It’s less than a week since the last one of these, but there’s even more changes to be seen and we want to talk about the ones that we like the most…and then some others that we don’t really care for very much. If you missed it we’ve already talked about the large Nord and W’adrhŭn changes here and might be referring to that throughout, so go and have a look if you haven’t yet! Para Bellum has posted up the massive changelog themselves, so we won’t be repeating every change today.
Core Rules Changes
What We Like
Bair: To start things off, Bloodlust is gone! As much as I enjoyed charging from off-table with Nords it’s a good thing overall that your units don’t activate in a way you didn’t want them to in the middle of the game, sometimes losing you the game. Even Bearsarks that sat on Resolve 5 would roll that 6 at the absolute worst time and just get killed. There’s a lot of simple quality of life changes that I’m really happy with like removing Morale Hits from Lethal Demise and Trample…though I’d prefer that Trample rolled to hit still. Lastly it’s small but so good that Scaling for spells now just matches the Resolve bonus so you don’t have to remember two similar but weirdly different tables…and means that Scaling will also likely come up more often (in a bad way for spellcasters) which I think is overall a benefit to the game given how easy spellcasting is.
Thanqol: Monsters can no longer do Tokyo Drift flank charges. If you don’t know what I’m talking about with this, celebrate, because now you’ll never have to. One of my least favourite rules interactions, gone. Further, the Reform clarifications are in general hugely appreciated. I actually started working on an article explaining Reforms a few months back and had to scrap it when I realized that the Reform rules flatly contradicted the way that everyone played them.
Rob: The Reform rules now match the diagrams. After literally years, the Reform rules now match the diagrams. I will never again have to gently take a new player by the hand and explain to them how their formation is unsalvageable at worst or will take multiple turns of awkward partial Reforms at best to get them facing where they want to. Thank goodness.
Probably the most meaningful change, and which I think is a good idea but we’re still sorting all of the ramifications of, is the maximum of three actions per activations regardless of the number of possible additional or free additional actions. This has already caught one unit in a probably-unintended beartrap that will need to be sorted out via rules clarification, but in principle I think this is an excellent change.
Sam Isaacson (not Josh): Lots of changes here that feel nice based on my personal playstyle. I don’t do magic so aligning scaling with the resolve brackets makes my maths easier so I’m a fan. Advantages to the supremacy (now priority) roll now make it more likely for the first player to flip from one to the other, so my frustrating experience of going second every round in faith is now confined to the history books.
General Cross: The rest of the team have covered my personal highlights already in Reform changes and Lethal Demise/Trample Resolve damage, so I’ll pick up on a less obvious one. Characters that join Regiments now only must be placed next to the Command Stand. It’s a really small change that actually clears up a few times personally where both of these stands had been competing to be the most central. It’s just another good example of cleaning up some of those fringe cases that occured in play.
What We Don’t
Bair: So on the complete opposite side…I did really like being able to charge from off the table with my glass-cannon Nords units and with Bloodlust gone and nothing to replace that kind of swift-strike it’s left a bit of an empty hole. Did really good players simply not allow themselves to get charged from off the board? Yeah, maybe, but even that was a kind of board control all its own.
Thanqol: Changing resolve and spellcasting scaling to match each other is silly! This is a reversion of an earlier change that was deliberately done so that Spellcasters attached to units did not immediately face scaling penalties. They say that they made this change to be consistent, but that implies that they forgot why they implemented this rule in the first place.
Rob: The change to the Supremacy roll bonus from whoever has fewer cards to whoever ‘lost’ Supremacy last turn sets off big red flags in my warmachine-scarred powergamer head, for two reasons. Firstly, ‘losing’ supremacy is actually good during the first few turns of the game before the armies have clashed, which means that good luck early is likely to produce good luck later. I don’t mind variance in my wargames, but rewarding good luck with more good luck feels like the exact opposite of what this rule change intended even though that’s what it actually does during a pivotal part of the game.
Secondly, I am an unashamed activation spam enjoyer, and I will promise you under oath with my hand a stack of holy books, legal texts and Pratchett novels that you do not want to encourage that playstyle without a few sensible handbrakes on it. The modifier to the supremacy roll was one of those very important handbrakes and it’s now gone. This actively buffs my personal playstyle and I played that way because I thought it was the most powerful way to play.
(I also note that the Supremacy Roll rules don’t actually say who wins, just that whoever rolls lowest after modifiers is the First Player. This is presumably the ‘winner’ of the roll, but I don’t love the word ‘presumably’ as part of my rules interpretation heuristic.)
Sam Isaacson (not Josh): Um, hello, Aura of Death? At the LGT I managed to get somebody to roll 28 dice with my 11-stand wall of Force Grown Drones so I’m very sad to be losing that. Yes, I know that’s entirely unreasonable, but it’s going to send me straight back to the drawing board so I’m going to have to think harder.
General Cross: I’d also personally liked to have seen the “official” guide to Zonal Terrain Para Bellum mentioned in the same Happy Hour. The community really needs a common language on what different common terrain types do (are Wood Hindering? Are they Obstructing? Depends who you ask) and at tournaments players should be able to identify the default set unless a TO implements changes.
Army Rules Changes
What We Like
Bair: It’s a nerf but I am very happy to see the City States chariots toned down in a way that keeps them as very good and worth taking but to a manageable level. They’re still incredibly fast, arrive reliably, and will just get in shooting range with ease but at least they might be in a less-than-ideal spot when they do now and allow you to interact with them more as something on the table. As a Dweghom player I am really surprised but pleased to see Warriors gaining Vanguard really giving them more of a place in the army list for early-mid game scoring. Love to see Flame Berzerkers a little cheaper and with Memory of Breath Kerawegh joining they’ll be slamming 7 Aura of Death hits without feeling like you have to run them super wide. Magmaforged seem like a really solid unit now as well, I still have mine sitting in a box waiting to be built and painted…but that’ll definitely be soon now! Finally Nords were my first faction in the game and while we’ve already covered their changes last week in detail I’m just really, really, pleased with how the faction is looking right now; lots of Charging, Tribal Tactics seem genuinely game-changing when set up right, and I think they’re back to being a very strong early scoring army that will hold their own well.
Thanqol: The big winner for the Spires is the Biomancer. The move of Desolation Drones to Mainstay is actually vast – it gives a really good place to put the Biomancer away from the front lines (perhaps even with Infiltrator Variant), and the movement patterns of Desolation Drones is about perfect for keeping everything in range of Biomancy. In addition, gaining the Siegebreaker Behemoth as a Restricted option makes it vastly more accessible than being locked behind the now almost completely irrelevant Lineage Highborne. The Siegebreaker is now a little more agile too, which is definitely appreciated.
I also am very happy with the Old Dominion changes. Highlights are Kheres losing their backbreaking Insanity megaspikes; now they’re just solid, good units. Buccephaloi getting some gentle buffs is something I am intensely here for, and Athanatoi now are a genuinely attractive independently dangerous option. I also think the Fallen Divinity buff is extremely fair and reasonable, and can’t imagine why anyone would complain about it.
Rob: Goonhammer has spoken elsewhere on the Nord and Wadhrun changes, both of which we collectively are fairly positive on and I’m a big fan of especially. Everything about the Nord update but in particular the signpost mechanics they’ve added make me frankly joyful, and that’s a pretty damn nice way to feel about an update. To speak about my own factions, Spires has seen a few general tweaks that adjust accessibility and useability of certain fun units like Desolation Drones and Siegebreakers without necessarily catapulting them into ‘competition optimal’ status, and Old Dominion saw a series of adjustments that was absolutely necessary but with a number of Para Bellum standard ‘when the designers close a door they open a window’ updates. I have already written one Old Dominion list taking advantage of a number of the updates that deals psychic damage directly to my opponents, although whether it can stand up to the might of new Wadhrun and Nords (mostly Wadhrun) remains to be seen.
Sam Isaacson (not Josh): I’m a bit of a fan of change, and as a Spires player I can’t wait to try out lists full of Desolation Drones and Siegebreaker Behemoths, as well as giving everything Aura of Death through the updated Plaguelord mastery. It’s going to be fascinating to see entirely new-look lists emerging! I’m also particularly interested in the Old Dominion tweaks, which look perfectly reasonable at first glance alongside the updates to W’adrhun and Nords.
General Cross: W’adrhun and Nords have all come out feeling revitalised and refreshed. They feel like very compelling reimaginings of their faction identity and it’s great to see the enthusiasm of their players in response.
In a similar vein, City States and Old Dominion have seen some much needed nerfs, but have also had some great internal changes that should open up the faction internally. It’s great to hear the positive from their players despite having generally taking more losses than wins in this document.
This is absolutely the shake up the game needed and it’s a very exciting time to be playing Conquest.
What We Don’t
Bair: Saying this as an opponent only to Old Dominion, an army that has been my least favourite to play against with the lack of interaction, having the Fallen Divinity transfer all power tokens immediately over to the Dark Power Pool feels like an unnecessary effect and really takes away from killing that big-bad; even when you’re taking down a super-charged god off the table you’re just buffing up everything else instead. What I’m not a huge fan of, honestly, is that Dweghom Bergont Raegh has to be your Warlord. That’d be fine on its own but the Tempered Creed is still around and just as good. In my opinion simply too good to not take in every game, too. Was kind of hoping/expecting some changes to happen around the creeds/Warlord choice to balance them internally but maybe sometime in future. Really I just want to take the cool Raegh on the Ironclad without also feeling like I’m kneecapping myself in the process!
Thanqol: We got advance notice that Aura of Death was changing, but not the actual numbers. That gave me a few weeks to puzzle over what the end numbers would be. See, an ordinary 3-strong unit with Aura of Death (4) would put out 12 hits when triggered; frequently you’d want to get that unit size up and impact with five stands, which applies a very scary 20 automatic hits – or 16 if the enemy had defensively adopted a two-stands-wide formation. I imagined as a result things that used to be Aura of Death (4) would be translated to Aura of Death 12 – a consistent 3-stand-on-3-stand interaction, which would take off the potential for the backbreaking 20 hit deathblows while meaning that a regiment would still put out consistent damage even if reduced to one or two stands.
Instead, the translation seems to have been that Aura of Death should be reduced by two thirds or more. Cascading Degeneration, previously a reliable 16 hits on a Lineage Highborn in a unit of Avatara, is now reduced three quarters to 4 hits. The Profane Reliquary for AoD(4) at 25 points is comical; you may as well just buy another stand of Praetoreans at that price. Essentially, the end result of this is Aura of Death got cut down by three quarters in expected value in most cases while having comparatively tiny adjustments to price. Dark Immolation now, if you get the timing right, inflicts 5 resolve-free hits, meaning it’s almost always inferior to Unholy Baptism’s ~4 AP1 resolve-causing hits (spellcasting interference changes this balance).
The simple answer is not to bother with it at all unless you’re in some niche scenario. This update is closer to ‘Aura of Death is removed from the game’ than ‘Aura of Death’s outlier cases are being reined in’.
That all said, I actually honestly don’t mind it that much. I was already more interested in alternative playstyles and felt like a lot of Aura of Death units were overtuned, I’m entirely happy to bench them and play a different kind of game.
Rob: Like Thanqol, I feel like there are a lot of casualties of the Aura of Death update, although very few of them bother me excessively. Probably the only exception is the Plaguelord mastery in Spires. This has been clarified as only applying to the actions taken by the character with the mastery, which means that for an absolutely eye-watering 35pts and having to jump through multiple positional and activation hoops, you’re getting… the ability to sometimes deal a wound or two to an enemy. If I’m being honest, I’m only upset about this because I’d just finished writing a list that tried to wring some value from it before they posted clarification that the wording would change from army-wide to only applying to the character that takes it, but I was excited to maybe find a niche build and it’s been smothered in the cradle. To an extent, this is expected – every update in any game has a “if it sounds cool, it’s a bug, not a feature” phase, but still… my poor dumb list never saw the light of day and I’m grieving as a write.
Otherwise – where are my Archangel rules, Para Bellum? I’m looking for justification to start a new faction and you’re not enabling me, dammit! I have a colour scheme in mind and everything.
Sam Isaacson (not Josh): Aside from the utter obliteration of Cascading Degeneration mentioned above I’m feeling a bit uncertain about what looks like Sorcerer Kings getting the benefit of rituals becoming easier to access. The global meta seemed to suggest to me that the factions that were dominating were W’adrhun, Old Dominion and particularly Sorcerer Kings. W’adrhun and Old Dominion have been reined in a bit, while Sorcerer Kings seem to have been let off the leash? I’m withholding judgement for now as I don’t play them regularly but I’m certainly not looking forward to facing them any time soon!
General Cross: In the politest possible way, this release felt chaotic. There were a surprising number of changes to the teasers since the Happy Hour on Thursday, including stat changes and special rules. Typos, inconsistent points costs and discrepancies between the PDFs and the App (and it not being clear which was correct all the time).
I think most aspects of these documents had plenty of iterations through playtesting to get right but I have a gut feeling that there are things that will have slipped through the net. I wouldn’t be shocked to see a small balance patch appear between now and next (historically) April to catch some of these outliers.
Para Bellum is a small company with a passionate team, and I’ve seen how hard the development team have been working with the community on Discord over the last few days to answer questions. For the sake of their own staff, I’d have liked to see this update delayed another week to let them really go through quality assurance a few more times to give a truly polished product in line with their outstanding wargame.
All For Now
That’s it, folks. Go and have a look at the full changes on the Para Bellum website, on their app under News, or in their Discord under announcements. Overall this seems like a net positive to the game as a whole and I love that these game developers are putting in the work to make this game as good as it’s able to be. We’ll be back next week with our regularly scheduled Conquest content and will be making adjustments and updates to all of the Faction Focus articles in the weeks to come, so keep an eye out!
Also, just let us know what you think of these changes in the comments below or on whatever social media platform you found this article on.
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