No! The Warcry combat system is intentionally quick and clean! The killteam approach still ends up with damage done at the end but adds a bunch of extra rolls and steps along the way.
I agree. I like it quick and simple...less rolling. However I do agree some model tend to cause a "swingy" game in terms of their damage output I feel like GW can mitigate this by adjusting the damage profile of those units.
Sure there are more steps just to get to a damage number but how can they address the twofold criticisms of 1. warcry being swingy and 2. combat being non-interactive?
@@OffMetaMusings 1. Swingyness like Velmorn is a reflection of a decision to make the profile swingy. After that dice are dice, a certain amount of randomness is needed. Also, when people outside the game talk about randomness they aren't talking about dice they're talking about mission selection. 2. I roll the dice, I look at strength and toughness, damage is inflicted. We've interacted. Adding a mini-game to every attack takes away focus from the great game, it's really not needed and the version from Killteam is notable as there's always an optimal play so the interaction is only an illusion. Either you make the right choice or you make a mistake.
Yea, I kind of prefer Warcry's approach of taking your lickings and moving on. The KT system is built around a combat procedure that has no Toughness and instead you hit on one number and the damage is then mitigated by saves or parries. I don't think porting it into a Toughness system would work that well as you would still have the feast or famine problem with low strength models like Elves (which suffer in Warcry because they follow the GW paradigm of accurate but weak, but in a game where there is only strength vs. toughness they loves one of their traditional strengths. I think if you want to reduce swinginess, instead of adapting the Kill Team fight sequence, you adapt the damage profiles instead and narrow the crazy gulf between normal and critical hits so it becomes less of a game about fishing for the latter or else nothing happens. I'm talking about making damage 2/3 or 3/5 far more ubiquitous on low numbered attacks, and leaving the swingy 1/4 profiles for rare specialist units that are meant to throw lots of dice, that maybe have a trick to making that damage a bit more regular like Spirit Hosts did (and now Nighthaunt do).
Looks like we don't need AoS 3.0 to bring us the most common addition on everyone's wishlist; turns out in a wild surprise Briar and Bone is introducing them to the game! Perfect timing for the second leg of my group's Heart of Ghur narrative campaign too! Which brings me to something I would like to see in a 3.0: more involved Narrative rules and even more thematically flexible list making. It would be cool to at least have a narrative supplement that added a bit more crunch to the game, like allowing us to build up our campsites more for special bonuses or more flexible list making. Mind you I am not asking for anything Necromunda or Mordheim complex, but it would be cool to have some kind of thematic resource system that let you build up your own basecamps, maybe raid those of others, get special bonuses that opened up thematic list making and etc. As an example on thematic list making maybe building a structure that would let you keep any beast or minion from your Grand Alliance as a Thrall, or an enclave to have a "Trusted ally" that allows you take units from the ally's warband in your Thrall slots (so you can have cool/fluffy things like a Kroxigor Warspawned or a Spawn of Chotec in a Hunters of Huanchi list).
I like most if these, nice ideas! What I don't like is changing the combat. Any time I have to roll more dice I get sad because it is boring and takes too long. High variance can be fun and makes games usually faster. I liked that you put in an example combat, though for me it illustrates the problem with that approach: both players spend more time rolling dice and doing admin. In you scenario (attacker: crit + hit vs defender: 2 hit) there are only 5 different outcomes, one of them strictly worse for the attacker. That took me 2 minutes to figure out and wasn't really interesting
I'd like to see a change in Counter. Traditionally Warcry modelled fighters that are skillful but not powerful but giving them large numbers of attacks but low strength. Look at Cypher Lords, Elves, etc. This seemed to work well enough in 1st edition but Counter makes these supposedly skillful fighters very vulnerable to Counter, which restricts the design space available for fighters in an unhelpful way. Finding a way to retain a Counter-like mechanic while removing this issue would be nice. Maybe using Kill Team-like melee rules would do this but it feels like a potentially slower mechanic and i like the fat flowing nature of the Warcry system as it is.
I think the fact that it eats an action and punishes low strength attacks contributes to the lack of midrange options which just die to low pt chaff who only counter.
We were brewing some ideas on counter whereby if you rolled ANY misses it would be 1 damage and ANY crit misses it would be 2 giving a cap on counter damage of 3 points. That seemed to even out the curve quite a bit vs more squishy warbands.
I agree. Counter is a nice idea, but the way it works is very much hurting list building options. Every low strentgh+high attacks unit basically kills itself, regardless whom it attacks. On strong enemies it at least eats up valuable action, but a 120 pts fighter basically dying to thorns damage on a chaff model seems wrong.
@@OffMetaMusings something like that would be an improvement I reckon, striking the right balance between being inconsequential and being too powerful will be hard though. Also there are enough faction reactions that are similar to Counter that they'd all need to be reviewed or they'd distort things.
I still think changing Warcry’s setting every edition is both a blessing and a curse. Necromunda players develop huge, sprawling boards with tons of interchangeable scenery. Warcry doesn’t have that. You can guarantee that the next setting will have no room for our 10 meat trees. If it had remained in the eightpoints, sure, continue to create books and soon it would become the most well realised realm in AoS. I’m not sure Warcry lends itself to a Necromunda style of development very well.
As a casual player enjoying quick games, the parry mechanic seems too frustrating. considering big tough things like a stormfiend with melee weapons could block a passage and just out tank small staff and parry big things to waste peoples time. But counter attacking would be an amazing thing, stream lines the whole process of fighting. then again it would de value the attack action. Maybe handle it more like the counter from thw new ossiarch bone reaper faction so attacks have one less attack die. Also the enemy must be in range of the defenders weapon. This way toughness does not become an offensive stat for stuff like chaff (stormvermin, Iron legionary, etc.) and weapons retain importance, as does attack range
I love warcry easy rules, but I rly like the idea to port some of combat mechanic form kill team. Be more interactive, like you say you can decide to parry, attack back and go back and forth, I don’t like the whole counter mechanic that was introduced to warcry.
I like most of the ideas but am sceptical to slowing down combats. There should be other ways to save elves or similair profiles. My biggest wish is actually to not bloat the game even more which faction abilities actually does. One way would be to cut back on the number of abilities players have to remember. Both general and faction specific. Honestly 30-50% are very fringe anyway!
Absolutely agree. I have a weekly killteam / warcry meetup and we can usually get in 1.5-2 games of warcry in the time it takes to play 1 game of killteam. Warcry also feels much more dynamic and engaging because it’s fast. Slowing it down with opposed roles and illusory mini-games feels like it would suck all the fun out of it and add substantially to the amount of time needed.
Considering that they just added factional passive abilities, instead of holding this change to the next edition, tells me new edition isnt coming soon. I would however, really like some of the bespoke warbands to be merged with the bigger factions, like hunters of huanchi and seraphon, or wildcorps and castelites
I don’t think Warcry’s combat design is the issue, I think Counter is one of the main issues. It’s far too reliable a method for weaker pieces to cause more damage than they otherwise would, and it completely negates the effectiveness of high attack, low damage models. 40k had a similar(ish) issue with Overwatch and solved it by making overwatch cost CP. Counter should simply be made into a double rather than a reaction.
I'd love to see a Kill Team style melee system in Warcry. Detractors will say that hand to hand combat in Kill Team winds up being deterministic more often than not. There are some interesting cases (for example, rarely you might intentionally leave an enemy alive and wounded even though you could kill them), but in the vast majority of cases the optimal choices are obvious, and players just do that. The time taken to complete a Fight sequence is often not worth the tiny amount of player agency (or illusion thereof) that you get from it. That's all true. But it's not just about maximizing/mitigating damage. The real benefit and interest in Kill Team's system is how it plays into positioning, makes every Fight a commitment (you are almost definitely going to get hit back every time), and doesn't leave the defender (usually) with a feeling that all they can do is stand there and take the hits. Kill Team's system is good, but even in that game I'd prefer faster Fights with decisions that are fewer and more meaningful. I think Warcry -- being a melee focused game -- could take a system similar to Kill Team's but do something even better with it.
@@mattpieroni94 I do like the way you think, but I disagree! That works in KT is because you can't perform the same action twice and there are like a billion actions to choose from. Not so in Warcry (which I think we all agree is the better game?). I actually think Kill Team is going to drop APL in the next edition and simply give each operative two actions in each activation.
@@naitp of course u Need to put some limitation for 3 APL fighter, like u can only use It for reaction or max 2 movement. It's a cool way to give Power to leader in a thematic way.
(Sorry in advance for the upcoming novel ...) 1. Agreed: Buffing faction identity through faction traits is a nice idea. I don't think it goes far enough, tho. Current meta is rather choosing two allies (like Vex and Varanguard) and accompanying them with whatever faction than picking a faction and then tweaking them with an ally or two. So I wouldn't mind seeing the entire ally and monster system heavily nerfed. But people hate nerfs, so buffing being faithful to a faction is a great idea. But from what I see in the background, those traits aren't enough. Khorne Bloodbound basically causes (on average) 0.75 dmg to an enemy when a friendly fighter dies. That won't change anything. 2. Disagreed: I personally find Spearhead pretty boring due to the lack of choice. Additionally, further dividing the already relatively small player base of Warcry with more different game modes isn't a great idea imo. I'd much rather like GW to set a certain power level as average for bespoke warbands in general, test new releases against that threshold and not just the other warband in the box like with Pyre&Flood where both were preeetty weak. Roughly balancing all bespoke warbands in their base setup to a samey level is basically the same as a Spearhead mode for new players, without actually forcing restrictions. Referring to point 1, by nerfing the ally/monster system, this would actually balance stuff out between bespoke warbands and other factions even more. 3. Agreed. Just agreed. Kinda shameful this doesn't already exist. 4. I agree with the idea, but I am not sold on the system. Imagine a clan rat attacking a fomoroid crusher. The crusher can tank the damage answer with 3 attacks. Already questionable, if this doesn't count as a reaction. Now imagine 4 clan rats fight the crusher. The crusher can suddenly answer each attack with 3 attacks, making him 4 times as punchy as he should be, basically negating the advantage of having many models/activations over big killy units. Am I overlooking/misunderstanding something? Is your idea meant as an alternative to counter? I'd rather meet Age of Sigmar half way and just throw two dice instead of one (let's say hit and save, dropping the wound roll). Takes away some swinginess, but still leaves room for unexpected outcomes. It is also faster than the (imo) very clunky distribution of dice. Never liked that. Bottom line: thanks for your thoughts =)
My main suggestions are a counter rework to be less punishing to weaker fighters like elves (and gets worse if you try to improve your chances by using onslaught). Also, the abilities that are based on value, maybe consider having bands, so 1,2,3 trigger the ability and 4+ have a slightly better bersion. I want my wildercorps retreat to work on all melee attacks again too, really hurts not being able to retreat from a 2" spear
Sorry a pass from me on all of these..maybe passives but only if just for 100% faction (to reduce allies). Last thing Warcry needs is to be anything like any other GW games 😂 combat mechanics are fine as quick and easy and simple. All id like to see in 3 is a nice new shiny book some scenery and a new location.. sort Elves out with a better reaction.
@@wolfmanhcc I personally would like to see some urban environment, the whole Hels crown thing might be building to it, or maybe the insides of Talaxis
@@toferkrz946 Yep, still there was a lot of good ideas in what they put out. I have seen some interesting homebrew Warcry stuff, where people have used it as a springboard to build out the system. I am also working on my own Fantasy Solo-Coop miniature agnostic skirmish game that draws from those ideas. Even if they don't do anything else with Campaign in 2e and end up dropping it and/or watering it down in 3E, they have set a lot in motion with what they did.
KT fighting I'd wonder about how it works with actions? Basically free action for stuff with lots of attacks everytime its attacked. What I'd like to see is more aggressive use of the Ally Runemark to address the soft problem of ally souping you allude to with the Faction Passive section. Some of the really tastey allies (Varanguard for example) maaybe shouldn't be so freely available to anything Chaos GA in the same way a Chaos Knight Champion might be
Kill team rolling defense dice can be fun but it also "slows" the game. The melee combat/fight in killteam is very FUN but isn't there always an optimal play? I always take my time when fighting because I'm like "how do I maximize damage " and I'm not good at math so takes me a bit. I do it for my friends too though because they suck at math even more haha. I always use my seraphon to shoot people off of terrain, most of the time I miss but all it takes is 1 six lol. More BOARD shenanigans, more sets that are for multiple people. A board that turns combat more like KT. It's enough new shit to not change the game but still give the option . Turn random units into ghosts or something. Idk warcry fun Kill team should take from warcry in terms of simplicity for explaining the abilities. My fiance gets more annoyed reading KT abilities than she does MTG. Anyone I try to show KT are like "what the fuck" but with warcry it's "oh I getting more dice he'll yeah"
When you talk about preconstructed warbands, do you mean for the non bespoke warbands?....As all the premade warbands already are 1000 points each so they're already sorted. Right? What i think Warcry could do with is a basic Charge mechanic, currently you kinda have to play defensively, hanging back to save that extra action to swing with....Wouldn't it be more fun if we could just do double moves and attack head on? So for example, When you charge you simply move + move but when you attack you are automatically treated as STR 1 as a penalty.
The problem from a balance standpoint of the existing bespokes is that those boxes HAVE to add up to 1000 points when they are released and there is always that expectation that because the box adds to 1000 points, it is a fully working warband (which is an issue considering they always give only 1-2 of each fighter you really want to play per box). So going preconstructed with their own warband rules (like spearhead) solves that problem entirely because you can balance around the actual contents of the box and not some arbitrary 1000 point number. On your second point, doesn't KT do a similar thing? they've got a move+attack action iirc.
@@OffMetaMusings i'm not sure, i know Underworlds does, aslong as it comes with some kind of penalty it should be balanced, maybe preset it to be an auto 3 dmg.
My suggestion would be using Underworlds combat system instead of kill teams. Similar but different plus it's more straightforward. Consider that AoS4 has ws, bs, T & S built-in to, to hit, to wound & to save, same as Underworlds but you increase the number of dice you roll to reflect the better ws, bs, s & T.
I honestly hope they do not go the spearhead (preconstructed) route. It would only give new players false information or get them stuck in one format... and it removes one of the best aspects of warcry, that is the freedom.
Agreed. Spearhead seems pretty boring to me. Also, people can already simply field bespoke warbands in their out of the box core setup against each other. Rather than adding a game mode, GW could simply try to rebalance the existing warbands in their core setup against each other. That would have the same effect with less effort, no new rules and no restrictions.
I think the core rules are really good how they are - there are some minor changes I think could be made, but i won't be upset if none of them are - maybe you can only counter if you're in range for one of your melee weapons? - maybe if your strength is X or more higher than your opponents toughness you crit on 5s? - I do feel like a new edition could be a good chance to rework some of the factions which don't work well.
@@OffMetaMusings do they need complete overhauls or just some profile tweaks? Some warbands feel like they're close, but just a little under tuned - others feel like they're built around a gimmick which isn't supported by the way Warcry plays
I understand the problem you're trying to address with preconstructed lists.. But the open building is one of my favorite things about Warcry. I think they just need to balance the bespoke boxes better.. That solves the problem without the need for a new format that dilutes the pool
you are rolling simultaneously so it doesn't actually increase playtime all that much. Like I've said elsewhere, I have played both systems and I find KT's more compelling especially from an interactivity standpoint.
@@OffMetaMusings yeah, no.. As despite being simultaneous two people rolling adds time.. Half the time you go one after another.. Many times you're sharing a dice tray, or even dice.. It's slower. Also, I've played KT too, the Los and cover rules are a mess. It's a solid game, I prefer the quick elegance of Warcry. I don't see a problem. If you prefer KT, just play KT
Mentioned in another video, but feels like it would fit here. Stealing from AoS - Hero phase. At the start of each battle round, after initiative dice have been resolved, there is a Hero (or Leader) phase. Hero/Leader units can spend ability dice to activate abilities in this phase, without needing to be activated. Would massively benefit abilities like Kixi-Taka's "Imbue with Azyrite Energy", or Calthia's "Coordinated Strike", or KO's "Fight for Profit" to be able to use these abilities at the start of the battle round, but activate a different unit first.
The Pyregheist ability doesn't really feel like a traditional passive ability to me. It's more like a section of common text that's been extracted from a few of their abilities. GW has a track record of bloating their games with passive abilities, so I'm cautious about adding them to Warcry. I like that the Warcry has until now been restricted to fighter stats and active abilities (plus reactions, though they're nicely constrained too), which does a decent job of keeping design bloat and mental load under control. I imagine that my gaming group will give Battle Tactics a go, hopefully they'll be reasonably balanced and the concept won't bloat, but it's not something I've been demanding.
My first instinct on battle tactics is that they only really help out a small handful of warbands with most of the best ones going to factions that already could put together solid in-faction forces.
If they keep it to one Battle Tactic for each warband to a) give flavor to the warbands and more importantly b) reign in the imbalanced ally/monster system a bit, I am all for it. I don't think we are in the slippery slope territory just yet, but I understand the well justified caution when it comes to GW.
Well I’m just gotta keep painting these neat trees, please gw give us easier terrain to build. I’m gonna tear my hair out if I build a single tree more
So im coming from new to Warcry but gaming for over 40 years, and this is my first dive into fantasy and GW. Im just checking. The first edition came out in 2019, and after ony five years, people want a third edition? Sorry, no, leave it, let it settle, keep it unique.
@@markhume3503 it's more that seasoned GW watchers are aware that GW has many of their games on a 3 year edition cycle, so speculation about what's coming next always tends to start up about 2 years into an edition. This doesn't meant that people want a new edition, most people are overwhelmed by the rapid churn, just like you.
I didn't hear a single word of Kill Team hate in this video. I only heard "let's not turn Warcry into Kill Team", which is absolutely justified. We don't need two games that are the same just in a different time period. I prefer playing Warcry, just because I prefer the pacing. That doesn't mean I don't also enjoy and play Kill Team. It would've been Kill Team hate if he had said: "It is an absolutely idiotic idea to convey distances with symbols and multiples of symbols. What kind of mentally impaired person would ever do that? Please fire everybody on the design team who had a way to prevent this but didn't!" However, it would also have been justified to say that =P
Any expansion as to why? I get the argument that warcry is fast and furious but that does lead to blowout fights when you just crit kill without any kind of counterplay.
@@OffMetaMusings you are fundamentally changing the game then. Crit blow outs are as much a part of warcry as list building is. When you change that, you are making a different game. Everytime a content creator looks at the game they want to change the bell curve: even it out and reduce variance. This game is designed at its core with variance in mind. That’s a total overhaul/redesign not a band aid solution. I for one want to play Warcry and not what every hyper competitive player or content creator thinks what is best for tournaments.
No! The Warcry combat system is intentionally quick and clean! The killteam approach still ends up with damage done at the end but adds a bunch of extra rolls and steps along the way.
I agree. I like it quick and simple...less rolling. However I do agree some model tend to cause a "swingy" game in terms of their damage output I feel like GW can mitigate this by adjusting the damage profile of those units.
Sure there are more steps just to get to a damage number but how can they address the twofold criticisms of 1. warcry being swingy and 2. combat being non-interactive?
I just hate having all of that strength and toughness comparison junk I have to deal with.
@@OffMetaMusings 1. Swingyness like Velmorn is a reflection of a decision to make the profile swingy. After that dice are dice, a certain amount of randomness is needed. Also, when people outside the game talk about randomness they aren't talking about dice they're talking about mission selection. 2. I roll the dice, I look at strength and toughness, damage is inflicted. We've interacted. Adding a mini-game to every attack takes away focus from the great game, it's really not needed and the version from Killteam is notable as there's always an optimal play so the interaction is only an illusion. Either you make the right choice or you make a mistake.
Yea, I kind of prefer Warcry's approach of taking your lickings and moving on. The KT system is built around a combat procedure that has no Toughness and instead you hit on one number and the damage is then mitigated by saves or parries. I don't think porting it into a Toughness system would work that well as you would still have the feast or famine problem with low strength models like Elves (which suffer in Warcry because they follow the GW paradigm of accurate but weak, but in a game where there is only strength vs. toughness they loves one of their traditional strengths.
I think if you want to reduce swinginess, instead of adapting the Kill Team fight sequence, you adapt the damage profiles instead and narrow the crazy gulf between normal and critical hits so it becomes less of a game about fishing for the latter or else nothing happens. I'm talking about making damage 2/3 or 3/5 far more ubiquitous on low numbered attacks, and leaving the swingy 1/4 profiles for rare specialist units that are meant to throw lots of dice, that maybe have a trick to making that damage a bit more regular like Spirit Hosts did (and now Nighthaunt do).
Looks like we don't need AoS 3.0 to bring us the most common addition on everyone's wishlist; turns out in a wild surprise Briar and Bone is introducing them to the game! Perfect timing for the second leg of my group's Heart of Ghur narrative campaign too!
Which brings me to something I would like to see in a 3.0: more involved Narrative rules and even more thematically flexible list making. It would be cool to at least have a narrative supplement that added a bit more crunch to the game, like allowing us to build up our campsites more for special bonuses or more flexible list making. Mind you I am not asking for anything Necromunda or Mordheim complex, but it would be cool to have some kind of thematic resource system that let you build up your own basecamps, maybe raid those of others, get special bonuses that opened up thematic list making and etc. As an example on thematic list making maybe building a structure that would let you keep any beast or minion from your Grand Alliance as a Thrall, or an enclave to have a "Trusted ally" that allows you take units from the ally's warband in your Thrall slots (so you can have cool/fluffy things like a Kroxigor Warspawned or a Spawn of Chotec in a Hunters of Huanchi list).
I like most if these, nice ideas! What I don't like is changing the combat. Any time I have to roll more dice I get sad because it is boring and takes too long. High variance can be fun and makes games usually faster.
I liked that you put in an example combat, though for me it illustrates the problem with that approach: both players spend more time rolling dice and doing admin. In you scenario (attacker: crit + hit vs defender: 2 hit) there are only 5 different outcomes, one of them strictly worse for the attacker.
That took me 2 minutes to figure out and wasn't really interesting
I'd like to see a change in Counter. Traditionally Warcry modelled fighters that are skillful but not powerful but giving them large numbers of attacks but low strength. Look at Cypher Lords, Elves, etc. This seemed to work well enough in 1st edition but Counter makes these supposedly skillful fighters very vulnerable to Counter, which restricts the design space available for fighters in an unhelpful way. Finding a way to retain a Counter-like mechanic while removing this issue would be nice. Maybe using Kill Team-like melee rules would do this but it feels like a potentially slower mechanic and i like the fat flowing nature of the Warcry system as it is.
I think the fact that it eats an action and punishes low strength attacks contributes to the lack of midrange options which just die to low pt chaff who only counter.
We were brewing some ideas on counter whereby if you rolled ANY misses it would be 1 damage and ANY crit misses it would be 2 giving a cap on counter damage of 3 points. That seemed to even out the curve quite a bit vs more squishy warbands.
I agree. Counter is a nice idea, but the way it works is very much hurting list building options. Every low strentgh+high attacks unit basically kills itself, regardless whom it attacks. On strong enemies it at least eats up valuable action, but a 120 pts fighter basically dying to thorns damage on a chaff model seems wrong.
@@OffMetaMusings something like that would be an improvement I reckon, striking the right balance between being inconsequential and being too powerful will be hard though. Also there are enough faction reactions that are similar to Counter that they'd all need to be reviewed or they'd distort things.
I’d remove it completely tbh, or make it cost wild dice (much like how overwatch in 40k now costs CP).
I still think changing Warcry’s setting every edition is both a blessing and a curse. Necromunda players develop huge, sprawling boards with tons of interchangeable scenery. Warcry doesn’t have that. You can guarantee that the next setting will have no room for our 10 meat trees. If it had remained in the eightpoints, sure, continue to create books and soon it would become the most well realised realm in AoS. I’m not sure Warcry lends itself to a Necromunda style of development very well.
As a casual player enjoying quick games, the parry mechanic seems too frustrating. considering big tough things like a stormfiend with melee weapons could block a passage and just out tank small staff and parry big things to waste peoples time. But counter attacking would be an amazing thing, stream lines the whole process of fighting. then again it would de value the attack action. Maybe handle it more like the counter from thw new ossiarch bone reaper faction so attacks have one less attack die. Also the enemy must be in range of the defenders weapon. This way toughness does not become an offensive stat for stuff like chaff (stormvermin, Iron legionary, etc.) and weapons retain importance, as does attack range
I love warcry easy rules, but I rly like the idea to port some of combat mechanic form kill team. Be more interactive, like you say you can decide to parry, attack back and go back and forth, I don’t like the whole counter mechanic that was introduced to warcry.
I like most of the ideas but am sceptical to slowing down combats. There should be other ways to save elves or similair profiles. My biggest wish is actually to not bloat the game even more which faction abilities actually does. One way would be to cut back on the number of abilities players have to remember. Both general and faction specific. Honestly 30-50% are very fringe anyway!
The killteam combat system has felt like failed system from the start. So slow and choice and interaction are an illusion 90% of the time.
Absolutely agree. I have a weekly killteam / warcry meetup and we can usually get in 1.5-2 games of warcry in the time it takes to play 1 game of killteam. Warcry also feels much more dynamic and engaging because it’s fast. Slowing it down with opposed roles and illusory mini-games feels like it would suck all the fun out of it and add substantially to the amount of time needed.
Considering that they just added factional passive abilities, instead of holding this change to the next edition, tells me new edition isnt coming soon. I would however, really like some of the bespoke warbands to be merged with the bigger factions, like hunters of huanchi and seraphon, or wildcorps and castelites
That's an interesting idea, or at least a way to take those warbands ala bladeborn
Honestly bladeborn is really fun
I don’t think Warcry’s combat design is the issue, I think Counter is one of the main issues. It’s far too reliable a method for weaker pieces to cause more damage than they otherwise would, and it completely negates the effectiveness of high attack, low damage models. 40k had a similar(ish) issue with Overwatch and solved it by making overwatch cost CP. Counter should simply be made into a double rather than a reaction.
I'd love to see a Kill Team style melee system in Warcry.
Detractors will say that hand to hand combat in Kill Team winds up being deterministic more often than not. There are some interesting cases (for example, rarely you might intentionally leave an enemy alive and wounded even though you could kill them), but in the vast majority of cases the optimal choices are obvious, and players just do that. The time taken to complete a Fight sequence is often not worth the tiny amount of player agency (or illusion thereof) that you get from it.
That's all true. But it's not just about maximizing/mitigating damage. The real benefit and interest in Kill Team's system is how it plays into positioning, makes every Fight a commitment (you are almost definitely going to get hit back every time), and doesn't leave the defender (usually) with a feeling that all they can do is stand there and take the hits.
Kill Team's system is good, but even in that game I'd prefer faster Fights with decisions that are fewer and more meaningful. I think Warcry -- being a melee focused game -- could take a system similar to Kill Team's but do something even better with it.
Also the 3 APL for leader or chuncky units.
@@mattpieroni94 I do like the way you think, but I disagree! That works in KT is because you can't perform the same action twice and there are like a billion actions to choose from. Not so in Warcry (which I think we all agree is the better game?).
I actually think Kill Team is going to drop APL in the next edition and simply give each operative two actions in each activation.
@@naitp of course u Need to put some limitation for 3 APL fighter, like u can only use It for reaction or max 2 movement. It's a cool way to give Power to leader in a thematic way.
Doing minimum damage should not feel awful!
100%
I want a better magic system.
Don’t want a new edition, but would be happy if they got rid of allies. Bespoke box warcry is warcry proper!
(Sorry in advance for the upcoming novel ...)
1. Agreed: Buffing faction identity through faction traits is a nice idea. I don't think it goes far enough, tho. Current meta is rather choosing two allies (like Vex and Varanguard) and accompanying them with whatever faction than picking a faction and then tweaking them with an ally or two. So I wouldn't mind seeing the entire ally and monster system heavily nerfed. But people hate nerfs, so buffing being faithful to a faction is a great idea. But from what I see in the background, those traits aren't enough. Khorne Bloodbound basically causes (on average) 0.75 dmg to an enemy when a friendly fighter dies. That won't change anything.
2. Disagreed: I personally find Spearhead pretty boring due to the lack of choice. Additionally, further dividing the already relatively small player base of Warcry with more different game modes isn't a great idea imo. I'd much rather like GW to set a certain power level as average for bespoke warbands in general, test new releases against that threshold and not just the other warband in the box like with Pyre&Flood where both were preeetty weak. Roughly balancing all bespoke warbands in their base setup to a samey level is basically the same as a Spearhead mode for new players, without actually forcing restrictions. Referring to point 1, by nerfing the ally/monster system, this would actually balance stuff out between bespoke warbands and other factions even more.
3. Agreed. Just agreed. Kinda shameful this doesn't already exist.
4. I agree with the idea, but I am not sold on the system. Imagine a clan rat attacking a fomoroid crusher. The crusher can tank the damage answer with 3 attacks. Already questionable, if this doesn't count as a reaction. Now imagine 4 clan rats fight the crusher. The crusher can suddenly answer each attack with 3 attacks, making him 4 times as punchy as he should be, basically negating the advantage of having many models/activations over big killy units. Am I overlooking/misunderstanding something? Is your idea meant as an alternative to counter?
I'd rather meet Age of Sigmar half way and just throw two dice instead of one (let's say hit and save, dropping the wound roll). Takes away some swinginess, but still leaves room for unexpected outcomes. It is also faster than the (imo) very clunky distribution of dice. Never liked that.
Bottom line: thanks for your thoughts =)
No, its good that you set out your position :)
9:08 I feel like this is just the old warcry 1.0 compendium boxes 😂
Maybe...
My main suggestions are a counter rework to be less punishing to weaker fighters like elves (and gets worse if you try to improve your chances by using onslaught). Also, the abilities that are based on value, maybe consider having bands, so 1,2,3 trigger the ability and 4+ have a slightly better bersion. I want my wildercorps retreat to work on all melee attacks again too, really hurts not being able to retreat from a 2" spear
Also, like the faction passives idea. Allies are a bit too ubiquitous, there needs to be an actual consideration as to whether they are worth taking.
Sorry a pass from me on all of these..maybe passives but only if just for 100% faction (to reduce allies). Last thing Warcry needs is to be anything like any other GW games 😂 combat mechanics are fine as quick and easy and simple. All id like to see in 3 is a nice new shiny book some scenery and a new location.. sort Elves out with a better reaction.
I want to see the saaame thing regarding just some minor changes to the rule set. I think it’s healthy otherwise
I would be really happy with change of the setting.
@@Ar2r I agree with this take 100
Shyish or Chamon!
@@wolfmanhcc I personally would like to see some urban environment, the whole Hels crown thing might be building to it, or maybe the insides of Talaxis
The only thing I like about Warcry is the thing GW cares least about, campaign. I have a sad.
They really seem to sweep everything but Competitive Play under the rug lately, don't they...
@@toferkrz946 Yep, still there was a lot of good ideas in what they put out. I have seen some interesting homebrew Warcry stuff, where people have used it as a springboard to build out the system. I am also working on my own Fantasy Solo-Coop miniature agnostic skirmish game that draws from those ideas. Even if they don't do anything else with Campaign in 2e and end up dropping it and/or watering it down in 3E, they have set a lot in motion with what they did.
KT fighting I'd wonder about how it works with actions? Basically free action for stuff with lots of attacks everytime its attacked.
What I'd like to see is more aggressive use of the Ally Runemark to address the soft problem of ally souping you allude to with the Faction Passive section. Some of the really tastey allies (Varanguard for example) maaybe shouldn't be so freely available to anything Chaos GA in the same way a Chaos Knight Champion might be
You could do like banding based on cost? up to a certain cost it takes 1 ally slot, above that it takes 2?
That is also an idea!
Kill team rolling defense dice can be fun but it also "slows" the game.
The melee combat/fight in killteam is very FUN but isn't there always an optimal play?
I always take my time when fighting because I'm like "how do I maximize damage " and I'm not good at math so takes me a bit. I do it for my friends too though because they suck at math even more haha.
I always use my seraphon to shoot people off of terrain, most of the time I miss but all it takes is 1 six lol.
More BOARD shenanigans, more sets that are for multiple people.
A board that turns combat more like KT. It's enough new shit to not change the game but still give the option . Turn random units into ghosts or something. Idk warcry fun
Kill team should take from warcry in terms of simplicity for explaining the abilities. My fiance gets more annoyed reading KT abilities than she does MTG. Anyone I try to show KT are like "what the fuck" but with warcry it's "oh I getting more dice he'll yeah"
When you talk about preconstructed warbands, do you mean for the non bespoke warbands?....As all the premade warbands already are 1000 points each so they're already sorted. Right?
What i think Warcry could do with is a basic Charge mechanic, currently you kinda have to play defensively, hanging back to save that extra action to swing with....Wouldn't it be more fun if we could just do double moves and attack head on?
So for example, When you charge you simply move + move but when you attack you are automatically treated as STR 1 as a penalty.
The problem from a balance standpoint of the existing bespokes is that those boxes HAVE to add up to 1000 points when they are released and there is always that expectation that because the box adds to 1000 points, it is a fully working warband (which is an issue considering they always give only 1-2 of each fighter you really want to play per box). So going preconstructed with their own warband rules (like spearhead) solves that problem entirely because you can balance around the actual contents of the box and not some arbitrary 1000 point number.
On your second point, doesn't KT do a similar thing? they've got a move+attack action iirc.
@@OffMetaMusings i'm not sure, i know Underworlds does, aslong as it comes with some kind of penalty it should be balanced, maybe preset it to be an auto 3 dmg.
My suggestion would be using Underworlds combat system instead of kill teams. Similar but different plus it's more straightforward. Consider that AoS4 has ws, bs, T & S built-in to, to hit, to wound & to save, same as Underworlds but you increase the number of dice you roll to reflect the better ws, bs, s & T.
Thats an interesting thought; Admittedly i didnt play a whole bunch of underworlds but from what i remember, the combat system was pretty neat.
Long story short.
As a casual player I despise Strength and Toughness mechanic. If it goes away, I'll be the happiest warcry player imaginable.
I honestly hope they do not go the spearhead (preconstructed) route. It would only give new players false information or get them stuck in one format... and it removes one of the best aspects of warcry, that is the freedom.
Agreed. Spearhead seems pretty boring to me. Also, people can already simply field bespoke warbands in their out of the box core setup against each other. Rather than adding a game mode, GW could simply try to rebalance the existing warbands in their core setup against each other. That would have the same effect with less effort, no new rules and no restrictions.
I think the core rules are really good how they are - there are some minor changes I think could be made, but i won't be upset if none of them are - maybe you can only counter if you're in range for one of your melee weapons? - maybe if your strength is X or more higher than your opponents toughness you crit on 5s? - I do feel like a new edition could be a good chance to rework some of the factions which don't work well.
I feel like some faction reworks should probably come before a new edition happens and not after XD
@@OffMetaMusings I agree, but I'm not hopeful 😅 - which factions would you like to see reworked?
Pyreghiests, Askurgan Trueblades and Idoneth Deepkin just to name a few
@@OffMetaMusings do they need complete overhauls or just some profile tweaks? Some warbands feel like they're close, but just a little under tuned - others feel like they're built around a gimmick which isn't supported by the way Warcry plays
I understand the problem you're trying to address with preconstructed lists.. But the open building is one of my favorite things about Warcry. I think they just need to balance the bespoke boxes better.. That solves the problem without the need for a new format that dilutes the pool
Hard pass on the combat suggestion.. Counter rolls effectively doubles the time for every combat. No thanks. Why does 'highly competitive' matter?
you are rolling simultaneously so it doesn't actually increase playtime all that much. Like I've said elsewhere, I have played both systems and I find KT's more compelling especially from an interactivity standpoint.
haha, I think we all want better balanced bespoke boxes :)
@@OffMetaMusings yeah, no.. As despite being simultaneous two people rolling adds time.. Half the time you go one after another.. Many times you're sharing a dice tray, or even dice.. It's slower. Also, I've played KT too, the Los and cover rules are a mess. It's a solid game, I prefer the quick elegance of Warcry. I don't see a problem. If you prefer KT, just play KT
Mentioned in another video, but feels like it would fit here. Stealing from AoS - Hero phase. At the start of each battle round, after initiative dice have been resolved, there is a Hero (or Leader) phase. Hero/Leader units can spend ability dice to activate abilities in this phase, without needing to be activated. Would massively benefit abilities like Kixi-Taka's "Imbue with Azyrite Energy", or Calthia's "Coordinated Strike", or KO's "Fight for Profit" to be able to use these abilities at the start of the battle round, but activate a different unit first.
It's a nice idea :)
The Pyregheist ability doesn't really feel like a traditional passive ability to me. It's more like a section of common text that's been extracted from a few of their abilities.
GW has a track record of bloating their games with passive abilities, so I'm cautious about adding them to Warcry. I like that the Warcry has until now been restricted to fighter stats and active abilities (plus reactions, though they're nicely constrained too), which does a decent job of keeping design bloat and mental load under control.
I imagine that my gaming group will give Battle Tactics a go, hopefully they'll be reasonably balanced and the concept won't bloat, but it's not something I've been demanding.
My first instinct on battle tactics is that they only really help out a small handful of warbands with most of the best ones going to factions that already could put together solid in-faction forces.
If they keep it to one Battle Tactic for each warband to a) give flavor to the warbands and more importantly b) reign in the imbalanced ally/monster system a bit, I am all for it.
I don't think we are in the slippery slope territory just yet, but I understand the well justified caution when it comes to GW.
I dont like the close combat idea at all. There would be always an optimum to choose.
There is an optimum choice to make now though in combats?
Summer 2025
Well I’m just gotta keep painting these neat trees, please gw give us easier terrain to build. I’m gonna tear my hair out if I build a single tree more
but... I like the meat trees...
So im coming from new to Warcry but gaming for over 40 years, and this is my first dive into fantasy and GW. Im just checking. The first edition came out in 2019, and after ony five years, people want a third edition? Sorry, no, leave it, let it settle, keep it unique.
To be clear I'm not actually calling for a new edition so soon... I'm just talking about it because everyone else seems to be :)
@OffMetaMusings Which I don't get. If the rules had been out there unchanged for 5-6 years, sure, I can see the argument from others about updates.
@@markhume3503 it's more that seasoned GW watchers are aware that GW has many of their games on a 3 year edition cycle, so speculation about what's coming next always tends to start up about 2 years into an edition. This doesn't meant that people want a new edition, most people are overwhelmed by the rapid churn, just like you.
Man why all the random kill team hate in a video about Warcry seems really unnecessary
I've played both games and there are certainly merits to both of the game systems. I don't believe I said anything about hating on killteam?
I didn't hear a single word of Kill Team hate in this video. I only heard "let's not turn Warcry into Kill Team", which is absolutely justified. We don't need two games that are the same just in a different time period. I prefer playing Warcry, just because I prefer the pacing. That doesn't mean I don't also enjoy and play Kill Team.
It would've been Kill Team hate if he had said: "It is an absolutely idiotic idea to convey distances with symbols and multiples of symbols. What kind of mentally impaired person would ever do that? Please fire everybody on the design team who had a way to prevent this but didn't!"
However, it would also have been justified to say that =P
@@ayonmetar2301It's about the comments under the video.
Hate most of these ideas. Maybe passives that’s all
Well faction passives are a thing now as of Briar and Bone :)
Everything that you have said about combat is terrible
Any expansion as to why? I get the argument that warcry is fast and furious but that does lead to blowout fights when you just crit kill without any kind of counterplay.
@@OffMetaMusings you are fundamentally changing the game then. Crit blow outs are as much a part of warcry as list building is. When you change that, you are making a different game. Everytime a content creator looks at the game they want to change the bell curve: even it out and reduce variance. This game is designed at its core with variance in mind. That’s a total overhaul/redesign not a band aid solution. I for one want to play Warcry and not what every hyper competitive player or content creator thinks what is best for tournaments.