With the impending flood (eh? EH?) of Deepkin onto the scene, their rules around shooting restrictions has stirred up a lot of conversation around the shooting phase. So, I wanted to throw my opinion into the mix, and see what you think. Before we look too closely at the current scene, however, we need to look back at the very short history of the game to understand how it got to where it is.
Since the dawn of Age of Sigmar, people have had their opinions on the shooting phase and its restrictions. It was a bit of a shock to the system, after coming from WHFB and 40K where you could hide heroes and characters within units, that in Age of Sigmar, you could target individual models and blast their faces off. For a lot of people, this was a big issue within the game, and many have tried to engineer rules to circumvent this.
In the first General's Handbook, there were some powerful shooting lists, sure. Free People and Dispossessed each had powerful gunline builds. Wanderers could pump out a horrendous amount of high-rend shooting, and of course, Kunnin' Rukk deserves a mention. While the game was still very much combat oriented, shooting lists did have some real success. And with those builds being on the scene, this left people with one of three options when it came to keeping their key combo pieces and characters alive.
1: Put enough damage and de-buffs on enemy shooting units to either eliminate or severely cripple the threat. This was naturally the best option, as prevention is better than a cure. If you're taking little to no damage at range, half the problem is already solved. However, many armies (Bloodbound, etc) simply don't have the tools to effectively do this in many situations.
2: Give your opponent no decent targets. This is a bit of a catch-twenty-two, as staying out of range or behind Line-of Sight blocking terrain means your opponent can't kill you, but it also means that your opponent is controlling the board, including when and where you can move.
3: Flood your opponent with targets. The principal behind this one is that if you give your opponent more juicy targets than they can possibly kill, they will focus on the wrong thing and leave important stuff completely unscathed. The more decisions you force your opponent to make, the more times they will get those decisions wrong. Now, this is probably the riskiest of the three, as it requires a certain degree of reckless bravado. There's a very good chance that your opponent WILL make the right decision and punish the two units that pose real threats. But for some armies, there is no other choice...
Everyone slowly learnt which of these three (or a variation or combination of them) was the best way forward. Kunnin' Rukk was incredibly popular, purely on the sheer volume of firepower it could put out, but it certainly had some bad matchups. Shooting armies were far from unbeatable, and if someone had a good list and some sound strategies, there was usually a path to victory to be found.
Then came 2017. This was a pretty big year for the game, and a terrifying one for the shooting phase, because of two Warscrolls.
The first, and to the surprise of absolutely nobody, was Skyfires. They were fast, they were lethal, they could hold their own in combat, they could be replenished with Fold Reality, their shooting was off the chain and they were CHEAP! "160pts per three" cheap... Even if you took Disciples of Tzeentch out of the equation, Skyfires changed the game from that point forward. All of a sudden, there was nowhere to sit out of range, there were not many places they couldn't seek out a hiding model, and if you flooded them with targets, they would make you pay a tremendous toll.
Most players (Tzeentch players included) accepted that they were criminally undercosted. You'd get the occasional person who would argue that they "weren't that bad", but when tournament lists started showing up at events with 24-27 Skyfires in the list, and blitzing their way to the podium, it was hard to give that argument any credit.
The second Warscroll that really highlighted the dangers of an over-the-top shooting phase was the Grundstok Thunderers of the Kharadron Overlords. I think this was a real shame, as the Thunderers were my favourite unit in the whole book. In an army of wealth-hungry mercenaries, these chaps were the best of the best, packing the most firepower and intricate weapons. The idea of gun-for-hire special forces was hugely appealing, but the whole concept was doomed by two things...
The Grundstok Mortar and Aether-Khemists.
What was meant to be a highly mobile dwarf army reverted to the most compact, basic combo; fit as many Grundstok Mortars into a Karak-Urbaz list and nuke your opponent off the board from 36" away.
Sounds like fun, right?
Action to prevent this was far swifter and more brutal than on Skyfires in GHB17. Where Skyfires got a slap on the wrist with a 40 point increase (still well worth it, in my opinion), Kharadron Overlords were absolutely punished. The Khemists went up in points by 40 points (appropriately so), their bonus didn't stack anymore, and the Thunderer Scroll was re-written, making the unit a husk of its former self. I know a lot of KO players were pretty upset by this, and I can understand, after they spent the last two months scraping together enough weapons to make a full unit (or three) of their weapon of choice. But in saying that, something had to be done.
The only other avenue I could see working for a toning back of the scroll would be to leave it as is, and make units five models. No more, no less. That way, you could still have those specialised units, without the ridiculousness. But you'd still have the issue of a gunline; it just means it's spread across more units. It would hugely scale down the efficiency of Khemists, as a Mortar unit would only ever be able to kick out ten shots a turn, but the games developers made a decision and I can understand why. As it is, you can make a legal, optimal unit straight out of the box without having to trade bits.
Since then, aside from armies like Nurgle, who have some great anti-shooting utility built into them, the biggest rule to affect shooting comes with the Idoneth Deepkin allegiance ability, which forces enemy units to shoot the nearest Idoneth unit, for better or worse. This is an incredibly strong ability, as it allows Idoneth to buff a unit up to absorb incoming fire, and protect literally every other unit in their army from harm in the shooting phase.
Now, it's too early to really judge the Deepkin book from a matched play perspective until we see the whole book, but it has certainly done one thing; respark the debate around shooting.
There are plenty of people, either on Facebook, on podcasts or on YouTube, who have called for the rules of shooting in 40k to be transferred over to Age of Sigmar, particularly, not being able to target heroes under 10 wounds unless they're the closest unit. And I can understand the appeal in this. Keeping your heroes alive for longer would be fantastic, and preventing your opponent from unleashing a veritable arsenal upon your humble Skink Priest would be a godsend.
And this is what I want to hit on. I think (and I stand firmly by this statement) that is probably the single worst rule to introduce to our beloved game.
While it might sound great on paper, and from the perspective of many armies, it's doesn't have much of an impact, it pushes certain armies into levels of obscene power that would inevitably destroy any sense of balance in the game.
All of a sudden, a council of Tzeentch wizards hiding behind screen upon screen of splitting Horrors have no risk of danger to themselves, in most cases, for the entire game. It's a brutal combat army that can chew through horrors by turn five and kill those wizards, let alone survive the arcane barrage all game. A Stormcast army's heroes handing out save bonuses can't be touched until you cut through sixty or more wounds of 2+ saves, re-rolling 1's. And then armies like Kharadron Overlords are essentially made borderline redundant.
I'm not saying I have the answer to find perfect balance, or that I know better. But one thing is for sure; introducing 40K shooting rules is not the answer.
I think Idoneth might be enough on their own to shift the power away from shooting armies, as I can see them being at events en masse, and being horrific matchups for certain armies (Barak Zilfin and Aetherstrike Force spring to mind). I don't think the sky is falling with the Deepkin allegiance ability, and I don't think it's made shooting units worthless, by any stretch! I think it will make players measure and calculate their game plan a bit more, which can only improve their play style. Adversity nurtures strategic and tactical growth.
I am interested to see where they take the shooting phase in the near future. Will it be addressed or changed in the GHB18? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Thanks for reading,
Gabe
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