Revised Generals Handbook thoughts

So GW have posted up on facebook asking for people to provide feedback on the Generals Handbook and what they would like changed for the next iteration.

If you go on the facebook thread and read the comments (around 500 at my time of reading and expanding rapidly) there is the usual mix of 2-3 disliked rules, a few people who still want 8^th/the old world back, a few tweaks to the magic phase and a bunch of suggestions about pointing warscrolls/ battalions and making it possible to add individual models per unit oh and measure from bases as standard.

A lot of the responses feel awfully kneejerk and I’m hopeful that the design studio will have the conviction of their ways not to bow to peer pressure on things that simply don’t need ruling (measure from bases for example).  That’s not to say I disagree with all of these, I’ve never played a game of AoS where I haven’t measured to the base but it does not need to be an additional restriction in the rulebook.  What was great about the period before Generals Handbook came out was the community came up with solutions and points and it all got used without causing massive arguments.  More recently I’ve seen the niggling agro come back into rules discussions because “GW wrote it this way so we must play by letter of what is written”.  What about them repeatedly telling us that was exactly what they didn’t want?

The one other thing is I’m going to focus on matched play.  Narrative/open by default allows people more scope to do what they like.

So what would I like to see:

Battleline – I get the point, GW are trying to put armies back into the game or trying to make armies fit the fluff.  But in all honestly I feel they did this better through scenario design than battleline units.  Under the current GH the difference between what are good and what are bad battleline units is simply too vast. There are a few optimal units and when you have faction specific battleline this can become even more pronounced (Skryre Stormfiends or Beastclaw Stonehorns & Mournfang, stormcast judicators and blood knights being obvious examples to cite).  Certain armies become better optimised as a result and this is particularly accentuated in the Escalation scenario, I’d return to the free form selection with no compulsory units and use scenarios to drive people into taking more troops on the board or whatever is the intended outcome.

An extension from this is the cap on characters/behemoths – again I think scenarios have a bigger impact on the viability of such lists than the limitation and they just stop players from bringing some fun lists like the all giant one that has a scroll that is by default unusable under the current Generals Handbook.

No ability for people to use Kairos ability or similar to impact the initiative roll (I’m fine with specifically designed abilities like the Fireslayers have or Archaeon players knowing in advance).

If for any reason you’re unable to deploy on the board due to scenario restrictions an exception should be made to allow units to come on touching the edge of the deployment zone but attempting to maximise the distance between them and the opposing models.

Scenarios - More scenarios and possibly some form of secondary mission to play for, even if it was existing scenarios just brought into the GH matched play section it will help keep the game fresh.  Each set of 6 scenarios could slightly shift the focus for the win conditions.  Where the GH missions at present mostly require most models within X to score but there are 1-2 exceptions the next 6 could be 2-3 requiring characters to score and that change alone would hugely shift army design.

 

Points rebalancing for the obviously under pointed battalions/units – Kunning Rukk and Clan Skryre spring to mind, maybe the Seraphon one which gives the big monsters re-rollable saves in combination with bastilidons this is rather powerful.  Probably looking at stormfiends because depending on the weapon choice the unit power varies considerably.  Also the free riders on Phoenixes doesn't overly make sense (though whether the points are right with riders included I have no idea so a discount version without may be the correct solution).

 

What I specifically don’t want to see:

Character protection – LoS/joining units has been a common suggestion but I hate it.  A lot of the game design is the character in charge of a battalion turns on all their abilities which are very powerful.  Being able to kill that character is essential to limiting the power of those armies so additional protection is too strong.

Summoning – Specifically summoning being significantly cheaper than starting on the table.  The SCGT pack tried it at 50% and summoning was very powerful. GH gave no benefit and it has brought the power of summoned units back down a lot.  Summoning in a fixed list environment gives flexibility to the player and in addition to that being able to summon up to 18” away is a helpful benefit that can turn games.  Perhaps there is a halfway solution of not forcing units summoned to be unable to move but that potentially gives them a huge range so could be too powerful, maybe in combo with not being allowed to score on the turn summoned but that’s maybe too far the other way again.

Shooting into/out of combat being restricted – This just feels like people harking back to how it was under WFB.  Lots of other rules are unrealistic but aren’t challenged so I simply don’t understand the hang up on shooting.  Shooting does seem powerful though so perhaps as some people have suggested with a save/modifier for shooting through units could work but I really think it just feels like rules bloat I’ve not overly felt this to be a significant problem.

Addition 2 Dec 2016
One thing I'd meant to discuss but didn't put down was core rules changes.  There is one area which I think that AoS could do with a slight clarification/change is how pile in should work.  As currently written it doesn't encourage the maximisation of the units in combat as models have to move towards the nearest this can result in some formations actually leading to log jams rather than everyone jumping into combat wherever there is space.  There has also been different interpretation in games as to whether you have to maintain unit coherency during a pile in.  To my mind it was clear that you did, but as others have interpreted this differently it would be nice to tidy it up.