Lame Duck: A politician or administration in the final period of office, after the election of a successor

by Patrick Nevan

Last month, January 28th to be precise, I was standing in front of an army’s worth of assorted Idoneth at the Cancon second hand stall, 4000pts at less than a third of retail and a deadset bargain. I’d always liked the models and thanks to the Craichouse Patreons I had the fat stacks to make 31% of my retail dreams a reality, but I just couldn’t bring myself to pull the trigger. Had I finally succumbed to fiscal prudence in my middle years? Not likely, at this point in my life saving money will just ruin my chances of qualifying for a Pauper’s Grave.¹ I didn’t buy them because I didn’t know if they’d be any good in the next edition. 3rd edition Age of Sigmar had entered its Lame Duck Era.

I shared this insight with my fellow gamers and was met with more than the normal amount of blank stares and confusion my conversational forays tend to evoke. Apparently the term Lame Duck isn’t widely known amongst people who have the good sense not to give a shit about American politics. It is however very relevant to the cycle of gaming editions, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to explain it, crank out one of my dreaded thought pieces and try to add a term to the AOS vocabulary.

America holds Federal elections for President, Congress and Senate in November but assuming someone else wins, the New Guy doesn’t officially take office until January. It used to be March. There are a few reasons for this, but like a lot of the American political system it’s built around the speed of horse and buggy on dirt tracks and is very resistant to change.² All the attention and focus shifts to the new guy, and the old guy becomes known as a Lame Duck. Generally they just putz around making speeches, doing favors for party donors and the governmental equivalent of keeping the lights on until the new guy takes office. They are still President or whatever but they are yesterday’s men, on borrowed time and everyone knows it.³ 

“Thanks for all your hard work, you did a great job.”

The sort of people with the ego to occupy high office don’t enjoy being lame ducks so Prime Ministers and Premiers in Westminster systems nearly always rip off the band aid and announce snap retirements, so they can get on with the important business of securing lucrative post-political board positions and speaking gigs. Over time the term Lame Duck has morphed into a sort of catch-all term for anybody serving out their time.

Thanks for the Lexicology lesson, Genius. What does this have to do with AOS?

Glad you asked, hypothetical reader, and because you – by virtue of reading this article – are not an idiot, you will have spotted the parallels between the political Lame Duck and the wind-down phase at the end of an AOS edition. 

If you have ever lived in the tropics, the AOS Lame Duck is akin to the Wet Season or the Monsoon: you know it’s due to arrive, you get a few signs of its approach, then one day it’s pissing down rain. It stops when the new edition is released, and you forget all about until next time. With an expected hard reset edition in the works we are going through a particularly strong Lame Duck era so it’s worth reviewing the characteristics of the phenomenon.

Forward Focus

The Lame Duck era is marked by an escalating frenzy of speculation, rumor and leaks about the new edition which is only amplified with an anticipated hard reset. Even now the gaming chats are lit up with rumors about the contents of the new starter box.⁴ Every person I talk too seems convinced that Battle Tactics are on the way out are we are going to random 40k secondaries. Go to an event now and every second game discussion will be speculation about the next edition. And we are still four months out and yet to receive so much as an official whisper about anything from our GW-daddy. Once the leaks and reveals start the whole thing will go up another notch.

This is all fun stuff, uninformed speculation being one of the key pillars of hobby, but change always comes with a hefty dose of anxiety. Every new edition brings the possibility of ageing units and whole allegiances not making the cut and heading off to the great Legends PDF in the sky. The Destro-Sexuals in the Craichouse are convinced they will be pouring one out for the demise of the Bonesplitterz.⁵ Skaven may be getting a new range but I’d bet my last chunk of warpstone that not every model will be in it. 

Which of these are still legal is a fun trivia game

If your army has old plastic/finecast or flat out ugly sculpts or units without much of an in-game role⁶ you are at risk of losing them with every Battletome, but a hard reset puts everyone on notice at once. In reality TV terms there are a whole bunch of really ugly Bachelor contestants and they’ve shipped in extra roses.

Personally I worry that a hard reset will nerf all of my currently-equipped dual weapon kits. As is tradition when a kit has two weapon options: one is good, the other will be ass and GW will swap them between Battletomes to encourage new sales, or so the conspiracy/happy coincidence theory runs. What if they did all the dual kit units in all of my armies at the same time?

And now you can worry as well

The Game Runs Out of Steam

The further the Lame Duck era progresses, the more competitive gameplay runs out of puff. Nothing stops. Worlds, Masters, the annual tournaments are all proceeding as normal. If you didn’t drop 3rd over the Bounty Hunter GHB then there isn’t much that will make you quit, but there is definitely a lot less juice in the fruit. 

The biggest recent Cause Celebre in hobby was the late Battlescroll. If it had arrived on time it would have been forgotten in a week, it will be forgotten a week from now and it will be best remembered for being late. What is left to do in 3rd Ed? A few more underwhelming installments of Yawnbringers and a bunch of snarky review articles. A cash prize for the worst-written Army of Renown?

This sense of malaise bleeds into the hobby. I don’t know what happens to Gee Dubs’ actual sales but I’m pretty sure most comp players will have had the sort of “Hold off till next edition” moment I described at the start of the article. We all love the models and the narrative but not one wants to buy a unit with an even greater than normal risk of being an expensive paperweight in six months. 

It’s the Lame part of the Lame Duck. Big Waaagh got a bump in the last Battlescroll. I hate the Big Snore worse than I hate the writing team on the last Blades of Khorne Battletome, but I couldn’t be bothered with even token outrage. What’s to be mad about? It’ll all be over by July either way and for all I know, Big Waaagh will vanish for ever and Khorne will become a combat army.

Whatever happens, you all know what to do

A Time of Reflection

Reviewing the state of the game is an important part of the Lame Duck era. Content creators will tumble over each other like a basket full of attention-deprived Labrador puppies in their haste to produce “Top 5 Failures of 3rd Edition” sort of material. In our defence, the low hanging fruit clickbait only works because it is an echo of the conversations players are having in the wider community. It really is a time for everybody to get their two cents on what was good and their four hundred and eleven dollars on what was bad, why, and which bits that they personally hated the most. Aside from the rage bait, a fair amount of serious thinking about what makes the game work takes place at this time so keep an eye out.

Hijacking other people’s conversations is another one of the key pillars of hobby, and the Lame Duck era becomes a time of personal reflection and nostalgia. You’re making a serious point about the overlooked good qualities of Games Workshop’s balancing efforts in 3rd Ed; next thing you know, some Bozo is yammering on about the fabled 80% win rate of the FEC back in the Activation Wars. That’s nothing to some clown who just has to tell tales of his classic victories with the untouchable DOK back in 1st Ed. Don’t let ’em push you around – you can always sandbag them with a walk down your own Nostalgia lane. 

“I used to run a bunch of Slaughterpriests and stack hit buffs from their prayers so the Skullreapers would do mortals on 2’s, but the real kicker was they were mortals in addition … “

But it’s not all about dominating conversations and boring your friends to tears. The Lame Duck era should be a break from the grind of meta chasing and a chance to reflect on your own progress through AOS. What are you most proud of? What would you like to do again? What haven’t you done yet?

So what does all this mean?

Well hypothetical questioner, what does anything mean, really, when you get right down to it?⁷ A few things. First we should all take a moment to express a bit of sympathy for the AOS Worlds teams this year. The event is on June 28th-30th; normally they are obliged to play a game that is a bit out of date, this year they may actually be playing one that is dead. Best case scenario, they’ll be duking it out while the community is busy devouring leak and spoiler articles and trying to remember what rules they are using on the stream. Tough break.⁸

Worst Case Scenario: New edition drops the week of Worlds

Second, I’m proposing we should embrace the ennui of the times by running Lame Duck Era lists. A few simple ideas to spruce up your list building and pump a bit of jizz into the empty ballsack of 3rd Ed AOS without, and this is important, buying any new goddam models. If you can meet one or more of the following criteria you can qualify for a Lame Duck Era list.

Things left undone from 3rd Edition

We all have them. A unit you painted but never got around to running. An idea that was nerfed by a Battlescroll before you could get it on the table. Maybe you painted Yndrasta and the starter set, but never took them to an event because you like to win games? Maybe you sourced a bunch of Ironblasters but couldn’t get them on the table before the nerf? Maybe you wanted to run 9 Baby Gargants but your friend convinced you it was a bad idea?

Well your friend did you a favor cause I’m pretty sure you can get 12 Babies on the table now. If you had any great ideas for 3rd Ed, it’s now or never. Really now or never because while the armies will be coming back on the other side of a hard reset, the Regiments and Armies of Renown, the Battalions, the schemes to use Cabalists and a Warshrine to Bridge 15 Slaanesh-marked Chaos Chosen across the table, that’s never coming back.

If you can think of a use for Hargax’s Pit Beasts, you’d be crazy NOT to run them

Nostalgia Hit

Got something from earlier editions you haven’t run in this edition? Sure you do, everybody does. Maybe they suck now? Maybe the rules just don’t support 120 Chaos Marauders in a Khorne army? Whatever bruh. Find a way to get that magical thing you just won’t shut the fuck up about back on the table for 3rd Ed.

Every Chaos Player I know has got an Archaon that they once loved like a firstborn son, why not break him out? He’s got a 50% chance of shrugging of a Blizzard. They just bumped the unit size on Plague Monks to a minimum 20, the only excuse for not seeing Clan Pestilens armies on the table now is that their owners just don’t have the Wontons to go through with it. Before there was Morathi and Snakes there was Witch Aelves and Cauldrons, you still own the models. Wheel out your Goats, wheel out your Doomwheels. I’m not saying take a joke list but it’s the end of the line, do something that brings you joy.

One Last Hurrah

It’s time to take an honest inventory of some of the units in your collection. People who stick to newer armies should be fine but those of us with more eclectic tastes need to face up to the reality that some of our guys may not be coming back next edition. Yhetees, big chunks of the Skaven range, Bonesplitterz, Spider Riderz, Valkia the Bloody, Scylla, there’s a bunch of older models in the game and they won’t all get a fourth edition stat block.

Even though there is nothing more Metal than Metal Epidemus, I’m not optimistic

Wouldn’t it be nice to take Old Yeller out for a special day before he goes on that last fateful trip behind the barn?⁹ You don’t have to go full Bonesplitterz but if you’re waiting for Maneaters to be worth their points before you take them to a tournament, I have a feeling you have just about run out of time. It’s now or never.

Final Thoughts

So that’s the Lame Duck era. The awkward bit of shuffling in the middle of “Out with the old, in with the new.” We have all been through this before. The new edition build up is exciting but the low stakes junk-time feel of the gaming tends to suck. Still, if you take the Lame Duck era as an opportunity to try some things out and send the old edition out with a bang, you should be fine. As for me I’ve got a tournament in two weeks and no idea what kind of Lame Duck list I’m going to take. I’ve got plenty of unfinished business in 3rd Ed. I could try and make an old-timey Bloodbound army work for a Nostalgia hit, or have a last hurrah for my Maneaters. Lots to think about.

I guess I can run them as proxy Tyrants in 4th, but I’m not ready to say Goodbye

1. Which, in Australia at least, entails a respectable burial with a wooden coffin, so good news there. ↩︎
2. On the subject of politics remember that every democratic system has native elements that are inexplicable to citizens other countries. We can all shake our heads at the Americans but try explaining Compulsory Preferential Voting if you’re Australian or the House of Lords if you’re from the UK. ↩︎
3. Obviously these are general rules with a very recent major exceptions ↩︎
4. All lies-lies of course. ↩︎
5. And good fucking riddance as far as I’m concerned. I’m working on a top 10 reasons Bonesplitterz being squatted is the best thing to ever happen to AOS in preparation for the day. No 3 won’t surprise you, Wurrgog prophets are a stupid NPE. ↩︎
6. Icefell Yhetees, a true triple threat ↩︎
7. Vale Sir Terry ↩︎
8. And at Amsterdam prices, c’mon Team Australia. ↩︎
9. Probably to be rebased for the Old World come to think of it ↩︎

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