Greetings! Today I would like to give some room for guesswork and random speculations. Today I would like to talk about Season 5 and what will it bring. We’re now in an interesting moment when Season 4 has come to a close (well, almost thanks to the recently announced Arena Mortis 2.0) and we still haven’t heard anything about the next one. We don’t have anything solid announced about the future, but we’ve got 2 seasons’ worth of cards and warbands and the knowledge that part of it will go away. Based on this we can try to analyze and speculate the direction of the game at the very least. And that’s what I’m going to do here.
Art by: Craig J. Spearing
Season 5 - will it even happen?
That’s the main question. Until now, we don’t have any official confirmation whether next season will even happen or what it will be about. We don’t have a name or anything. Having said that, all the signs point to the next season happening. We know there has been a movement towards re-thinking how seasons are being released. New Starter Set and Essential Cards Pack are establishing the core for Underworlds going further. And they are said to be outside of rotation to provide the base all the players can tap into. Should next seasons were never be released such narrative would be pointless. Thanks to that we’re safe to assume we will get season 5 - despite the COVID-19 related slowdown and temporary death of competitive events. When will it happen? That’s harder to guess. Arena Mortis 2.0 is due to be released this month, so I would assume we will get next season no sooner than late September/October. But it wouldn’t surprise me at all if we saw it release in December, just as Direchasm had.
Where are we going to go next?
Are we staying in Ghur and keep on dwelling in the Beastgrave? Or will we move on as the Katophrane curse leaks even further to other realms? I think it is very likely we will abandon the amberbone-laden corridors and move somewhere else. Kragnos is out and rampaging across the realm, so it’s likely everyone will be able to leave the mountain now. Also - we’ve spent 2 seasons in the Shadespire - if we will move on now, we will have 2 seasons in Beastgrave and a nice pattern for the future. Will this happen? We don’t know, but I think this is very likely to happen. Where to next? I would hope to visit the realms of Ghyran or Aqshy. But it’s also quite likely we will follow the path that is in line with the main AoS narrative. It will be interesting to see if Underworlds will be used to foreshadow some major lore developments for Age of Sigmar again.
Art by: Konstantin Porubov
What are we going to play?
Wild speculation alert!
Most of the factions have already received their warbands. It would be no surprise to see a warband for Primaris Stormcast and Kruleboyz
.
I would be quite excited about new orruks - I love their models and I would love to have them on board. They like toxins and poisons, so they could expand the poison ploys. They’re also happier to use ranged weaponry, so we could get a mix of ranged Kruleboyz and a supporting cast of their goblins.
Stormcast warband could be composed of a hero surrounded with Praetors ready to take his wounds on them instead. Playstyle could be centered around damage mitigation/redirecting attacks while the hero is engaged in the brawling.
I’m hoping Primacy, Hunter, and Quarry mechanics will keep on living. Hopefully, they will not share the sad fate of wizards and the magic, where they are still in the game but only nominally. While those mechanics feel tied to Ghur setting, Primacy could go on easily to support an aggressive playstyle. We’re also having a wide array of hunter and quarry fighters and in-faction cards, so hopefully, they’ll not get abandoned. Part of their power is the fact that they have those keywords.
Coming back to other warbands I would like to see - those would be:
Dispossessed or good old-style wood elves as a part of Cities of Sigmar
Getting a fresh, decent magic-based warband would be terrific. This could also work nicely with CoS with human wizards and their troupe. This might be challenging to do without making Cursebreakers super strong again though.
If we went to Ghyran, we could get more sylvaneth - they do deserve some decent warband.
In Aqshy we could get more fyreslayers. New, more playable orange dwarves would be terrific to have on the table.
I know one thing - I could use a break from Death - or at least nighthaunt - those bastards usually come out and are super strong most of the time.
Art by: Lake Hurwitz
How are we going to play?
Nightvault has introduced super-strong magic and it was prevalent in many forms on the battlefield. We’ve also seen fast-paced Supreme Tactician decks that ruled the boards until Tome Troll broke it all.
Beastgrave was the time when aggro died and hold objective playstyle became dominant - especially thanks to strong HO-based surges.
Direchasm brought the revival of aggressive play. But what will go next? It’s hard to say for sure, but we can observe that easy surges are scarce in DC universal pool. There are a lot of kill-based objectives and quite a few strong end-phase options. Hold objective play has not received many surges to support holding or passive playstyle. If those changes are the start of a shift in the game, we can expect the game to be more oriented around scoring in the end phase and harder surges. And that Hold Objective won’t be that explosive anymore having to wait for the end phase to score their objectives. Most likely we will see more flex playstyle being promoted - designers seem to put a lot of emphasis on those feature tokens, which is a good thing.
It’s not very unlikely that we will see another ‘minigame’ like Primacy or other kinds of counter stacking - those are usually the go-to options to keep card game mechanics somewhat fresh.
The last thing I wanted to talk about is the de-powering of the meta. Power creep is a thing that is happening in WHU - it’s a natural part of evolution for many games. And in some games situation gets to the point where the next set/block/season is designed as far less powerful. A kind of a soft reset. To keep the game healthy it is sometimes good to bring the power level of the cards quite a bit, so players get to explore warbands and styles of play that usually would be overlooked. It also allows the developers to gradually release some more powerful cards and have them be appreciated without going to silly power level territory. Will this happen to WHU? It might. Direchasm has shown signs of de-powering in some areas. Surges are not that hot with only a few exceptions. Ploys are mostly stacked with utility, rather than sheer power (not you Punching Up). Upgrades are crazy town though. It’s difficult to get a correct read, but it might be that the devs are trying to shift the power from ploys and objectives into upgrades. The goal might be to slow the glory train down, make the end phase the time when you get to score most of the glory, and apply upgrades. And make those upgrades grant a lot of power. Right now with the super easy surges, the end phase plays little role in terms of enabling you to upgrade your fighters. You can go HAM very quickly with a little effort.
Also… do you remember when Calculated Risk was considered borderline broken because of how easy it was? Now - while still very good - it wouldn’t make such an impact as people are used to having such easy surges to score. Maybe going back to those times would be beneficial for the game?
And that would be it from me. What do you think? What is the direction the game will go towards? Will we see any major shifts in the way we play? What warbands would you like to see in S5?
No comments:
Post a Comment