Assorted AoS Observances

[Erik Setzer]

Just some random thoughts I've had while looking through books and considering "builds" with AoS, feel free to add your own.

Apparently units can have multiple standard bearers and/or musicians. You can't double up effects, but you can have built-in redundancy, which is nice for units with serious benefits like Skeletons. Only one leader (singular, whereas others are plural), though.

Plague Priests aren't Wizards, which means they can't act as Nurgle Wizards. But Grey Seers and Warlock Engineers *are* Chaos Wizards, so you can summon Daemons into a Skaven army. You could get a small bit of synergy between Nurgle Daemons and Pestilens Skaven, but not enough to be serious concern. Still, a Warlock Engineer summoning a Bloodthirster to do his bidding is kind of amusing.

Despite it being basically a Greater Daemon of the Horned Rat (and I think it even has the Daemon keyword), you can't summon a Verminlord. Either it arrives with you, or it's not showing up to fight today.

Speaking of summoning, you can't summon a Mortarch any more. Sure, only Nagash could do it before, but it was amusing to pile on your opponent by building up some summoning points and then dropping Mannfred on top of him, too. Okay, so maybe that explains why you can't do it any more...

Undead used to be the army that crumbled, now they're the one least likely to crumble. Battleshock of 10 for pretty much everything means you won't lose many of them to Battleshock tests. Add in the ability for standard bearers to bring back dead units, and they get more resilient. Use the battalion with a Wight King and he helps bring guys back, too. Toss in a Wight King with standard, and plant it in the middle of your army, and suddenly you have Skeletons and Grave Guard with a 6+ unmodified save on top of their armor save, so they're a bit more resilient, don't run easily, and you can just keep bringing them back. That's before you even get into using spells to add more.

Random thought: Battleshock could be shortened to its words' initials, but I don't think people want to spend their whole game taking "BS tests."

The "joke rules" weren't a short-term thing. There's still some in the Grand Alliance tomes. When I play my Nurgle Daemons (probably mixed with Skaven), I'll have to giddily "shout" the number seven at times. I think just doing it a little louder than normal voice will suffice. (Also, I'm now picturing a scene from How I Met Your Mother where Robin's being told to be "happier" and "more wry" about saying a number.)

I'm going to have to discuss with some opponents that one warscroll =/= one warscroll in some cases. For example, a Skaven weapon team is one warscroll itself, but it's only one model. If you want multiples, that's multiple scrolls, and if you want a unit and weapon team, which used to be just one unit, that's two warscrolls. A block of 25 Stormvermin and a Ratling Gun isn't exactly equal to two blocks of 30 Plaguebearers.

Speaking of Ratling Guns, why would you ever not go for the extra shots? You could get 4D6 shots with it, just with the chance you might roll a 1 and hurt the team, which might not even kill them... and if they survive, you still get 2D6 shots (since it never says they don't fire). Given that I'm used to seeing Skaven war machines go nuts, I'm quite okay with taking that chance every turn. (Once you see enough Skaven - or Orks, especially in 40K 2nd edition - blow themselves up, you learn to just laugh at it and stop worrying about it.) Pretty much ditto for any other Skaven weapon.

Yeah, that's a lot of random thoughts, but I felt like doing a "thought dump." Maybe some of those thoughts are actually useful to other people!

[Ben_S]

I noticed the standard and musician thing right away. My best guess is that this was to allow you to remove whichever model you want, but still keep your standard (representing more likely the way that another model in the unit will pick it up).

Some people at my local club suggested I was being THAT GUY, but it has always been the case in WFB that the standard is one of the last to fall and no one that I recall actually had any better suggestions as to why the rules explicitly allow you more than one standard (while at the same time only giving you the benefit once).

[grimmas]

All fair points.

I rather like like the multiple banner thing for big units you can use it to represent a horde of troops fighting togeather rather that it being just one regiment of troops.

It is strange that Verminlords can't be summoned they are definitely daemons. narratively ice never been comfortable with Greater daemons being summonable all the time, the summoning of a great daemon is supposed to be a rare and difficult tasks which needs a great deal of preparation, mass sacrifices, daemonic pacts and the like. I like to see it only I specific scenarios but Skavsne should be able to do it as well.

[Erik Setzer]

I feel the banner/musician thing is probably so people can buy a box of infantry, assemble them with a full command, and still use multiple boxes they assembled that way in one big unit. Might seem a bit odd, but we're no longer dealing with standard regiments. (Okay, the musicians thing is a bit stranger, but hey, maybe these warbands that are "units" have their own traveling band that helps their morale?)

The Verminlord thing was just peculiar given that they're summoning them in the same way Chaos is summoning GDs, albeit with even less control over them. It *does* seem a bit odd to be able to summon them right onto a battlefield, though. Ka'bandha being summoned required them to sacrifice Kairos Fateweaver, another Greater Daemon. That's some serious effort, not just, "Hey, dude, could you, like, maybe come help us fight? That'd be swell. Thanks!"

[Mr.Gold]

You could summon the Verminlords with "The Great Bray Shaman (Beastmen)" - Special rule brings a monster on from the sides of the board without even having the model on the table (keywords required: Monster)...

[Erik Setzer]

That's possible, but it'd require bringing along Beastmen, which feels a bit weird. I never got the hint Skaven and Beastmen got along. I think to explain that one from a narrative point, it'd have to be something like they're threatening the Shaman and promising him as a sacrifice or something to get the Verminlord to come along and help. That might actually work, though.

[Nogle]

I played in a tournament last month and an opponent split up a units shooting between two targets. Couldn't find anything in the rules to not allow it. You can do it in hand to hand

[Mr Mystery]

So far, I'm yet to see many '8th Ed scale' battles. Instead, it's much closer to what would once have been 1,000 - 1,500 point games.

Which is nice. I've not had any issues with playing bigger games, but it's pleasing to see people aren't put off my a perceived 'minimum size' of game.

[Erik Setzer]

Conversely, I haven't seen any that weren't at least the same size as "8th edition scale." Heck, some people have taken it as an excuse to run even larger battles. It's like being told they can bring all their toys means they want to bring all their toys to every game.

Heck, if I did that, there wouldn't be room on the table to put my opponent's army...

The new Path to Glory didn't help, with its emphasis on getting multiple full sized units out of the gate and just adding more and more units rather than a few guys here and there, which would work a lot better for an escalation style campaign. That's a bit of concern to me, given that the local GW is doing a PtG style campaign (or league?) with modified rules for all factions. The concept sounds like fun, but it could quickly price itself out of the reach of the newer people it might bring in. Hopefully they'll take that into account. I'm wondering how it'll work out, because I could probably play it with Death units without having to buy anything. (I have a LOT of Undead.)

[Tzeentch's Dark Agent]

I've ranged from 50 to 250 wound armies. I currently am amassing around 500 wounds.

[grimmas]

Sounds like a good thing to me. The way some systems channel people to a certain size of game has often been critised. It's good to hear AoS is being played in a variety of ways.

[Tzeentch's Dark Agent]

We played 50 wounds, five player triumph and treachery today, it was so fun

[Auticus]

That AOS is being played in a variety of ways *is* one of the common complaints about it that I read on forums.

[grimmas]

Really? All I've seen is insesant whining about there being no points. Everyone seems pretty happy about all the scenarios and that the game can be played with pretty much however many miniatures they agree on.

[Auticus]

Pick up gamers and tourney gamers want a standardized ruleset that is the same from store to store. There is constant complaints about this topic.

[Caitsidhe]

Pick up gamers and tourney gamers want a standardized ruleset that is the same from store to store. There is constant complaints about this topic.

I can attest that is why it is dead in the water in all the areas I have seen. I can't speak for the U.K. but in the U.S. the community is driven by pick up games and tournaments at a LGS. The lack of points and a mutually agreed upon set of standards has driven a stake through the heart of it. It has been months since I've seen anyone playing the game anywhere, even in passing.

[grimmas]

Pick up gamers and tourney gamers want a standardized ruleset that is the same from store to store. There is constant complaints about this topic.

That's about points though isn't it. No one has complained that it works for small games or big ones. Also it was the biggest whine that WFB needed to be played at such high points to be "balanced" it still is with 40K. There already is a game system that needs to be played the same way every bleed time and it a soulless bore and you are quite vocal about not liking it.

[Auticus]

Its not just about points. Its about rules interpretations. Each comp pack does things a little differently. They want a universal rule set with universal faq and universal way of doing things. They want a universal way of handling summon, a universal way of choosing forces, a universal comp system, a universal way of resolving common arguments, etc. As it is, each group plays things how they want, which appeals to some, but pick up gamers and tournament players detest that.

Here in the US it would appear that tournament gamers and pick up gamers are the vast majority so its a hard sell here to play because the game is played in a variety of ways. They want to know its being played the same way in their city, and in your city, and in every city so that there is the feeling of a standardized way of playing it.

We saw this in previous editions as well. It was very difficult to get people off of the internet / tournament meta because people bought their armies to play a standard way with a standard set of scenarios, and playing things outside of that was not received well in a lot of places. I know where I am from it was received harshly when you tried to deviate from what was seen as "standard". That Age of Sigmar is suffering because there is no standard does not surprise me.

[Erik Setzer]

That AOS is being played in a variety of ways *is* one of the common complaints about it that I read on forums.

I think the issue for those people isn't so much that there's a variety of ways, but that they're pretty much all community efforts, which means there's a lot of "unofficial" rules and the community at large has been taught "house rules are bad."

I love house rules, but I can see where there might be a problem with, say, the points issue. People answer "Well you can use X comp, Y comp, or Z comp." But that shows the issue: If you want some kind of balancing mechanic, there's multiple to choose from, and the kind your local players use might not be the same as the guys elsewhere.

All of this uncertainty with no guidance (or really even much in the way of discussion of AoS as a game, rather than just a means to show off some figures) from the core company means that I might get used to a certain way of playing locally, with various house rules and preferred size of game, and then going to another community they might have other rules and preferred size of game, which makes it a little more difficult to jump right in.

I certainly wouldn't discourage people making up their own ideas for campaigns, scenarios, etc., but some centralized rules that everyone uses would be good. In theory, the community would make its own, but it seems the community is so segmented that it's not really possible, at least at the moment. You'd think the Internet would help with that, but it actually doesn't.

The only real answer is for GW to provide the guidance, but they don't want to. So you end up having to accept that AoS is going to be a different game from one community to the next.


On a completely different topic, I'm throwing some more Dwarfs together because they're easy to assemble in between converting some Deffskullz Lootas, and I think it'd be fun to throw a unit of 30 Thunderers out there, especially as they can fire *and* fight in combat. I think a shooty army still has a chance of doing some good. Still, it's interesting that the ranges have been clipped in AoS to promote armies getting closer before any shooting can occur. So even in a shooty army, I'll have to have at least one good melee-focused unit on hand to step in and protect the line, because you're not going to get off many shots (maybe two rounds?) before the enemy's charging into your lines.

- - - Updated - - -


We played 50 wounds, five player triumph and treachery today, it was so fun

Any particular changes to the cards or anything? I need to sit down with my copy and see about doing AoS style rules. Already converted it for 40K, I really enjoy T&T (but sadly I'm one of only maybe two or three people who have a set locally).

[Tzeentch's Dark Agent]

We used playing cards. Red numbers can buff a dice roll, black debuffs, red face cards heal d3 wounds, black face cards cause d3 mortal wounds, red aces are an auto charge, black aces are a failed charge, joker means the target unit does nothing in it's turn. Total all cards in your end at the end as per blackjack.

[Auticus]

Erik - exactly. There are a multitude ways of playing, but all are "unofficial" and thus "bad".

[Mr Mystery]

That's just people being silly.

The official books are just the baseline experience. If you want to tweak, such as your own Sainted efforts with Azyr Comp, go for it. It's not my bag, but for gods sake (your choice of deity/deities too!) don't let my opinion or preference stop you, or anyone else for that matter.

And go for the middle ground. If an opponent would prefer to face me under your points system, then fair enough. If it's been sprung on me, I'm happy to point up my intended force, so long as my opponent understands I won't necessarily be able to stick to any further list restriction (like a cap on big monsters etc). But even then, that's not an excuse for me to be a Richard about it.

Now, let's consider formal, organised play. All it takes is for the organiser to publish their own FAQ and nominate a comp system beforehand. Don't like those? Sit it out. Their house/gig/venue, their rules. Which is exactly what happened with the previous editions of Warhammer....house rules, arbitrary comp, tournaments specific FAQS. It's part of the hobby. Always has been, and with any luck it always will be :)

(Not having a pop at individuals on this thread.)

[grimmas]

Thing is all tournaments/organised have some sort of comp people don't just turn up and start playing without any extra guidance. Warmachine the paragon of tournament play has at last count a 16pg document for their major tournaments

[Auticus]

I've always been of the opinion that having multiple ways of playing is desirable (for me) but the base of the disgruntlement that I hear and read all comes down to no universal ruleset. The reason why its a big deal is that AOS has shown in the states anyway that pick up gamers and tourney gamers make up the majority of the player base in most communities.

You are right - the big events pretty much universally had their own comp system. I know the ETC was big over in Europe but a lot of people in the states expressed solid disdain for it for having such heavy handed comp (where they wanted universal rules with as little modification to the raw as possible)

Unsurprisingly it appears AOS is also more popular in Europe based on the tournament attendances over there than compared to over here, where most of our communities languish with few players.

We're up to 8 now but most of them also don't want comp and want to play RAW. The problems of course being that there are about a dozen common rules arguments you read about when trying to play raw (can i summon things not on my list, can i move models in base contact to make way for others during combat phase, should 1s count as fails or are they auto pass, etc) so really they are all playing differently anyway (which further aggravates a lot of people)

Me personally I will never play AOS raw but yes I agree - play what makes you happy! I've always been of that mindset (i've never liked any verison of whfb or 40k raw since the mid 90s and have always tweaked)

[Erik Setzer]

I'm in the middle ground... I think the company could have put forth more effort in creating better guidelines to work with. Yeah, having more than four pages would mean you can't slap those four pages into everything and have the rules everywhere, but you don't really need to. A 20-page set of standard rules, army building guidelines*, and standard scenarios would be nice. Actually, 24 pages. Not an arbitrary number, really. That's a good printing number, and you can offer up a PDF download, and sell it in stores in print form using the same printing as WD and charge $5 for it. People would likely slap down $5 for it (I certainly would), and you have a core document to work with.

*By army building guidelines, I mean something more than model count. Doesn't even have to be points. Just something to help people along. Even if it's, say, adding more keywords to units, like Elite, Regular, Horde, etc., to help people better recognize how good something is compared to something else. And never, ever have a victory condition based on who has more models left on the table.

There are some issues with the core rules, mainly in that victory condition and the rules about outnumbered armies getting bonuses even though an army of Skaven Clanrats would need to vastly outnumber an army of Ogres for a fair fight.

But from an optimistic standpoint, the game can be "patched" at any time with new PDF releases and even slapping the new rules into a WD. So where there are issues, they can be cleared up at any time.

[Mr Mystery]

It's even in the GW staff training (or at least it was circa 2010 when it was all massively overhauled, and for the better in my opinion).

See, when you come into my store, as a salesperson I need to establish a rapport with you. And the best way to do that? Talk to you about your hobby first and foremost. Not 'the' hobby. Not my hobby. YOUR hobby. Now don't get me wrong, it will always ultimately remain 'my house, my rules' for gaming purposes, but you need to get on the same level as your customer when chatting about the games.

Done right, I can feed your enthusiasm. An enthusiastic customer will always spend more - even if it's just an additional pot of paint, I'm that much closer to my target (and I used to break it down at the end of the month based on average transaction value. You would not believe the difference simply flogging WD, paint or a brush in addition makes to your store's performance - and I wasn't even particularly brilliant. Competent enough, but by no means a master salesperson).

Best example? Kid and Mum came in at the beginning of the summer hols. Kid was in shtook because he'd got bad test results, and that affected his holiday spending budget. Started off with the cheapy Chaos Warriors set. By the time I'd pitched in, that turned into the Batallion Box. Can't remember exactly what clinched it, but I explained (via porky pies) that I'd been in the same place as a nipper, and my Mum had bought a similar set. Every time I completed homework, and my grades improved, another kit from the box was mine to build...and the Batallion is a cost effective way... Devious? Liberal with the truth? Well, I was a sales person.....

So in the modern day, I'd be looking to familiarise myself with he various points systems, so I can engage on some level. I'd stop short of learning them inside out - because nothing enthuses a nerd like the excuse and opportunity to wax lyrical. Walls broken down. Rapport established. Sales in the offing. Easy. Peasy.

But those days are behind me now. But I've been able to adapt certain skills garnered there to my current career as professional financial disputes mediator. All about making the aggrieved feel listened to, but more importantly, heard. Which is why I have a pretty superb resolution rate, and don't need to go bothering Ombudsman for final decisions - and when that's proven unavoidable, I've never had an Ombudsman depart from my findings, rationale and outcome ;)

[grimmas]

To be totally honest when I made the initial comment I was referring to the size of the armies. Being able to play small is very important for new people and being able to go big is important for the vets. I like the way the discussion has gone though and I'm very happy to see Erik being cautiously optimistic, the AoS is gonna get you.

I was under the impression that WFB was very much a minor system in the US for a number of years before AoS came along though. Well it was claimed to be dead by quite a few on the front page anyway.

I find the idea that non official rule are bad a little alien. I ran a GW a bit before Mystery (selling the 6th ED WFB box was the ticket) and we'd house rule loads of stuff. In fact every GW l've been to and thats a few had it's own meta as you'd say. They'd also have their own ideas on what was overpower and not and it varied quite widely between stores.

[Auticus]

It really depends on your community to be honest. My community is for the most part mostly competitive style players. Many dont play in tournaments, but are still competitively bent, and don't like many house rules at all.

Our group uses a fair bit of comp, and we have a decent turnout but it is said by others in my community that doing this "drives a division in the community and is bad".

Now if the community is more casual and less competitive, I have a feeling it wouldn't matter as much, but thats just a guess on my part.

[Erik Setzer]

I'm all for unofficial rules. Heck, I've got a website (and two from my dad) that was built off of the idea of coming up with new units and rules and all kinds of stuff. A lot of the old GW fan sites were like that. Somewhere, though, the community at large changed. Look at the more popular GW sites, you might see some painting discussion but it mostly seems to be news, rumors, and/or "tactics" (which is less tactics and more "how to build a stomp-'em list"). It's hard to pinpoint when that happened or how it happened. I won't blame "the tournament scene" because prior to the disaster that was 'Ard Boyz, tourneys were focused on multiple aspects of the hobby.

I'd love to see more "house rules" but I'm not sure how you'd get a community to embrace them again, especially an entire community embracing one set of ideas.

I feel like a game company should produce a good core that covers all the basics, but they don't need to really go beyond that (unless they feel like it). But that's an "ideal."

In the meantime... it'd be interesting to do "house rules" for things like converting T&T to AoS, adding building rules for AoS, other types of realms, new scenarios, stuff like that. Maybe some "rules guidelines" for various questions like splitting fire or anything else. A "Community FAQ" of sorts. The house rules writing loon in me wants to start jotting down concepts and throwing them together, but maybe more experience would be better before hand. Then again, you could just release ideas into the wild, let people test them, and tweak them based on community feedback.

Might get around to doing that. Also, finally getting off my bum and doing some other stuff I'd meant to do in terms of converting old units and such to AoS (because they might be gone, but never forgotten!). Why would some obscure army from a corner of the Warhammer world show up in the Mortal Realms? Because MAGIC. (Come on, it's a bunch of floating magical realms in the middle of the Warp, who's to say you couldn't have a bunch of guys get picked up from the past and dropped into one of the realms like a magical version of the Cardiff Rift?)

- - - Updated - - -

On a side note, sort of related to the last bit... Has anyone tried a wild concept army yet? It seems you can mix units to your heart's content, so if you feel like getting particularly crazy (and don't mind explaining it to your opponent), you could convert an army of, say, magical automatons (golems, I suppose you could call them, but mechanical looking), and then use appropriate rules from a unit who has rules that you feel match the units you're modeling. Everyone's all about mixing TK and VC, or Orcs and Ogres (admittedly, I'm all about that one, it's the whole reason I bought an Ogre army), or various types of Chaos and Skaven... but why not use all that freedom to just build your own army and borrow rules from existing units?

[Auticus]

Thats funny you mention that "somewhere along the line things changed". I have said that for a long time. My speculation is that when tournaments stopped scoring for appearance and sportsmanship, that the hobby side of the game started taking more and more of a backseat.

Then coupled with the emergence of other games like warmachine and then infinity and malifaux and xwing never caring about that aspect of the game enough, it caused a new generation of players to really not care about it either. Thats not to say they don't care about the hobby at all, but the hobby part of the game became very much secondary and probably since around 2005 or 2006 or so the alternate rules started to be treated more with disdain than anything. Pretty much weekly now I hear people in my own community wish that GW would release pre-painted models so that they could just buy their army and play out of the box like other games. I'd say a good 50% of my community never picks up a paintbrush and has no desire to do so and wants pre painted models. (this is not to say thats bad or good this is just giving my perception of what my community is composed of in general)

I still remember the General's Compendium being released in 2002 and how many awesome ideas it had in it and it was a struggle even then to get people to deviate from the (6th edition) rulebook to use some of those ideas.

Today the community overall no matter what game you are playing is very dead set against house rules overall and I think it would take moving tournaments back to scoring for painting and composition and sportsmanship to shift that focus, but I also feel trying to do that would enrage the community overall as that moves away the concept of a tournament being 100% about the game (it was argued even back in the 90s that those scoring facets should never exist in a tournament)

[grimmas]

I remember reading some stuff you'd linked on the frontpage to those sites you mention Erik, it was good stuff.

That's the sort of stuff that Wargames are about the idea that they are a "sport" defeats the point. I don't know where people's imagination has gone. The shear confusion over the way you were expected to produce Datasheets for your own scenery in 7th 40K is an example. People just couldn't get there heads round it. Of course I still don't get why people buy scenery rather than make it. It wasn't so long ago we were expected to scratch build our own vehicles was it?

[Erik Setzer]

The best thing about the days of pewter units was getting that foam tray with compartments, you could cut bits out of it and paint it as a quick ruined house.

Scratch-building and converting are always fun. I also enjoy seeing "counts-as" armies, especially if your opponent's clear on what they are. Eventually when I have the time and funds, I do plan on making a Black Orc army converted to be Gork and Mork's answer to the Stormcast Eternals, a bunch of heavily armored Orc warriors striking from the nether to unleash Green Judgment. A lot of the work should be pretty straightforward, it's ones like the winged guys or Dracoth Riders that present the trickiest areas for conversion work. Even the Boss's boar isn't big enough to really count as a Dracoth.


Back to the concept of random observations... I think I like missile units a lot. The splitting fire is pretty handy, and you can even shoot the unit you're fighting in combat and then attack them with melee weapons, or shoot at some targets and melee others. It's also a bit of a change to think about one model being able to attack multiple targets if it has multiple attacks, i.e. if you have two shooting weapons you can attack two targets with that model. I feel like you should at least be required to pick targets for the models in a unit before making any attacks, so a person can't just keep attacking with individual models until they wipe out a target and then fire the remainder of the unit at another target to avoid wasting attacks on overkill.

[grimmas]

One of the shooting house rules we used to play was nominated shooting. At the start of you shootin phase you would nominate what each unit was shooting at and then carry out the attacks. You wouldnt be able to change targets it was assumed all units would shoot at the same time. It made for some careful choices, do you make sure of the destruction of the target and waste shots or take the chance and spread the fire a bit. A bit WFB advanced.

I rather like that if you have 2 units engaged in combat you can retreat one very safety. Marauder horsemen are really good at this with the feigned flight rule. Which is great because the models are very nice and their detail makes them very easy to paint.

[Mr Mystery]

On game size....

Many of the pics shared on the Facebook group I'm part of show forces reminiscent of very old Warhammer - such as the days of Werner Flamefist and Lothar Bubonicus. Number of infantry, smattering of Cavalry, couple of characters and a monster or two.

Such sights warm the cockles of my heart :)

[grimmas]

They were examples of Chaos Warbands from The Lost and The Damned. 3rd did have a good range game sizes. I've still got some battle reports form the Osprey World Championships played at games day around the same time and the Army sizes easily match what was knocking around in 8th. AoS really has that feel of working at many levels.

Something else occurred to me and that how reminiscent of Space Marine it is but that might just be having the weapon stats as part of the unit entries and no wound rolls. It's a shame they didn't go with the Space Marine turn sequences as well it was really good, though to be fair they did with the combat phase which is great (of course it's a little different but feel is the same)

[Mr Mystery]

True that.

Come to think of it, barring Orders and VPs for Objectives, it plays a lot like Space Marine.

With the fluctuating initiative, and IGOUGO combat rounds, it's a much harder game to outright dominate as you can Warhammer. Whilst some won't like the lack of 'wrong move can cost you the game' (and fair enough on that), I find I'm having to consider my turns more, meaning the movement phase isn't as free as you might first think. Sure I no longer have to worry about wheeling, redressing ranks etc, but it's replaced with 'right. If move here and here, then I can do this if I maintain the initiative, but also do that if I lose it'

Quickest lesson I ever learned? Unit of Ogres and a unit of Ironguts were in combat with Empire Greatswords. My opponent chose first, and whacked the Ogres. Hindsight soon caught up when the Ironguts went next....big gory smears all up the board. Really drove home how important it is to plan your fights well in advance, and to take care not to over extend yourself - especially if like me you have an army with a low model and unit count!

Contrary to the claims of Thehatemob, AoS is the strategic equal to Warhammer. You've just got completely different considerations entirely.

[Erik Setzer]

Of course, if you have a shooty army, you can just keep moving around and shooting and then engage once you've softened them up a bit, with a bit less worry about picking the right fights. ;)

Feel like I should note... my borderline-obsession on mobility and shooting isn't some kind of "figure out how to beat AoS thing." It's through all my games. My Orks in 40K have always been more about shooting than assault, even when Orks were actually solid in assault (though the mindset kind of got pushed in with 2nd edition). I just like moving around and having the freedom to maneuver. Heck, I couldn't stand it when World of Warcraft yanked the ability to move and cast from Shaman, even. It's just a personal preference. Being able to actually move Dwarf Thunderers and fire them is a nice boon.

[Mr Mystery]

True that, and that helps to keep combat monster armies more or less in check - no more shelter in HTH!

Also, Artillery appears to have largely had its day. Still has its role, but I no longer look across the board at the Dwarven Army Of Numbing Inevitability and think 'right....I'll just pack up now, yeah?'

Indeed the change to how leadership works is probably the most significant change. No more trying to drive off enemy units with massed artillery. No more losing the game on a single botched Ld test. I much prefer Battleshock, as both players in a combat need to fear a serious panelling. About the only addition I'd like is to adopt how shooting affected stuff in Warmaster, namely that if a formation took enough hits, it was driven back. Not something the game needs like, just a personal wish.

[grimmas]

Yes the game is much more about dealing events that occur rather than operating a preplanned master strategy. Of course there is an element of having a plan but it isn't going to survive contact with the enemy. I really like how you can effectively fire and maneuvre now. It was very difficult to do that in WFB even with my Wood elves where a couple of units could which was a bit pants as it was supposed to be their MO.

I agree Orks have always been about the Dakka

I think there are little tweeks we'd all like to add. I'd like alternating phases across the board like we have In the combat phase. But it's not something that the game doesn't function without. I know In some areas folk aren't keen on house rules but with just 4 Pages of basic rules AoS does lend itself to tinkering.

[Mr Mystery]

Specifically large bore, DED SHOOTH NOIZE DAKKA

[grimmas]

Somethings also that pops up on Facebook a lot is that people are still not really grasping that forces are formed from taking what you think is appropriate rather then what is in a faction. Quite often people will ask a question on the lines of "I've just started and what to I need to take for X faction" to which comes the reply (In a nice way) "whatever you like, but dont be a d**k". It's interesting how ingrained the idea of having to take certain units,play in certain ways and even the idea that you have to choose an army from one faction has become. I guess that it is only to be expected really after years of doing it one way. I still keep forgetting it myself and I've always had the attention span of a goldfish when it comes to Warhammer armies so I've got various odd units all over the place. Being able to create forces based on what you think is cool is a great plus and may be somthing that isn't mentioned enough as a positive

On the subject of Facebook is really pleasant how often people comment on how positive the community is. I guess because of all the moaning that goes on elsewhere people only go to AoS groups to really talk about it positively. The internet hate in some quarters is helpfully driving the people who do like it into a nice group of people who want to embrace the game for what it is which is whatever they want to be.

[Mr Mystery]

Also on FB, you just don't have the anonymity that Keyboard Warriors require.

I've just posted on the FB group, and lots of pleasant replies. That community is far more like my actual real life gaming community than Forums have ever been. Variety of views and opinions, but nobody getting out their pram. The few trolls are quickly banned, and people go back to enjoying their hobby.

[Erik Setzer]

Well, I think there's still something of a desire to limit the number of factions in an army, just for fluff's sake, or the look of the army. Sure, you can mix Sigmarines and Fyreslayers, but the aesthetic is kind of polar opposites, and the main reason they'd work together in the fluff really is because Fyreslayers will work with anyone.

On the other hand, you can make a fluff reason for why you can mix certain units, i.e. Sigmarines who somehow got corrupted fighting alongside Chaos, or you can convert them to work together better.


I've been looking over the Dwarf rules some more, and if I don't already have shields on my Thunderers (probably not, since most of them are from me apparently having bought three of the Dwarf-Goblins WFB starter at some point), I need to get some and put them on. Then I can do a "shieldwall," even if I move (but not if they run or charge). Can't really remodel them to match what I'm imagining, but just thinking of an implacable slowly moving wall of Dwarfs with guns using their shields to protect themselves from incoming fire seems pretty awesome and Dwarf-like.

I think artillery is still useful, but I have to admit that a Dwarf cannon doesn't seem that impressive next to a Ratling Gun, which I'd always just go for the extra shots with, getting 4D6 shots each turn until it inevitably blows itself up (and then you laugh or curse, depending on your Warlord's demeanor). But heck, two shots with D6 damage isn't bad, it just seems unimpressive when you can instead take a block of missile troops that counts pretty much about the same when determining your army.

- - - Updated - - -


Also on FB, you just don't have the anonymity that Keyboard Warriors require.

I stopped using a handle a while back just so everyone knew who to hate when they disagreed with my opinions. :p

The funny thing is, I'm pretty sure there's people who've been around who'd recognize my old handle (Kaptin Gavrin), but most of them don't know the name behind it, so it's harder to run into old faces (having about twenty years of memories to comb doesn't help, either... it has to be something very recognizable, like HBMC, who also used to post on the ancient Ultimate GW Website guestbook that got turned into an impromptu forum).

[grimmas]

Well I agree trying to keep things to the fluff is a good thing. I think mixing things in a Grand alliance is quite a fluffy way to go. The ability is there to really treat oneself. I quite like having a different aesthetic as it provides a bit of a break when painting. I've yet to see any Chaos Stormcasts which I'm a little surprised about I thought they'd have been converted up pretty quickly if only as Blood Warriors.

[Erik Setzer]

I'm considering doing some "corrupted Stormcasts," but the army's a bit expensive when I have other armies I need to complete building (and some games and stuff I need to get). But as it's getting nearer to the year mark, there'll probably be some armies show up on eBay or somewhere, from people who got the hot new thing and then decided they didn't want it, and I can snag some cheaper models that way.

[grimmas]

I'm sure people will start to offload ones they didn't want from the starter set fairly soon. You may be in luck

[Asymmetrical Xeno]

I do have some criticisms of AoS but I have to say, personally it appeals to me a lot more than WHFB ever did. For example the floating islands and weird stuff like that is totally my thing. I also like the stormcasts and actually wanted a faction like that ever since the 90's when I first got into WHFB.

That said I do sincerely sympathise with WHFB fans as I have felt the same way they have when worlds/universes I liked were "destroyed" and replaced by something I did not like at all - for example I was a hardcore fan of 90's dr who books, and the 2005-current series wiped out all of that continuity and effectively destroyed everything I liked in my eyes so i think a fair amount of the AoS "hate" is probably more of an emotional reaction I think. They'll get over it in time and either find other games or find something within AoS they do like. I think escapism is very important in this world we live in too, and things like games like that become something we feel very emotionally attached too and they become support mechanisms to help us deal with real life at times.

i think AoS appeals to me more because it lets me do the kind of armies I want to. I've said I'm not a gamer but I'm still OCD that I still try to make one within the framework of the game, perhaps in the offchance I might get into it later on or whatever, but I wouldn't of been able to do my tomb kings force as I didn't like any of the humanoid models in the range (so none of the skeletons at all), i litterally only liked the snakes and sphinxes.

If I had any criticisms, it is that the new miniatures have all been for either chaos (which has also mostly been Khorne bar the Everchosen), stormcast or fyreslayers. I think they could of released new stuff for some of the others as well, for example the Sylvaneth release could of included treekin and a clampack branchwraith, the recent Skaven one could of had plastic Censer Bearers and a clampack Plague Priest. I think things like that would of really helped things along better IMO, but hey I don't have a clue on how to run a business...

[Erik Setzer]

I don't want to get too much into "what's wrong with AoS" here because there's plenty of discussions for those. Wiping out WFB *was* a mistake, though, and it alienated a lot of people, but it's not like they can't just undo that damage by putting all the rules online and adding updated with the new models. The biggest mistake there is that they're still using the WFB setting for a bunch of licensed games, which then draw people in, who end up instead getting a totally different world than they expected.

Still, GW screwing up on WFB and introducing a new game shouldn't be cause to hate the new game, but I can't blame the people who want nothing to do with it because of that. I also can't deny that it frustrates me when a lot of people I enjoy playing against are in that boat, so I no longer can do fantasy games with them, only 40K (where they actually play 40K and weren't just fantasy-only).

Can't change that, though, so it's just down to making the best of the situation you're presented with.

On the background... I only have a couple of issues with it. First is that the way they have it jumping into the middle of the story, and it feels like we've gone from seeing "Chaos will ultimately always win" to "Chaos can't win because it will always turn on itself" and, rather than having real stakes, the high-stakes fights have already happened and we're coming into things for the cleanup act. I'd also like a more definitive explanation of what the realms actually are, because the fluff is inconsistent in places in seeming to suggest it's more than just eight chunks of planet, and it feels like they talk about areas outside the realms at times. Add in that End Times pretty much confirmed they're in the same general universe as 40K, and that adds more questions. There's room for some cool background, but it feels like they didn't really start with a clear direction of where to take things, and it's meandering a bit while they try to figure it out, which will eventually necessitate some kind of retconning.

But heck, try following the story of the Spawn comics (one long continuity), much less Marvel's universe or the DC stuff, and you eventually get used to stories being messy.

[Asymmetrical Xeno]

Yeah, they do need to clean up some of the inconsistancies and explain some of the stuff. I'm still not sure what the realms are too, i'd like to know if they are different dimensions, planes of existences or celestial objects of some kind. I think it would help if they released just one book that explained the setting to newcomers as a form of intro. I haven't personally bought any of the books that have come out, there are already a lot of them and they are all expensive (well, for me they are...others may differ) so a single book for people to read and understand the setting and backround would make things a bit more accessible I reckon - and who knows, it may help to push sales of the other books too if it's enough to hook people.

[Erik Setzer]

I still have a pet theory that the "realms" are parts of the World-That-Was that ended up being locked in shape by the magic that got bound to them. Sigmar built a space station around the core of the World-That-Was, so I can imagine the long game is rebinding the realms to the core and forming a new world.

And I'm not kidding on that bit about the core... there's a piece of art of the core of the World-That-Was with a kind of fortress ring built around it. I think it's in the first book. Only have the original book (try not to read it too often since I got the limited edition, because hey, only 2000 copies of a piece of gaming history, why wouldn't I get it?) and Quest for Ghal Maraz, don't have the latest one. But throughout those books and some of the battle tomes (IIRC), there's mention of groups that are/were highly technological, and it sounds like they're talking about other worlds at times.

[grimmas]

I suspect there will be a definitive book at some point. It does seem like they are practicing what they preach and are describing the setting through a narative at the moment. I thought that the Warsrcolls released for the existing WFB stuff was to allow people to play the game in an Old World setting as we know those factions don't exist in AoS. Although there's lots of paints named after them 😳

[Erik Setzer]

I think they're renaming the paints as they go. Or something. I keep seeing paints rotated out (kind of a problem as one of the ones I use a lot is in the "last chance" slot in the local GW store, and I need to ask if it's seeing a replacement).

Mainly, the warscrolls were so people wouldn't be left with no army to play the new game (otherwise there'd be hardly anyone playing). But you could also just claim that a warp portal opened up and dropped a bunch of Bretonnian Knights out after scooping them up from the past.