core book ones in that method And said these are going to be consistent. You're going to be able to complete them If you are willing to make the sacrifice required You're going to move a unit somewhere. It shouldn't be you're going to You're going to have something die that you don't want to die You're going to give up control of an objective You're gonna whatever that might be whatever fits in the theme of the army Or fits in the the core narrative that you're trying to construct the core ones As long as you're giving something up so that when you fail it, it's because you choose not to give that up Right. Yeah, that's what I'd like to say. Yeah, that's really interesting. We should and I'm sure we will We should definitely talk more about that but I Yeah, Vince that really stood out to me when I was talking to Nick earlier today this notion of opportunity cost I hadn't been thinking about that enough in relation to battle tactics I think that's yeah really critical now It's not necessarily that all of them that all of them need opportunity costs I don't I don't I don't think necessarily, but maybe it's half of them. Maybe it's it's another lever you can pull on right I think back tyler to again schemes are not exactly You know applicable to battle tactics, but I think back to schemes and it's I think about Uh, the scheme map maker. Do you remember map maker tyler? Oh, yeah, everybody hated it Uh Is that the one everybody hated? No, no, that's not true. That was that was banners held I went as the one that everybody hated plant the flag yet Because I was ahead of my time asking for totems and banner bears and stuff No map maker was fun. I think most people enjoyed it So the way map maker worked is a scheme To complete it was you had to have models You had to have some model not the same model But some models in your army had to touch touch within an inch of all four corners Of the map, okay So like all four corners had to be touched at some point in the game by by your models Which was especially punishing on sort of the old bigger sized boards, right? Because you know, whatever and some armies and it was just interesting the choices people would make to complete that scheme Like they would take their ambushers They're things that could come in from reserve and have them coming in from the corner Sort of non-optimal positions just dropping them there to complete that scheme, right Um, I remember I had a game where I was running like a chaos force and I had cast chariots And I just started the two Against the back the back right corners like right here and just spent the whole game running them And then just got to the end up here and like that's not how I would have used those two units Right Had had it like it made me make a different choice I played the game differently because of it, right and You know and knew that by the way, I if somebody wanted to stop me from that They could have they could have come over there and killed my chariots or something, right? But then they would have had to move their pieces Way out of where they wanted to have them be to go fight my chariot, right? So anyways That's a good example These are good good the schemes in this case were hidden from the opponent, right? So it might exactly figure out exactly what you're trying to accomplish and and go to counter it I like that idea and I I think that might be an interesting element of battle tactics too If instead of declaring it at the start of the round you concealed it at the start of the round Yeah, there's there's a whole other sort of interesting sub-paction hidden information versus public information in game design There's a lot to unpack there, but it's yeah, it's it's an interesting element Um, all right. Let's talk about the tone celestial because good lord All right. These are just These are just even worse Uh, somehow Okay So this is the seraphon one now. Look, I'm gonna play the smallest violin in the world for seraphon Okay, obviously they're like one of the most brutal armies in the meta Um, thunder lizards continues to be just running wild like Over over everything But they have two In their article they got two Again doc got six and three of those are just Instantly completable, right? A lot of armies did not get many in their tone celestial It's like two or three or something like that But it still varies all over the shop which which I can't even wrap my head around that Like if we were going to introduce these one would have thought the first thing we sat down and said In the design studio would have been okay. We're going to put in army specific battle tactics So this so I if I had been at the table, I would have been like no But I wasn't so we decided to do it One would have thought the next thing that happened would have been they said All right, how many of these are we adding for each army and they just locked in the number? Oh d6 Okay war hammer with So at any rate There's two One of these two is just a harder version of an existing Quote-unquote ghb one right the stampede of scales where you pick three different friendly monsters and make them run and Finish holy within enemy territory. It's okay. It's just it's just a harder version of the existing one But I mean if you're playing thunder lizards and I guess getting stompy all over them Why why not if your monsters are already over there? And if you have the tools at that moment, there's still a hundred percent guaranteed There's still like almost no interactivity here, right? Like by the way these are The one of them you can only complete if you're starborn Right, like you if you're if you are coalesced you can't do the top one if you're starborn you could theoretically do Both even though it's supposed to be a coalesced one, but there's nothing that like starborn armies frequently contain monsters So it's not that weird So I think that second one is is interesting and on a number of levels I mean to me there is some potential opportunity cost Introduced with that second one. You have to have three different monsters alive And you're probably not doing that in the first battle round because it has to be holy within enemy territory And you have to run within which I think that one of the bestillidons can Run and shoot but not you have a couple different run and charge mechanics in the book Okay, I thought yeah, I've when I played that you have run and shoot and run and charge mechanics Okay, so I've only it's a very powerful book one. Yeah I've played against two bestillidons a lot and they're usually just doing it with one, but sure either way. Yeah, at least there's starting to Introduce some of this opportunity cost nick that you're talking about at least in my opinion with this one Yeah, maybe still it's a little too easy Yeah Go ahead. I think it's easy to add opportunity cost to a lot of these Ferocious advance is one where except for a couple armies that just have My trust word on certain currents if you made it so ferocious advance couldn't be used in turns one or five You often would have a significant opportunity cost for running and holding hands Not always but sometimes. Yeah speaking to that like turn limitation that actually is an interesting thing, right? I I think that's right sure. Yeah And and again, I return back to the it's clearly hard to design these And I I don't I don't mean that any in any I don't mean that any demeaning or joking way These are really hard to write. They're a very Very difficult thing to get correct like when you're designing in in any game space There are certain things that are going to be easier to write and certain things that are harder to write, okay? And something like this that's trying to meet such a high bar of being interactive being skill testing being something You don't complete all the time. It's actually some of the hardest stuff to write Okay, things that where you expect The player to actually fail sometime Is really hard to get right Okay And that all these examples we've seen just prove why these are so hard because they just they've just basically it's a cavalcade of failure in all of these expansion ones Right And again, I'm not I'm not meaning to to be mean to anybody who's working on these books or this stuff It's just it's it's a bad idea that's implemented badly And You're almost being asked to work outside the bounds of the possible Like writing eight compelling battle tactics is a difficult task writing a hundred compelling battle tactics I mean you might as well jump and touch the moon Like it's just not possible right so Okay uh Random chance So this this is in my mind is a whole other different kind of bad um Where you're so this these are out of the sun's of bad luck book One for effectively each giant type sort of Uh, the wrecking crew and is actually generic, but whatever um The but it's obviously more keyed to like the gate breaker how it was Concepted whatever doesn't matter um the Each one of these is crap because there's not it's not interactivity There's there's almost no interactivity with these Or counterplay or anything like that, but also they're not autocomplete They're just roll a die and based on the fickle outcome of that die you either completed or not Right Like do you kick it? Do you kick the objective from wholly within your outside of your territory to wholly within? Well depends on what you roll on 2d6 I guess Right and sure sometimes you might have it in the exact spot where it's like that's one inch out And so it's automatic like yeah sure that could happen. I guess I mean a broken clock's right twice a day That doesn't make it a good clock. All right um Again demolishing terrain. So okay roll a three up cool beans good stuff Uh, and the war stopper mega gargant hurled body um If you if the enemy model you pick for the first part of this ability is slain and an enemy battle line unit Is picked as the target for the second part of the ability and suffers any mortal wounds I need that meme lady of all the the like, you know Mathematical equations going on so to be clear. Let's assume I grab somebody out of a one wound unit. Let's make it the most favorable situation possible Like I'm I'm going into like empire spearmen. Just the work, you know some some crap unit, right? Okay, I got to roll a two up To grab the dude Okay So that's not too bad But it's still a random chance. I could fail on the one for no reason of my own failure Then hurled bodies back to deal mortal wounds is a four up And then they have to suffer the mortal wound they have no mortal wound protection base So let's assume if I get the four up they take it, right? What a ridiculous battle tactic these I just absolutely hate where it's like, hey, maybe it completes. Maybe it doesn't I don't know roll a die Like I understand that even the fighty ones are technically based on die rolls You know because you're going to kill something and you could have a bad turn of dice rolls But the law of large numbers is somewhat kicking in there I can do things to manipulate that, right? If I'm if I know I've called the ball on broken ranks I'm going to drill that unit with everything I've got, right? I'm going to cast spells into it I'm going to throw an arcane bolt at it even, you know, I'm going to do everything, right? I'm just going to start drilling that thing with everything I've got. I'm going to all out attack my unit I'm going to double charge them. I can I can minimize or interact with the randomness of achieving that objective There's nothing I can do here. This is just the dice It happens or it doesn't deal with that Right, I think the most difficult element of this is hitting that World where you're you're expecting people to be 60 on their completion, right? You're expecting them to fail some while avoiding this I agree with you. This is the worst possibility You you want people to have control over it, but you need to avoid this situation where it's just a random chance Whether you're failing and who gets more is is up to the dice. Yeah Yeah, these are like just the worst version of this so Good stuff I mean again, I sons of badmout is whatever whatever, but uh, You know, like I don't I think a lot of people probably don't have much sympathy for that army after it It's spent the better part of the beginning of 3.0 just literally war stomping all over everyone And even though it's come certainly down now in competitiveness. It's often still a very unfun army to play against um So because it's a badly designed book as I said when it came out originally and I continue to say to this day Let me rewrite it and I'll give you a good book. We might do that show at some point We might do vince rewrites the the sons of badmout book Would people be interested in that would people be interested in watching me in me doing a book rewrite? Like I would obviously have it pre-written before the show But tell me if you're interested in that should I rewrite the sons of battle tone book and do a show on it a complete ego trip show That's all that is that's just me flexing my ego So if you think that's interesting cool, tell me right now in the chat or put it in the comments below if you're watching this later Okay, I'm just curious whether or not people would enjoy that All right, bubba bubba way to get worse Uh So here's my final question I want to end on Um Are these all just extra weight? Here's what I mean There's a lot of good to this and we've talked about all the positives But uh, Doug is voting for it for for the sob book. Well, then if Doug wants it, I got to do it That's it right there Um But I like these I think they're valuable and valid. I want to be super clear Okay But are they necessary To be part of the game in every battle pack Okay, and my answer is No That like the core battle pack Shouldn't need these like we played and see if you if you played the seasons of war missions. There's no objectives No objectives on those tables Okay So we showed we can write now. There's a lot of interesting battle tactic stuff going on But we we showed that we can do a we can do a battle pack and scenarios without objectives It seems like the base experience and what's offered on core like for getting people in Shouldn't have this layer there's I I would cut multiple layers from the from the starter battle pack, right But this is one of them I'm not like for competitive play for tournament play these things seem so valid valuable and interesting If if written well, and you've got a good selection bar and and and getting rid of the the army specific ones But it feels like there should be a starter battle pack. That's what's missing right now We haven't used the battle pack technology to its fullest potential Why I like if that's what they intended with the core one, it ain't that homie try again, right There should be literally a new player battle pack that comes with three to six missions cuts a lot of rules Out of the out of there of the expectations like in this battle pack. We don't use battle tactics or this or this or this or whatever, you know And allows people a play mode that doesn't have Uh That doesn't have this as part of it and then what we should focus on Is for the competitive play, let's write six to eight good solid battle tactics, right? And make these things that are really interactive skill testing fun with sometimes opportunity costs that speak to actually differentiating in the game That's the two goals, right? Then we've got a good new player on ramp and then they can graduate to this to the to the competitive play one So tournament players have what they need the new people or just casuals who don't want to mess with it Have what they need everybody's a winner Battle packs. Let us do that Right. So so why doesn't this exist? Yeah, makes a lot of sense to me Like I don't want to cut from anyone. We don't need to We don't need to remove these from the game, right when I saw your twitter mentions of like I hate them I love them. Boo. Yay. All right. I was like Why aren't we serving both of these audiences in the right way? Right, we just have an underserved market here. This is this is nothing, but this is a simple econ problem Right So I think that's probably could be a fun thing for the community to to create frankly Tyler you seem pretty good at writing battle plans You wrote four of them. They're all good. Maybe this maybe the starter battle pack is something you need to to work on next Uh Interesting. No, it it is an interesting idea Yeah, the what's in the core roles is not cutting it. That's for sure. So Yeah, I have to Come out yeah I think generally when you when you start playing with somebody who's never played before you're doing a lot of these things Anyway, you're right. You're tailoring a make-believe battle pack Excluding a lot of the complexity that they don't need to learn the game and getting through the game with them It would be nice to have that in some kind of formalized way so that if you've got two new players for example and one of them doesn't know what's kind of the needless cruft and Then you've got some reference that you can dig through together Yeah Yeah, that the way you just said it there. Nick. Yeah, that resonates a lot. You know, we Are having new players that are coming out Tuesdays. That's hobby night, right and It feels like it's too It feels kind of heavy trying like a heavy weight to try to Pick up and introduce this game to new players sometimes Just because it's like you have to well, it's just it's not Said there's not a path I know maybe somebody's come up with this and I haven't seen the community But like here's a slimmed out what we guys just said here's a slimmed down version of the game He used to introduce new players, right? I would love to have something like that It gives me like do I did do we do redeploy like do I look at the Cheat sheet that awesome weird knobs put together and I cut out half of it I cut out the battle tactics. I cut out like all this crap Like I'm not sure I haven't thought about it. Nobody's I haven't seen anybody put together something like that That would be pretty interesting I think what you said nick is so correct like that there'd be a shared reference people would know you can just look at it Right and be like, oh, okay, cool. I understand. This is the thing. This is what we're doing got it Right again, it just it it it feels like a thing that should exist and if they're not going to write it Maybe we need to write it That's that's what it comes down to it's probably pretty straightforward to just in terms of these decisions What what what cuts and what stays? Yeah, probably pretty straightforward. You probably figure that out pretty quickly I mean, I agree exactly what you said when you show new people you often just ignore certain elements anyways Because you know, it's going to be too much like just right into the battle tactic to the battle pack that those aren't there Yeah, but it would definitely be nice to have some centered. Yeah to have a set A set of rails and a guidelines for folks Interesting. Yeah Yeah, I I agree chase and and like it would just be It just feels like a thing that should be out there. So I I hope we see that at some point Um, maybe maybe tyler you and I'll talk. I don't know. We'll see we'll see we've got a lot of we got a lot on our mutual plates But we'll see when we can we'll see Uh, all right, can we do better? This is the question. I don't know. Can we do better? I took a shot at it. Here we go So gentlemen, here's my list. Here's my list of eight. I may Okay, okay. I'm still really interested in having more conversation uh Again as usual with me the Decisions before the decisions on this, but maybe you can we can go through it and then we can get into some of that Yeah, because it's it's I have it down in here like it. It's I'll I'll invert for you there tyler, but it's there Uh, okay um All right, why did I pick the so I I I decided to sit down? Uh Yes, as thanos said fine. I'll do it myself. That's right. Exactly Uh ever ever wise when that thanos, okay So I decided to sit down and try to say what would my eight be? and why Now what were my guiding principles for this? Well, it's everything we've talked about already earlier tyler, right? Focusing on things like interactive orthogonal goals Um, not all but some right now and No bonus points, you know skill testing where we can um, but also Uh Some other little items you'll see here that that I like they're they're sort of small items. Okay, you'll you'll get it All right, so let's talk about what stays broken ranks slay the warlord and conquer now I know nick you were anti conquer The reason I kept conquering as this one I do agree it is a hat on a hat like I even wrote that there But I think it's a minimal amount of hat on a hat right it does at least encourage trading Which is kind of an interesting thing that happens where it's like they stretch to get wanted and you punish them For their stretching and take it back from them, right? So I don't disagree with anything you said there. It is just operating along the base goals But it is an interesting soft incentive against stretching out and just like how I'll grab this thing real quick to get my three points You end up paying more for that in return Right by handing them that which which is kind of interesting And I don't think it's bad to have one Battle tactic that fits in this mold of take an objective, right and I that's the only one Right what I don't like is having effectively three right monsters slip over expansion and conquer all fitting in that role of taking objectives Yep, exactly. That's I kept one that went simple So I kept it broken ranks and slay the warlord stayed because to me They do push some on kill which we want a little of Right, we talked about how like the more you push kill The more you empower shooting but like look, let's be honest This game is about taking your toys and killing the other person's toys, right? So let's you know, it's good to have a little bit of that in there again there's got to be some variability and so And so like they allow plus these two really allow counter play Right, like broken ranks to slay the warlord. You've got things you can do you can Yes, you can read a play away. You can even have shooting. You can all out defense, you know, there's there's things you can do Against them. Maybe they're not the best things But I the story I told earlier about Nathan and the the our boys off turn, right? Like there's stuff And I think those are both fun They do often come down to very tense moments like how long how many times have you either achieved? Or failed broken ranks by one wound Sure, right? Yeah, it's not every time But it's happened And you're like in particular. Yeah, sure. You're like, ah, what a moment, right? Like it's such a great moment when it happens. So So I think those are those are valid to stay in there. Okay Cool Secure the center. I stole this one from the bass list. I actually really like it Now how good this is really matters about where the objectives are in the particular Battlepack you're currently playing in right if there's I think we're about half. We're about half right now Yeah, not enough maybe a little maybe a little less But but the more you spread out around and don't have one in the dead center point the better this is I'm kind of like hoping that the next one doesn't have as much in the center and kind of spreads more out around You know I don't mind a few of them being overlapped that yeah, yeah That's not too bad though Like looking like I said I quickly when we were talking about earlier went through it and it was around half or maybe a little under half I did not have an objective in the center. I think that's that's pretty intriguing You know in terms of battle tactics, so yeah again moving to an area that's not objective pulling your army apart Being in a different place. I like that concept. It's cool, right? Even in battle plans where one is in the center It means that both armies are more heavily pushed to contest that center objectives than they otherwise will be It creates a another incentive to to focus in that spot. And so I I don't hate it from that point of view Without being about the objective itself Right. Yeah, right. It's almost incidental that the objective happens to be there or not. Yeah. Yeah, I agree Um now I have my two win for losing Okay, um, I like win for losing mechanics. I think they're really good Um, when for losing mechanics shouldn't be everything you can overplay your hand on that, right? But one of the best things you can do as like a gm in role playing games Is learn that your players should win for losing what I mean by that is like Oh, they lost but it's not they don't die. It's not the end of the story It's just new challenges arrive, right? And so that there's consequences and interesting things occur, right? And I think this is the same here. It's one of the reasons the the thing I've always loved about the blood tithe mechanic And why I think it's so good is you lose a unit and you're like, ah, I lost a unit. Oh, but I get a blood tithe, right? It's like, hey Right, it's a rebate. It's cool. It's not as good as the thing, but it's it's something, right? So I've never literally met a glass half empty corn player. It's Right. Yeah, exactly. They just They're all in sets all it's all half full of blood. That's what that's what all their glasses are full of Um, so the full measure is choose a friendly unit that unit must be like again, please don't I'm not writing the actual rules text here Folks that don't beat me up on the rules text. Like I I only have so much space on a slide I'm writing a short version of it so you get the idea the thing Um, choose a friendly unit that unit must be slain by the end of the turn get one of your own units killed right cool And then trader choose a friendly hero that unit must be slain by the end of the turn, right? Which I love the narrative of I like these when they're more obvious when you can speak to the narrative of them And something like trader is just writing that word. It's way more obvious what you're doing Like the whole story is in that one word, right? Like one of your heroes you turn you discovered they're a trader Time to get them killed Right So maybe it's my my cold scaven heart that uh, that loves that concept So I like the I like the wind for losing. I like having two of these in there one for just kind of a unit and one for a hero Um, by the way, you could we could put other stuff on that unit because I mean it should that should probably be like non Choose a friendly non hero unit, you know, it's you get the idea Um, but again, I'm not writing these for proper rules text in my head. I'm thinking of just like some unit Trader should probably have that same restriction where it's not your general a hero. That's not your general Uh, just so you're not holding on killing your own general and denying slay the warler Excellent, yeah, absolutely right um king of the hill Choose a single piece of terrain wholly within enemy territory You must control that terrain at the end of your turn, right again Often we've given the way tables are constructed for tournaments There's you're basically guaranteed to have no objective on that terrain for the most part That's you know, how a lot of uh tournaments Structure their terrain to be like not having objectives directly on them on them So you're kind of having to move onto a piece of terrain into their territory and actually control it Um, so it's kind of like secure the center. It's moving you to a weird location It's moving you to a location where there's almost guaranteed not to be an objective you want to control Right and it's it's pulling you apart in an interesting way We could quibble about yeah the details of this, you know, is it fully outside of your territory Or is it Within as opposed to wholly within enemy territory in terms of you know, like all wars had some had some big terrain pieces, right? And I couldn't tell you offhand whether you know the Percentages of how challenging this would have been across the 20 tables of all wars I that definitely would be something I would have been eyeing if with this text in mind as one of the universal battle tactics But yeah, you know what I'm saying Ben's like we totally look at the details of this. Yeah 100% like I could see it being exactly as you said out, you know Uh, not within your territory or wholly outside of your territory or something like that. Yeah, sure. Sure. Sure. Absolutely right um And Fine like I again, I think it could still be perfectly valid, right? Um, you just it's a cool idea. Yeah Yeah, conceptually it's good get to the hill take the hill. We all understand we want to own the hill Right like it's yeah, it's it's a thing And then vendetta is my last one choose an enemy unit that has slain a friendly model You complete this uh, you complete this tactic if that unit is destroyed this turn Now why that's a kill mechanic, but it's a little different, right? The reason I like this one is because it's Automatically gated without using the turn mechanic Right, it is a little more kill, but it's unidagnostic. It's not battle line or whatever But it rewards counter punch as opposed to alpha strike, right? Like broken ranks and slay the warlord reward you going out and alpha striking them You can do him turn one if you want it to right like you could just Knock him down set him up knock him down vendetta has a gate Right, you can't actually do vendetta until they Slay something of yours, right? um And so oh gareth said king of the hill add that the territory can't be smashed give some counter play destroy it with a monster action That's a cool idea gareth. I like that. That's definitely a good idea. Yeah good counter play call right there Yeah, so again, this was just my first shot across the bow This is my initial draft and all this feedback has been exactly the kind of stuff You would do if you were going to actually make these real Right, you'd talk about them figure out. How do we actually build in the right counter play? Do we put in turn limiters or something like that, right? um But but that kind of stuff where you're you're pulling and pushing on different measures um So this was my list and I felt like this from a conceptual standpoint met the bar Um, it can be refined. It could be improved no doubt But I feel like it's a better place like if I had these eight, I'd be like, all right, we we we got a game here Let's do something right Yeah, so the breakdown let's say so you got broke ranks. Let the war lord kill mechanics. You've got an objective hold mechanic You've got to secure the sensor That's that can be objective overlapping with objective holding But generally it's intended differently as you know positioning kind of where you are on the on the battlefield moving to a spot Measure just kind of going through this month the choose for in the unit must be slain Okay, how okay, so when for losing that would be in your mind. Yeah a different category for these two In the hill is another positioning And data is kind of a little bit of kill A little bit of something else. Yep And a little bit of counter punch punish them for overextending for alpha striking you that kind of thing, right? Yeah So if this was you eight How many would you expect to complete in a in an average game with an average army? Yeah, it's a question like have I gotten us to a point where you could do where where like suddenly three would become the average I don't know. I don't know is my honest answer Like I might need to put more governor switches on some of these or something like that I doubt it. Yeah, I doubt we're there yet Right. I feel like this is certainly harder than there because I don't just have like the run three I automatically get these two, you know what? I mean like there's there are still things I would feel pretty confident I would achieve but there's these what I can say is these are harder Than the eight on offer from the core book right now that I can see I think something Tyler brought up earlier is that you need something that is compelling and and manageable in turn one for both armies, especially top of turn one um and That's a tricky one potentially. Yeah. Yeah. I mean you could go of course nick in the direction of that's the round Where you get a higher percentage your fails Sure, is that is that round one now if you were going to lean into that? Yeah, you you would then within that space Need to choose carefully so that you're not having a disproportional benefit to shooting blah blah blah everything that we've previously talked about Right. You're not just disproportionately Disadvantaging or or advantaging highly mobile armies Yeah, I mean, I think you could go in that direction as well. I'm not sure what that would look like offhand, but So nick, I know you had a lot of thoughts on You know opportunity costs. We've talked a lot about a number of different ways I have real quickly while I'm thinking about a constantinos He had mentioned in the twitter thread and I oh, yeah. Yeah, he had some real fun ones. Yeah Yeah, that's some good ones. Yeah, the one that really stood out to me was this notion of I think it was basically You cannot use any command points in a turn, but it cannot be round one or round five Yeah, his so he was leaning into the opportunity cost nick like you like Yeah, his was you complete this tactic if you don't use any cps this turn can't be used on turn one or five Right. Something like that. That's a cool idea um he had um uh He had one that was uh, I actually don't like his serious ones. I like his cheeky ones Yeah Um, like have a unit or two retreat onto an objective and take it Maybe the units they retreated from must survive the turn could reward planning armies and not a strong units that kind of thing Like, you know, I didn't touch on the win for retreating But that could be another kind of win for losing one that weaker armies could do Right where you retreat away and take stuff. That's another that's another thread you could pull on an easy one that came to mind earlier is lose control of an objective you control this turn Which oh, yeah, sure objective or retreating off of it Yeah, you don't technically you'd have to phrase it like Uh, do not contest an objective you control this turn or something like that, right? Because you don't actually lose control of it when you walk away from it But you have to be actively there to be contesting it so but you lose control of it if the opponent is there, right? Oh, that's a good point. Okay. Yeah, sure sure sure when it checks. Yeah, that's fine. Good call. Yeah, good call Okay, yeah, you're right. Now that would work. Okay. Cool. Yeah, I was thinking of an empty objective, but yes, you're right Having something like two wizards not cast spells Oh, or priests not pray um Yeah, we had we had a scheme that was all about like completing a ritual where you had to do it over multiple rounds or something like that and the idea that you're trying to do like a um a big ritual that That requires them to like build up and not cast for a turn or two or not pray for a turn or two is kind of an Interesting conceptual space you could play in that that like would narratively make sense. What's going on? Right, um, so sure. Yeah I really love those multi turn setups as well because it just opens up so much counterplay when you've got a Uh, you maybe don't declare it in the first turn But it's obvious that you didn't do something. You didn't cast any spells with your wizards So your opponent knows you're going for that in the next turn and they can try to interrupt that plant, right? Yeah, definitely. I was thinking about that too. Nick. Yeah earlier. Yeah, I love I mean won that to me that came to mind was Gave friendly unit that Destroyed killed an enemy unit through An ability or attack however you need to ward it, you know to cover your bases in the in your Previous turn they must kill an enemy unit in this turn But yeah, I mean, you're right That's a big sandbox in terms of some options that we'd have to play there And it could potentially as you said give your opponent the chance to interrupt the sequence. That's I think that's a pretty intriguing one I think Yeah, that that seems like a very interesting space The if you were telling me about actions and 40k Do you say a little bit about that and how you think about that in relation to all this? I'm very much not a 40k expert, but Secondaries have the the concept of actions where a unit goes to some specific place And then gives up their shooting and charging For the turn in order to complete this action whether it's raising a flag or competing completing some They're doing a thing basically they're doing a thing They're giving up what they would otherwise be doing in order to do a thing Yeah, and I think they typically have to do it in either near an objective or near the center of the board So that you they're making themselves vulnerable and then trying to accomplish this task Um, and that is just more of that opportunity cost feeling you're Yeah, you would like to taking in order to further some separate goal in the game And I think there's a lot of space you could explore there I do think it's one of those things you got to be careful as with all of these right the part of the key to this Is having a good mix having like four of them that all required a heavy opportunity cost is probably too much Right because then people are playing like they're not they're going to feel like they're not actually playing their army Right So it's about finding that right mix where it's like a one or two You do this cool now. It's an interesting thing that you like it is less interactive But carries its own innate cost to you Right, so that can be a way to to sort of balance it out There's just a lot of there there is space to play in here Um for for how we would you would structure your your right eight So there you go Okay, cool Uh, let's go on Conclusions, what are we doing here? Okay all right Here's my conclusions. I I welcome all of your your your thoughts gentlemen. Okay conclusions I'm time stamping this There we go The idea of these things are good. They have real value in competitive play, especially tournaments Theoretically Um, even maybe not even theoretically like in play a lot of people really enjoy these they should be there But we want them to be a good list This is this is useful and interesting and interactive and skill testing as possible To be interesting they should have counter play even if small and skill test even if small Right They should carry some they should they should be making you make it as you said very very Wisely nick they should be making you make a decision a real decision Right, that's that's what it boils down to you should be making some kind of active decision There should be a small controlled number that all players share that way They're a known quantity a hundred of these are unknowable and impossible to counter play against except in the exact moment It's just it's just it ruins everything good about it And they should be battle pack dependent and we should have battle packs that don't use them Just like we have you know, by the way, that's not the tournament player pack Fine. It's for other people So that's my conclusions. What did I miss nick? What any any other conclusions that you came to? I I came to the conclusion that people feel way more passionately big about battle tactics than I any understanding of But I I think that summarizes it well. I I really love that they're part of the game I think they were the best positive change for third edition was the The ability for armies to play in a different way than one and Just adding that to the game Providing that as an option that they can can continue to expand on I think is fantastic But there's just these these obvious flaws with the system as it exists now One thing that gives me a little bit of of hope about the system is that if I wanted to design A set of battle tactics that were as simple as possible for a second edition player to pick up and understand We would get the core rulebook battle tactics A second edition player is going to kill models and take objectives So here's six battle tactics that are for pulling models and taking objectives This this allows someone Coming to the game to pick it up very quickly if they're a second edition player But hopefully in this new general's handbook They're going to explore the space a lot more and get a much better set of them And unfortunately, I think the custom ones may Ruin that best in effort, but I have a solution to use in your own personal battle packs that you run for your tournaments Say you do not allow Any battle tactics beyond faction specific battle tactics you allow the ones in the current battle pack only Like the current ghp battle pack you are using only easy easy solution If some players get angry at you too bad You just I mean like I cannot I've been to multiple tournaments where the tos did that Like actually just said we're we're only using the base battle tactics, and you know what it was great It was great. I was like this is wonderful. I don't think anybody complained Because it was a better time for everyone Yay Right like like where's the problem here Let them be a thing for people want to use them in their home games or narrative games or whatever If you feel like that's the thing you want to want to do The the the other ones in my estimation have no place in tournament play none They they ruin what what's otherwise a good system So tyler Yeah, I was curious if you guys have any more thoughts on what we one piece that we discussed early on You know, I mentioned that I have heard from number players over this first year that they stole with battle tactics The standpoint of I was using the term realism and you Mentioned appropriately the versatility is what we're really talking about here that some of them are Warhammer fantasy players some of them are both fantasy and a was and some of them are just a was 1.02.0 players So it's been a mix sure and but but some of the what they've told me similar and it's this Feeling that a number of them expressed of arbitrariness to some of these things That it feels arbitrary to have to go do this other thing With this unit that runs contrary to their story the perception Going on in their head about what their army is there to do right in a game of age sigma I've heard this a number of times over over this last year I just didn't if you guys had any except that hasn't really Accorded to me. I don't really see that issue and how I think about it, but that's why I mentioned this whole Ocean of feeling like there's insufficient context grounding That's why we're doing this in the first place On on on a few levels, but did you guys have any thoughts? on on that Nick you any thoughts? I think there are a couple of them that are obvious problems there right You know run run run is is the one that Most often when you call it you first advance um, it doesn't feel like What the theme of it seems that it should be oftentimes they're running by staying in place and you've just checked a box and Right, you carry on and you get your two points. Um, but I I think I think uh, if they're Appropriately tied to very thematic things like your king of the hill example vince. I think is perfect in this It's very easy to understand why an army needs to control a piece of terrain You know any territory right very easy to understand why this is part of the battle that's going on I think doing things we didn't really talk about it, but certain battle plans could have specific battle tactics associated Yes, I would be into the theme of that and I think if you did that appropriately I think that solves a lot of that problem. Yeah, there might be examples of armies that Narratively this one kind of doesn't make sense or you whatever that is Yeah, I'd almost rather see something like six base and and you know Half of the scenarios have a unique battle tactic you can do in them or something like that right or or something like that Uh, or or maybe they all have one unique battle tactic you can do or or something Whatever like you can pick the numbers that make the most sense right but somewhere like that But uh, if you've picked the right set of them I think it would address a lot of that problem. Yeah, I agree By the way, they could also just like you can you can do a lot in a name They could also do a lot with a little bit of flavor text right above them or something like that You know that helped a lot with the schemes that we did. Yeah, I thought yeah Because we had like the little flavor text on every one of them. What what what are you on about here? What are we doing? I don't think it's that hard So that totally yeah They do it with everything else every war scroll has flavor text for every ability on it Right every battle plan and yeah Yeah, they all have to they all they all but like they're generally really good at grounding us and like what's going on How's this thing do? I mean, they're also Propagandists if you read the some of the war scrolls and that the war scrolls read like the deadliest unit They cleave their way through their foes destroying all In their wake wait, who am I reading this for a slang or fiend bloods all you liars But anyways, yeah, it's still good. It's still a cool thing So All right So there we go. Um, did we miss anything folks? What do you think drop it down in the comments? Below don't forget to hit like subscribe and do all those fun things Hitting buttons is cool. You want to be cool, don't you? You know, you want to be cool So do all that all the things we mentioned during pick of the week. 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