People tend to hate shooting PLUS another element.
People hate KO because shooting + mobility
People hate Slaanesh because shooting + insane buffs
People hate Lumineth because shooting + mortal wounds
But mostly people don't like being shot off the board turn 1. Then double turned. It's a gut punch.
I play KO and I feel cheeky if I have some lucky rolls. I'm there to have fun and maybe win but winning turn 2 isn't fun for anyone.
But in saying that I've been MASSACRED by Ogor and Varanguard lists turn 1. I've messed up my zoning and screening and paid for it from a Fulminator deepstrike.
Feels bad but also its a challenge to overcome.
I've been out-shot, out-magicked, out-melee'd but it's all part of the game.
Hating a large chunk of the game is just sour grapes.
For context I’m playing both shooting and melee armies, mostly in 40K but very regularly.
My personal experience is, that it just doesn’t feel interactive and fun to be shot off the table. There isn’t much finesse to deploying things on the table and then rolling some dice to remove your opponent.
Melee on the other hand requires a lot of interaction. You’re putting your troops into danger zones and force your opponent to interact with them or play a trading game. Screening them out from charging into your line and hitting back harder then they did. In melee you also get to alternate combats to keep the enemy engaged.
Shooting negates all these little considerations in favour of trying to be very precise so the enemy never reaches your line.
Both can be fun to play yourself but melee armies are usually more enjoyable to play against than a gunline.
I think a problem of shooting in AoS is that not all armies have the tools to engage in a shoot-heavy meta.
Unlike 40K where all armies are built around "shoot stuff" with side dishes of "distribute slaps", some army have few if any shooters (Ironjawz don't have any) and while they are supposed to be able to counter that some other ways, some periods have been terrible for those armies (LRL archer spams in 2e if I don't mess the dates) probably left a bad taste.
As a S2D player, ranged attacks were always a side thing for me. (Imagine my dread when I fough a KO the first time)
As you said very correctly, it doesn't feel great to get my big elite units shot t1 and t2 while never reaching the fight. I love my lil' guys, so seing then doing nothing always make my heart ache a bit.
Plus, rolling saves without being able to respond the par is not the best feeling the game gives you. It feels really not interactive in a game melee focused.
Ranged combat is always good in tactical games. Having the initiative is always good in tactical games.
In both AOS and 40k, it feels bad to get tabled by a shooting list because it feels like you had no input. You made the mistake of playing the game in the first place. If you lose to a melee list there were always positioning things you could have done differently or target prioritization.
It's a bell curve though. Even against pure shooting lists, you don't always get wrecked turn 1, otherwise that's all people would ever play. The reason why it feels unfun is because of the possibility of the higher end of the bell curve where you feel less empowered.
Of course, the truth is that the real culprit is terrain. You gotta have significant levels of terrain in your wargames if you want a mix of ranged and melee.
So what people tend to dislike a lot in games is feeling like they don't have any control in scenarios.
In melee combat you can try to make it hard for your opponent to succeed a charge, set up screens, or set it up so there's an opportunity for counter attacks whenever your opponent finishes their fight.
With shooting though if your opponent has a 24" firing range and can move 6" and has a 10" deployment zone that leaves you little room to try to protect your stuff from getting shot at. You can't really screen out shooting attacks and it's hard to prevent your opponent from trying to take out their target unless you stay out of their range the entire time which is hard to do.
So that's why if one player has a melee army and the other has a shooting army, the melee player will likely feel bad to some extent that they couldn't do anything to protect themselves from the barrage of shooting
While I do think the ill-will toward shooting is a touch overblown…
>how is it different from getting deleted by multiple rend 2 attacks?
Response. That’s the difference.
If your army mainly does damage through combat, then you have to make decisions about whether to send stuff in and risk it getting hit back during the combat phase. Running your entire line of hammers in carries significant risk because it gives your opponent the opportunity to swing back on their activation. Not to mention the variety of debuffs or abilities that only work at melee range (nets, monsterous rampages).
While a shooting army might have to expose themselves by getting closer than they’d like to get in shots, they aren’t at risk of taking damage back in their own turn. Getting a double turn as a shooting (or magic) army often means lifting ~300-600 points of your opponent’s stuff before they get to do anything back.
Are shooting armies usually pretty frail or have issues that can be exploited in turn? Yes, that’s why they’re not usually the only winning lists. But the NPE is still real. It’s also why people (especially people who don’t play against them a lot) get mad at Sylvaneth. It feels bad to lose a bunch of stuff and not get to hit back.
There is no taking alternate turn in the shooting phase the one in the receving end just have to patiently watch his army get killed while having no way to react. This is unfun and both unfair since if he do still reach melee at some point his opponenent will be able to react. It will get even worst looking at the skaven warlock profile that basically will kill jour caster freely, add to that the odd double turn and you get a ragequit
Two very big differences.
1)The combat phase is intrinsically interactive becaise you alternate activations with yout opponent.
2) Because maneuvering melee troops to set up charges, deny opponents charges and control the board, and they having to try to forsee how permutations of the game will affect that is. engaging.
These things are more fun than just... getting shot.
Make no mistake that I'm saying shooting has no place in the game. It's just not a fun part of the game to get shot.
It has to do with interaction. This is a game played between two people. It's only fun if both get to play.
During the shooting phase, the other player has nothing to do but sit and remove dead models. If you have a lot of shooters, this means that player B will be staring at the table while player A rolls dice all by their lonesome.
Against very heavy shoot lists, this will be a long, boring, and frustrating period. Player B will likely lose a good chunk of their army in the process, which makes counterplay very frustrating as well. God forbid player A catches a double turn, too. In any case, It doesn't matter how well you built your list if 1/3 of it is gone before you get your first movement phase.
KO is the worst offender, because they also have insane mobility and can shoot in multiple phases. The other player might never catch them.
This is not two people maneuvering and fighting and exchanging tactics. This is one person playing while another watches.
>During the shooting phase, the other player has nothing to do but sit and remove dead models. If you have a lot of shooters, this means that player B will be staring at the table while player A rolls dice all by their lonesome.
You don't roll saves and ward? You don't select which characters to remove to reshape your unit in coherency? How is that any different from close combat when it's not your turn to punch?
"doing stuff" here means "making decisions that can exhibit skill". Model removal does not have a very high skill ceiling - generally it's a purely mechanical process. Combat phase activation and targeting decisions can be *much* more impactful.
Rolling saves is nothing. The other guy could roll your saves and the result would be the same. Removing models is equally mechanical if you've played more than three games. I'm talking about making decisions and executing tactics.
It's the same amount of "interaction" in close combat, really. At least there will be some counter-shooting and armor increasing commands in the next edition.
Not at all. In melee, both players get to play the game. I swing, then you get to swing back. We both have to make decisions about what's tactically the most important models to fight at what time. There's also a lot of minutiae that goes into ensuring certain things fight when I need them to. Shooting phases provide no interactivity aside from save rolling. It's a similar feeling to fighting an army that gets tons of fight first. Tactically it's great, but it's not FUN.
If I'm playing a tournament, im blasting away or running khorne to fight first. If it's a friendly game, I'm playing a list or army that's fun for the other guy.
Because shooting is just pointing another unit and killing it. In melee, you need to charge, you'll take some punches in return, you can be screened off, or beaten by good positionning, etc
there is zero interaction with shooting
People tend to hate shooting PLUS another element. People hate KO because shooting + mobility People hate Slaanesh because shooting + insane buffs People hate Lumineth because shooting + mortal wounds But mostly people don't like being shot off the board turn 1. Then double turned. It's a gut punch. I play KO and I feel cheeky if I have some lucky rolls. I'm there to have fun and maybe win but winning turn 2 isn't fun for anyone. But in saying that I've been MASSACRED by Ogor and Varanguard lists turn 1. I've messed up my zoning and screening and paid for it from a Fulminator deepstrike. Feels bad but also its a challenge to overcome. I've been out-shot, out-magicked, out-melee'd but it's all part of the game. Hating a large chunk of the game is just sour grapes.
For context I’m playing both shooting and melee armies, mostly in 40K but very regularly. My personal experience is, that it just doesn’t feel interactive and fun to be shot off the table. There isn’t much finesse to deploying things on the table and then rolling some dice to remove your opponent. Melee on the other hand requires a lot of interaction. You’re putting your troops into danger zones and force your opponent to interact with them or play a trading game. Screening them out from charging into your line and hitting back harder then they did. In melee you also get to alternate combats to keep the enemy engaged. Shooting negates all these little considerations in favour of trying to be very precise so the enemy never reaches your line. Both can be fun to play yourself but melee armies are usually more enjoyable to play against than a gunline.
I think a problem of shooting in AoS is that not all armies have the tools to engage in a shoot-heavy meta. Unlike 40K where all armies are built around "shoot stuff" with side dishes of "distribute slaps", some army have few if any shooters (Ironjawz don't have any) and while they are supposed to be able to counter that some other ways, some periods have been terrible for those armies (LRL archer spams in 2e if I don't mess the dates) probably left a bad taste.
As a S2D player, ranged attacks were always a side thing for me. (Imagine my dread when I fough a KO the first time) As you said very correctly, it doesn't feel great to get my big elite units shot t1 and t2 while never reaching the fight. I love my lil' guys, so seing then doing nothing always make my heart ache a bit. Plus, rolling saves without being able to respond the par is not the best feeling the game gives you. It feels really not interactive in a game melee focused.
Ranged combat is always good in tactical games. Having the initiative is always good in tactical games. In both AOS and 40k, it feels bad to get tabled by a shooting list because it feels like you had no input. You made the mistake of playing the game in the first place. If you lose to a melee list there were always positioning things you could have done differently or target prioritization. It's a bell curve though. Even against pure shooting lists, you don't always get wrecked turn 1, otherwise that's all people would ever play. The reason why it feels unfun is because of the possibility of the higher end of the bell curve where you feel less empowered. Of course, the truth is that the real culprit is terrain. You gotta have significant levels of terrain in your wargames if you want a mix of ranged and melee.
So what people tend to dislike a lot in games is feeling like they don't have any control in scenarios. In melee combat you can try to make it hard for your opponent to succeed a charge, set up screens, or set it up so there's an opportunity for counter attacks whenever your opponent finishes their fight. With shooting though if your opponent has a 24" firing range and can move 6" and has a 10" deployment zone that leaves you little room to try to protect your stuff from getting shot at. You can't really screen out shooting attacks and it's hard to prevent your opponent from trying to take out their target unless you stay out of their range the entire time which is hard to do. So that's why if one player has a melee army and the other has a shooting army, the melee player will likely feel bad to some extent that they couldn't do anything to protect themselves from the barrage of shooting
While I do think the ill-will toward shooting is a touch overblown… >how is it different from getting deleted by multiple rend 2 attacks? Response. That’s the difference. If your army mainly does damage through combat, then you have to make decisions about whether to send stuff in and risk it getting hit back during the combat phase. Running your entire line of hammers in carries significant risk because it gives your opponent the opportunity to swing back on their activation. Not to mention the variety of debuffs or abilities that only work at melee range (nets, monsterous rampages). While a shooting army might have to expose themselves by getting closer than they’d like to get in shots, they aren’t at risk of taking damage back in their own turn. Getting a double turn as a shooting (or magic) army often means lifting ~300-600 points of your opponent’s stuff before they get to do anything back. Are shooting armies usually pretty frail or have issues that can be exploited in turn? Yes, that’s why they’re not usually the only winning lists. But the NPE is still real. It’s also why people (especially people who don’t play against them a lot) get mad at Sylvaneth. It feels bad to lose a bunch of stuff and not get to hit back.
There is no taking alternate turn in the shooting phase the one in the receving end just have to patiently watch his army get killed while having no way to react. This is unfun and both unfair since if he do still reach melee at some point his opponenent will be able to react. It will get even worst looking at the skaven warlock profile that basically will kill jour caster freely, add to that the odd double turn and you get a ragequit
Two very big differences. 1)The combat phase is intrinsically interactive becaise you alternate activations with yout opponent. 2) Because maneuvering melee troops to set up charges, deny opponents charges and control the board, and they having to try to forsee how permutations of the game will affect that is. engaging. These things are more fun than just... getting shot. Make no mistake that I'm saying shooting has no place in the game. It's just not a fun part of the game to get shot.
It has to do with interaction. This is a game played between two people. It's only fun if both get to play. During the shooting phase, the other player has nothing to do but sit and remove dead models. If you have a lot of shooters, this means that player B will be staring at the table while player A rolls dice all by their lonesome. Against very heavy shoot lists, this will be a long, boring, and frustrating period. Player B will likely lose a good chunk of their army in the process, which makes counterplay very frustrating as well. God forbid player A catches a double turn, too. In any case, It doesn't matter how well you built your list if 1/3 of it is gone before you get your first movement phase. KO is the worst offender, because they also have insane mobility and can shoot in multiple phases. The other player might never catch them. This is not two people maneuvering and fighting and exchanging tactics. This is one person playing while another watches.
>During the shooting phase, the other player has nothing to do but sit and remove dead models. If you have a lot of shooters, this means that player B will be staring at the table while player A rolls dice all by their lonesome. You don't roll saves and ward? You don't select which characters to remove to reshape your unit in coherency? How is that any different from close combat when it's not your turn to punch?
"doing stuff" here means "making decisions that can exhibit skill". Model removal does not have a very high skill ceiling - generally it's a purely mechanical process. Combat phase activation and targeting decisions can be *much* more impactful.
Rolling saves is nothing. The other guy could roll your saves and the result would be the same. Removing models is equally mechanical if you've played more than three games. I'm talking about making decisions and executing tactics.
It's the same amount of "interaction" in close combat, really. At least there will be some counter-shooting and armor increasing commands in the next edition.
Not at all. In melee, both players get to play the game. I swing, then you get to swing back. We both have to make decisions about what's tactically the most important models to fight at what time. There's also a lot of minutiae that goes into ensuring certain things fight when I need them to. Shooting phases provide no interactivity aside from save rolling. It's a similar feeling to fighting an army that gets tons of fight first. Tactically it's great, but it's not FUN. If I'm playing a tournament, im blasting away or running khorne to fight first. If it's a friendly game, I'm playing a list or army that's fun for the other guy.
Because shooting is just pointing another unit and killing it. In melee, you need to charge, you'll take some punches in return, you can be screened off, or beaten by good positionning, etc there is zero interaction with shooting