If you could change one rule...

[Trygle]

Yeah actually... removing tough is another idea.

[Breadsmith]

I want it so models without guns cannot aim, nor can models engaged or otherwise prevented from shooting.

[Mattman]

While I agree that makes sense it also means Old Witches Feat says "Pick up your engaged infantry and play the next game".

[Binz]

The number of times I've seen individual models tough 7+ times in a turn to continuously block a charge line is staggering. And by that same merit, I've played many games where I can't tough a single Bane or Bloodgorger to save my life.

The truth! I had 10/12 Bane Thralls fail their tough rolls in a recent tournament. I wasnt exactly relying on them to make their tough rolls, but I took the UA for a reason.... (the other 2 thralls didnt die)

[Harvester]

4) Any models out of formation MUST move their full advance or run directly towards the unit leader until they are in formation. This advance must be to their full move, not 0". Conversely, any model that is out of formation does NOT grant any sort of advantage to it's unit. (No more hiding the banner dude at the edge of the table)

Pls explain the hiding banner part..

[Charming]

Pls explain the hiding banner part..

Players take one model in the unit (usually standard bearer as it often doesn't have an attack and provides a bonus) and hides it way backfield to keep it safe and prevent the entire unit from being wiped of the table.

[TheLoki]

Players take one model in the unit (usually standard bearer as it often doesn't have an attack and provides a bonus) and hides it way backfield to keep it safe and prevent the entire unit from being wiped of the table.

Not sure what benefit this provides. A model has to be in formation to provide any benefit to its unit (specifically errata because of the bane thrall banner.)

[hausdorff space]

Not sure what benefit this provides. A model has to be in formation to provide any benefit to its unit (specifically errata because of the bane thrall banner.)

Easy upkeep (or similar) spell cycling, or saving a grunt for unit regeneration (revive, deathtoll, excarnate).

I'm not sure it's a super common tactic, but in some communities it seems to cause some real issues.

[MathPasta]

I would give extra focus to warcasters that cannot be used to cast spells. Only power warjacks. About 2/3rds of their standard Focus score (It also stacks to give extra arm. If a warlock can entirely avoid 20 points of damage by transferring it to a war-beast with only one fury then Warcasters can get a boost as well).

The mechanic is still about resource management, yet its encouraging taking warjacks rather then discouraging them.

Also give some actual RISK to the fury mechanic.

[wargrim]

I would give extra focus to warcasters that cannot be used to cast spells. Only power warjacks. About 2/3rds of their standard Focus score (It also stacks to give extra arm. If a warlock can entirely avoid 20 points of damage by transferring it to a war-beast with only one fury then Warcasters can get a boost as well).

The mechanic is still about resource management, yet its encouraging taking warjacks rather then discouraging them.

Also give some actual RISK to the fury mechanic.

Because standard ARM25+ casters is what the game needed. ARM30 Harbinger on the way to you, no need to worry with your army.

Bu if we are at it: Every Fury on the warlock gives +1ARM. If a warcaster can entirely avoid damage by small arms by over boosting its armor, than warlocks can get a boost as well.
See what I did there?

[MathPasta]

Because standard ARM25+ casters is what the game needed. ARM30 Harbinger on the way to you, no need to worry with your army.

A Warcaster who isn't supporting ANYTHING. A warlock can Manage beasts with 5+ fury and STILL redirect 5+ attacks without taking ANY damage . Yes the beasts will suffer. But Beasts have more HP to deal with this sort of stuff alongside the ability to heal/ regenarate.

See what I did there?

You made a wonderful strawman?

[katadder]

A Warcaster who isn't supporting ANYTHING. A warlock can Manage beasts with 5+ fury and STILL redirect 5+ attacks without taking ANY damage . Yes the beasts will suffer. But Beasts have more HP to deal with this sort of stuff alongside the ability to heal/ regenarate.




You made a wonderful strawman?

if a warlock redirects 5+ attacks it means it hasnt used any fury so either its beasts are full and and going to frenzy if you leave the warlock alone or its beasts are empty and done nothing. if you are going to argue the point at least try and have some awareness of how fury works.
also a caster camping a couple of focus is usually on average rolls not going to take damage from the plethora of POW10s and 12s where as a warlock either dies the death of a thousand needles or his beasts do.
most locks keep 1 or 2 fury for transfers, which means less action from the beasts.

[jandrese]

This is more than a single rule change in the end, but anyway:

I think most AoE spells should be removed or reduced to AoE -. Then, whenever you cast a spell with a POW stat and AoE -, you could spend an additional focus to make the spell AoE 3, or 2 focus to make it AoE 4. Some spells would need to be reworded to add "directly hit" to the effects, but that shouldn't be too hard. Most spell effects require "target model" or "target model/unit" already, so you wouldn't need to reword too many.

For example:
Cleansing Fire: Eliminated
Hex Blast: Reduced to AoE -, Cost reduced to 2. Wording unchanged.
Ashes to Ashes: Not applicable because it is AoE *.
Cataclysm: Remains AoE 5, unchanged

This gives almost all casters a direct damage and an AoE spell in one, and a decent AoE if you're willing to spend a whopping 4 focus to cast it.

If you want to go crazy with this, you could give the player a menu of options for enhancing when you cast a spell like:
1. 1 focus to add +2 to the attack roll (presumably you're already planing to boost)
2. 1 focus to add +2 to the damage roll
3. 1 focus to add +2 to the RNG

Maybe limit it to one enhancement per spellcasting?

[MathPasta]

if a warlock redirects 5+ attacks it means it hasnt used any fury so either its beasts are full and and going to frenzy if you leave the warlock alone or its beasts are empty and done nothing.

Yes, That is a true element. But

A: Beasts rarely frenzy
B: A Frenzying beast is not always bad

I agree. Full beasts are bad. But If on my last turn I destroyed all your warjacks (With my 3-4 fury each) I won't mind if my beasts are not as effective next turn.

also a caster camping a couple of focus is usually on average rolls not going to take damage from the plethora of POW10s and 12s

Yes they are. I avarged it. The avarage warcaster (From any faction. Yes I took each one, added them together and avaraged it) has Arm 15. Even with +2 your still taking 1-2 damage each shot. But thats very unlikely as most damage happen with singular tough blows. Its more difficult to maneuver a unit with light guns then it is a single jack or boosted pow 15 shot.

[katadder]

if you average warcaster has ARM15 hes taking no damage from POW10s on average when camping 2 focus. and 2 from power 12s.

A: as to your beasts rarely frenzy, this is because locks take the fury from them. you said locks can transfer 5+ times, this means they are not taking any fury so all the beasts will frenzy. if they dont they are then stuck on 3-4 frenzy and so cant boost or anything anyway, or they did nothing in the 1st place so nobody used any fury, which would be like a caster not using focus and sitting on 20+ ARM. however if no beasts did anything and the lock horded all his fury to transfer and then did said transfers his beasts are hurting and the lock now has no fury next turn due to transfering everything.


B: a frenzying beast is not doing what you want, if its a heavy its probably lost 2 attacks or so. it cant use its animus and wont move where you want it to. a frenzying beast is bad 99% of the time.

as to your if I kill all your warjacks with my beasts and fill them out:
1 you caster now has all his focus to himself and that makes him a lot harder to kill
2 my beasts are probably going to turn on each other when 50% of them frenzy and have no warjacks to kill anymore and you being sensible moved all your infantry away from them.

locks have to keep a balance of keep enough fury to survive attacks whilst boosting beasts fury to get enough back next turn but not too much that they cant take it all. casters dont have this problem as focus comes every turn anyway and their jacks wont attack their own forces

this is getting into the old fury/focus debate however and that never goes well. quick question, do you actually play hordes as from your earlier examples i quoted in my previous post I would say not.

[alchahest]

we're back to the "beasts always running at full fury, warlocks never use fuy except to transfer (somehow to full beasts??), Warlocks always have enough free fury to manage all of their maxed out beasts." thing again, I guess.

[wargrim]

@ jandrese, interesting idea, but there are probably some problems. What's with spells that have an area effect like rift? If you put them to 2 focus, you would need to pay 4 focus instead of now 3 to get the same effect. And you can't make it a 1-point spell, because 1focus = POW13 shot is insane.

Maybe do it from the other side? Every non-AOE spell get it's effects changed to 'directly hit' and the ability to spend 1 focus to get AOE3?

[MathPasta]

we're back to the "beasts always running at full fury, warlocks never use fuy except to transfer (somehow to full beasts??), Warlocks always have enough free fury to manage all of their maxed out beasts." thing again, I guess.

I guess I also strawmanned. But seriously, Warlocks DO have more Fury to spare as they only manage buffs and extra attacks unlike Warcasters that manage Jacks, and buffs and attacks. So a couple of extra focus won't hurt, especialy since it encourages warjack use.

Yes some extra spells will need to have kinks sorted out like Full throttle or the like.

edit: Katadder:

I don't want to be a structure nazi but it was difficult to tell what you where saying.

Yes I play Hordes (Piggies). And I just have a better time (as in more fun) playing it then with Warmachine.

I just used a poorly thought out strawman example though.

[alchahest]

Warlocks do need to cast spells just like warcasters do, though. to say that all they do is manage buffs and extra attacks is incorrect. in addition to having attack spells, non-upkeep buffs and debuffs, and occasionally special fury-costed abilities, they also need that fury to cast animi, and heal beasts. Any turn where they've camped fury for defensive purposes is both a turn in which they are not using all of their abilities, and a turn where they're gambling on needing to transfer (if no transfers occur, that camped fury does not go away, and leeching will not be a fun prospect)

[MathPasta]

That can equaly be applied towards Warcasters as well. Almost word for word (Remove healing and Animus though. Animuses are just extra spells). And healing is more a benefit then it is a drawback:

WarCasters do need to cast spells just like warlocks do, though. to say that all they do is manage buffs and extra attacks is incorrect. in addition to having attack spells, non-upkeep buffs and debuffs, and occasionally special focus-costed abilities, alongside with making that the Jacks function at least decently.
Any turn where they've camped focus for defensive purposes is both a turn in which they are not using all of their abilities, and a turn where they're gambling on needing protection.

[leo_neil316]

B: a frenzying beast is not doing what you want,

Say's who?

[alchahest]

That can equaly be applied towards Warcasters as well. Almost word for word (Remove healing and Animus though. Animuses are just extra spells). And healing is more a benefit then it is a drawback:

The thing is, I'm not saying warcasters don't do that - I'm saying that you have to factor that in when considering the fury on a warlock. it's not all buffs and transfers. there's a very real economy going on in every turn, just like with warcasters and focus, it's just applied differently.

[alchahest]

Say's who?

Hordes players, almost 100% of the time

[MathPasta]

Hordes players, almost 100% of the time

Well then not me 90% of the time. If my beast rages, then I know when and why it is raging.

I personaly think the focus-fury thing is unbalanced in jack management. There I said it, rage all you want about how wrong I am and how jacks run equaly as well as beasts.

[TheLoki]

Hordes players, almost 100% of the time

We say it because its true. Despite popular belief beasts DO in fact frenzy on occasion (circle frenzies all the damn time with primal). Losing a beast for a turn sucks.

[wargrim]

Well then not me 90% of the time. If my beast rages, then I know when and why it is raging.

I personaly think the focus-fury thing is unbalanced in jack management. There I said it, rage all you want about how wrong I am and how jacks run equaly as well as beasts.

Don't want to contribute to this discussion, cause we all know the way all fury-vs.-focus-debates go.

But even if we assume your right with this, I don't see how your proposal would lead to more jacks. There are already casters with more than average focus, but they aren't taking more jacks than other casters. They take their ~2 jacks and use the extra focus like every other caster, for themselves.
If they get additional 4 'jackfocus', they will run their 2 jacks with it and cheer that they are able to use the normal focus without sharing.

[alchahest]

Well then not me 90% of the time. If my beast rages, then I know when and why it is raging.

I personaly think the focus-fury thing is unbalanced in jack management. There I said it, rage all you want about how wrong I am and how jacks run equaly as well as beasts.

I'd rather not rage. It's not worth it on the internet

I definitely prefer to be able to make decisions as the turn progresses, rather than be locked into something prior to the turn starting (and even that's not reliable - if you make the threshold check, then you've just got a beast that can't be forced)

as I said, it is almost always preferable to not frenzy. there are obvious exceptions (primal being one, Arkadius' feat being another - mainly because you DO get to choose to frenzy, and you don't lose out on a beast's activation). I would perhaps look at when and why you frenzy, as sometimes you may be better served by getting a whole second activation instead of a single boosted attack that your opponent can alter the target of during his or her turn.

I'm glad you've got uses for frenzying, though. I personally prefer to have control over the things my beasts do.

[MathPasta]

Don't want to contribute to this discussion, cause we all know the way all fury-vs.-focus-debates go.

Probably right.

But even if we assume your right with this, I don't see how your proposal would lead to more jacks. There are already casters with more than average focus, but they aren't taking more jacks than other casters. They take their ~2 jacks and use the extra focus like every other caster, for themselves.
If they get additional 4 'jackfocus', they will run their 2 jacks with it and cheer that they are able to use the normal focus without sharing.

So whats the problem with that?

Also:

Yes I prefer not to frenzy, but I don't mind frenzying if I get a turn of OVERDRIVE PAIN the turn before. And I can work it out that it works pretty well anyway. Something that I found jacks simply not having the options of.

[Dacian]

Right then to get it back to OP...

Rockbottoms coins should work for Rhul.

[Deo85]

Sense every one seems to be on the Dead got to be retarded wagon I wish all undead models had eyeless sight... They don't have any eyes after all and are walking corpses I demand this problem be fixed! I wan to be broken like ever blight

[gaminguy]

I definitely prefer to be able to make decisions as the turn progresses, rather than be locked into something prior to the turn starting (and even that's not reliable - if you make the threshold check, then you've just got a beast that can't be forced)

The only suggestion I've seen on modifying Focus that I think makes a lick of sense is eliminating allocation and letting 'jacks pull Focus on demand on their activation. It would make the WM turn more organic (like a Hordes turn) without actually making the 'jack any stronger, they'd just be more efficient.

Allocation is taking a guess at how much mojo your jack needs to get it's job for the turn done, pulling on the fly eliminates the guess work while giving you the opportunity to throw good Focus after bad like us Hordes players have to resist doing.

I wouldn't swear to how balanced it would be without play-testing it that way though.

Edit: I'm not claiming to want that change, being a good judge of how much Focus a 'jack needs is part of the game and I suspect it's part of the balancing act between the Fury mechanic and WM's overall superior stats, spells, and feats.

[hausdorff space]

The only suggestion I've seen on modifying Focus that I think makes a lick of sense is eliminating allocation and letting 'jacks pull Focus on demand on their activation. It would make the WM turn more organic (like a Hordes turn) without actually making the 'jack any stronger, they'd just be more efficient.

I like the focus mechanic, but think marshalling/driving could be more integrated and interactive.
- Warcasters and marshall should have a standard set of simple (perhaps faction or more specific) drives that they can use on any jack (part of their battlegroup or not).

[SteakAndSpirits]

If I could change one rule, I would reinstitute Arcane Archer on Epic Lylyth. I don't play her frequently enough that I'd derive much joy from it, but it's always irritated me from a thematic standpoint. That and it was pretty silly to both give her a range extension ability /and/ access to spell martyrs in the same book. That sort of silly redudancy rivals federal bureaucracy.

-s&s

[Breadsmith]

Say's who?

Not Dr. Arkadius, that's who.

[katadder]

If I could change one rule, I would reinstitute Arcane Archer on Epic Lylyth. I don't play her frequently enough that I'd derive much joy from it, but it's always irritated me from a thematic standpoint. That and it was pretty silly to both give her a range extension ability /and/ access to spell martyrs in the same book. That sort of silly redudancy rivals federal bureaucracy.

-s&s

and the fact that anything you want to pincushion for the accuracy bonus she has no chance of hitting with fury 5.

[Curufew]

Warbeasts that are killed have "wrecks" like warjacks do.

[SteakAndSpirits]

and the fact that anything you want to pincushion for the accuracy bonus she has no chance of hitting with fury 5.

Right. Pin Cushion has been relegated to damage boosts only. Still, the sorts of things you want damage boosts on are low enough DEF that you can hang the spell with a boost.

Still, the issue of her operational range was a major point of contension during the field test. It was debated. Further debated. Had direct feedback. And she went through multiple incarnations. The issue was her ability to affect things at a distance.

In hindsight, with Spell Martyrs floating around the corner, I'm not even sure why they acknowledged it was a problem, let alone made a functional change to her abilities.

-s&s

[PG_joedj]

I would change the Charge/SPD rule so that a debuff upkeep/spell could be cancelled/countered by a SPD buff.

In other words, a debuff of -2 to SPD would be negated by a +2 SPD buff, resulting in no negative modification to the SPD stat, therefore a charge is allowed.

Currently SPD debuff spells effectively also read 'no charges, slams, or tramples are allowed...' and many factions cannot eliminate debuff upkeeps, without using a few select 'required' models.

[jonconcarne]

I would change the Charge/SPD rule so that a debuff upkeep/spell could be cancelled/countered by a SPD buff.

In other words, a debuff of -2 to SPD would be negated by a +2 SPD buff, resulting in no negative modification to the SPD stat, therefore a charge is allowed.

Currently SPD debuff spells effectively also read 'no charges, slams, or tramples are allowed...' and many factions cannot eliminate debuff upkeeps, without using a few select 'required' models.

So you basically want any warlock (or at least those in Circle, Skorne, and Trolls) to be able to negate an enemy feat or debuff by a simple animus (Rush/Bounding). Let's make it so buffs spells are another step better than debuffs and add some upkeep hate while we're at it :P

[Indy]

Simple fix to the Undead rule:

Eliminate it entirely.

Create a statline sybol for Soulless, (which would crop up in multiple factions now, so it's worth bothering with), all current Undead models would get that and fearless. Change all abilities that refer to Living models to say Non-Incorporeal instead.

PROBLEM SOLVED.