 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 going on buddy? How you doing? I meant good to be here excited for this topic tonight Hey, I'm glad to be back at home with internet. That's not terrible and video. That's reasonable Also joining us back on the show. We're happy to have him. He's back Mr. Hey, will twitch sup brother. How you doing? Yo You're all Hey reports of my death We're premature We got over it Can't stop you can't stop you. Yes, like I like a tank. You just roll on absolutely That's the one a OS hat I would like to get. Oh, yeah Well that I have seen you click on my merchandise store from my twitch page and get yourself one for only I don't know how much money I only know that I get four dollars when you buy it That's all I know All right, I'm not for some amount of money. That can be yours. Mm-hmm. Yeah It's got green under the bill big You like maybe like green Very nice, very nice. You can get also in the hat You can get it any color you want long as that color is black just the same as the rims of your bases on your models appropriate appropriate No, very good. These these are all correct choices. All right We're gonna talk about secondaries tonight and how to fix the secondary system This is all based on some discussion that floated around thanks to one mr. Hey, will twitch earlier in the week and I was like well, we got to do a show on this Was what prompted it? What the wrong with secondaries? Well, I mean, yeah, there's so much wrong. I think I think I love battle tactics Perfect perfect. Yes. There is a slice of people that love them. You're not wrong But that is I would say not the common opinion here what you two idiots think tonight But before we get into all that of course we got to start with the news. So what do you got? Greatest section of this show every week. Nobody skips this rumor engine maximum effort session every time here we go It's two birds on a rock Yeah, it's one stone These appear to be what ravens or crows something of that nature So I play ogres and everything has to be ogres, but even I you know their blood vultures vultures different than Crow so it probably not an ogre model Who do you suppose? Courts I figured I don't know. I just got flesh it a court something I figured every other things flesh it a course right now So sure sure I Mean I shared like six rumor engines last week that I thought could all be fleshier courts No one saw them because we were in like eight pixel Nintendo vision But but I did do the work of having those six images. I think it was about six rumor engines that could be fleshier courts Which is not nothing It's quite a lot if you think about it really But I want to draw everybody's attention and it already got shouted out in the chat. You see the top bird here This is upper bird how it doesn't actually have little legs It has like this see this like we couldn't make it print fine enough and it's like fuse There's the whole just piece of plastic here. It's wearing a dress. Okay He has like the tiniest kilt. Yeah. Yeah So I submit to you that this is like a piece of terrain That it's not actually a model This is like a terrain piece. That's like because everything else is made in The u.s. And like pretty high quality that the China stuff that they get which is where they get like I think they still source some of the terrain pieces and things like that Yeah, some like an endless spell something like that Those are all still made in China as far as I know that might have changed But I think that's still true and those are much lower quality casts as anybody who's ever put together any of the terrain pieces Or whatever will note So I think that that that that's what I think I think this is just a piece of terrain It's not actually a model anything like that or you know, I mean, it's not a Unit as it were just some terrain box That's my guess I did my thing All right. Yeah, there we go Next up we have underworlds and war choir war cry. That is apparently hard for me to say war bands Now there's a bug Pre-orders galore with everything I've flipped over here for our newest season death gorge Hmm good name leave that out there Continuing a proud and long tradition of everything sounding like sex names with the underworlds Thing I they really at this point They almost feel like they have to be doing it on purpose because they've done it so many times in a row Yeah, it's shocking Keep it keep a PC vents. I'm totally PG. That's it's fine. I'm just saying It Definitely feels like they're doing it on purpose. But yes, so this is obviously with a little octopus person the new Slinishites daemonettes and the I'd have deep Ken folks so Yeah, yeah, good looking models And then as well like 50,000 different underworlds war bands and stuff like that all coming out The what's the other one the one with the hunters versus the new gorgers? I didn't have a picture of that though. I should have because hey, whoa I want to talk to you man. How you feel about your new gorger sculpt not just one But like I don't know five or whatever's in there. Yeah, like a unit worth. Yeah Yeah, so that you could almost be a unit like an age of Sigmar That's more on the gut buster side I'm more on the Beast Claw side, but it's been a long time since we got fused back together And that's probably just how it's gonna be moving forward. So maybe I should stop with this distinction kind of thing I Was thinking that gorgers were in the They were in the pile of units that either we got a Get them out of the game or do something with them. Sure and they decided to do something with them So good one of our oldest crappiest looking fine cast garbage sculpts in ogres of which there are a Great deal. We're no scaven. Don't get me wrong. This isn't a pity party, but we're I don't know We're in the top three or four. I think sure. It's not they were like beast man and stuff like that. Yeah We all know these look like gorgers They just do when when they were first previewed. I'm like, yo flesh you record getting new horrors. All right Let's go Cryptonkers maybe they look a lot like that, but I guess they're they're gorgeous and you know, they still got the one There's always the one gorger Who looks like he's dunking because of the scope You just have to photoshop a basketball in his hand and they kept that so I appreciate that Maybe they'll be good. I don't know the currently they deep strike and the rest of their worst gross blank So that's a good starting point Hmm I said, it's not bad. It's a couple battle tactics to tie into our later discussion, you know Yeah, depending on depending on what season it is they They've been making those harder over time which I understand Because if they're all easy then kind of why have them right, but we'll get into that later Yes. Anyway, I'm happy for my gut buster compatriots I Hope they're good It's a brand new games workshop plastic sculpt replacing a really really bad old one good Yeah, I hope that they do it is like a good. I don't know good Yeah, you know gorgeous all like this weird single model going back to like Warhammer fantasy Which I know wasn't you know either of your two bags, but like Ogres for a long time were really weird army in Warhammer fantasy It's sort of hard to explain how they worked They were always like At almost every point in ogre's history Here's the best I can say it They were the sons of badmout of warhammer fantasy and that they were almost always Sideways something was wrong with them in every way and they were always playing weird, you know games so like When they first came out They were ridiculous is like 2000 what four six somewhere in that I heard people say their cannons were OP That's yeah, almost all that I know about them is that their cannons were OP I mean basically when they first came out every one of those dudes not exactly but pretty darn close Every one of those dudes was basically swinging around an Imperial Cannon like what the old little artillery model was but it's just like a group of them, right? And that was basically what it was so Yeah, that was strong and then their impact hits were also just like wild like just crazy crazy strong they're just flatline units on the charge like they wouldn't even need to fight and Then later on into warhammer fantasy they They became the sort of poster child for problematic play Because the single the little individual cats your little frost sabers Would sit out in front of all the ogre units like in a rail car formation So every ogre unit had two little kid two little kitty cats in front of it So you can block of ogres to kitty cats block of ogres to kitty cats and so on okay little little train cars and Then if you try to charge the first cat would flee Pop all the way back through your units pop through the first cat pop through the second cat And then if the and then they would think you could redirect the charge But they're only other legal target the next legal target was the second cat So you'd flee the second cat and it would pop through the unit and they'd both be back behind you And you couldn't redirect more than once so now your unit auto fails the charge and then the ogres always get the charge They were like poster children for this behavior because they had these single model units that were like Ridiculously cheap even then right and So they are always just weird angle shooters But the Gorgia was in a similar place because he was he was still this weird single model thing that had Which like having 360 degree vision was very impactful in in warhammer fantasy But it couldn't really fight units. It's never actually strong enough to do that. You know, it wasn't like a giant or something So I was in this really weird place and they stayed that in a OS I hope this new thing is just like a true unit of gorgers Just like make your order unit for like 300 points or something and make it really good Like have it all ambush in and do something cool Then maybe it would fit in your in your army because you know like maybe you drop like a beast rider or something for it I don't know. I don't know. Maybe it's worth it. Yeah Yeah, I agree. They should be a unit and they should do something and yeah, just something Like actual rules text and not if some lorem would be great. That's all it doesn't seem like I'm asking too much All right, the other the lesson next up yet ease We'll see I'm hoping that like in some underworld slash war cry thing We just get that a new butcher slash slaughter master slash That's what my guess was whenever anybody from the stream asks Hey, what do you think if you only had one box of new things for the ogre book? What would you choose every time I would say a dual kit butcher slaughter master for sure The one army that actually needs foot heroes and what do you keep getting new hunters? Yeah, that's what we needed Thanks guys. We get a fourth hunter now that does the same does the same thing and sucks I Do love the variations on a bad theme that that that manages to accomplish. It's pretty great Well, you mentioned merch eat earlier which brings me to my last news item I'll tackle this real quick the new merch stores officially up. You can find it down in the description Some of the new stuff came in. I wanted to share this This is pretty cool You can order all sorts of neat stuff now like now, of course You got shirts and hoodies and all that with with all the logos and characters on it But I was like, what's the big mouse pad look like that's all looks like and it's got like this nice rubber backing stitched edge That's like a play mat obviously or or big mouse pad and whatever you want But yes, it's got the three of us all investigating the hammer amongst other things Hey, hey, no, isn't that a magic the gathering thing using those mass pets like yes, yes Play mouse mouse pad play mats. All right, you guys be proud of me. I was last week and late at night Finally sitting down and watching some how to play magic the gathering YouTube videos Fantastic I'm actually going to play a game imagine you gather commander. Nobody told me commander is Highlander. Yeah, it's Highlander. Yes That's Yeah, please that's it's so easy, right? Yeah, with the exception of like I'm gonna say three cards off the top of my head that you can have more than one of because you have Disciples relentless rats and I think there's a third one that I'm forgetting right now for then sorry Nazgul decide You're right. Disciples young Nazgul disciples seven dwarves relentless rats. Yeah There you go somebody somebody probably told me it was Highlander at some point Now that you're learning magic I can share with you the custom cards I made I made a I made commander focused legend Commander magic cards out of for every faction of Age of Sigmar All 26 factions have at least one card that's like the leader of a commander deck And it's a custom card that has to do with oh this is This is Bastion Carthelos and the card does stuff that like he would do when you're supposed to play Commander and it's the absolute Most shameless nerdy thing I've done in the past month for sure I love it. The question here. I have for you is Bastion Zorias or is Bastion boros because I could I could believe either combination as a matter of fact stormcast Eternals are just Scottie Okay, sure. They are America red white blue. Well, there you go I was trying to I was trying to split the diff, but yep fair fair since we're going commander We got to encompass all of it and they're Their keyword thing that kind of all of them have is flash because that's deep strike sure They're vigilant and they have a cycle of the storm which is when they die you exile them with suspend Love it. I keep getting reforged Why did we not get okay? This shouldn't become a magic show. Why did we not get the AOS commander said I'm very upset about these mechanic Just write themselves Gavin call us all right. We got you covered about something different now. We're gonna talk for two hours about all the different Move on we should do it like there's gonna be a whole magic related show now Now Joe you just signed yourself up for another show. I apologize to tell you but that's no problem The year you gotta you gotta come back on and we're just we're just doing that as a show Just literally very happy you just came up with I am beyond excited My final question. Did you do three colors like did you do three color combos for all armies? Or did you do did some no, I I Tried to make it make sense for them. Okay more than a Zooming out and having like an equality structure or anything like good I had it just make sense for the for the army first and foremost classic top-down not bottom-up design You love to see it. Okay. I'm here for it. Excellent at the end of the day Really, who cares if there's an equal amount of white splash decks, right? Yeah, I think it's more important that oh, I picked up the ogre armor. Yeah, this feels like the ogre I'm I picked up the cruel boys. Yeah, it feels like cruel boys. Sure Instead of this is that we're checking a box for the number of black cards or whatever. Yep Last question that we can move on stupid criner. The full name was elder dragon Highlander. Actually, I've seen that Why is it called elder dragon? because there is an original cycle of Elder dragons from the set legends and these were like legendary dragons with names vivic this as Madi Nicole bowl. This is one of them. He later became sort of the main villain the whole series later on All sorts of the other ones and they were I can't remember how many there are they're all three colors And they have five originally and there were seven man of seven sevens. Yeah And so those were like the original legendary creatures was kind of win legendary creatures were Not necessarily invented because they came out in the rabid nights as well But it was sort of the set idea was multicolored cards and legends And so those are the first like generals of the yeah, when they when they sort of created this format This was like everybody that was the idea. Everybody picked one of those guys to be the leader over time. It's expanded. All right, so We can get that in that just scroll down my dude Description merchandise store and it will it will take you to freedom new merch is all down there including that guy There's also one with my wife and the dogs and all that kind of stuff down there as well different sizes Depending on what you're looking for all that kind of thing. All right, cool. Let's move on Before this just literally becomes that as a show which would be fine, but not what people are here for okay Let's talk some pick of the week Hey, well, what did you want to share with everybody? Well, my pick of the week is what I am going to which is dragonfall AOS tournament and Convention got 40k and stuff too. It's in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin birthplace of D&D and gen con and Geneva right and Should be a good time. It's this weekend two days 2000 point AOS tourney Bringing my monster trucks. I'm gonna count to abc Truckasaurus is returning aka cragnos And bring your commander tax if you're showing up because of course speaking of magic we always bring edh They just sigmar tournaments And in between those rounds after those rounds before those rounds That's right. That's right Uh, very good. It's a shame you're a week before the dr Who'd actually that'd be a great that's a great like sort of tournament things pop those out for everybody Oh, yeah, they've been they've been filling up my twitter feed all of them Is uh mark remcheck joe does he do that one? Okay. Yes. Yeah, that's who I had to email my list too late So it's actually it's a secret because I do tournament reports And I put them on youtube and I do them on twitch and stuff like that I bring I know all the pictures I take a picture of every single army and talk about all that stuff and I always forget to take pictures of every Round of my games so that you know, but anyway, um One thing I always do Is I submit my list late to see if the tournament has any integrity Because if they're like, oh, hey, well the content creator, I'll let them slide. Mm-hmm Now dock me those points a rule is a rule And so if they let me slide it means they have no integrity at all but They might let you slide and if they don't it means they care about the rules I like it very nice or or Or I always forget when the event is until it's next week. Sure Tyler what do you want to share with everybody? All right, two quick ones. Goon hammer had an excellent in-depth silvanath tactics article really enjoyed that and then Shannon And thomas who were at flying monkey with a bunch of us a couple weekends ago They are doing a recap. It might be it was streaming before we got started at the week and the decanin I love the name of that youtube channel. So they were talking about their glorious Finish, I think Shannon was 4-1 thomas took it out 5-0. I'm not going to report on how well I did Nobody, you know, we can just move on And yeah Great great time Charles Fox puts on a good event over there very nice, so So I got excellent for My particular pick of the week first of all, I want to say Totally support. I hope there's gonna be a lot of fun people at dragonfall. I'll say hi to sam And uncle adam zambies and sam are both there teaching along with some other people So check out their classes if they're not all sold out Uh, but say hi to uncle adam and stuff. There's gonna be some some definitely some good fun there I'm gonna get to dragonfall one of these years in past years It was always the same weekend as holy havoc and I didn't realize this year It had it had diverted and I could have totally signed up and gone I didn't realize that until like a week ago And I was like, oh geez. Okay. Well now I feel bad totally could have went Uh, so future years. I'm gonna I'm gonna make it up there. Say hi to everybody Uh, but my pick of the week speaking of this We're talking about changing game rules tonight potentially and the newest episode of trapped under plastic was a very interesting discussion between john and scott about Do you feel like changing the game rules and what happens when to's changed the game rules and like you have the authority to Change the game rules and play the game how you want to be played And and like what does that mean for understanding the real problems in the game and yada yada yada They kind of broke into this and this has been something we've talked about on this show quite a lot Over the years, but I thought it would have a lot of interesting accidental alignment to tonight since we're going to talk about changing crap left and right, uh, although I'm Generally, we're going to focus on how I think they should change it in the core rules But you know, hey to has played around a lot of this space already For example with things like canning book battle tactics has been something that many to has have done or whatever um Yeah, the the bad version of that is like everyone ignores How the official way to play is and then it's just the wild west and the and everything is different And if you want to play like normal a os you kind of can't because everyone is just different but then like the good way Is holy havoc is really fun and it features basically almost all just custom stuff. Yep so I don't know. I don't think it's worth giving up that Yeah, and you know, I'll say even to defend your first situation you talked about We all simultaneously rejected the like wacky terrain rules at various points in os history And I don't think the game is worse for that, right? We all went well, you didn't put any effort into this So we're not going to actually use any of this right. We're going to do our own thing Everybody agreed to sort of an alternative way of doing this and remember when the that's been it Do you remember when the creature's sword had to be able to physically reach? Sure the other model to be able to attack it. Yeah, we ignored some Pretty obvious stuff back in the day. Yeah We were all just like no So, okay, maybe a baseline of doing it the right way, but the people rise up when it's obvious and We let the creative people be creative also Anyway, I shouldn't talk over it because uh, they talked about it and they probably brought that up too I just haven't seen it. So that's a good pick of the week. Oh, there you go So all of that linked down below. Check it out Uh, okay with that, let's move on to some hobby time My question is uh, hey, whoa Obviously, you've been out of commission. You've been so I assume you're behind the eight ball here Probably not a lot of time for hobby But is there anything that needs to get done before you get to the tournament? Um, I finally finished this guy I finally finished the boy Don't notice who's got he's got his hat there. Um The other one also has my other hat on it Is it ironic that you finished that because that's your maw pot, right? Yeah Okay, is it ironic that they have deal that you you finished your maw pot Basically the week that the because in that in that new Yeah, the alternative maw thing. Mm-hmm. Yes The new terrain piece that you could use as an alternative to the maw pod. Yeah I am to understand that it is the same rules. You can just use it if you want, right? That's what I've heard too. I mean, I don't know And um, if that's true, then fine. Yeah, no big deal I don't mind sure if it's got different rules than it's ages sigmar So I made the thing that looks cool and then I use the rules that are good, right? Always the right attitude. Absolutely. You know I just thought your timing couldn't have been better. You finished this So you finished that guy up. You were about to say someone else when I interrupted you rudely. I'm sorry. Oh, no, that's fine Um, I take forever to hobby stuff. I just don't work on it a lot And so if we're looking for someone at fault, it is me It's fine. So that's that's life Uh, at least you're hobbying. You're getting some stuff done there Uh, we'll use that as a segue Tyler that was not subtle I wasn't trying to be I mean, I I was told what october november wait, when am I supposed to be when am I supposed to be pressuring you? Can officially I mean you give me a hard time every week anyway, but you can officially give me a hard time After give me a week after vault wars to a little r&r So let's just say november first All right november first. That's that's when you get it. Okay. I'll continue this pass until then Tom does not get the same pass just so you know because he's going to a tournament with me and he has to paint his half of his army So, you know Yeah, well chop chop There's a lot to be said about about tom in 2023, you know, I mean getting married. He's got a lot of kids new He's got a lot of excuses, but But by this curve of tom Um or the scale I'm doing good buddy. I'm doing good. We're great on that curve. Yeah, absolutely I'm gonna come in and blow your curve right up. Oh, it's the worst thing about that Don't be in a class with somebody who's an overachiever because then they just ruin the curve for everyone um, all right So I finished, uh, this girl up, which I'm very happy with this is shinobi from journeyman miniatures Uh, and pretty pretty happy with how this all came out So pretty cool This isn't actually her official plinth. I just had to borrow this plinth until I get the correct plinth in because I realized That's all out of bust plinths But yeah, so all I didn't make any videos out of her. I'm sorry everyone Um, this was pure experimentation Like this was pure me just painting for myself the thing I want to talk about here And it's not probably showing on camera But like if you do you see how strong the shadow is on her face Like right in this area up here, all right Yes, I'll take some good pictures and share her out at some point One of the things that I wanted to try with this mini with this bust was To do something that shows up in like animation and comics and movies media all the time Which is the shadow being here Like if you think about how they frame batman in like the animated series How often does like batman rise up and like there's a rim light around him But the center of his face is actually completely in shadow Right, you only see like this part of it And yet but like that is a very very very difficult thing to paint We always talk about like you've got to draw attention to the face draw attention to the face All right, you got to make that the highlight So I wanted to see if I could invert that and still keep the model readable Like was that possible to make it look interesting and not insane by having a strong shadow on the center of the face sort of doing that look and There was a couple times in painting that model that I was like I could just give up Like as I was trying I wanted to give up like 10 times Where I was like this doesn't look right. It's not working and then I'd be like no, we got to push through we're gonna do this we're gonna push through and I mean the number of times I sat down on this desk and was like I'll just repaint her I'll just repaint the face just change it But then didn't and it got to a pretty decent place So like maybe there's a maybe there's a video there. There's just like persistence I think I think in the end think that one of the things that separates sort of Somebody who paints well not that I do. I'm just saying like whatever from somebody who doesn't It's just they're willing to sit there and suffer And and force themselves through actually like feeling like they're constantly failing until they eventually get hammered just Just hammer their head against the wall until eventually the wall breaks, right? That's that's the answer So That was a very challenging project with that being done I decided it was time for something a little more fun. So I've got these three bad boys primed up and ready to go Ragers about you know it. That's right Uh, I've got my brute ragers. Of course, these aren't not the ones with the goofy face masks I gave them the big Sorty weapons this thing Like choppas I'll either use them as the choppas or or as the one that does the mortal wounds. I don't really care I just know I thought the the The chains look stupid. That was what I thought. So I gave them the big choppas because orcs look cool with big choppas I don't know. That's that's why you that's why you play orcs for exactly what hao said earlier like Do and paint the thing that's cool. And then it has it's it this is the rules, right? Right. Yeah especially because Usually there's just one thing that everybody does Right And so that's what people are going to know the unit by Right. And so it's even more like oh, you're playing the rager is cool. Okay. Yeah, they have that rule Oh yours look cool neat and that'll be the end of it. Yeah, exactly Eight eight eight years on every tournament still doing whizzy wig in the pack. Nobody nobody gives a crap. Nobody gives a crap Yeah I mean they put whizzy wig in there as like You know the tap the sign kind of thing. All right Somebody is gonna if you give them an inch they'll take a mile and we need something to point to in the rules For someone being a dick And so they print that I think just to be able to point to something if you're using soda cans and whatever so You know, that's like the running joke the the soda can stuff but but like In the very many first years of me playing 40k back in the 90s I had a buddy who would just always take dr. Pepper cans and turn him sideways and be like, this is my rhino I'm like, okay, man. Sure. All right great Okay So, yeah, there is a line Ascended me. I I can show them the ways of the paper hammer. Sure I would have happily accepted a folded a piece of paper Cutting out the the box art and then folding the bottom make yourself an event is cheap strike, you know, nice Yeah, just I've I've got a I've got an event as cheap strike in the garage and a box actually right now. Nice. Yeah All right Good stuff With that gentleman, are we ready to move to tonight's main topic to talk about secondaries? Hey, as we're doing that if you haven't hit like yet, why don't you do that? We've had fun talk. We we we may have talked a little too much about magic, but that's fun You know, we've we've done some fun things And and and let's uh, you know hit like hit subscribe do those things that make dings All right, let's get into this So tonight we're going to talk about secondary objectives secondary systems Uh boom boom, how can we fix this? um I'm going to start with sort of the Statement that we're going to we're going to talk about what these are What we mean is the other things that you do That are worth points and help you win the game or whatever That aren't kill the enemy And stand on things Right like the do you have your objectives that you go stand on you don't actually get points for killing people But obviously it's beneficial to your general battle plan to kill the enemy. It's kind of the reason we play the game right So that's the thing But then there's this whole secondary objective as we've played around with different versions of this over the course of AOS and different different constructions But now currently we live in the world of battle tactics and grand strats and so on in third edition But this has been a very fluid system And all this was kicked off By one mr. Hayward twitch I have his tweet here Uh, I will read the tweet and then i'm going to hand it over to you Hayward to to take this So Hayward's tweet was one of these days age of sigmar tournaments are going to switch to win-loss draw every round preparing standings Dump all the bs tiebreakers in the trash where they belong and hand a trophy to the two or three xo records And be simply better in every way So Okay, and then you also had a follow-up down at the bottom, but now And I noticed you. Um, I noticed that you got the 69th like and I really appreciate that in the screenshot Exactly right. That was me I'm here So go ahead. You take take us through this. You had said you uh, you wanted to uh, sort of set this all up Yeah, I I wrote a little speech. Um, if I could Uh, to explain how I arrived at that tweet So like all the way to no tiebreakers and pure record trophies and stuff from the starting point so We're starting with some facts, right Fact one Age of sigmar tournaments do not run enough rounds to properly determine a winner Five rounds is correct for only 32 players If you have more than that 50 100 200 you will get many five o's Which should be reduced by continuing the tournament until you have only one or perhaps cutting to Top eight playoff or something like that Fact two because aos games take two and a half hours and events happen over a weekend, which is two days There's simply not enough time for a proper number of rounds of swiss If the game took 55 minutes to play, maybe we could swing it, but it doesn't but we can't Right so far Yeah fact three Since we don't have time for an extra three plus rounds of swiss into a cut to top eight playoff And semi-final final grand final to crown the decisive winner. What do we do? Well currently we rely on tiebreakers to single-handedly determine the winner of an entire event Bean counting and tapping on windows 11 calculators then walking past three Undefeated perfect record players smiling at them. Good job. You'll won every game No, you can't play each other. No, you can't prove yourself amongst your equals Until getting to the fourth undefeated perfect round player You are the one true champion It says right here in the windows 11 calculator because in round two Your opponent's friends former roommate had a butterfly land on their shoe and the waves created by its wings came to me in a dream And said you Are the chosen one the one who will deliver the message that aos is the wind more king of the hill The seal clubbing olympics the shadow overlords who want you to think that the easiest climb to the top The least challenging path to victory is in fact the most righteous while I stand before you today and I say no So then I tweeted about it And then some discussion happened Yeah, and i'm gonna try to sell you on My system here, which is I will call it the throwing the baby out with the bathwater system. Okay Really, that's what it is doing Um the no tiebreakers none of that. It's just record You can do whatever you want with secondaries and you can make games more fun and all that but it's just Let's just go about records, right? You have win draws losses You went five and oh you went four and oh or four and one you went three and two That's where you are To the to's in between every round players report win draw or loss nothing else no standings No, how many bts how many gs's how many kill points? Just record and then the five os get trophies. That's it for the to's you're welcome For the competitive players pairings don't screw you in strength of schedule if you randomly pair against A weak opponent who loses later that screws you out of your hands, right? You don't like that Um, if it's how many bts and gs's and stuff you can get you actually are rewarded for getting paired up against the weakest players Who you can dumpster and if you have like quote-unquote good games against very good opponents, you're actually hurt by that For the competitive player just win five games and you get a trophy. It's all in your hands. No randomness For the casual player your life is probably the same You probably don't care anyway Um, I have a lot more written, but I feel like I've talked almost enough So I'll I'll pass it off and I can probably get to the rest of the stuff later For the most part I find all the different tiebreakers that could exist Uh inadequate I'm not like an expert in tournament structure But a lot of people were responding to me And then they were like this is what different we should do differential. So I look up differential. I don't like it Oh, we should do this thing. I looked it up. I don't know. Strength of schedule appears to be the most fair If fairness is what we care about but on the topic of this show I don't think it is sure I think our or maybe we care about fairness Somewhere, but I think goal number one is having the best individual games we can have And whatever system for figuring out standings Should just mostly keep its hands to itself Is how I figure it um I think tiebreakers the players can actively participate in like who has the most battle tactics or differential or whatever are suspicious like Uh, if a player can affect that system, then I think they're capable of and incentivize to exploit it like Sure If um, oh, I'm bringing this term back by the way from the 80s hotdog in Tiebreakers that reward you for hotdogging like not only did I win, but I perfect one max five of five My special man lived. I killed my opponent's dog I did a backflip and then like now my tiebreakers are better those I think select for the strongest player Who had the weakest opponents like by chance In other words the undefeated player with the most lopsided matchups in their favor all day like wins And I think that's maybe antithetical Well, it's antithetical to strength a schedule if you care about how hard it was to get to the top Would you may or may not care about? But anyway, I find all of those kind of weird and one last point before I'd talk too long is Some of them can create some perverse play patterns A particular one that I've experienced and I've been on both sides of is the goldilocks win zone Where if you win too hard You actually can't score the last one or two battle tactics or maybe your opponent concedes Or you'd table them or something So you actually have to tightrope walk Keep your opponent on life support. Don't kill this. Don't kill that String them along like a vampire as you can slurp max points out of them By the end of round five which feels Weird and bad I think Yeah, because your option either becomes that or you your opponents allow you to do the talk through Where they're just like, yeah, yeah, you get your other battle tactics Yeah, and that's a lot of the game that you're talking through Right. Yeah, and I don't I don't necessarily like talking through three rounds Sure That's what players are going to do, you know, and they're not wrong to do it I just feel like we should be playing instead of talking through it For the most part. This is another topic real quickly. I would love to talk with you guys Not necessarily this show but at some point end of game resolution because I think that The community has not Certainly addressed or come to a consensus on how to handle end of game resolution This gets into the chess clocks debate and all of that, you know, you run into things like, okay A pack says one thing and then some people follow the pack But then some people don't follow the pack which then impact standings You have like some people will talk it out. Some people won't talk it out, right? It's a whole discussion around end of game resolution I've been looking at that for vault wars this year on how exactly we're going to do that Anyway, that's a little tension. No, that's a good point. That's like sportsmanship The thing tells you don't just circle five Fill this out for real And everyone circles five because if you don't you're a dick and it's just like the etiquette of it And it's hard to break that and maybe we're we shouldn't be fighting against it Like how how can we yeah, so Yeah, I feel similarly to you about that all of the scoring systems and and tie breakers and everything like that These all assume you're playing five rounds of this game Right. Yeah, I mean they all assume like all of the if you look at the way these systems are constructed to score you It's assuming what we call the 28 point game Right Meaning you got you grabbed five every round and your grand strat the 28 point game the sort of the sort of perfect game Right and when you look at now lots of lots of tournaments will have extra little points You get each round for doing x y and z so so you actually don't just score 28 You score like usually between 28 and 33 or something like that, right? You can sort of there's like up to five bonus points for various things that they can And that will use it and differentiate the total score in some way Um or whatever, you know something like that, right? And the uh You know the thing that It's always weird to me is everything assumes that that's the case But you very rarely actually play five round games, especially as the game has become tougher and Opponents get more equal scaled and even if you're on you're using clocks and stuff like that It's it's still often the case. You don't get through round five, right? um and so One of the things like you almost by necessity have to be willing to talk it out and yet Right and that's fine. Like I don't have a problem with with talking things out but People who don't know that that's what you're doing like the very first Like when I went to a tournament didn't realize that was the case. This is some years back I just filled out my sheet like I was done and then I filled out my sheet and I was like Okay, and they're like no, no, no, no, no, you're supposed to you you do all these other things in later rounds And you get you get points for them and I was like, but I didn't play those rounds And they're like, yeah, but you're supposed to talk it through like as though you did And I'm like what? why You know like it didn't make sense You know, I won the game. Isn't that good enough like I'm the winner I did I accomplished what I was supposed to do Right And so there's this like extra layer That you don't know unless you're like in the same with the scoring people five for for sports or whatever, right? There's a whole bunch of these like unwritten rules of conduct Yeah, right That you just kind of like get to know in the scene But you don't have any way to like know this it's not written anywhere directly of like Okay at the bottom of the game if you haven't and blah blah blah and this then you feel free to talk it out with your opponent Not in this case because that would be inappropriate like if it's if it's a time and you're both very evenly matched You don't get to talk it out, right? This is the problem like you come to the bottom of five or sorry the bottom of three times up All right, you're both fairly evenly matched talking it out. It's inappropriate because you can't be like Well, I'd go here and do this and they'd be like, okay. Well, I would have done this That doesn't get you anywhere It's only when you've like crushed them Right and one player played too slowly and they're responsible, but they don't realize it They don't have the self-awareness that that they're responsible And and so their opponent is kind of screwed in that situation Yeah, yeah, I mean like when you have roughly even matches you don't talk it out. That's it scores That's it scores the score Also, how often do true draws happen in age of sigmar? It's once in a blue moon. It's so rare for a true draw to happen But what it's worth joe. I I felt there's more this year than ever man More this I would say more in third edition than the past two editions for what it's worth That's just an echo. Yeah, true. And when I look at turn the results, I feel like we've had more draws never but yeah It's still a rare offer There are more than there used to be for sure. Yeah But what if What if if your game is over and round three it's a draw? right Then now we have probably majority draws versus any other outcome But players wouldn't I don't think players would like do that. They would just talk it through 20 minutes before round three and just write it down I'm sure right Yeah, I mean what is it is what's an ideal solution and another part is what would people actually do? Yep Yeah, yeah Because we can impose all the sort of theoretical rules on this we want right But as we just said, it's not written in the rules anywhere that people want to talk stuff out It's not it should talk stuff out It's not written in the rules anywhere that you should give your opponents five on sports or good on sports or Yay thumbs up II you're the best in the world on sports like whatever right right, but but basically that's what happens So behavior in these sort of social cues that everyone takes is is just as deeply Influencing on this as whatever's written in a in a pack or a rule book or whatever So You could even accidentally like let's say you get you get blown up and you're new It's your first tournament And you get like destroyed your table Then it's the bottom of two or something you did the thing or you walked up to the middle of the table And just pass the turn big smile on your face right and then they just kill you And then you can see it because the game's over and you don't have any guys left right You like actually just screwed your opponent out of points For the final standing and you aren't aware of that or maybe you are if you're like recognizing conceding now If it's a poorly written pack you've screwed to your opponent potentially. Yeah, I mean packs You can do a lot of different things with these right, but Packs yeah packs To should know by now to write a pack in a certain way to prevent that Yeah, for instance like I don't know if your opponent concedes you get max points or just whatever that's the standard Exactly. Yeah, which can also write. There's some gray or there. I know we're getting to the weeds on a few of these things at a little No, it's all good. It's all good That's also right. Joe. It reminds me of the the whizzy way because I'll tell on vault wars, right? So right now vault wars says if you concede a game you essentially get zero battle points and your opponent gets 20 battle points But in actuality Maybe it's a bad idea for me to be saying this right in actuality how probably should work is your Just getting to the point of the game is over Right, and maybe you talk out like what could happen and happen with we've got some language in there personally with our event on Confidently score a battle tactic. Now that's all of this has gray area But anyway, just to point it out that it's it can be I've found it challenging to try to write Clear policies when it comes to two human beings It varies. It's very hard to write clear policies. Just like it's hard to write rules Right that someone's not going to misinterpret or it's not Technically saying to do something that we don't want or cause an incentive that we don't like Right. That's why in my system If someone concedes early Then their opponent wins the game and you go up to the to and you say I won And that's it. You don't have to care about you don't have to talk it out Yeah, you don't have to come up with all of this interpersonal Oh Oogly boogly basically About the last x rounds or how many bts you have or if you can't screw it's just what options you saw Let me dig in my book and see if there's anything in there. I can do as well You know yada yada It's withdrawal loss and it just it stays within the game. It doesn't leak out to like Poison the rest of stuff And so the only talking out when time gets called would be to determine who won And if they can't determine that then it's a draw and I think maybe i'm side stepping all those other very real problems But also I think uh That's why I like my solution Even though it's probably Yeah, I certainly have a number of thoughts on what you've laid out, but we don't have there's I don't know That's I'll let you take it away. We'll kind of go through in order. I'll say by the way I know there are a whole bunch of reasons why my system is bad as well So I you can you can go over them as well. It's important to it's important to know the counter arguments or And all of these things are a double edged sword to be clear. We're not going to find like the perfect system on this show It's really a shame. We don't it's because we don't have enough rounds We have to choose between a whole bunch of really bad Outcomes, right, which is why I'm going to recommend some also other potential We'll call it radical or maybe orthogonal solutions or whatever But it's a shame. We can't do the the the sort of um Five turn countdown, right? I mean if you if you play in a magic event, you know, what happens when you go to time You get a five round countdown like current turn is turn zero dice gets it on the table Right when it passes to the opponent's turn, that's one two three four five done Right and and either like it's a draw or somebody won. That's what happens, right? And that's and then scores the score Right and we don't really have that ability to to to move in that kind of speed Right because there's only five five turns really well, there's 10 turns I guess, but yeah in the whole game So, okay now Let's lay out I want to lay out the challenges here because we've talked around this this is good I actually liked having all this discussion up front because what I want to touch on Is that there there are a couple different things going on here with secondary objectives And I think it's really important to pry these things apart Because they get wrapped up in each other really really easy like the oroboros of this is so real Uh as I watch these discussions go round and round even with like the the chat right now or in discussions I was watching around this in the comments and stuff like that yeah um Like chess clocks are being mentioned a lot and we we really should do a show events on on that topic We've never I know you hate what anyway that might be too strong, but you know, I tested that I tested that out a little bit because we on discord and my mods and stuff like we'll test out different Oh, what how is it? What's it like to play under chess clocks? What's it like to play if there's no battle tactics? What's it like to play if you don't roll dice? We'll play average hammer and just figure out the average of everything And see how fast a game of age of sigmar can go if you're never rolling. You're just consulting a chart And um playing under a clock you don't realize it, but Think of like the um the perfect example of the slowest player ever in your head right the spgl player with 200 zombies right um You think oh man because they're so slow like the I'm not going to finish when you use clocks and you look at how long you took You actually take longer against slower opponents who have a million guys also Sure When you're playing against it actually slows you down as well and that wasn't something that I thought of Until I did it Yeah, yeah I just mean to say that I do think there is obviously a lot of nuance within that I get a little tired of people on the one side thinking that chess clocks are this magical solution with no downsides either Like they have real there's real limitations for those real issues challenges Anyway, I think it would be interesting to actually we've never tried to lay out That discussion in a thorough nuanced way. I think that would be interesting I thought it was fun, but I know that a lot of people wouldn't think it's fun because Look, I was the guy that you'd go to a gp For sealed and you'd get to day two and so now it's time for draft drafting in pods And they were all timed and so you'd have a person on the microphone say open your pack. Look at the first card Choose your card cards down and suddenly Normally drafting is not timed, but suddenly it is It was like way more fun for me But also I understand that especially in ages sigmar It would just be like A lot of stress and basically a roadblock Just so many people even wanting to go to a tournament Because they're just socially I don't want to waste people's time. I don't want to be that person Um a burden on somebody else or it's too stressful and So and so forth. There's a lot of that I think as a as a barrier to offense I agree. There's there is pros. There is cons. There's there's worth it a whole dive here And maybe we'll swing back around to him at the end. Sure What I want to touch on with the challenge is the secondary objective system is a whole a lot of what we covered so far Have been like their uses in tournament scoring right I submit to you that that's completely incidental for the reasons That you already covered Right in a perfect world. We wouldn't as you as you said we wouldn't use any of these systems Right, we would just play the appropriate number of rounds to determine a winner Yeah, right That's that that is sort of the that would be the primary choice In in that world we would grumble about tiebreakers on the bubble of who gets into top eight or something like that And and that's where it would get relegated to sure so like That's being used this entire system has been sort of jacked into that plug Right, like we had this this this plug and we just like found a port and we're just like jamming it in there because we're like, this has got to fit right and and Uh, and it really doesn't You know But but it's sort of the best we've got But secondary objectives have a purpose beyond that, right? I don't want to overstate the obvious But you know most people aren't playing tournaments, right? Yeah And so like secondary objectives do something In the game, they're there to give you something else to do To go beyond, you know killing the enemy and stand in a place Which is ostensibly what your two primary things you're trying to do, right is stand in a place and kill the enemy Uh, those are kind of the two things we're generally doing, right? And uh and then So this this adds hopefully whatever system this is we can talk about how successful the current system is But hopefully it adds flavor And fun and other ways to do right So it could be like add more fun Could give me catch up mechanics could allow for continued engagement If you think you're losing on the primaries, but you can still go for secondary type things All of these are viable reasons why this stuff would exist that have absolutely nothing to do with tournament scoring, right? You could just right. Yeah obliterate that entire Argument out of it and you'd still have a justification for these to to exist. Let's go deeper. Yeah The these things open up more space in army design Right, like if you're the designer of the game and you know, there's a sort of solid secondary objective system that you have right Then You can design toward that you can make armies that are like stronger on the primary thing So sons of batmots a good example in current aos. Yeah, right very strong on the primary Sucks at secondary battle tactics It's a it's a big knob that you can turn for balance just like I don't know in the past people would talk about who this army's artifacts suck But that's like because they're too good at something else or sure this army can't shoot Which is fine so that their melee is overpowered or something You can and they have done that with battle tactics like oh look this army's battle tactics are like automatic Yep, I don't know if they use it as a as a balancing thing at least when they were writing the books They did not seem to but they are now in the um What are they called now battle scribe battle scroll scroll? Yeah battle scroll They've done it the last two right they gave they gave orcs a special battle tactic um Sons of behemoth a special one Am I forgetting an army? I think they did stormcast Stormcast Then they basically just look at the worst armies in the game and they're like we'll give them a bp Night honk at a grand strat, but yeah, or modified And so yeah I mean like when it comes down to it when I look at the four challenges only really one of them has to do with like Uh the finer mechanism for separating and ranking players Right and again, that's not actually these things Real intended purpose. I would argue the real intended purpose of this thing Is the other three provide for fun provide for different options in design provide for Continued engagement if you're losing on the primary Yes, I've been hijacked. Yes. Yeah Toes have to find a way to differentiate somehow and so they latched on to something that is has points I think it is a mistake to do that Um, and once you once you separate it You instantly start seeing the good even with the current system that Nobody likes well that many people don't like Two thirds of people on this stream don't like um When you divorce it from like standings or anything like that Suddenly battle tactics are like, yeah, he has better better battle tactics than me But all I have to do is win this one game And if I win the game, then that's fine and it doesn't carry over, you know to later Yeah, yep so I think it's just really interesting because to me all of these different challenges keep getting in each other's Putting I guess is what I want to say um Like they're just they're all mixed up The peas and carrots and mashed potatoes are all getting in in each other's stuff And I don't like that. I don't like that Now the food needs to stay separate. All right, so I want to think about these things separately because I think that if you were Depending on what you're trying to do you would design different systems Like we wouldn't actually design one system to do both of these things if we were starting from scratch Right. Yeah, for sure. Okay Hey weekends there from scratch Isn't there a new addition coming up? Rumor has it we have the power Yes Rumor has it this game and 40k have been on a three-year cycle for their entire existence since new gw And we'll probably continue to do so since it's a stock price Dependent or deliverable it delivers shareholder value. So, you know There you go Clearly never had shepherd's pie actually good meme Uh Keith roger said just add grave events. It'll taste fine number one No, number two Still no, that's like some that's some like my grandma depression era stuff Where they just like mix everything together and just put like gravy on it. That was like shoes I was like, what's the difference it all ends up in the same place The difference is which side of my tongue it ends up in all together in the same place You psychopath like obviously that's a difference. That is a material difference You crazy woman, you know when when I was a kid I got my don't worry. She's dead now. She won't watch this go ahead When I was a kid, I got my wisdom teeth out. Sure, but I wanted a burger Yeah, and I was a genius Because I was young And so I put a burger In the food processor, right? But it kind of caught because it was pretty dry. So I poured some of the pepsi in there, you know, and that That cleaned it up real nice um And I'm like, all right, it's time to drink this burger Yes, it all ends up in the same place. It very matters what condition it's in when you ingest it Yeah, it was not okay Like we're pretending like texture and things like that just don't matter. Get out of here. All right at any rate This isn't a food review show though. It could be it could be a magic show It could be a food review show. We're going a lot of different directions Okay Is there any challenges here? I missed is there anything else that we see as like The reason for having a secondary system existing This is the challenges we're trying to meet by creating secondary systems. Is there anything If you are bored by the base game if that's not complicated enough for you then Secondaries can breathe life into that and If you are a competitive player Who plays the game constantly all the time Then it is just going to get stale unless things change and so secondaries make for A pretty good idea for something like seasons Just from you know from one to two to three there So, you know, do they have a reason to exist should they exist for sure? Yeah That's another really good point dynamism in the overall feel of the game, right? Like within an addition or aversion Those kinds of secondary systems could rotate change move around alter in some way Who represents the lore of the campaign that you're doing, you know, or pushing Yeah, and that creates more more sort of oh a new challenge to unlock a new thing to discover a new a new situation to play under whatever right Uh, we conducted and said next week on Warmer Weekly. What is the best event food? The answer is simple It's undoubtedly nova nova is the best food in its new location Uh, it is right off t-street now in dc Which there is you're you're right in between two different areas of amazing restaurants One being a pretty hipstery neighborhood and one being like the sort of Classic dc bistros and stuff. So yeah, it's like just like right there. It's on the crux of those two So, uh, easily easily best food 10 minute five five 10 50 minute walks you have incredible restaurants Some of the best in the world you can you can get to if you're willing to to go that distance So there you go. How close how close is the new shake shack? I I don't have an answer that because I wouldn't waste my time with such nonsense when I was there when I had real restaurants around When I was in dc last thing like there's a shake shack at every corner. Gotcha I'm sure there's one around but no, there's plenty of amazing restaurants well within walking distance That we went to that were that were incredible Had one of the best meals of my life when I was at dc. So there you go um Okay Uh, all right Next Um tournaments need finer mechanisms for separating running players because they don't have enough time to do true swiss I don't know. I think that's just a separate challenge. It's like very I think to me. That's totally different than secondaries Sure, like again, we don't need a secondary system for that, but that is what we've used this for right and I There should that's a hard problem to solve and I think it should be solved in a totally different way Yeah, uh number four having something to play for in a game where you're on the back foot In other scores provides for continued engagement and fun. I think You should be playing like um Damn, this is gonna sound bad Uh, the thing you should be playing for in a game if you are behind is the win And I think like bolting on a new system To get like a moral victory even though you lost is like a Opium, I don't know Okay, all right Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think that there's there is some value right to The ability To have something that still continues to engage people because Just because of the nature of different sort of psychographic profiles and how people approach what they perceive as a loss Or or or a soon to be a loss. Oh, so we're leading them along because they're wrong about the fact that they just lost Yeah, they continue engaging and then they'll see the game turn around because something broke in their favor so many new players Get double turned the first time in their life and they try to concede and if you're teaching them the game You have to like grab them and be like not yet And then once they go all five rounds they might end up winning or something and They just they just didn't know that they hadn't actually lost right there. It's like really common Yeah, so it's not even necessarily playing for the more victory. It's like a way to keep them going Okay, I still have something I can do so I'm still in this right and in one and a half hour around You don't want snap concessions to be the norm Right, right like he alpha striked my guys in 27 minutes And I snap concede and then I walk around for two hours Eating hot dogs and playing commander and that does sound fun by I don't think we want that Well, so to add on to this And it's one that I don't have an answer to but it's something that has been brought up to me over the years many times so Joe you and I are playing and You're kicking my butt, but we've got we're under a secondary objective system where I'm getting some points Under the system you proposed. I'm still going to lose that game and presumably I'm still essentially Maybe one point of clarification I I guess it doesn't matter. You're just simply saying there's no what what you my interpretation of what you said at the beginning was essentially the classic 20 oh 25 oh system, right where 20 points for a major win Zero points for a major loss a win is worth three it draws worth one and a loss or none or whatever You know, whatever So ultimately what I'm getting at right is that I hear time and time and time again This is one of the main arguments that I hear for differential scoring Is that if we're playing and you're not kicking my butt and we ended up having a close game You beat me by one point And then I take Nothing for my trouble nothing for my effort, right? That's probably the primary thing that I hear from folks in terms of Why they dislike Essentially what you proposed and why they like differential, for example Now, I think there are downsides which we make it into some of these different scoring systems and the upside to downsides differential has downsides But that is one of the perceived upsides at least of differential is a representation Of close game. Oh, well, you did that's more granular than simply granular, right Now to what degree I mean I think there's a conversation we had about Is it is that actually the right first principle the right idea to have in your mind? I mean if you you know, you could have the viewpoint look if you lost you lost if you won you won Do we actually Should we actually have a scoring system that needs or requires that level of granularity? Yeah, I mean it's down to the buzzer. You got two seconds left Jordan at the three wins Right ends up winning by one. The crowd goes wild There's no, yeah, there's do the Celtics need like a point from that Yeah, they're not getting extra balls and the You know for the for the next draft or yeah, there's there's not a lot of not a lot of consolation prizes They go back to their life Play the next round. Yeah I'm more that it is that simple That's like one of the I think that's one of the strengths of my system is that it's so simple It's easy for toos to do and implement easy for everybody to understand If you've mathematically lost Then yeah, the game is over If you haven't yet you can keep playing towards of the win and and everything else is just kind of like a Busy work like it's just extra extra stuff I suppose it it would make people feel better. I'm reminded of the first tournament I ever went to And I lost a game in it by one point. It was like 25 to 26 I just barely lost by one point and then on the scoring sheet. I had to write major defeat Like I lost by one point It came down to that major defeat really And but but actually, you know Yeah, it was it was a I mean, maybe not a major defeat, but it was a defeat. So that's fine for what it's worth Are these are these people like used to coddling sort of Tournament systems from the past that have always done it this way where you just get Consolation points for no reason Because you almost won and are they like used to this? I don't know Man, I don't want to I don't want to sound as cold and unfeeling as I undoubtedly do No, I mean, there's there's a Again, as we mentioned all these things have pluses and negatives when we get into these systems, right because I'll tell you what I'll I'll be really emotive about the chess clock and understanding of my Um, my brothers out there who are really nervous about social interaction and tournaments I'll be emotive there, but then with the win-loss draw thing Maybe no copium horseshoe the almost won points win-loss draw, I think Pushing that rumor scoring system The the ancillary stuff it's interesting because you mentioned like you you know Three-pointer at the buzzer you win congratulations, you know best It's or or or like the olympics, right? Seinfeld used to have this bit where about you know the difference between gold medal and silver medal, right? And it was like best in the you know best in the world Never heard of them That's the difference, right and like the hundred meter dash, right? It's like absolute legend. Everybody knows their name zero box endorsements Nobody cares. That's the difference, right? Yeah. 0.001 seconds yeah I think it's more I mean with aos games. It's more like a boxing match really it's it's not the The tournament itself is the gold medal silver medal thing, but as far as the boxing match is concerned I mean if you win in round three with a tko I don't know. I feel like if it's a contest between two people there's like three outcomes and all the other stuff is Sure. Yeah, man. And and and we do we have a lot of events That again, this might be a little essential, but we do have a lot of events that have Other awards that reward doing different things, right? And we have all kinds of and they're really none of those need to go away Like none of this in any way encroaches on monster slayer and general killer You know the best nylander list and whatever whatever it was a trophy where it was like the least net list ever Where it's the most unique army list that did the best like that's a great idea for a trophy You get the wooden spoon free entry next time all that stuff can stay especially the painting and the sports and everything This one's just instead of gold silver bronze That you hand to the three five o's that were tied and you Wrote some fan fiction to figure out which one technically one you just give three five and no trophies to the three five and those While i'm thinking about it and just real quick. Hold on. I want to build on that real fast It's not as though this is unprecedented in some way What hey was describing just to make it to to analogize to another world. I'm very familiar with in the world of painting Most painting competitions are open system Okay, and like nova is this way Miniature hobby is this way monti san sevillio is this way contrast and poland is this way Yada yada yada scale models this way right and In those There's like what is your work? How good is your work? Is it the best is it the best in the show? Okay, then it's the gold right? It's a gold It's a gold But everybody else who's sort of in the space with you Who's also doing works that like we're not going to try to figure out Like these are three amazingly. They're not actually but i'm just for sake of argument, right? They weren't amazing damn These are like three. I mean there's prime. These are three amazingly painted orcs. Let's say right This one's the best clearly But these two are so good and so close. I'm like I can't rank them in some logical way. They're all gold That's open system. That's okay And then when you see a material drop in quality So you go down to the next figure like let's say these are the three golds, right? And the next figure down It's not as good as any of those three because of something right There's some material difference that the judge sees between them. Okay. That's the step down Now it's a silver those are the four zero ones Correct. And then like everybody who's on the level with that guy With the next thing that was a silver you go like, okay All these people are silvers right because they're all on the level when you see a material drop in quality That's a bronze and then these people are all bronzes and then beyond that nothing, right? That's it. And so like open system and painting competitions and everything literally like golden demons one of the last sort of top threes in the world and um Everything else is has moved to open system because it more adequately represents accurately rewarding The work on display so that like extremely arbitrary minor bias-based judge call differences Don't end up becoming The thing that makes you suddenly drop drop drop like a rock right and not get a metal when in fact your work is like Well, yeah, that's like maybe this slight irrelevant difference between these two pieces, but they're both incredible Right and you could see the same thing that speaks to your argument right there like yeah, okay Maybe you completed one additional battle tactic or or whatever Whatever the differentiator the tiny differentiator or even even the fair one strength of schedule Oh your opponent was slightly better than his round two opponent That neither of you could control right right right, okay And so like this does handle that because it's meant to fairly recognize the quality of the work on display So the analogy here would be it's recognizing the quality of the play On offer right like the three of you went 5 0 And all three of you had clearly amazing tournament showings So here we go, right? Yeah, if we had time you would all fight each other and we'd determine a decisive winner But we don't have time so right here's your 5 and 0 trophy. I think In the zeitgeist of aos we already kind of do this Like we talk about 5 and 0 is 3 and 2 is in 4 and 1s Sure Even when you're talking about like an army who this is a 5 and 0 army This is a you know that faction maybe it's a 3 and 2, but maybe it'll be a 4 and 1 if it's better when you In my chat whenever whenever anybody goes to a tournament and I ask how their tournament went They always reply with their record. They always say I went 4 and 1 yeah, right or 3 and 2 or 5 People are already thinking the only exception is um The only time a player will tell you they're standing before their record is if the standing sounds more impressive before you hear the whole story And that's the only time like yeah, I got a top 8 your 12 person local uh I got sixth place It was a 15 person tie and I had lucky breakers, you know sure, right But it's also like hey it was a 15 Person tie for 21st place is saying that So important that we need standings is that so important to people to say that sentence that's silly sentence It was a 15 way tie for who cares place I Don't I don't think so to me it's yeah So I just want to flag this and ask the chat for folks thoughts about this idea In eight years. I've never thought about the potential of doing a west tournament awards this way As an open as an open citizen. Yeah, that's fascinating I need a process It's very interesting though. I'd love to hear. Yeah people's thoughts, you know reaction Most people probably don't care. I would imagine There's like the how do we determine five and oh actual winner and then there's 99% of like every other person sure. Yeah and I think for most people it probably just doesn't matter if they were 38th or 33rd Really right most people go to tournament say I'm gonna try to go three two I want a winning record. Yes. I'm gonna go three and two get five games in get out of the house Talk to people who like aos have a beer And so I I don't know I in my system. I think it's it's harmless to the casual player it's Probably quicker and easier for the to um Person who would have gotten the trophy still gets a trophy for going undefeated The only thing is I did a little mathematics and I'm hey, I'm a bachelor of fine arts But I did a little math. Okay American public school here and I'm pretty sure I did it right because it was just dividing by two windows 11 calculator just to Show it at a 50 player five round event. There's a maximum of two five an os Sure You can't have more than that. So it goes 50 25 12 and a half. Well, it's not really 12 and a half But one of those undefeateds would get pared down and so it would you're actually rounding up every time At a 100 player five round event, you have four five an os which would mean four golden trophies Like undefeated that's the max So four feels like a lot you'd rather have three like first second third, but still it's a hundred player event That's a lot And and like pause how many hundred player events happen every year? How many hundred player aos events happen every year? Right, how many hundred fifty where it's five five an os or 200 player events where it's seven Events that even approaching that big are probably already large enough that they're not two days They're three There may be even four adepticon lvo lvo already cuts to top eight Right so an event an event bigger than like 150 people is already probably expanding into solving this problem The right way by having enough rounds or cutting the top eight anyway Yeah, because both nova like 200 people And lvo like 200 people and i'm pretty sure adepticon is going to go this direction as well I'm not sure but I know the other two do at least Do cut to top eight Yeah Right and do you have that third day of play where it's like okay now we're going to actually we're going to actually figure this out yeah, because they're They're a tournament that that cares a little more about competition and they're huge and part of a Convention that's long and so they are they have they actually do have the time We go back to first principle. Why don't they do this? There's no time for it. Well, some tournaments are big enough They actually do have time for it right because those are big enough events Yeah, like legitimately you are making A weekend of it or whatever right like you're you're taking off work. I think that's the Either you're taking off work or you're not taking to go to adepticon right you you're there You're there for the event. You took a day or two off work to go there, right? And in fact adepticon only leaned into this because even last year Right, they had their their aos big event on friday and saturday Yeah, right So they were already like it wasn't like oh, we're not doing this because we can't let people take off work or something Like what no they had already leaned into that yeah And so I don't think my system having like seven five no's as a 200 player I don't think that's too bad because it scales into a different system beyond mine I think ideally and correct for all those like more than 150 person tournaments Which that now you're really cutting to a very small number of tournaments like people who tournaments that have more than 150 attendees In the us each year where we do we have a lot of tournaments But like tyler, how many events do you go to that have 150 plus attendees? Yeah, not that many. Yeah I can think of like Maybe three or four lbo adepticon uh nova I guess is up there now sure and Can con in australia Yeah, I want you to outside the us. Yeah, exactly. But like My point is this so like what we're really talking about here is Is the events that have You know, how many events have a hundred because that's that's really the number where you were like, okay Now it's breached be wrote or sorry. It's sort of breached to like three people or all five And those were handing out three trophies or something at a hundred the max is four and at 150 the max is five Right, and I think five is maybe a That's fine. It's only two more than the three you were going to have anyway But it does get a little silly when you start getting to seven. I admit But that's the real question is how many tournaments do we have that are like at least a hundred people But less than 150 or something like that, right? Yeah, yeah Everything bigger than that's going to go to the longer days That is not a big number Right. So so what are we talking about here? So at any rate that's see and to me What I love about that what I I'll I'll be on straight on I'll be really straight I like this system that that you've proposed now there's downsides and we'll talk about them. Yeah, there are But the reason I like this is because it's first of all it gets rid of all of the nonsense Of trying to figure out how we jack in a secondary system to do this differentiation Right, it just sidesteps the whole thing and says it lets the secondaries be as cool and interesting and fun as they Need to be in the game doing their primary purpose, which is making the game Do anything else. Yeah, right, right, right Yep, exactly so One of the reasons I love pulling it out of this Of even needing to be concerned about this is because then we can refocus what these things are supposed to be Which is everything else Right, like they're supposed to be there for game purposes not tournament purposes right And moreover, it'll let us then do things with these secondaries that are different. We could design them differently We can make different choices. We can take them out if we don't need them In certain in certain play modes Right because they don't have to be there. They're not like an absolutely required part of the game All right to sort of separate out points or something like that They don't need to be a base assumption like all sorts of things change. So Okay cool uh, sj arcade aos mtg edh games love it sj arcade said, uh, how many five o's happened at the last deptcon? Uh, I don't remember Because it was accidentally like the last deptcon. I believe was the one that had the problem. Was that last year Tyler or we had the That was last year. No, it was last year. Okay. Yeah No, I was gonna say the one we got where the four one went over top of the five o accidentally and then blah blah blah 20 22. Okay. Yeah Time is a flat circle. All right The how many people were at a deptcon last year? Does anyone know roughly? Actually, no, I think it was about 200 About 200. Yeah, it was they would have a maximum of seven five o's, but usually it's not the maximum usually Somebody gets a draw or doesn't win or whatever. Yeah a max of seven And they cut the top eight which makes sense in that case, right? It may have been 20 21 bins I I can't remember it was yeah one one 20 21 or 20 that feels like it was too long ago I don't feel like 2021 is correct I don't know though. Who knows all right. Let's talk about some problems Yeah, that's okay Let me go ahead and timestamp this Because i'm not coming back and watching my whole own show later to timestamp this. Okay You might say vince didn't we just talk about challenges? It's different. All right problems Battle tactics, especially when you are playing the same army regularly develop a pretty standardized pattern Like you will tend to do the same thing on turn one turn two Maybe three has variants. Maybe maybe four is often this but sometimes this and then five is always this is your cleanup one, right? It's like Like this is maybe my this is maybe my biggest complaint Yeah, it's made the game Quite stale to a lot of us, especially people. I think you play a lot. Yeah, like the game has gotten so stale to me. Yeah And it used to be so I used to feel differently At at first when battle tactics came out I didn't necessarily like them and I played with them and I didn't like them and then I played a lot Like once a week for a period of time And i'm like, oh, i'm starting to like battle tactics actually And that wore off really quick and then became stale And so I thought man the more you play the more you like battle tactics Which was true and then you hit a wall very quickly and you're like Oh, now i'm just man. It doesn't it kind of doesn't matter who i'm playing against what their army is What the battle plan is? Yeah, it matters, but Okay, every game I deploy like this Right, these three guys run round two I do that Right three it's up for grabs and then round four is the retreat all around five is the charge all and Every game is just like kind of the same thing And it yeah With our boy cw crying around in chat here nobody nobody nobody advanced that point cw Right, it's a logical fallacy easy logical fallacy. You're falling into there You're assuming that we're saying some ain't some other system was better because we said this Is has a a bad problem not at all. What's being said not an offer not advanced into facts on evidence Okay, of course standing around on objectives alone as the primary got boring as I said in the initial Challenges slide like last slide like 20 minutes ago Right is that part of the whole point of a secondary system is to advance Other things to increase fun to increase variability yada yada yada Right, but if that's the challenge we're trying to answer and this is the inevitable outcome of battle tactics, then We're failing, but those aren't the only two systems in the world Right, it's not as though it's like either we have battle tactics or we all go back to just standing on objectives And the battle tactics don't have to tell you to do To play exactly this way each turn right like the battle tactics don't have to be written in such a way where Your army basically Has to deploy like this and then three units within acts of each other all run or You have to be within six inches of three different board edges which kind of like Cells you what to do for an entire turn. They could be looser. They don't have to be that tight They could be do this one thing somehow At some point or they could be really do exactly what I say. So there's a lot of play there Um Also the the whole stale thing like yeah, they got stale. I think seasons could Be the answer to that Like right about the time that it becomes stale for people that are playing all the time. Hey look at that All right, it's just it's just in time for the new season to come out and give us all new bts And give us all new ones except they're not all new ones. They're the exact same as the old ones except slightly harder Hmm Yeah And the one you like the most is gone because it was the easiest one Because as a player you want ones that work 100 of the time always No randomness automatic which is what I want as a player I want five out of five guaranteed automatic zero rolling But then if you look at it like Hey battle tactics is a system we're putting into the game where everyone gets five of them For free like okay. Well, then why do they exist right? Hmm So we should make them harder. Well, what kind of difficulty do you want because there's There's harder like Just random, you know like a flip a coin if it's heads you get the points That's hard, you know Outcome way There's hard like Or there's difficulty like if your army is built this way you get it But if it's not you don't And because there's a bunch of them like that if you have some unit you kind of get them And if you don't you're not playing with that unit then you just don't There's ones that require you to like do something like kill something and there's some randomness there but people Are far more okay with that type of randomness kill a unit Because they feel like it's under their control Yeah, something I would like have every winter kill a hero, you know Where you need a roller to re up and then have a d3 finish somebody off if they're still in combat with you like Giants have that's close where it's like kill somebody with your throne your little your little rocks your little throne rocks Oh, you're throwing axes and fire slayers that one. Yeah um Okay, so yeah, there's different types of just like in video games like oh, how do we make this game more difficult? We'll just double everyone's health right so it takes longer to kill them That's like the quote-unquote lazy way or the not fun way of difficulty Maybe I would say challenge like challenging. Maybe that's the the good buzzword for difficulty is challenging But how do you do that in a game like aos without just leaning into the randomness? I actually don't know So so let me I want to touch on something you said because this is my next point on the slide which is This does add a lot of bookkeeping like it does and and sort of decision weight and stuff like that, right? and Like so there's there's a cost here to these Between the mental load of the decision-making remembering to do it during your turn Bookkeeping exactly who did what so on and so forth like it's real it's there right And we all as you said want to go five for five of these Right, that's that's just what everybody wants This is the classic game designer conundrum Where like what if you design the game so that everybody gets what they want the game is materially worse and your system is pointless right So like this is this is such a classic game designer challenge And the reality is most now can most armies Most players really can go Five for five, especially as we've seen New battle tactics be introduced through battle scroll and book tactics and stuff like that, right? um Now there is still inequity there don't give me a wrong can like most could be 51 percent that would be most right And just to be clear what most the word most means Define that for everyone okay um But it's there And so you got a lot of armies just doing that and the more armies that go five for five that have good battle tactic options Right, even in the current season where they became way more difficult and they did Um for for various and sundry dumb reasons because several of them revolve around dumb magic the worst system in the game Yo speaking of the new gorgers The one that has you being three different Board edges. Yeah surround and destroy the unit has to start on the table. No deep strikes allowed gorgers molding Imagine anyway, keep going. Well, they only have to go to the table that turn if you just you set them up in the next turn You could surround and destroy Uh, so yeah, you see yes, you got to think you got to get toward the future because that's what everybody's Everybody in suns is now using that regimen or a down with goblins every it's always three big guys and a bunch of tiny little morons that's every giant army I see now all right is like three megas and 20 little idiots And those dudes are just like they set up. It's like this side this side that side and here's my my megas And we just stand around and wait One guy's gonna cast the spell And round one and do the magic one for me and then next round we'll surround and destroy Three four points, right? Oh god easy. Don't talk to my sons ever again. Yeah, exactly um so You know these things are meant to be a differentiator But they often end up being like a mega part of the focus and this is something you and I chatted about a little bit In advance. Hey, whoa Yeah, I'm too much of an armchair designer, but not a real one to know my terms really uh so I was That that concept was right you were aware of it for sure And it's it's this thing where you you mean something to be a fairly minor part of the game It's meant to only come up and be like a a slight differentiator should all else fail Let me give you the classic example of this by the way because it's actually in aos right now In the current season, okay Uh Where but it ends up becoming like the dominant factor tyler the battle plan where Uh, you get to decide to pull up to two objectives if you have lower Points than the other player. Yes. Yeah, I believe nexus claps Uh, sure, but that sounds right. I can never remember the names of these things because battle plan names just like come Over here and go out the other awesome I can like describe the thing exactly and how to play it, but the name is irrelevant to me At any rate that one, right? Yep That thing it says it's a classic case of like sort of unintended consequences Yeah To a casual person who reads that they're like neat a catch-up mechanic Right or whatever like cool if i'm down on points. I get to decide to remove two of my opponent's objectives To us to a to a competitive player who reads that they're like awesome turn one. I touch no objectives I get my battle tactic go Yeah Yep, I watched players like I watched the top tables play this at a tournament It was like down the row Both people doing battle tactics and nobody touching objectives. It was the floor is lava Right like the little circles that were on the table the units would just be around them instead of in them right poison mushroom okay And that's a reference for the very old people in the audience uh and so That is so clearly not what was intended with that battle plan Right. Yeah, right. They thought they were making a catch-up mechanic. Oh the person would let now Here's a chance to claw your way back and now it's turn one Mexicans stand off. Nobody blink reservoir dogs just Exactly, exactly And you're just waiting and hoping that random roll because then it defaults to a random roll if you're tied Just breaks in your favor, right? Yeah, and then we go Okay, now that I've now that I've gotten lucky on an arbitrary coin flip and pulled two of your objectives. Now we go All right. Okay. Now. Let's fight after I got my power up. Yes So like that's a great example of this in in hand and I think that oftentimes battle tactics end up becoming the same thing Right there. They're clearly meant to be the lesser part of the scoring They're worth two the objectives are usually worth three. Okay. They're 40 to 60 percent That's small. Yeah one two more or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, and yet like I am in most turns Much more worried about my ability to get my battle tactic done than I am about being able to hold one two more Yeah, right Yeah, and it it might not be as serious in reality, but it's how I think players think and sometimes it kind of doesn't matter what the Reality is if players think away Then they just do like the Who if battle if battle tactics are a tiebreaker than round one. I only got four. I lost the trophy Right in 19 and a half hours Like it'll come to fruition, but right now First place is gone for me. Yeah, absolutely. That's what it's sort of like the whole game All of aos like shrinks down to can I get five for five every round? Even the rounds that might not like I still won the game Doesn't really matter Like I didn't get five out of five. I just lost the trophy and it's happening tomorrow at 8 p.m Yeah, I mean tombis talked about this right because he was in a tournament where he dropped a tactic in the first game So he went We'll call it 26 instead of 28. He won the game handily But he dropped a tactic right fluke of whatever luck happens like things happen, right? Yeah And he was like and that was his game one and he's like, okay cool. I first place is gone. I can't get it anymore He got kenshiro. You're already dead right And this is something that no one really cares about but like the competitive players will sure like this is like a 90 10 issue I think yeah 90 percent of players are just like They interact with battle tactics. Maybe they like them. Maybe they don't but then there's the There's the like eight people out of a hundred that are like really gunning for The top tables and they're the ones where the game shrinks down to that. Maybe that's okay a lot of times if you're hyper competitive at a game You end up playing it totally differently than everyone else does and that anyone that anyone even intended you to And it's weird, but maybe it's fine because you're a really small group and it's not affecting Most people and maybe that's okay Yeah For what it's worth anecdotally real quickly. I have noticed within myself that I have Gotten worse at standing on circles I think with the battle tactics system because my cognitive load is more focused On focusing on battle tactics than standing on circles. Well to beat my opponents Like I think that's legitimately been a thing for me over over the edition There have been games where I'm like, oh crap. I didn't actually focus on The main way that you're winning this game hold one hold two or more or or more than that in some instances like geometric pulse And yeah, so anyway, that's just kind of an anecdotal thing. I've noticed personally that came up at fly monkey against Yeah, I played a game or two with no battle tactics against some mods and I found in those games suddenly Like the meat and potatoes of the game became so important the area control the board control What happens next turn or next turn? With battle tactics when you're thinking ahead to the future You're mostly thinking about what battle tactic you're going to do next Sure For the most part and when you took them away I was thinking to the future. Okay. What Strategically what am I going to do for the rest of the game and this is my flank and that flank in this area and it was a lot less Taking stuff from each other just sort of back and forth and it felt more. I don't know. I really really liked it Interesting It was but I think it was it was like I don't think it's better somebody said like oh battle tactics Something better than in second edition. I don't know If I would compare them I suppose I could because I was playing but It felt awesome to not play with them for those few games like freedom but I think it was like You're crawling through the desert and almost dying of thirst and you come across a diet caffeine free mountain dew And that's gross Oh, it's just rc. It's just rc cola. Never mind Go ahead But you're almost dying and so you drink it and it's the best drink you've ever had in your life, you know So maybe it was that And I would get bored with not playing with battle tactics five games later like maybe that's true. So yeah, sure sure The other things that I think are that are worth mentioning is I got a whole host of other battle tactics All right, I don't mean to interrupt but Dana jazzy as you said something great in chat The difference between winning games and playing perfectly Sure Yeah, the stress of having to play perfectly every round and not just Okay, this round. Can I just win? You know Yeah, maybe I maybe that's what I don't like Well, and I'll also say that that does breeze over and assume that playing perfectly is possible What I mean by that is like that's not exactly what happens because some things like this is a game with rng Oh, yeah, it's not possible. But you're like you're you're mentally trying to do that, right? Right So like no the difference isn't always the difference between winning games and playing perfectly Like you could have put yourself in the best situations But like sometimes you do just roll snake eyes and re-roll into snake eyes like that is a possible outcome on the dice It's happened. I have I have In a tournament rolled snake eyes to charge And then re-roll the charge and got snake eyes again like that happens. It's like that's like your it's like your favorite peccard quote, right? boom That I talked about in the Attitude video. Yes, you can You can commit no mistakes and still lose that's not What is it? That is not a flaw that is life or something like that It's I I love everything about like god bless. That's a great show. There's another there's another whole show. Um Uh the Yeah, it's possible That's good. It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That's not a weakness. That is life. I believe Yeah, that is the quote In my video, I went farther with it and said not only It's not Possible to commit no mistakes. You're just not aware of them. Sure. So it's even it's even worse You're it's not possible to commit no mistakes if you think you Didn't then You're just not aware of them. That's all right And that too is fine Yep, and so so that's why I say it's not just the differences in winning games and playing perfectly though that though You're also right. Hey, will that that's the stress you feel like you're under Yeah, right the position that sort of puts you in Um, yeah, so I I both things right. I just wanted one if it's possible to hold two Complicated ideas in your head when when dealing with nuanced subjects not on twitter friend, but yeah, in real life in real life There are a lot of a quick other just quick hits like battle tactics things like this are big obstacles for new players Because it's a lot more information. They have to like take in and learn to understand and Figure out the game grind to a halt. Yes Yes, because they have to make these complicated choices There's a lot of men to load they wildly they wildly vary in difficulty They often create a win more problem where like the the person who's easily going five for five is the person Who's just like Absolutely just crushing their opponent, right and it's just a mismatch completely the easiest way to get five out of five is just to be Seal clubbing and curb stomp your opponent. Yeah, right Like that's how you get five out of five for sure if you're in a tight game Equally matched on skill and army skill against skill Right, then then it's like You actually are very likely to drop a battle tactic in what is otherwise a great game Right. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah had a lot of games like that to a flying monkey. Yeah events where I'm thinking of the luminous game Thankfully because we were playing fast we two 45 rounds. We had 15 minutes left and I literally Took 10 minutes shuffling through my remaining battle tactics cards to try to desperately find a battle tactic to I think when my one point or lose by two points something right and I couldn't do it But the fact that it was just a weird experience like really this is this is what the game has like turned into I'm taking I'm taking the 10 minutes I can take and I'm looking through these remaining cards to try to find about it Just like and then it happened in another game where yeah, it's like they're in tight games You know, we talked about the the game gets stealth and smooth brain is setting a fight for you know Like planning out your this battle tactic in round one this battle tech round two Certainly there are obviously going to be games, especially in competitive tournaments against other against good players Where it's going to get trickier those players are going to be better on average at denying your battle tactics You're going to be in tougher spots on average, etc. etc. So but that yeah that experience of Playing an army that I wasn't intimately familiar with slaves. I kind of played them a whole lot, right Uh, yeah, I was trying to shuffle through the battle tactics to figure something out. It was it was a it was not experience Okay Like Dana's had a really good comment here of our battle tactics just a bandage on the lack of variation the battle plans Save that thought we're going to come back to to that kind of a thing Um, because we're going to we're going to talk about some some various concepts later on Yeah, that's where you could hit them if you wanted to You could put all of them in the battle plan section They would be less catered to the army than So that's perhaps a downside if you want to talk about lore or Like feeling of the game Um, you could put them in both places do a lot of stuff in the next slide and says that friend There you go. All right. So here's my question The question I have and and this to me Is the definitive question Okay Is the current system of battle tactics with all its pros and cons The best system we can imagine Is this the mountaintop No Yeah Yeah I mean chat. I want to hear you sound off. Yes or no. Is this current system of battle tactics? Is this the absolute best That could exist that we can imagine there's no better world So we've just got to sit with this existing system. Maybe we can maybe we can make some minor tweaks around the edges But basically we've we we're we're we're we're at peak warhammer right here Okay, is that what we're saying? and my answer is uh No, hell no Just very simple. This is more of a call in response than a than a question, but sure Yeah, right Do you guys feel that the the community is there at least a small majority on this question and the answer is no? Or what's your what's your temperature? It's hard for me to say because even if you Even if you're like a content creator and like oh you tweet and a bunch of people will read it Then you stream and you make videos and stuff You're still only like selecting for your audience And your audience tends to think like you do unless they're hate watching, right? Yeah, and so maybe it's a little echoey But um Yeah, for the most part I get a resounding no Yeah, yeah, just just all around just yeah most people just don't like them a lot Yeah, I could talk about like how much I see this or that but again, I'm just kind of selecting for my audience so Yeah, but a lot of people are Not playing as much in third edition and talking about second edition like who I liked it better or We don't play with battle tactics and it's cool or we just don't like them or this and that are just usually interestingly enough it's weird, but I think I I don't mean to say casual people. Maybe I'll say like the average player If there's something in the rules that they don't like They will just like not play Actually, even if it's really simple to solve like if you don't like Priority you could just play aos with your friend In your basement with your doritos spicy purple bag and just you go I go you could do it You could just not play with terrain rules if you think they're annoying to roll the dice for you could just not use battle tactics And some of them do but most of them are just like I'll wait I'll play armored course six, you know big robot The whole like what you just had the discussion around the the Just a return to a thing I said earlier around the double turn or whatever was Part of the discussion on the on the top episode because obviously scott's a known double turn hater, right? So Uh, okay, that was interesting there. Yes Uh, yeah, I found they tend to just lean back and then like now I'll wait until the big game Is this weird like playing the game the way It is The people just do And some people change it, but I don't know for the most part. They're like, no, I'll just wait. I'll play bothers gate three Game so good actually And then you know, maybe fourth edition comes out if it's more of my liking I'll play it more And that seems to be like a prevalent attitude Among the average wargamer. They'll literally just wait for a new edition or something instead of make one change That they would like to the game and then play like a custom version of the game with them and their friends Again, some people do this, but Yeah, it was it was interesting for me to note because I do that too Maybe everyone is this some sort of human nature thing? Like dockside extortionist should probably be banned in commander, but I'm playing it You know, yeah, or I mean it's the I think that It is very much one of those things that's that's what they struggle with the whole episode is that very discussion Right of how much is it the struggle of like human nature versus this and what's the good in the bed? But but my point here is like just just to swing us back around to this I don't think I think maybe tyler to answer your original question. There's some Small minority would say like this is the best we can imagine but even like I think You know, even this chat the the sort of best answer we got I think was it's the best so far Which I'm not sure I disagree with that Right, that's probably true Um, I think I would probably fall down on that side um Not many candidates not many candidates yet. No, no, but yeah, sure Uh democracy may be one of the worst forms of government we've ever created, but it's the best one we've Created so far right or whatever that that sort of thing. Yeah um and so I Like to me this answer is so obviously no and the majority of people who read it would say it's no And then we're it's it's just like there's that the problems are so glaring We can obviously imagine a better world Right And so regardless of what we want to change in our individual games Because because the real answer to your question. Hey, we'll have to go back to that like people changing stuff and that kind of thing Right. Is it some play groups will say hey, you know what? We're just We're just not gonna do land destruction like you know my commander pod. There's nobody's running land destruction I got armageddon's and no armageddon. No, you know that stuff's falling out of my my But I don't put it in decks right because it's not fun Is that no we're like, oh, that's a lot of fun. That's a different experience obviously because you know commander's not really a competitive type of thing right But most warhammer like that Yeah, most warhammer if you're playing with your friends in basement games Such as like the vast majority of games isn't exactly the most competitive thing either To be fair you're getting together to drink beers talk about your weed Roll some dice and push some minis around like that is the heart the beating heart of this game Right people taking this game not very seriously Right There's nothing wrong with that It's great So I think that regardless of whether or not it's there it's still Some people will just make that choice. They'll be like, no, we're not doing armageddon. We're not doing whatever discard No, no turgurt at this table Keep making magic references, right? Sure. Yeah, I but then again, there is a difference between I don't put armageddon and extra turn cards in my deck because I don't want to hog the time at the table but that's different than printing out a printer sheet and writing All time walks are banned and putting it up in your local store. Sure. Like there's that the the extra step. I think is like um self-policing or maybe design restrictions On what you're doing versus okay in this space in my local here The ban list is suddenly like 300 cards long and it just features every tutor Every extra turn card every land destruction Yeah, there's an episode of brooklyn 9 9 where uh, peralta and boil are on a stake out And they're in a stake out where they have spent like eight days together in a small apartment room, right? And the captain's like you're gonna go crazy You can't nobody no two people can stay together for that much time without going crazy and killing each other And on day three, they're like, you know what? Let's just make a quick no-no list of the things that the things we don't want the other person to do We'll just eight items for each simple no-no list, right? By like day five, there's like 300 items scrolled on the wall. It's like 12 monkeys. It's lunatic crap You know because because that's what happens. It's going off the rails, right? I think that's people's fear With tinkering with the main system is like once you once you pop the top of that particular pringles can You're gonna go until your arms stuck in there. Yeah, you can't eat one. Yeah, right So I think that the the other thing is there's just that there is a subset of people who's sort of psychographic profile is such that like Uh, they're not going to make changes. They want to play what is on offer on the game Yeah, and it could be better, but that's the game Right That's a rule is a rule is a rule like that's the game And it could be better and I hope it changes in the future But it's not my job to do it. I'm not playing custom version Right. I want to play the game the game that's on offer from the designers If I drive from here to the store, I want to play against somebody and we don't have to reinvent the whole game We have a shared language Um, yeah, maybe it's down So But to me We can imagine better Okay, we can we can we can do better. So let's talk about kind of the systems that we might want here some thoughts This is before we get into brainstorming. I just want I want to set us up with some thoughts Okay Uh, okay First question How do we provide for an interesting time in the games creating alternative items to play for right to have a more interesting and varied experience? I think that's has to be a stated goal Right Yeah Okay And then my second question was how do we provide a system that allows for more differentiation in a large turning? Or do we just play more games? I think we set this to the side because I like the second answer And if the when if you did can't if you can't play more games, then we do your answer, but we'll come back to it Okay, I want to break these up into two separate things. Yeah And then Can we keep the game interesting beyond the point where you're pretty sure you're losing or should we just pack up and move on? Okay, like is the right answer there comes a point where you should just concede right Uh, like this sort of gladiator thing, you know the beginning of gladiator when when they're out there And he's like they're staring down the the Germanic tribe or whatever and he's like how come these barbarians don't know that they're defeated? And maximus is like would would you or would I would you? right Yeah, knowing when to succeed as a when to concede is a skill at least from magic And so uh, or if you prefer the uh, kenny rogers reference, uh, you got to know when to hold them When to fold them when to walk away when to run you all take that as well Lots of lots of references to this over time, right any rogers, huh? Yeah I didn't um man, I didn't know that I just don't think i'm in the right condition for that The show covers a lot of ground on references. That's what we do. We it's a wide My condition isn't in the right condition for a kenny rogers reference, I guess Well, he did do the remix of it with wyclef jaune, so he can also go to that version if you did he so oh, yes Oh, it's exactly what you would imagine it to be at any rate There are a lot of people in the chat that are under the age of a million that are not getting what we're talking about, but that's fine Who were like five when when the fuji's were successful. Yes, absolutely. Um, okay So I have a complicated answer to number three. I think or maybe a thought about it. Let's opine hit me Can we keep the game interesting beyond the point where you're pretty sure you're losing? Let's pretend you are right Okay, you're mathematically you have lost the game. Okay Then the game's over and you should concede. That's it Uh playing beyond that or incentivizing someone to play beyond that I think is weird Okay, uh, what's your carrot on the stick this like, um, I don't I think if you've lost 45 minutes in I don't I don't think we should come up with a system To force you to keep playing a lost game for the next two hours okay for A pes dispenser or what or a blizzard buck or whatever sure I if you've lost I think You probably want to get out of a game that's totally lost So we should let you for the most part but If you think you've lost but you're wrong right Now conceding is a skill It's going to separate players If you're mistaken and you think you've lost well now You're doing yourself no favor by quitting the game But that's what it means to be Good, like if you get better, maybe you have players who they think they've lost and way more importantly Their opponent thinks they have won But they're like, oh, why is this person still playing, you know, and maybe they can Snatch victory out of the jaws of defeat, right? Right. And so that's cool I think that's a fine thing to have To give them the option of of doing that um and then secondly, um Maybe the maybe it's the game and it's not some it's not attacked on secondary maybe it's It's the game that can keep you playing Or stop someone from losing instantly or something like that. Sure. Um And this would be Like you'd have to change like everything, but I'm just I'm thinking about the like easy Bad version where it's like Let's pretend there's no such thing as shooting past 12 inches and there's no such thing as alpha strike at all It just doesn't exist. Okay So that you like literally can't win the game before turn four or something like that So like most of the history of warhammer fantasy We're the only thing that shot more than the distance you're talking about Is like your heavy artillery that's in the back line and you couldn't kill it a whole You couldn't kill an enemy army with your heavy artillery You could like maybe kill a unit or two or do do a little bit damage here or there or something, right? Yeah, like just mechanically because of the tools all the armies have available to them It's like impossible to win before turn four. Sure. Well, then this wouldn't be a question We wouldn't even need to ask this question, right? Right, right the sort of pace of the game matters, right? Yeah, and furthermore We are not a best of three match Like round thing, you know, we major sigma doesn't play best of three. There are no sideboards It's one huge game Should one huge game have like Oh, i'm playing against soul blight I can't win I am I am scissors to the to the rock or should there be like such a thing as alpha strike kill you immediately If our rounds are only one game and there's no sideboards or and all the silver bullets are basically bad for the most part, right? Should we even have games that are that? Dynamic and easily blown up dude, it takes The average if two people are starting a game of Aegis Ignar There let's pretend both of those people are walking towards a table. How long in real life minutes? Does it take until they've both finished deploying and they're about to start playing the game? Like someone's rolling a dice or making a game an in-game decision. Yeah Yeah, 20 minutes. I think 20 minutes is probably pretty reasonable. Yeah That's a long time to lose instantly like on average. Yeah So that's a lot of and versus magic where you shuffle up Next game or like a fighting game Or you press continue Yeah, I mean when even setting up for the game is 20 minutes Yeah, should there be like an instant fold over, you know possibility That's obviously a huge topic in itself. Joe. I mean, I do think we have complained a lot this year about the state of the game I have not felt the ecosystem Residing in that space more than it has in some time than it has over the last over the last year Showing up to flying monkey game one getting 42 mortal wounds 50 damage and round one before I've moved model Went all the way to Wichita, Kansas to to play against that round one the 425 wound right that that's good time. You drive eight hours That's good time. All right. Yeah Yeah So It's yeah, I'd love to talk more about that because I know that's a huge topic But uh, yeah, it's just I think there's there's obviously a go too far There's a there's a nothing happens nergal versus nergal and everyone is bored to tears and nothing happens, right? There's a There's an and I think that's probably worse And I think the aos designers agree with me on that Because in a vacuum something dies and I think they've coated that into the dna of aos very well all over the place Yes, I think that's first day. Yeah all else being equal something will die I mean, that's why battle shock even exists like as a mechanic even though it kind of doesn't that's like the idea for it Just in case, you know And so we don't just want Armies of move four staring at each other and like attacking and nobody dies and then all right round five something happens, right? but I think we're almost in the other extreme Or no, we're not that attack is has actually helped that Because you can't murder your opponent that hard You have to keep them alive to get full points out of it or talk it out Which is as we had talked about maybe not the best solution So while I'm thinking about it to go back to where you started Can we keep the game interesting beyond the point where you're pretty sure you're losing or should we pack a move on? I do want to give a shout out. It's so serving. We do it a lot on the show, but my best Example of that over the eight years has been the nashkon schemes because that was designed to Provide an answer to this question the answer in the affirmative Here is something that you can do That is worth enough points that is very much worth you doing it That it is a you can perceive you could have the story a narrative that it's a consolation prize In the structure of the nashkon tournament scoring system It was very meaningful to do this It gave you gave you something to do during your game regardless of how that game was going and that was the as far as I We perceived the feedback that was the overwhelming experience That players had at nashkon over the years that it achieved its goal and it had multiple goals But that was one of the key goals So anyway, I just wanted to give a mention to that because that's the my favorite system that I've seen in terms of doing that thing Well, it should also be noted that it didn't encourage you to play forever Which is also the other thing that said kind of flip to what you're talking about. Hey, well, right because It like the thing that was that happened with schemes is they encouraged you to play to a point like okay I'm pretty sure I'm going to lose But if I can get this thing done Then I'm still salvaging it in some way and then once we get to that point I can concede Right, but I still have something I'm actively playing for but not necessarily like I don't need to stretch this into sure You know madness territory, right where it's like, okay, you have 15 our points. I have my Uh war boss is going to keep running right or whatever, you know, you know, right? I got one butcher. Let's go Yeah, exactly, right I mean at that point you might as well just play it out because your turns ain't gonna last very long so sure sure But yes, you don't you don't have to feel like well, I've got to do this thing I think probably that's this is one of the things that Everyone else probably just feels differently than me and that's just how it is. I think I bet like the average person seems to want to Accomplish something or do something even if they lose they have that Moral victory. Well, I'll go out on my own terms kind of thing, you know, that seems to be common and I don't get that it just like the um Uh the people want a first place trophy That's why not to do my system because they want that first place trophy, right and sure to me It's not just a trophy. It's like Deserving I guess Let me let me ask you this Miles I think I'm just different than people sure Miles Dyson Okay, you know who I'm referencing dials my son Miles Dyson the this is Terminator, correct the the yes of of from told on the address I'm ready to say it exactly Okay, we really we really are dating ourselves This is a little bit better than Kenny Rogers, but it's it's not much better fine Spoilers for a 30 year old movie 31 year old movie now Oh, jeez That is an accurate statement that movie was released in 1992 I went to see it with my father who took me to see that movie. Okay, so uh at any rate Miles Dyson dies. Yeah, he gets he gets shot up pretty badly. Well, they foreshadowed it. He's called Dyson. That's your point But Miles Dyson has that like he's got the the clicky in his hand, right for the bomb And he's like everybody's running into the building and and he's like waiting for everybody to run in And then he's just like you see him there and he's like Like trying to force himself to stay alive Until he just can't anymore and then he his hand falls off the dead man switch and boom Yeah, it's like Ripley and it's like Ripley and aliens or not Ripley. Uh, I can't remember the name of the Cool chick and the we're all gonna die guy with the grenade and aliens anyway. Yes. Yes, exactly Yeah, uh, Vasquez a muscle chick Vasquez. Yeah. Yeah And so yes same thing And like this is a very common trope in action movies in general, right? And In general you watch that scene and like obviously The sort of greater scope of the world his death is still pretty Just he died right? He died. He doesn't make it to the end of the movie. He he lost Yeah, but you watch it and you get the one manly tear and you salute him like metal gear three and you're like, okay He went out Such and such. He still accomplished something. Yeah, right? And so that's my point is that I think mechanisms like like that's clearly a thing We as humans like right as it wouldn't show up as a trope In media all the time if we didn't like it So having that thing that can be I don't want to call it a pure victory because a pure victory means you still actually won Right, so you don't have the troops to do it again. Yeah, right But but having that thing that you're like Yes, I lost but right Yeah, right, but then it but then you translate it to real life and you're playing a game against someone and you swing for lethal And they're like I'm gonna lighting bolt myself. So I go out on my terms and you're like sure Can you sign a sheet? Well Good job, you know And maybe I'm weird because I feel that way but Yeah, I think I think I understand your I understand your human nature thing and I I take the point Okay so I think that it's It's it's time. It's time. We go into brainstorming. Okay. I'm gonna lay out my solution For for these things. Let's talk about let's and what I'm gonna do here is I'm actually gonna okay, so So Secondary and then we're gonna come down here. I wanted this where I'm I'm channeling my inner hey, well okay for this yes, uh, and then Uh Differentiator, I'm channeling manner. Hey, well by typing on stream, right? This is some classic. Yeah, the live doc here Yes, exactly. Okay. No, I had to get a new live doc. I yeah, I know Yeah, it was like, uh hundreds of thousands of words And it started to lag when I opened it up So I had to get a new one amazing And people keep saying can you just release that? No You're like this is like, um stream of consciousness typing live and it's like a hundred thousand words and it's not going to make any sense I won't be releasing it I won't be releasing the director's cut so Okay I don't know if the stream here's the clicky-clack. I don't know if the clicky-clack comes through on my microphone When I when I type I'm not sure. I don't think I heard it, but I wasn't listening my I've got my microphone set to be on like voice Detection and not yeah, I gotta get one of those with like a gate on it Yeah, and I don't have like a phone Yeah, I don't have like a fully mechanical keyboard. Okay. It does. Cool. Me. I assume if I'm talking you'll hear it Uh, all right Here's my solution For secondaries. Let me just start with something we haven't even mentioned yet But I want to lay this out I want a secondary system that has that is not required in the game For all the reasons we've talked about that where it can be a positive Okay to not have to worry about this like you mentioned Being able to have the experience of playing without secondaries Yeah, okay Hmm I want there to be some version of the game Where we don't have that Okay so to me There needs to be three battle packs on offer with fourth edition. Let's just say this is for fourth edition. Okay a starter battle pack which is stripped of All that now this stuff's even a concept right be up. No secondaries It's it's stand on objectives and kill things and and even then we're probably cutting other stuff out too Yeah, like no mystical terrain probably right probably no grand strat battle tactic Yep, all that ancillary stuff goes Right are arguably not even priority But you could you could you could keep it to you sure there's like anything that's not the primary loop could probably be stripped right um Like you want to give people enough of the mechanics, but really you're just trying to teach them the primary loop yeah, well, then you probably do want ready because it's but Kind of central to the whole aos experience. So maybe you do He is a core mechanic of the identity of aos. It's a good question. It very much is yeah I think it is. I think if it went away you would have to basically rewrite the whole game Yeah, and rebalance literally everything So in which case I think it's pretty central Okay, then you've got a matched play battle pack Which has Optionally the ability to use the secondaries like they're fully vetted with it that you can use them or not And like written in there is when using this matched play battle pack This is like just your stock basement at home matched play battle pack You can use these secondaries optionally if you do here's here's the things you choose Okay, right cool Then you have an event battle pack Which in which these things are absolutely part of it and are used for skill testing Whatever these things are I like I'm not necessarily calling them battle tactics. I'm just Amorphously describing some secondary mechanic. Yeah Right, and there they're automatic. So you have a no optional Yes yeah That's on the product side starter would be in the core would match to be in the core Sure 100% and then seasonal ghb is event in other words Oh, yes, there should be a portion of the seasonal ghb that has the event battle pack for that season in it I'd like there to be more in the ghb than that Because you want to sell it to more people than just tournament players or whatever right And by the way if people want to use like the event battle pack or whatever, of course go ahead go nuts Right, like yeah, like it's not like you're not allowed It's just You know if you want to play your home magic games Under the level of rules that you would use at the pro tour You can Right, it's like there's nothing stopping you. Yeah. Yeah, just most people don't Like the level of rules enforcement and stuff like that, right? Um, just most people don't Um, and and because like that's just not the the sort of way you want to operate at that moment. So That's that that's not you're not practicing Right, right. So like, well, are you practicing for that? Then yeah, if you're not practicing then I don't know why have the mental load Exactly You're doing the run up to your event and you want to get those good games and you just use the event battle pack Great. No problem Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Okay All right, this replace Um open narrative matched I think so because I think though like I narrative can still be there I don't I don't think open is anything. I think that's just nothing Open is for a store demo and that's it, right? I just don't think it's anything Yeah, I think narrative has been shoved to the site and it needs to exist But it largely exists like it has a home it's called like path to glory and narrative book supplements that you put out That allow you to play through the narrative schemes And you should have narrative battle plans and battle tomes that allow you to play those things Like narrative stuff is really important and cool And I want it to be fully supported my point is people like that's that's constructing its own whole little ring-fenced bouncy castle right It like it's you decide you want to go do that it's heavier Than the normal game it often gets treated like that's sort of this kind of a thing where it's like open narrative Match play and it's like no no no no It's more of a new game plus Right, right So yeah, I think narrative still exists, but this is the new breakdown starter match play event Right, and the narrative is just its own thing. It doesn't need to be part of this It's just it's its own thing. You have narrative supplements and narrative options and yada yada Path to glory and so on none of that should go away. That should also be there. It's great stuff. Okay Uh all right so Tyler what do you think about my breakdown here? Just like just lay in some foundational elements of this is how we we we start breaking these things down. Does that make sense to you? Yeah, yeah seems reasonable. Okay Okay Where should secondaries be? Where should they go? You don't mean within packs you mean Like should they be in army books should be in the core should they be in battle plans should they be in seasonal ghp Yep, like whatever these things are Okay, like we're again, we're talking amorphously about the concept not battle tactics, right You you just laid it out perfectly. Hey will right they could be a core rules thing Just sort of there and static Yeah, um the example there I would use it be feats in d&d Yeah, right that sits there in the base book as an optional system. Most people use it I've never believed that lying data from d&d beyond that said most people don't use feats like that's That is improper filtering Okay, I cannot believe that Yeah, no, I disagree. That's me. All right. I have never met a d&d player Like a table that doesn't allow feats. Some players will take them or use stat bumps instead, but like Wild to me. No incorrect data. You have filtered incorrectly disbelieve Okay, oh you're starting a d&d game. Do you allow feats? Right? That'd be lunatic. Yeah, okay So They could be in the core book And that's just the set for like for the addition, right? Whatever the secondary system is it's just like it's here It's in the core book. That's what we've got They could be in a seasonal supplement like you mentioned like they currently are right ghp or something like that They could be in the battle plan Right and that every battle plan has its own thing They could be uh They could be in the army books. Yes. Thank you. David Herron. That's insane Uh, all right at any rate they could be in any of these places or or even additional stuff that I haven't That I haven't mentioned, right? We haven't limited it. Where where do you Yeah, they could be in the complete spironic handbook, right? Like some they just release, uh um battle tactical Right volume two and it's just complete battle tactical. Yes or whatever. Yeah. Yeah 100 percent Yep Where do where do you want it to be? Um Like american express that's everywhere you want to be True If they're in the battle tomes, it means they have the opportunity to be really cool and flavorful and customized for your army Yep, which is good in theory um I would say that the current ones that are I am dissatisfied with on all levels but There is the opportunity for that. So let's That's good. Um, if they're in the battle plans Then they're well, I was going to say they're more generic, but that's not true They're just very tailored towards whatever that battle plan is trying to do It helps the battle plan be a little more than just circles and uh red and blue Heteris lines that are annoying to do in real life. Sure. Um On the page So it would probably help battle plans be a little more interesting um I don't want them in the core book probably because I think Um, it feels like universal artifacts then which to me was a band-aid because people didn't have artifacts That becomes a hanging chad for the next two months or two years. I mean um I would just assume not have them in the core book at all. Um Seasonal place is very legit to put them in as well because they can Then it's really about the campaign narrative and everything like that. Sure How bad is it that they're everywhere? I guess because they kind of are now They're in the books army books and they're in the seasons How bad is that I guess and they're in the core book by the way There is a set in the core book. That's only for that battle pack, but they are there. Oh, yeah What does this mean? It means that probably the The ones that are in the season will so far what has happened I don't know if this has to happen But the seasonal ones get more and more restrictive and annoying and not fun every season it seems And so the core book ones that you used to think weren't so good apparently are Suddenly right over go back and look at them core book battle type It's like play a game with those and only those and you'll be like wow This is a completely different experience than where we've gotten to now two and a half two years in two and a third years in So look at the drawn battle tome stuff Seems to really matter Tyler, what about you? I want to get want to get your take on this. Where where I'm just putting out the world for these things to be Okay, well, I'm Personally not sure this is the ideal way to approach it in my mind right now Go for it. Hit me with your back me around spin. So yeah In my mind, I'm still trying to Get a sense of of what I think Feels like an approximate ideal design for this in the first place. What are the variables? Are we talking about? one Secondary objective that a lot of scheme structure. Are we talking about? Something like the 40k system where obviously now they have two directions that you can go You can go with the You select your three objectives I think at the start of each game if I recall, I don't think it's in the list building stage I could be wrong on that either it's one of those right But they're worth fewer points than if you do the used to be called melstrom of war I don't know what it's called now. Yeah, then if you ran them your way through it. Yeah Run them your way through it. Those are worth more because I guess the idea is that they're going to be a little more challenging There's different incentives for each direction. I would guess the melstrom of war to this war what it's called Will tend to incentivize more of the toolbox list Because you are trying to cover a broad array of variables whereas as opposed to The preselector three you're honing in on those three. So I think they're both interesting But so that's kind of a cool system. So like that's one question immediately in my mind like What is sort of the ideal goalie lock space in terms of number of secondary objectives? And that would help me think about okay, where are they located? I could certainly see AOS battle plans that have one second one secondary objective essentially per battle plan Like that seems pretty reasonable to me in general We have gotten Carried away with complexity as we've talked at infinitum about With this game and battle tactics is one example of many. So it's just it's way too much We're outside of that goalie lock zone. So so we need to Narrow down one secondary objective I could see but yeah, I don't have a good answer in my head right now I'm kind of more at the moment from five one every turn What's that all the way back? Strategy but written so that it's not just win more Like is that enough or Yeah, it I hate to like to me I hate to say it it does feel like I've always really liked the 40k system from a distance personally. That's just me I haven't thought tremendously about it. I don't have a lot of personal experience with it I played eighth edition a little bit The I like that in terms of like trying to think about a goalie lock zone I like the constraints. It's healthier constraints in my mind whichever direction you go in I mean there's different ways you can do that right like I said You could do the the current version that they have or you pick one I I think there's interesting advantages with each I mean the idea of a random deck Okay, so if I'm a competitive player, right, I know Let's just that gets in the question of are we talking about each Is it just one set deck like we've talked about would be nice with our battle tactics It's not battle tone battle tactics added to the set, right? We've talked about that forever Okay, so you have I don't know 20 cards and okay I'm going to be planning for these 20 cards and then I get into an interesting headspace where competitive players where okay, I've got to I'm going to plan to cover 15 out of 20 and I'm hoping I'm going to get five or I'm going to cover 20 out of 20, right There's some interesting elements there and list design, etc Um, I like that but I don't really have a clear idea in my head like what is an approximate ideal I don't know where you guys are. So that's that's where I'm at at the moment Sure and and let me so one of the reasons I approached it like I did with these questions in this order Kind of laying this out like this Was because I didn't want to jump Not that you're doing something wrong like you're asking the right question styler. I wanted to get there Yeah But I was hoping that if we like kind of laid out some of the other elements first and like built a foundation Then that would help restrict our choice architecture From what you're talking about here, right? Because you're right There's a lot of directions we could go with this and you're you're absolutely exploring the pros and cons Which is which is more or less exactly what I wanted to get to right because to me My answer for where these things should go by the by In the trash Right in the ash bin of history um No, like where these things should go I think that if you make that decision and you say it's a seasonal thing you might end up Creating a different secondary system Then if you say They're in the battle plans, which would also lead to a seasonal system because assumingly the battle plans rotate as well Yeah, right And so to me it's like How much do you weight The different elements of what is important about them If it's some kind of set of things that are seasonally rotating, but it's a known quantity Yeah Okay Then you can build toward it Right you like as you mentioned you could build your list toward it And that could be a valuable thing that we we can say has a high value structure If they sit in the battle plans With most to is not revealing the the specific battle plans until after lists have been submitted Right, you can know the whole universe, but you have no idea what you're actually gonna play Yeah, right And so it could it could incentivize sort of different different things about what what you're doing Yeah, let's let's boy. I'd rather now Sure. I think a lot of people probably would And with that deck of cards, I'd rather I'd rather choose than pull a random card But I always like I tend to err on the side of giving the player a choice when they're Building stuff and having their decisions matter than randomness, but also I'm kind of spiky So naturally I would hate randomness obviously, right? So sure There's that too It's not a surprise that when I been you know, we when we all came together and did the scheme system Mr. Timmy over here was like, well, we'll we'll have a random draw to decide the your initial lot, right? Like what a surprise. Yeah. Yeah, right I think we eventually did a you can turn You can give two back and Get another two or no give one back what we do. We ended up with seven You draw seven you can give one back. Did we have that at one point? Anyway? Yeah, I think we matter. Yeah, just to try to even things out a little bit, but yeah But let's move to something at us that you both just hit on because I think this is the important thing Like we can hone in on this. Let's move away from the where they go Yeah, right that is a bit that is a bit obtuse Do these things have to be every turn? No, could we For a secondary that's like one thing You're trying to do Over the course of the game. Now that one thing could take multiple turns to do Yeah So it's not as like you could just complete it all at once and it doesn't necessarily have to happen at the bottom of five This is where most grand strats are pretty boring, right? And you could fight over it. It might not be personal What if there's only one that any player can get and so if one gets at one necessarily doesn't Right If it was in a battle plan that'd make a lot of sense You couldn't do that if it was in the battle tome for instance, right? Well, I guess you could but it would make less sense there Right And that gets to my next I had like two questions and one was Do they have to be worth points? Because if they if they are worth points, then you're going to get situations Where on this battle plan or that battle plan or maybe always If you have like maybe two Battle tactics a game and they're worth two and the average score of the game Is like 25 to 18 Then maybe they just don't matter Okay, okay I didn't follow that and you'd have to scale their points to how many points on average that battle plan would have to tend to go, you know so they'd have to be pretty From one battle or for one battle plan to the next you'd have to really Make sure the I don't know how you would do this actually it's kind of tricky find a Like a zone of points That's pretty consistent between all the battle plans so that the battle tactics actually matter Or maybe they're not worth points. Maybe it's you must be this tall to ride like if you haven't succeeded at the The one battle tactic you like can't win the game You can only tie or something like it could be like that for instance Or it could give you an actual bonus on the table, which is the most dangerous one If you get this thing that unit like plus one attacks or something like that Which favors this or that and it's also scary But you could reward in a different way entirely like you reward with power during the game and then the person Maybe has a higher chance of winning because they got some buff or something like that Yeah, the second half of that question was um What exactly Is the type of thing that they should ask you to do Because the game already has you stand on objectives perform some power projection and um board control And probably kill stuff Right So if we want battle tactics to be different They probably shouldn't ask you to do any of that Or maybe they want they want you to do it You should be doing something completely different than any of that right or or at least different in some some meaningful way Because a lot of battle tactics that players like are the ones that ask you to have already eaten breakfast this morning Right exactly do something you are already going to do anyways control and kill someone. Oh word Go to the objective. I don't control and kill someone there. All right Like a lead into the maelstrom there charge with these two units. I was going to charge with anyways, right classic and Really really tough So tyler, do you think that they could like I mean you mentioned schemes earlier schemes were a once were a one per game thing right and Some of them did take multiple rounds to like set up and accomplish Right, some of them had like a longer term to them Some of them were things you could accomplish like Kind of at once if you were clever about it, but you know like Like map maker touch all four corners of the board Yeah, that's a really hard thing to do in like one round unless you have all the ambush units in the world, right? Right sure Yeah, sylve could do it ogres. Maybe not right right so You know like the whereas like Uh get your hero killed like choose a hero you have and they need to get killed right yeah, um That was something that could be achieved in one round But it was you know, you had to like go set up your hero and put him in a position where they were going to get axed Those kinds of by the way like win for losing things or stuff I always love and this kind of design that they don't do enough of like get your own people killed lose Your own things get your own objective taken Right yada yada yada, right? I love stuff like that So doggen. Yeah, yeah Ty one behind your back and still win right Obviously then so I think there's a lot to be said very biased a lot to be said by Um, what was done and how the feedback that was received over those years personally, I don't think The scheme's format is the ideal it would not be my proposal for an approximate ideal at least of where my head is right now I think I'm more I'm having a hard time honestly Not ending up something approximating where 40k is today Which is probably just being constrained by and I don't even play 40k. I don't know a lot about it, but it's just more That has always struck me as a strength of that ecosystem of that landscape Is generally the nature of how they've designed their secondary objective system As I recall 8th and 9th was operating around again, you could play one of two ways But generally you go to tournament you're selecting your three objectives for your list You're writing a list to achieve Max points for those three objectives like that's an inherent part of your goal It it constrained the the space of choices in a healthier way. I think the battle tactics do And then of course now they've we just talked about they have integrated the two options Is that a better world? I don't know. Maybe epi chris. We still need to do a 40k show where we get some, you know, like Lawrence from tabletop tactics Some of some of the others over there to come on and talk with us because they've been playing aos as well That'd be really interesting But yeah, man I I have a hard time getting out of this headspace right now that it looks Something like that in my mind But that just could be a lack of imagination at the moment Sure the interesting thing about the 40k system is as you mentioned that sort of choice differential Right, you have the beginning of between being able to pick and then it being worth less or being able to random and it being worth more Yeah and I think that that's fine. I don't I don't I'd be interested to see what people Feel about that system Like in my experience with my 40k games and playing it, you know, where we're where we're using the random thing using the Flip cards, you know and complete them and so on and so forth. You can ditch card and flip a new one is that like It because of the nature of the size of the deck It's very hard to avoid the traps That then like what hey will mention of like where it doesn't become a do the thing you were already going to do anyways, right? Because you have to make it like to get to that random deck when you're trying to do them turn over turn Yeah, right. I've got to have Enough options in there that I'm not just like basically drawing the same thing Repeatedly right that I can't afford to bin one and redraw and so on it requires a deck of at least a certain size Some number of options and when you have to create that many options I think that you eventually get to a point where you're going to be like, yeah, cool. This is what Like I have to win more ones We've seen what happens when they had to design six entire artifacts for an army, right? How quickly do they run out of ideas? This is my now and now we want 28 battle tactics Because that's what you're talking about. You're talking about like having 2025 30 of these things as an option right And then the dark side of that is if you don't get that balance right of the random versus the chews And you have those win more ones and it's like well, I'll just choose And I know I can just smoke them every time And I'm just going to rely on my opponent to get a bad random draw at some point, right? And that becomes the right answer So really like getting that striking that exact balance can become really really tricky right Yeah, because I would love to get more information about this that'd be a great follow-up discussion to have with with them On where yeah, how do they feel about the current state of that system? You know, I've always been on the impression that it can Do pretty well on incentivizing Build variety list variety, which I think and again like going back to what are we wanting to achieve with this? Obviously I'm always emphasizing a variety in and the importance of it to the game I think that's been one of those struggles that we've had historically with this game And to me that feels like I'm going to be honest that feels like a c3 objective For this for secondary objectives. Okay, what I mean by that is like, yeah, it's there It's neat if we can do it, but it's not the critical thing. It's not that it's not the primary path right like how we should be encouraging diverse Armies with like interesting silhouettes is through the army design because that's what does that Right where you have units that synergize and missions that want you to be doing different things You know moving and that and like the units are designed so that spam doesn't pay off Right like that that should be the way the army the units the items the the Command traits the the everything Should be designed so that so that basically spam isn't your right answer for the it's the crime doesn't pay of this building. Yeah Yeah Like that that to me is going to do way more work than the soft incentives of whatever's the secondary thing, right Because I mean you you could make them really This is this would be terrible, but you couldn't do it like A battle tactic is your stone your frost lord on stone horn specifically captures an objective your um your Great unclean one that by mentioning it in the battle tactic I'm forcing you to put one in your army, you know can and maybe Maybe three of your battle tactics require plague bears to do something Yeah, and so that really would like Inform how you have to build your army or maybe suck right like so you could do that You could Really affect diversity by the bts, but they would feel really Uh Railroady at that point And some of them do they've done this a little bit. I've noticed Um, especially I don't know storm cast is one of them a few others are Storm cast has one where if you're like if you have city of sigmar units, you get points They're not even in your army And it's like if you're if you're playing cities as a storm keep Uh, then you get this bt And it feels a little yeah, I don't like that, but Yeah, as brandemade said they already exist um Yeah, I guess in my head just to close the loop on this was more archetype I could see secondary objectives that by the nature of their Diversity and what they're asking of you to accomplish It ties directly into more diversity in list building, right where uh more diversity in archetype Functional archetype with your units that sort of thing, but then I mean that Yeah, not all armies are created equal not all all armies are going to reflect my Beautiful perfect world of toolbox combined arms armies Like I know that there's biases that are going on here with with some of this stuff Sure And you want to still have the door open for you know people to be able to play the armies they want like I I want to run a nine steam tank army in the new book or whatever right because it's funny to me I'm not looking to go make that be competitive and go 5-0 in a tournament, but I want that door to be open You want to let let the kids have fun? Yeah, it's not the I think 40k has a thing where you just can't play any more than three of one unit Oh, yeah three of any unit six of your um, yeah, whatever the And that's like the laziest possible way of stopping people from spamming stuff. It's just make it illegal I gotta I gotta like something spamming is now illegal Yeah, I got a lecture at that. I got a lecture from Vince one night about that About what? How lazy and ignorant that is as an approach Oh, okay. I don't know if I used the lazy word a few times on twitter and some designers got upset about that so No, it was Yeah, it's like it's just illegal. There ought to be a law right But a way better way is making it so that it's not the best You're not incentivized to do it, but you still can if you're a weirdo You still can play five stone horns if you want to Um, because spam is fun and maybe they really like that thing. It just probably shouldn't be the best Yes, that's exactly a hundred percent. Yeah, but yeah, well, yeah Long discussion and it's up right there. Uh, let me throw a wild idea Okay, Tyler, let me throw this just total back of the napkin This is this is not a baked idea. This isn't even half baked. We're we're at like we're at like quarter baked at most. Okay I have to be right back. Yeah, go for it Okay What if Let's let's get these things off of every round Okay Opening the door and I've seen some people in the chat like Ben Stafferton said that you know like, um Uh The Like for the most part a lot of people go random some lists do the the choose thing But for the most people a lot of just flip through the randoms because they're pretty achievable. So it's interesting Okay, okay Maybe Ben you can confirm my understanding is that they're worth a little more like on average. You you have a higher Yes, correct. Okay. Yeah, let me throw let me throw a situation at you here. Okay What if the uh like what if we had something like the following? You got a relatively constrained deck of options. Let's call it Seven or eight something akin to current battle tactic choices Okay and You have the choice Of either at the beginning of the game you can choose two of them Okay And if you complete the two of them You get the points one. Let's assume they're all worth the same number of points. Just let's just say that Like they're all worth whatever x points. So everything's x. It's all equal. Yeah Or You can random your way through The deck like you shuffle your eight cards at the beginning and at the top of one you flip one over and if you Complete it that round Okay Then you can then you can choose in the next round to flip one over if or or if you can't Or you decline it or you fail it at the top of two you get to flip another one over Okay from the top of the deck And the max when you're going that direction is you can complete three of them. Okay So like let's assume x is equal to two Right if you go for the fixed ones that you're pretty sure your army can definitely get it Then at some point in the game, you need to complete two of those you get worth four points Yeah, right If you go for the random flip Then at max you top at three, but you're good, but you have very little control of what comes up win Right because you could flip the one this round That's like just imagine this happening on the current set not that I would use the current set But just like imagine it for sake of argument, right? Right you flip the you need to be on three different board edges And you're like nowhere near three different board edges, right? Okay. Well, that's gonna be impossible this round Right, but what you open the door for is it's sort of playing to that same random has a higher cap Right, but you still cap it like you max at three per game once you've scored three of them. You're done You're that's it. You can't score anymore Yeah, okay What do you think about something like that? I think that's pretty interesting man Yeah, I mean First thought would be to okay. Let's take a look at the let's seven or eight And let's write a list to be able to do As many of them as possible I would feel sufficiently confident that I could achieve three of those to be able to get more points Uh, I mean you'd have to design that carefully to where that wouldn't necessarily become the overwhelming favorite Obviously, that would be the challenge with having two options, right? Is it's so easy I would think for these things usually to tip one way or another of the overwhelming favorite But I do like that idea that is getting more into that goldilocks zone that I was describing, right of where Some players when they went to nash con they would look at every single Scheme and they would incorporate that into their thinking of their list design their two list design, right because they're trying to optimize Yeah for their their capacity to achieve the deck to take out to minimize randomness or and This this would allow you to do that, but it's yeah Anyway, I could say more about it intuitively that's making a lot more sense to me That that feels pretty good. I hope a 50 differential if you if you actually go random and achieve the max It's not it's not nothing right. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Hey, well well, I I missed a little bit of that, but I got most of it and I have a thought about All those different like when you said how many of them how many strats were you laying out and then deciding your list for in 40k? Uh, you're still doing one around so it's it's still theoretically like five you choose or or Like they're 15 because you're playing two cards Yeah, you're going after two. I believe per you're going after two per round. Yeah, sorry. Oh 10. Yeah Yeah, you either choose and you yeah, you either choose and you're going after it's two per round Whatever, I'm sorry. So that's a lot of my point is that that's a lot of that's a lot of different ones, right? Yeah, and so there it's probably 15 We'll call them battle tactics that ask you to do or have or be able to Accomplish over a pretty decent variety of things 15, right? um In 40k the armies are humongous Right like not just not just um space marines, but like All the armies in 40k have like battlefield No, I mean if you go to the web store and you look at the things you can buy Okay in range. Yeah. Yeah, and you can like or even orcs have like have like 50 You know boxes they can buy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, okay In age of sigmar up until very recently iron jaws Had like two units Oh, right. Sure. They had they had pigs and a variety of hero um Most aos armies have Under 10 Different boxes they can buy And so they probably if you're if you're making a bunch of battle tactics that have to encompass everybody And a lot of aos armies are giving up entire phases to be able to be better at some other phase It might be slim pickings on those I say there's an army that might be slim pickings Sure, and that's why I think in so the the way I was describing it You still have like about eight of these things, right? I think seven or eight is probably the the actual max probably seven actually I think seven's the sweet spot For reasons how many were we doing for a game? Two if you choose three max if you random your way through the deck But keep in mind it takes a whole turn to burn off a bad one, right? so like So in my head you random the first you random the first three And if you don't get a good one the last two turns you auto unless you're gonna be tabled And that's like kind of the way well You're making the choice at the beginning of the game either you get to like take your deck At the start of the game you're taking your deck and you're either you look through your seven the seven battle tactics of the season Let's just call them or whatever. Let's just keep the name because whatever Right you look through your battle choices. I don't know something so I don't want to I don't want to wrap up too much In people's heads. I look through at the beginning of the game and I'm go I'm gonna do this one and this one Yeah, set them down Face up. These are my battle tactics. Yeah, and then if you're playing if you're playing I'm the main character of age of sigmar um Center of the universe Absolute privilege, you know, um cities of sigmar or whatever that is like some castle army That doesn't answer to everything if you want to play it then you can go random because you can reasonably do almost anything Right, but when you go random you can complete up to three, right? So it's like so you have an option either way based on your list but The points whatever x is equal to again. I don't want to say what x is worth But the point is that's tinkering. That's just you know, that's all right The point would be X for going random is going to be 50 percent more than X for going choice regardless of what we set the base points to, right? Yeah Like because it's three versus two and that's just yeah three versus two and the downside is that you have to have um We'll say a take all comers list. Maybe two Reasonably do the random ones and then you have a really focused one That'll do two, but it's you know, you guarantee you always get them And then maybe you can table your opponent or something and that's and now this is how you have a little bit of Gamesmanship there that sounds kind of neat The other reason I like a system like this drawing on that kind of random flip from 40k and that the wise I think there is wisdom in that Is that tyler you like you mentioned spending 10 minutes on deciding your battle tactic, right and seeing if there was a way You could dig out Like that is all removed that is not a possibility in either one of these worlds Well, yeah there we've just moved it to before the game. Correct. It doesn't matter Yeah, like you had the time to already think about this way back in list construction. You were probably thinking about whether or not Yeah, I would do this Right. Yeah big fan of that So yeah, like that is suddenly pulled out because if you go random you flip the top one and you're like nope can't do that Right, I guess there's a lot of other like being counting uh Nob turning for later like um If a person if you score all of the objectives the whole game But none of the secondaries and someone scores all of their secondaries who wins How much do we want this to matter, you know If you drop one turn worth of objectives is a bt enough to win you the game Or can the opponent, you know, I suppose we'll have to If we were really cooking something like this up, we would have to do all of that which would take forever And it would some of it would get down to I suppose just our philosophy about how important we want them to be Sure But my point is I think in any world you could create seven that are like theoretically viable for any force in aos Seven feels like a number Where you could write it to be doing interesting orthogonal things that most any army could complete right Like theoretically complete is what I mean, right? Like of course, it could be the wrong turn. You have the wrong situation, etc Are we still down with having them probably not be Capture an objective or kill something correct. Yeah capture an objective and kill something or both off the table Right to me it would be stuff like I actually don't mind surround and destroy as a concept in something like this Right like surround and destroy that that get next to three table edges Yeah, if you have the whole game to do it So that you're not spreading and collapsing like you're fighting a wow boss over the course of like One battle round to the next then I'm more Okay with it Like getting your hero killed is an easy fun one, right? Like there's a you know, let's sacrifice the the spy like I learned that one Oh, I had to do that anyway My my grand strategy that I choose for ogres is the sorcery one Uh the one where you have where there are no wizards on the table at the end of the game And I have a wizard And so I have to get him killed every game to get my grand strategy. Yeah, and It has gone down to that. I Battle round five. I had a slaughter master who charged a um gotrek Oh, he died Sure He died a real spicy like cajun style Um, but it created a fun end And so yeah, and in this world, by the way, sygna says ah, no faction specific things. Yeah, correct Right like in in the world Are unique and interesting enough, right? They don't need them get it out of here get it out of here And also the facts and specific dts that we have right now are so bad Are so bad that I Any potential gain that they could give you a lore wise it doesn't make the translation to reality Right, just whatever what ends up happening is it's just it ends up being one to two more that become easy slam Dugs you add on top of the bay season and then the other floor you ignore That's all yeah, and whatever you try to turn a knob because it's a new season It doesn't matter because you have these book battle tactics just being lugged behind And also half of them are like by this unit and get points. So what do you think of my solution? I think what do you think about this system? We get some randomness and incorporate you have to be, you know It can't it'll factor into list building Right people by the way this the answer to where would these things go? In that case would be absolutely seasonal Yeah, because then they would they would rotate Right, would you do any secondary objective system and battle plans? I don't think I need to in this case Yeah, I don't think you need to I think you just focus on let's just focus on writing good battle plans Even if you did it's in the same book Yeah, right Because the battle plans arrive in the seasonal ghb and so too with the bts So whether they're on page 33 or split between the 12 Yeah You could you could soup up the battle plans if you cared to you could put one extra thing in there if you wanted to Yeah, my my one My one cool trick to making every battle plan great is When designing how to deploy deployment zones You are banned from using anything but a straight line ever You can angle that straight line however you want But there will be no steps Get rid of the steps box or line This isn't talking to this guy. You can use any number of lines you want almost Hey, well, I'm disappointed in you my friends. Why? You've been talking that you've been talking to this man way too much You need to like lay off the common sense point of view tyler that tetra shapes are inappropriate for deployment zones Tetra shapes for deployment zones are awesome for a computer game Sure, but in real life if you have to build Tetra staircases and waste real life minutes The absolutely disgusting guys need to get good at mapping out deployments So just just use a just use a string just use that red line, you know for David, you're seeing your construction project. Just there you go. Those are Oh semicircle or getting or getting a spiral double helix deployment zones that interweave into each other in ghp 2017 many of the deployment zones in the multiplayer scenarios are Semi circles because you got like six points on the board and you just Around at 12 inches like you set your dice and then you just do around at 12 inches It's actually semi circles actually not that bad. Um It's it's actually pretty easy to measure out because you're literally just picking one point. Yeah, you're doing like the comfort rose thing, right? Yeah, just doing it. Yeah, exactly. So that's actually that's much easier. It's actually easier than stairwells than this All right, good. Uh at any rate Uh, David here and said if you want to make them seasonal, then you need design space large enough for what 30 meaningfully unique tactics Not sure the game has that space. I'm not sure that's true. You're right. You need to have the game space for more than seven I agree with that But there's no reason you couldn't carry over some from season to season like you could have two or three carry over That would be fine. You don't need to rotate the entire clutch Rotating part of them is still interesting Right, if you had three before like if you let's say it's seven, right three stay four ride And then the next season those three that had ridden go away plus plus one more and then you get Four new ones. So right so you're riding three twice So in that event, you're only introducing four new you need enough design space for about 15 Over the course of an entire addition again, that feels doable All right, it's like none of this stuff is easy. There are design challenges here. I'm not trying to understate it Right. It still takes competent Talented designers to make good game rules But I think it is within the realm of the possible Okay Like it's possible to design six good magic items for a book I know there have been a couple books where that's happened and that's six and like There are 25 army books There is at least three where we got six good items Okay, so there was at least 18 good items that exist Hey, it's possible to to make three of them but I Don't see it very often either. Right Uh, they just need to go back to what they were doing in like fourth and fifth edition when magic items were awesome I'm sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead. Could you could you run through quickly? Why you think what you're proposing does a good job Asficient job of addressing your bullet points on some thoughts Especially on yeah, yeah, like especially on the point of potential staleness Yeah, happy to so uh First point having something else to play for besides standing on circles and killing people, right? So as per what we what I talked about earlier with hey Well, none of these would be stand on circles or kill people, right? So they would always be something else you would be playing for so that's number one, right Number two for the type of player who wants to go longer in the game who wants to have something they can continue Playing for even after they meaningfully feel like they've lost Doing something like the random system Does keep them in that world, right? They get to keep flipping through if they want, okay? So like it prolongs the possibility of victory In other words, there's there's still screwed if they've mathematically lost but It it prolongs the Guarantee of loss I suppose yep it by by Cutting off some of those things that we did We're tackling a lot of the problems like I already mentioned it getting rid of the Uh, the analysis paralysis challenge Right Um of getting rid of the five for five by leaving some wiggle room in there Like i'm a pro i'm purposely not setting it to all five rounds or something like that, right? So there is wiggle room to drop to like be like oops. I didn't get it that round you know Oopsie do but that's okay. I wasn't trying to go five for five. I was trying to get three out of five Right Oh, I suppose then the the staleness of Turn one. I always do this battle tactic turn two. I always do that one That's sort of up to the player. How stale do you want your game to be right? You can choose the random one and then it's not Or you can choose the two guaranteed And then you do the same thing every game Yep, but only twice at least, you know not all five battle rounds. It's just it's just the twice and you pick your moment So by the way, the more important thing though is those two better be equivalent Right because if it if it turns out that it is or people think that it is One of the two is just the choice Right, then once again, we have the the game collapses into being one thing and sure and there is a All and so on and so forth. There's a real tricky balance system here. Okay between those two I don't disagree that it's not that it's not hard to to do that I think you view anything you slightly incentivize the the random side Right. I think that's like In in the world of what were you trying to incentivize you'd want it to be like 60 40 or 70 30 where most people feel like random is the right choice Something in that range would be the healthy version of that not 50 50, but at any rate The the staleness in there are some people who aren't going to feel that at all like oh in turn Wanted to do this in turn to do this or some people who like that predictability They would take that they would be incentivized to choose the thing Well, the thing that would choose thing some people like so I've been playing Just about five stone horns Since the ghb that added points to the game. Sure some people just like Drive in monster trucks around the table making charge rolls and getting impact hits It just doesn't get old Some people take those too, you know, and they don't need randomness. They just want the world to make sense Whereas for the um, what I want to say for the Fast majority. Yeah for the vast majority of people. There we go. Thank you. That's a good way to thank you Your words, um, you know, they've been in the randomness world where you're flipping the top card Like you shuffle your deck and flip the top card. You don't know what you're doing on turn one, right? It's It's whatever the top card flips to is what you've got to try to achieve So you better build wide enough deploy in such a way, etc. Etc. You know play wide enough to allow for optionality Right to do that and if you drop it, it's not the end of the world. You got another chance next turn right Yeah So to me it tackles all of the primary issues that I talked about right, um That's that's why I think something like this feels like the right answer If the two auto ones asked you to do something awesome Then that would be fine, right? I'm sorry. I'm still caught up in that randomness versus, uh assured ones Sure Like I think I think some stillness gets staved off by you doing something that's totally sweet Sure or being asked to or being obliged to or whatever Picking the thing that's asking you to do something sweet. Yeah. Yeah being next to three board edges is like Stupid and I don't like that but like Killing something like doing 10 plus impact hits in one turn 10 plus mortal wounds from impacts that's sweet And so I do that every time I actually don't mind that one. That's one of the fun ones that I have to do You know, right the other four ones aren't fun and they're kind of dumb but So maybe that's also part of the difference too Is that once we're once we're changing these to not be Asking you to do something either not fun or Or just like boring like what you were going to do anyway Maybe that's going to go a long way for the stay on this too Because I've played diablo 2 for 20 years You would think it would be stale by now, but I actually just like the game Right. Yeah, right Yeah, I I know we're over our minimum, but I wanted to mention Come on since we haven't talked about this angle somebody commented For getting who I like the idea of having 12 and each player has a shared pool And you can counter each other by trying to achieve what your opponent is setting up for So we haven't talked about that design angle on these that's something that I think we've touched on in the past But Benz, do you have a pebo take on whether you like that approach or not? That's kind of a shortcut to balancing them. Isn't it points wise, right? If you're fighting over so let's pretend Well, let's simplify it the most and just say there's one right Well, you don't have to bounce that one anymore Because somebody just gets it and now there's a point differential like your plus two and your opponent's phantom minus two right And then suddenly there's two and you each could get the same one And then it doesn't matter but one person could get two and then you know But if you so the difference between there being two and somebody could get both Or you each could get one versus each person having two that they can just get Now those two have to be bounced towards each other If you're only choosing one And so I suppose having it be zero sum and you're fighting over it is more direct It does that thing that everybody says they want but they're lying Of interactivity. Sure Or they're like, I don't like getting shot because it's not interactive, right? Or I don't like Something because it's not interactive, but they're actually interacting a lot. They just Um, don't care about that type of interaction or maybe they do but um, they're guys lose anyway And so that's like the main thing but Speaking of that, I personally I'm so ready to get just throw redeploy in the bin In my opinion this game Hold on. I'm about to polish this whole idea for you, Tyler. All right. I'm about to ruin you to this man's day So here we go Okay, one two two comments on that sort of system first It um in a song of ice and fire and kings and war thrones or whatever The in a song of ice and fire in the game of thrones game This exists This is more or less what happens. There's a there's a sequence of thing. Yeah, you have you have I don't know. They're nco's or whatever you have non-combat Characters like the people who you wouldn't think of fighting like sansa stark and so on and so forth. Yeah Okay, so people who aren't like actually killing each other Right And they there exists they have figs And they sit like outside the game space and there's this little track That you you go back and forth on and like I pick the thing that gives me Extra this you then then that opens up you to pick the thing that gives you the extra Different benefit and you go back and forth choosing your spy master is kind of like fighting against each other Yep. Yep. It represents the like officers and commanders outside the battle like pulling the strings of what what is going on in the game Okay, and it's it's a interesting system the the like The the nco part of a song of ice and fire war thrown song game Is the most that's the most interesting part of that whole design to me other than I find it a pretty standard Not very interesting rank and flank game um but tyler This is why This system is ruined for you. Okay. Let's say it's a deck of 12 things As you have described Tyler, I want you to imagine them sitting in the middle of the table 12 options the other player goes first They pick one There are 11 options left in the middle of the table It is now your turn tyler Okay Well, I want to make that it's a 10 seconds. That's all I need 10 seconds Sir You're now going to choose for that and then they choose again and you're like, oh no, I chose wrong Hold on. What do I need to pick now? Okay, so into 10 Now you're you're choosing and there are like nine options left in there That analysis paralysis because not only are you choosing for you Yeah, you're choosing. Yeah, you're choosing against them If you thought this was hard for you to decide before Okay Yeah Welcome to analysis paralysis on steroids Yeah, right an important thing to understand about the the song of ice and fire when is you're like going In order and stuff like that. So it's like a set sort of word to it. Whereas here. It's just very like wide open Uh, I cannot it like that is that is that is super charging the analysis paralysis problem That's my it's a super cool idea. I love that kind of system Okay, but I'm the kind of person who will just like think about that stuff and then make that decision very quickly Like I'm not someone who suffers from a lot of analysis paralysis Uh, but for those but that's not a common thing Like most people do and new players especially do I just happen to be someone who's like willing to bet it all I don't need to think too hard before I push the chips in and go all in Okay, that's why I'm an iron jaws player. Okay You dance for a minute and then you push your chips in That's how you play that right Okay, yeah fair enough So that's all. All right, let's bring this to a close. We've been going for a long time. Okay Let's talk just I want to close just here on the differentiator stuff I think we've thrown out some good ideas for secondaries and stuff like that. There's more to this Yeah But but I think we we could go around around this for another six hours but Hey, whoa I like the differentiator idea of stop differentiating open system. This is the five o's you're good to go For the big tournaments, you just take the rounds. I'm a proponent of this now. You've won me over to this Let me just say that Okay Now kill your own argument as it were. What are your downsides you see this? I want to leave on the sort of I want to want to talk counter arguments And that way everybody can kind of weigh it in their own thinking All right, um counter arguments uh, one of them was Too many trophies, but we kind of went over that sure people want a first place Yeah, they just do They want the the gold Yeah How would you it's inherently unsatisfying? To give out participation trophies, which is what these are for the five o's They will it's it's just it's cleaner It's uh, it's more satisfying to have a first place trophy now. I contend that The way we arrive at the first place trophy is so unsatisfying that it ends up ruining it And brings so much baggage with it that Hurts other people's games that I don't think it's worth it. Obviously. I'm not steel manning this. I'm still destroying it So sure, but I'm at least bringing them up Hold on what this reminds me of is the the um future rama episode with the the where the uh, I forget it's like ma is like laying down the rules and and um Leela's like fry. Why are you why are you on board with this? You're not rich And he's like, yeah, but I might be rich someday and then people like me better watch out, right? Like yeah that argument Like you've got 60 to 60 other people in the tournament care About who's getting first place even though they know in their heart of hearts. They're not they're not they were never in contention for that Like right like they're not there Okay Yeah, but like but someday I might be and then people like me but and then I will be unsatisfied, right? Do they imagine themselves in that position? I mean it it is a cool thing though like it what at the end of a tournament Everybody's sitting there. They got the guy with the microphone that doesn't fucking work. Sorry. I didn't We'll have to mute that. Um, you got the guy with the microphone up there that doesn't work And he's the person holds the trophy up and everyone politely claps a little bit waiting for the raffle You know So that's like a cool thing that happens and instead it would be three people getting a five note trophy Yeah, so maybe maybe that's bad. Um number two is no one actually cares About all this tournament stuff. Sure Um, are we just chasing our tail on something most people don't actually give a crap about 99.9 percent of the people who go to five round tournaments. You could change this and they wouldn't notice right um Another big one is I want to control my fate for the tiebreakers people This is most this is more like a One tiebreaker system versus another kind of thing that was what people were Kind of arguing in the responses. They they like the win more ones or the ones that I call win more Because they get to control their fate. So if they're like really good, they'll get five out of five every time Yep, and what's like they deserve it and from my point of view um It probably tends to reward You having weaker opponents or maybe good matchups randomly more so than it necessarily does how skilled you are um, but maybe this is just like an american thing where um Like in soccer if someone scores a goal that guy is like so good, right? But in america if a batter hits a home run it was because the pitcher screwed up and sucks, right? And so it's just like a different Kind of way of looking at things maybe I suppose Do you have a quick take on differential I don't know if you've looked at that much differential scoring And I don't know what it means, but I think so the short Sorry, the short version of differential means you and I are playing You get 25 victory points in the game. I get 15 victory points We will look at a table and we'll we'll take the difference you beat me by 10 points That will mean you will get let's say 14 points In your actual score that gets reported and I'll get six points in my score that gets reported I hate it for all the same reasons. I hate everything else. It just encourages you loving So what if I score 20 points and you score zero? What's the differential there? Technically Yeah, so it just rewards you having super weak opponents and just crushing new people. Yeah, right the more the more Yeah, I don't like different people you crush the better your your overall score That's to me. It seems like to me. It seems like there's strength of schedule Which rewards you for having strong opponents But you have no control over that And then there's every other tiebreaker. I've ever heard which just rewards seal clubbing In one way or another Yeah, man. I'm what it's worth. Uh, I will have now participated. Yeah co-ran Three tournaments where we will have used three different systems essentially or arguably four different systems All all around for a new system Yeah, exactly. And they're all they all leave a lot in my office The differential has issues Old town throwdown is is interesting and his ottd that garth came up with it's used a lot It has issues on this front as well. I don't know why we're giving people points for losing You lose your points if you try maybe one And then if you win three and we're good just quick No, because I think ben stafferton said in the comments I do agree with this differential is actually really good for team games like like european team games like four Oh, I don't know anything about how four person teams six person teams stuff like that Because then there really is like because then there is this like balance you're trying to do across the Across the thing because there is no like seal clubbing. You're gonna have you're gonna have matchups and stuff like that You're trying to steer into the skin all this like because it because it's a completely different matchup system And way that all the points are tallied that is where differential systems actually to me are really really good I don't think yeah I would leave the team Let them handle that because they know more about it than me and they might even have like a really good system already even Yeah, or stuff like worlds and things like that where they have plenty of rounds to To do that anyhow Oh, how yeah, it's a little unclear to me how what you're proposing handles Let's say non-centered awards or even like even best best grand alliance water destruction, etc Has become pretty standardized over the eight years in aos. How do you award those? That's a good one. I thought of it during this and then I forgot about it and you reminded me of it and i'm happy um If there's no standings, there's no such thing as best destruction Right period right because there's no standing and that's all there is to it Do like and those are cool Yeah, that's destruction best order Right, there's no real they're also kind of weird because necessarily one of them is the first place anyway And so you're awarding first and second place With two different trophies if order is just really good. It's kind of weird and so it's like you know destruction death and um chaos Get a trophy for being the best in that and then order gets a trophy for being the second best in that Because the winner was order so that's like kind of weird, but I guess it's not too big of a deal I think those are kind of fun and my system basically issues those For just rewarding X and L And there's no standings in my systems. There's no there's no way to fix that unless it's randomly perfect, right? Like there's only one four and one destruction or something like that I mean, you could you could lever it on on something else like that is tracked over the course of the the tournament Right, but you'd be grand alliance is pretty arbitrary anyway. Sure Like you could see people like their sports teams though. So there's this team kind of thing about your grand alliance Even though it's irrelevant My answer is we'd have to make a different arbitrary choice that we'd be totaling up along the way That doesn't factor into anything else but this in the same way we would handle best monster slayer and King slayer most kill point generals, right? Like you would just there's some other arbitrary thing we would pick that you would track and that would determine best in Like there's lots of data points being tracked still even under this system, right that you could choose to knock down And that's what you would suddenly you pick something or some combination of those things And that would become your best in faction awards You could also kick the can down the road and bring back tiebreakers just for the funny award And make them strength the schedule because it's the most fair one And you have to track And unless somebody drops around one like yeah, I mean there there are drops are way less common in aos I found then magic at least so there's the size of the tournament as the tournament It happens but that being said We're going to the fully ground so it doesn't matter anymore Yeah, I mean in magic the culture is when you lose your second you just drop and so after like round Three and four of the tournament It's cut in half basically, right like almost in aos people mostly for them just want to play actual games Yeah, I came out for the whole weekend for this. I'm not going away. Yeah, exactly All right. Look, I'm gonna call it there. So yeah, I think I think that's a good one And that's probably the best downside I've heard Yeah, that's interesting is no more best in arbitrary sport team Uh grand alliances There you go. That's a fun little trophy. You know, it is it's good. All right, everybody. There you go. We talked around this a lot I want to know your thoughts drop it down in the comments Tell us what you think what did we miss? What other what other options that you've got what other thoughts you have What did we say that you don't agree with what did we say that you do agree with that kind of thing? Hit us up with those additional comments. Don't forget to hit like subscribe do all those things new merch stores down there If you want to support the show, you can do that There's also links to like element games and monument hobbies. You can use those go get stuff Uh, of course, there's a patreon focused on review and feedback and taking your next step on your hobby journey All that's down there. Hey woes channel is linked down there. Go check that out, of course Go watch hey woe on twitch And and then when you're done watching that go watch hey woe plus On his regular channel on youtube and and of course the hey woe plus service that we all appreciate more than anything Yeah, hey woe plus channel is for the vods from the stream a stream monday's friday saturday sunday Sometimes thursday monday's the big one though. That's the aos one and then the main channel is for Scripted prepared high edited, you know really good stuff. Um When I have time the post Once every four years Very good. Thank you all for watching. We really appreciate it as always