I think rune marks need to be made more visually distinct. Too many spiky skulls I think battle traits need to be built so that bespokes and parent factions have synergies. Having Wildercorps be able to gain castelite wall or a freeguild marshal gains smart step back could be a lot of fun. Base sizes should be added to fighter profiles. I’d also like to see rune marks generic abilities. If you have bulwark you can up your toughness or something. I think it’d make the generic rune marks a bit more meaningful and it could be fun.
Several of the hot takes aimed at bringing Warcry back to what it was intended to be were welcome suggestions in my opinion. I don't buy the must keep the competitive scene happy to keep the game alive angle for three reasons. 1. The sister game of Kill Team shows that actually having bespoke teams for the skirmish systems whilst locking out the models from the bigger brother game works rather well. 2. Several surveys have shown that competitive players are a vocal minority when compared to the silent casual majority. Of course it's more complex than this I admit, but it certainty doesn't suggest that favouring one group over another is the way to go. 3. I remember discussing some of these issues with one of the AoS designers, and his take was basically that they feel that whatever they put out there the competitive community will try to stretch it to its limits anyway, so they don't need to specifically design for the competitive community.
Those are pretty poor points. 40k is different. People who play kill team want a smaller game or can't afford the flagship game. Competitive players are the most committed and willing to buy what they need. They might be a vocal minority maybe? But they are individually the majority holding up the game like most of gws stuff. Now, some reasons for. List building is amazing. If you even play for fun you have some of the best moments in making a list. More accessibility to players is important and you get the large aos community able to play too. And lastly just variety. If might be a good selection for you but honestly im not a fan of alot of warbands meaning my options are small. Not a good place for something you wanna spend a bunch of your time, money and joy into. Arguments like this are only good in comp. In casual its just plain bad. Like toast saud, play how you want, its casual. And let people play how they want with their models.
Thanks for the detailed response! To further elaborate what I was saying about the competitive scene, after many conversations with AOS and Warcry staff, Warcry saw (or was earlier this year) the most % growth competitively of all their games. This is backed up by events selling out at WHW in minutes. The competitive scene is currently thriving and is clearly being monitored. Warcry does not sell particular well so one of the best ways to measure it’s actual popularity is via the competitive scene. It’s not about appeasing the comp players, it’s more about not taking away the things that got them to support the game. To go point by point I guess 1) Kill Team is a substantially more popular game with a much bigger players base inside of an IP that dwarfs AOS. A dip in players from a drastic change is less impactful as a result. Warcry could just die if you suddenly axe a massive part of the community. 2) Competitive players are absolutely the vocal minority, but in this case, they are also actively keeping the game alive by supporting the game in a way that has kicked GW into gear with regular FAQs and updates. This was acknowledged earlier in the year during an interview with John Bracken, or Captain Warcry himself. 3) competitive players optimising the fun out of their game is a problem in all games for sure. Doesn’t really change the stance though!
Enjoy these videos with hot takes. Keep it up. I personally think that the game needs a new edition to change up the rules. Fundamentally the game is great with how combat work. Wild die initiative and abilities is also a great system. Terrain and verticality needs a much bigger part to play. There needs to be very good reasons to move to higher ground. Universal abilities should also be pretty much reworked and only have a focus on basic utility. A warbands own abilities should play a bigger role to better emphasize the warbands theme. Warbands abilities needs to be better and more flavorful than they currently are. They should also focus less on adding new warbands all the time. Instead I’d rather just see 1-2 new models with a new fighter card released once in a while for existing warbands.
I agree we the fall rules comments. We house rule fall roll only on damage and impact damage for every 2in of fall. It makes fighting on the gnarlwood bridges so much more fun. I love the singles for reactions idea. Gonna try it!
12:40 he is addressing Bladeborn board game - game was okay, its like Warcry but at flat surface and with underworlds groups (called also bladeborn in warcry); game was sold also in uk
Regarding the "bloat" of fighter options, and the inappropriateness of fighters like the Megaboss, I think that ship has sailed. If GW had stuck with what might have been the original concept of Warcry being "fantasy Necromunda" then that'd have been great. But now it's emphatically "AoS skirmish" I think being able to put almost any AoS model that catches your eye into a warband is a great thing for getting people into the game.
Flying rule is what killed Warcry for me. It is basically a teleport that ignores any piece of terrain. Would be so freaking easy to actually measure the length of your flight path, but no, GW decided to give flyers infinite vertical movement!
@@wargamesontoast The rule is just broken there is no balancing out a mechanic that allows you to teleport through walls of infinite height. They took a rule for a 2D game and put in a 3D game.
The singles would be tops. Hoping they got some great ideas for 3rd. Bes thing they did was add aos models but think everyone is fine with condensing stuff. I think adding a whole lot of stuff was just for accessibility so people can take what they waht for now.
Disagree to the bladeborn take. It isn't fun having to ask every game what your special characters do and think about all of the abilities. It isn't fun, but just a chore. Some bladeborn are also really unfair, like what you get from points and abilities. Singri from Oathbounds just has the capability to have a 5 shot attack str4 dmg2/4 with 18" range... It is ridiculous and there are many more examples of units being overtuned with broken abilities or just undercosted. It also makes the competitive entry hurdle just more frustrating having to buy these clearly stronger figures. If they would be more balanced, fine, but we've seen a decrease in points recently and that just shows that they don't care really. Bladeborn should only ever be a way for players to try out warcry if they come from underworlds instead of being another investment for existing players to bloat the existing profiles even further and overcomplicate the game with special (sometimes badly written) abilities, I mean Skabbik having basically an improved version of Rampage on a triple is just insane
There are some overtuned Bladeborn, but most are totally fine. Singri Brand isn’t Bladeborn either! Brand’s Oathbound are a full Warband that are part of the Darkoath warband. They are not Bladeborn at all. So Singri can’t be taken outside of a Darkoath lists
Hot take: Warband lists should be completely locked... and every warband given an allocation of points to spend on blessings, allies, artefacts and what not to add in addition to the locked list.
I think rune marks need to be made more visually distinct. Too many spiky skulls
I think battle traits need to be built so that bespokes and parent factions have synergies. Having Wildercorps be able to gain castelite wall or a freeguild marshal gains smart step back could be a lot of fun.
Base sizes should be added to fighter profiles.
I’d also like to see rune marks generic abilities. If you have bulwark you can up your toughness or something. I think it’d make the generic rune marks a bit more meaningful and it could be fun.
Several of the hot takes aimed at bringing Warcry back to what it was intended to be were welcome suggestions in my opinion.
I don't buy the must keep the competitive scene happy to keep the game alive angle for three reasons.
1. The sister game of Kill Team shows that actually having bespoke teams for the skirmish systems whilst locking out the models from the bigger brother game works rather well.
2. Several surveys have shown that competitive players are a vocal minority when compared to the silent casual majority. Of course it's more complex than this I admit, but it certainty doesn't suggest that favouring one group over another is the way to go.
3. I remember discussing some of these issues with one of the AoS designers, and his take was basically that they feel that whatever they put out there the competitive community will try to stretch it to its limits anyway, so they don't need to specifically design for the competitive community.
Those are pretty poor points.
40k is different. People who play kill team want a smaller game or can't afford the flagship game.
Competitive players are the most committed and willing to buy what they need. They might be a vocal minority maybe? But they are individually the majority holding up the game like most of gws stuff.
Now, some reasons for. List building is amazing. If you even play for fun you have some of the best moments in making a list. More accessibility to players is important and you get the large aos community able to play too. And lastly just variety. If might be a good selection for you but honestly im not a fan of alot of warbands meaning my options are small. Not a good place for something you wanna spend a bunch of your time, money and joy into.
Arguments like this are only good in comp. In casual its just plain bad. Like toast saud, play how you want, its casual. And let people play how they want with their models.
Thanks for the detailed response!
To further elaborate what I was saying about the competitive scene, after many conversations with AOS and Warcry staff, Warcry saw (or was earlier this year) the most % growth competitively of all their games. This is backed up by events selling out at WHW in minutes. The competitive scene is currently thriving and is clearly being monitored. Warcry does not sell particular well so one of the best ways to measure it’s actual popularity is via the competitive scene. It’s not about appeasing the comp players, it’s more about not taking away the things that got them to support the game.
To go point by point I guess
1) Kill Team is a substantially more popular game with a much bigger players base inside of an IP that dwarfs AOS. A dip in players from a drastic change is less impactful as a result. Warcry could just die if you suddenly axe a massive part of the community.
2) Competitive players are absolutely the vocal minority, but in this case, they are also actively keeping the game alive by supporting the game in a way that has kicked GW into gear with regular FAQs and updates. This was acknowledged earlier in the year during an interview with John Bracken, or Captain Warcry himself.
3) competitive players optimising the fun out of their game is a problem in all games for sure. Doesn’t really change the stance though!
Enjoy these videos with hot takes. Keep it up.
I personally think that the game needs a new edition to change up the rules. Fundamentally the game is great with how combat work. Wild die initiative and abilities is also a great system.
Terrain and verticality needs a much bigger part to play. There needs to be very good reasons to move to higher ground.
Universal abilities should also be pretty much reworked and only have a focus on basic utility. A warbands own abilities should play a bigger role to better emphasize the warbands theme. Warbands abilities needs to be better and more flavorful than they currently are.
They should also focus less on adding new warbands all the time. Instead I’d rather just see 1-2 new models with a new fighter card released once in a while for existing warbands.
I agree with basically all of this XD
I agree we the fall rules comments. We house rule fall roll only on damage and impact damage for every 2in of fall. It makes fighting on the gnarlwood bridges so much more fun. I love the singles for reactions idea. Gonna try it!
Reactions needing singles... Only? Or in addition to an activation? Could make it stronger if both are required
No idea, would need more testing to nail the exact implementation. But the concept of using singles more is very interesting
Barnes and Nobel is a large national bookstore chain. It's where X-wing was often sold.
Ahhh, I see. Thanks!
12:40 he is addressing Bladeborn board game - game was okay, its like Warcry but at flat surface and with underworlds groups (called also bladeborn in warcry); game was sold also in uk
Ohhhhhh. I had no idea haha
I use Underworld dice for hammer dagger shield markers
Regarding the "bloat" of fighter options, and the inappropriateness of fighters like the Megaboss, I think that ship has sailed. If GW had stuck with what might have been the original concept of Warcry being "fantasy Necromunda" then that'd have been great. But now it's emphatically "AoS skirmish" I think being able to put almost any AoS model that catches your eye into a warband is a great thing for getting people into the game.
Flying rule is what killed Warcry for me. It is basically a teleport that ignores any piece of terrain. Would be so freaking easy to actually measure the length of your flight path, but no, GW decided to give flyers infinite vertical movement!
To balance fly out, the vast majority of flier are disgustingly expensive to actually take and have significantly worse stats to boot!
@@wargamesontoast The rule is just broken there is no balancing out a mechanic that allows you to teleport through walls of infinite height.
They took a rule for a 2D game and put in a 3D game.
Thankfully there are warbands, abilities, and rules that shut down flying completely then!
The singles would be tops. Hoping they got some great ideas for 3rd. Bes thing they did was add aos models but think everyone is fine with condensing stuff. I think adding a whole lot of stuff was just for accessibility so people can take what they waht for now.
A lot of people got into Warcry because it opened up the way it did for sure
Top billing, oh yeah. 🤣
why would you want to make it easier to fall off? wouldn't it make it even worse for vertical play?
Because it’s funny 😂 it’s such a non-issue right now most people legit forget about it for entire games 😂
@@wargamesontoast yeah, i know i've definitely have lmao, even tho i've won games by throwing people off ledges
Sounds like a solid twist. "Loose footing"
@@ZiggyStardunk right? most of the things people want to see in the game they could just do it themselves by houseruling lmao
Disagree to the bladeborn take. It isn't fun having to ask every game what your special characters do and think about all of the abilities. It isn't fun, but just a chore. Some bladeborn are also really unfair, like what you get from points and abilities. Singri from Oathbounds just has the capability to have a 5 shot attack str4 dmg2/4 with 18" range... It is ridiculous and there are many more examples of units being overtuned with broken abilities or just undercosted. It also makes the competitive entry hurdle just more frustrating having to buy these clearly stronger figures. If they would be more balanced, fine, but we've seen a decrease in points recently and that just shows that they don't care really. Bladeborn should only ever be a way for players to try out warcry if they come from underworlds instead of being another investment for existing players to bloat the existing profiles even further and overcomplicate the game with special (sometimes badly written) abilities, I mean Skabbik having basically an improved version of Rampage on a triple is just insane
There are some overtuned Bladeborn, but most are totally fine.
Singri Brand isn’t Bladeborn either! Brand’s Oathbound are a full Warband that are part of the Darkoath warband. They are not Bladeborn at all. So Singri can’t be taken outside of a Darkoath lists
I just looked him up. If favored he can go up to 8 shots. So 16 total shots at range 18. Undefendable.
Hot take: Warband lists should be completely locked... and every warband given an allocation of points to spend on blessings, allies, artefacts and what not to add in addition to the locked list.
That would be an interesting way to do it for sure