What to Do About the Skew: Fixing 'Skew' Legions for Competitive Play

 

They're not the only issue here, but they're probably the worst offenders

Last article, we looked at some difficulties with the ‘skew’ Legendary Legions Games Workshop have recently been putting out: specifically, the Black Riders, Vanquishers of the Necromancer, Fall of the Necromancer and (kind of) Breaking of the Fellowship. I won’t recap that article too much, but I ended up deciding that there were some real issues with the design of these Legions, even if these issues are easy to overstate. So how to resolve these problems? Let’s dive right in with the first possible solution…

Solution #1: Ban Them All

Go join Tom and Goldberry in the Naughty Corner

What is it?

Banning these Legions from tournament play. No ifs, no buts, just gone.

 

Would it help?

Well, it would definitely mean no one has to deal with the Vanquishers anymore.

 

Would it hurt?

Absolutely. This is the nuclear option, and, in my view, a really bad idea. Firstly, it would mean losing all of the benefits I identified last week that Legions like this bring to the meta. Secondly, it’s going to hurt a specific handful of players a lot, and really undermines the last two supplements Games Workshop has released. Thirdly, there will probably be more skew Legendary Legions released in future, and the more of these we ban, the greater the divergence between the ‘official’ metagame and the tournament metagame. That will make it increasingly hard for Games Workshop, or anyone else, to balance the game.

Finally, it sets a dangerous precedent. These Legions honestly aren’t that bad for the game, at least relative to the kind of tricks yellow alliances and even some pure lists can get up to. As I mentioned last week, skew exists in many forms, and is there really anything fundamentally more oppressive about the Vanquishers than a hundred Goblin Town models swarming the objectives and waiting till the game ends? So it becomes very difficult to identify a stopping point, and we’d likely end up in a radically different and much more confused position than we started.

 

Overall Assessment?

This ain’t it chief. Maybe we'll end up needing to implement this if nothing else works, but the negative consequences seem sufficiently severe that it's worth trying out the other options first.

 

 

Solution #2: Better Mission Packs

Let's be honest, this probably just shouldn't be on the table

What is it?

By carefully curating what scenarios will be played at tournaments, we can avoid those in which these lists are oppressive or unenjoyable to play against.

 

Would it help?

Partially. Ensuring Contest of Champions isn’t in the mission pack is probably a good thing, and things like Assassinate are generally going to be a rough time against armies like this. Removing those would go some way towards addressing this problem. However, the missions you’d need to stop the Vanquishers being oppressive don’t all overlap with the Black Rider’s nastiest scenarios, so you’d either have to leave the job half done or chop out quite a lot of missions.

 

Would it hurt?

Quite a bit. To start with, it’s putting a lot of pressure on tournament organisers to use their missions to carefully shape the meta. And no matter how well they do so, there’s always going to be lots of collateral damage. A plethora of games that force armies to move around and spread out will impact the Vanquishers, sure, but it will also hammer Iron Hills, Moria, and lots of Elven lists, while massively boosting Goblin Town and Angmar. The resultant shift towards higher model count armies will mean less games finish on time, Fight value is devalued, and cause a hundred other unexpected metagame effects. And chances are we’d still end up with the Vanquishers or Black Riders doing alright, while the Breaking of the Fellowship gets shunted out of contention entirely.

 

Overall Assessment?

I guess it’s probably better than banning the Legions themselves? Still not a great option, at least beyond a casual ‘No Contest of Champions.’

 

 

Solution #3: A Veto System

I'm not much of a patriot normally, but the veto system makes me proud to be an Australian

What is it?

Under this model for choosing scenarios (common Down Under), players will receive three possible scenarios. The Evil player will veto one of these, then the Good player will pick from the remaining two. In effect, it means that each player gets to veto one scenario, and (in theory) you end up playing the one that is the least weighed to either side.

 

Would it help?

Substantially. There are lots of scenarios in which the skew Legions are quite well-balanced and neither too strong nor too weak. If you know you can veto Contest of Champions, ending up on To the Death doesn’t feel half as bad. And if you can guarantee that your Vanquishers won’t be playing Command the Battlefield, then Hold Ground feels very winnable.  

This wouldn’t totally resolve the problem: if you think these Legions are just not fun to play against in any scenario, then that’s going to remain the case with a veto system. And if an army is still too powerful on To the Death and too weak on Hold Ground, then the issue is only reduced rather than eliminated. It would partially mitigate the increased emphasis on matchups and listbuilding, however, as you can use your veto to avoid any scenario your army just can’t handle.

 

Would it hurt?

Arguably. At the top tables, this makes it much easier to get away with a list which can’t handle every possible scenario. That could be conceived as a weakness (it encourages skewed listbuilding over balanced forces in some respects) but it could also be viewed as a strength (increasing diversity in listbuilding so you can win tournaments without 40 models, three heroes, a banner and some fast models). 

At least to my mind, everyone playing a variant on this is hardly something to aim for (Jay Clare)

At the low-mid tables it probably discourages skew lists, because it takes away the scenarios they were going to win almost automatically. It also increases the gap between experienced and inexperienced players somewhat, as the newer players will struggle to work out what scenarios they should veto while better players know it instinctively. Whether that’s a positive or a negative again depends on your own views here I think.

I’d also note that this way of picking scenarios does still encourage players to build lists that can win on any scenario. If you build a Goblin Town list that has no chance whatsoever on Lords of Battle, that means you can’t veto To the Death when you find yourself up against Rangers of Mirkwood. A list that can compete in more scenarios still has an advantage under this model, that advantage is just less pronounced. Again, that may or may not be a good thing, depending on whether you want to encourage variety or balance in listbuilding.

I’d be interested to hear other arguments against this system, but to my mind there’re no unequivocal downsides that don’t depend on perspective, unless you count things like ‘it’ll take an extra couple of minutes to pick a mission at the start of the game.’

 

Overall Assessment?

Honestly, I may be biased, but I think this is what tournaments should be doing anyway, so the fact that it also would help mitigate the unpleasantness of facing skew lists is pure gravy to my eyes.

 

 

Solution #3: Tweaking Their Rules

What is it?

In effect, this would involve FAQs and a shift in design perspective on these Legions to try and make them less skewed in how they play. Simply allowing them to take warrior models obviously isn’t a great option, but a similar effect could be achieved by giving them rules that help them play objective games better, in exchange for stripping away a few other bonuses that make them oppressive in killing scenarios. Something like:

All friendly models from this Legion count as two models when determining who controls an objective or has the most models within a certain area.

You could hand that out to the four all-hero Legions, stripping off or tweaking a special rule from each of them in return: maybe limiting the stacking Harbinger to -2 for the Black Riders, or capping the Wizards’ Attacks at 2 for the Vanquishers. There are a million different nerfs you could couple with this, but the key thing is that because of the above rule, you can go harder with the nerfs without removing the army from tournaments entirely. 

The wording or effect of the rule itself could be modified for different Legions if you wanted, but the important thing would be making these Legions more able to engage with objective games and less of a negative play experience when they’re free to just kill stuff. You could even include a rider that they also count for double in killcount games, so Wounding a Vanquisher in Lords of Battle would give you two Wounds for your tally. That would make the two games that these armies most dominate (Lords of Battle and Contest of Champions) a little more balanced for everyone.

Contest of Champions against these guys would probably still be a painful experience, but maybe a little less so

The point I'd like to emphasise here is that handing out this buff enables us to nerf the Vanquishers (and the other Legions) more than we otherwise could without totally removing them from competitive play. We certainly could just prevent the Vanquishers from casting in combat, but that would basically have the same effect as banning them from tournaments entirely. They'd struggle even more in Domination, and now wouldn't be very good at Lords of Battle either. For the reasons I went through last article and above, I think that would be a mistake, and this more nuanced approach is a better option.

Future all-hero Legions could either follow the same approach, or they could integrate it more smoothly via alternative rules that helped with objectives or mobility. I’d like to quickly note that when I was wishlisting for the Fall of the Necromancer, both my Vanquishers and Rise of the Necromancer Legions had less raw power but a lot more mobility, which would have made those Legions feel less skewed than they are now. So it definitely is possible to do this, it just requires a little creativity in Legion design; and given how cool the rules received by the Vanquishers, Black Riders and Fellowship Legions are, I think this is definitely something the design team are capable of. 

 

Would it help?

To a large degree, yes. This would make the Legions less oppressive in killing scenarios and better in objective scenarios, which is kind of how they should be. It should make them a little more fun to play against if some of their most unpleasant rules were stripped away, and would somewhat mitigate the premium they place on listbuilding counters. Maybe if the Vanquishers weren’t capable of beating you up with all of their models then you’d feel less need to bring the Lady of Light along, which would be positive as well.

 

Would it hurt?

Somewhat. While not the nuclear option, it’s definitely a bigger shift than other fixes, and one which would have to be done entirely by Games Workshop in order to have any legitimacy. Making substantive changes via FAQ is always something to avoid where possible, and I think Games Workshop would need to see some pretty serious issues before this was rolled out. Whether we're seeing those issues so far is up for debate, but it definitely seems like we might end up needing this. Of course, as a prospective design philosophy for new Legendary Legions it has almost no downsides, so that should definitely be on the agenda.

 

Overall Assessment?

I really don’t hate this solution, but I think I’d lean first towards the veto system and see whether that adequately resolves the problem. If not, this slightly more dramatic move might be in order.

 

Given what I've experienced with them so far, I think the big changes probably will be necessary at some point

This brings us to the end of my two-part editorial on the ‘skew’ Legendary Legions. In passing, I’d like to briefly note that almost all of the words spilled in these articles would apply equally well to other kinds of skew, like massed archery lists, massive hordes or hyper-elite yellow alliances. The further a list diverges from the average, the more likely it is to create easy wins and losses, alongside negative play experiences. It’s why I believe the veto system is far and away the best option here: it addresses the larger problem of skew more generally, instead of just the narrow, all-hero version I’ve otherwise confined myself to here. Other fixes, like the FAQ I proposed, could be implemented as needed, but I think a veto system or something like it should be the competitive community’s first port of call.

I just really like the veto system!

I hope you enjoyed these two articles, and that they got you thinking about the future of the game and the part skew lists can play in it. As ever, I’d love to hear your thoughts below, on Facebook or wherever you found this. Next week we’ll be back with some less controversial material (unless someone is particularly annoyed by my Fantasy Fellowship series for some reason).

Until then, may your matchups always be tight games!