Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Howdy everybody, that's right, all three of you!

This is the thread for making Age of Sigmar actually work as a system.

The focus will be on creating some kind of basic structure for armies such that players can create armies of roughly equal potency.

This will be an evolving and developing process. As of now, we don't really know enough to make decisions for specific armies. That will come on Saturday.

For now, let's concentrate on making some kind of a 'force organisation chart' for use in pick-up games and everyday play. Something akin to that used in 40k.

For example:

BASIC AGE OF SIGMAR WARBAND STRUCTURE

1-2 'Heroes'

1-5 'Core'

0-2 'Special'

0-1 'Rare'

Units will be designated one of the four categories above based on their previous role in their army. Eg. Goblins and Chaos Warriors will be Core, Ogre Bruisers will be Heroes, White Lions will be 'Special' and so on and so forth.

I am well aware that this is a daunting task, and one we shouldn't have to do. But this is what GW have given us, and for me I don't have the luxury of moving to another game system.

If you have any positive suggestions at all, please give them. Don't just focus on the development of the Force Org Chart, if there are other elements of the system you think could be improved or added to, feel free to do so. GW have left us plenty of gaps to fill, so let's get to filling them.

As a final note, please don't post if you're just going to vent a complaint about how Age of Sigmar sucks. I know it does, that's why we're all here. Your complaints and concerns are completely valid, but this isn't the place to voice them.

Alright, with that said, let's do this. Let's fix this stupid system and get back to playing games

Try looking at this for ideas:
http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?410600-GW-may-not-balance-AOS-but-can-we&p=7482034#post7482034

This is actually the system that came to mind to me that I was going to use personally with friends, so I'm totally in agreement/on board with the idea.

I look forward to getting more concrete data about the game so we can start organizing this kinda thing.

Just as an aside, I heard an interesting suggestion for how to balance the issue of numerical advantage: wounds.

Apply the structure through the spending of wounds. For example, an average game might be '30 wounds a side', divided up how you like. If it turns out that larger infantry have multiple wounds and smaller infantry have 1, this could address the issue of a goblin army almost always granting their opponent the 'Sudden Death' victory option.

Thanks for posting that link to the Warseer thread, they've got some really good suggestions that I think would be great to implement. I'm not going to brainstorm anything concrete for points-determination until we can see all the warscrolls on Saturday since there very well might be greater complexity to them than what we've seen.


This looks like an effective way of determining unit sizes: Max number of guys per unit (unless it's stated to be 1): to-hit score x to-wound score / wounds

As they said in the Warseer thread, this would lead to a max unit size of 6 for the units we've seen. For goblins, who presumably hit and wound on a 5 and have 1 wound each, their max unit size would be 25.

 Dr. Delorean wrote:
Just as an aside, I heard an interesting suggestion for how to balance the issue of numerical advantage: wounds.

Apply the structure through the spending of wounds. For example, an average game might be '30 wounds a side', divided up how you like. If it turns out that larger infantry have multiple wounds and smaller infantry have 1, this could address the issue of a goblin army almost always granting their opponent the 'Sudden Death' victory option.

Thanks for posting that link to the Warseer thread, they've got some really good suggestions that I think would be great to implement. I'm not going to brainstorm anything concrete for points-determination until we can see all the warscrolls on Saturday since there very well might be greater complexity to them than what we've seen.


This looks like an effective way of determining unit sizes: Max number of guys per unit (unless it's stated to be 1): to-hit score x to-wound score / wounds

As they said in the Warseer thread, this would lead to a max unit size of 6 for the units we've seen. For goblins, who presumably hit and wound on a 5 and have 1 wound each, their max unit size would be 25.

Their is a problem with that which was found on warseer, those units of 6 are not equal in terms of power.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. It'll probably involve a more complicated system taking into account all the model's stats in order to come up with a points value per model, which will inform the unit size.

My first thoughts:

(i) Something like the Basic Warband Structure proposed by Dr. Delorean; a number of scrolls of each type.

(ii) Define a few basic types of games: Skirmish, Squad encounter, ... , Large battle, All out war ... Each has a different warband composition chart, e.g.:

Skirmish:
0-1 'Heroes'
1-3 'Core'
0 'Special'
0 'Rare'

Squad encounter:
1-2 'Heroes'
1-5 'Core'
0-2 'Special'
0-1 'Rare'

(iii) Each scroll gets a point value; e.g. starting with 10 for a Lord Relictor (gotta start somewhere).

(iv) Each scroll scroll gets a "number of models" value (the "any number of models" formulation really messes things up).

First off, good on you for taking the initiative here and trying to make what looks (at it's core) like a fun game and making it workable. I've had a few thoughts on this myself, if you don't mind me throwing them in here. So far I've come at it from three angles, so I'm interested in any initial thought on which would be preferred.

1: Classic Points System
Basically works as suggested above. Each unit is given a cost, which increases linearly with unit size, onto which upgrades can be added. Basically, it works how WFB always has, buying 'models' by the 'unit'. If an Orc costs 7 points, 10 costs 70, 30 cost 210 ect, and upgrades are paid for either per unit (command) or per model (weapons, rules,, unit-wide changes).

Pros: simple once the initial maths is done, allows highly customisable units/sizes and armies, keeps things level (30 guys cost the same whether they're in one unit or 3), is a system players are already familiar with.

Considering: could be harder to balance, still potentially allows extremely small or large unit sizes provided the Warscrolls aren't modified, isn't as easy to combine with a Force Organisation chart as option 2.



2: All Warscrolls Are Created Equal
This was mentioned a few times in the other thread, and I quite like the idea. Unit sizes get fixed so that each Warscroll matches any other Warscroll. As an example, a Warscroll might be 3 Chaos Warriors, 5 Elf Archers, 10 State Troops or 15 Night Goblins. Both players agree a Warscroll total for the game, then select up to that number of scrolls to build their army. While it would take a bit more initial work, I think this fits nicely with the simplified style of AoS, and makes on-the-fly building a lot easier. Instead of a dozen units ranging between 12 and 347 points, you have a dozen blocks of equal weight to plug into a list.

This could actually be expanded in a few other directions. A FOC would be easy to implement (just say X Warscrolls of type Y), and it even meshes well with the 'hidden' lists/'bidding' idea in the deployment rules. Since all units are of equal value, you could bring 'extra' Warscrolls to swap in and out as you go, so you keep the countering aspect but impose some order on it. For example, you see the enemy deploy a unit of Knights so you swap your Cannon for some Musketeers. They then see your gunners so bring some plentiful chaff unit to cover the Knights. So on and so forth. I think that's a cool idea, and much simpler here than with other systems.

You could also allow units from the same Warscroll to Combine at deployment, which gets away from homogenising armies and allows more customisation. 3 Warscrolls of White Lions could be three single units, one mega unit or a bigger and smaller unit.


Pros: units are balanced against each other, easily built on, little maths involved, works with what we've been given.
Considering: more initial work to secure balance, potentially makes things predictable, harder to implement with characters (simple fix: better characters cost 2 or 3 scrolls)



3: The Other Points Method
What I like to call 'inverse points'; instead of paying 10 points for 5 models, you pay 5 points for a unit of 10. This is used in Warmachine I believe, as well as Lion/Dragon Rampant and a few other historical systems. You buy units as a whole rather than models, but these units can be less or more powerful than others (whereas option 2 has all units essentially equal in value). This is something of a middle ground between the other two, keeping the maths simpler but still allowing more customisation that fixed 'scroll=scroll'. Again it would take a good while to figure out the initial balance, buy it a formula can be arrived at then in theory there's no need to actively balance everything with everything else.

Pros: simple maths, allows for unit diversity, is familiar to some gamers already
Cons: would need a more complex FOC, units might be too varied to balance without getting back to system 1 where you pay ppm rather than ppu.


That's what I got. Leaning towards the second one myself as I think it fits with the feel of AoS best, and is simplest for the end user. Any thoughts welcome!

 Paradigm wrote:
First off, good on you for taking the initiative here and trying to make what looks (at it's core) like a fun game and making it workable.

+1!

2: All Warscrolls Are Created Equal
This was mentioned a few times in the other thread, and I quite like the idea. Unit sizes get fixed so that each Warscroll matches any other Warscroll. As an example, a Warscroll might be 3 Chaos Warriors, 5 Elf Archers, 10 State Troops or 15 Night Goblins. Both players agree a Warscroll total for the game, then select up to that number of scrolls to build their army. While it would take a bit more initial work, I think this fits nicely with the simplified style of AoS, and makes on-the-fly building a lot easier. Instead of a dozen units ranging between 12 and 347 points, you have a dozen blocks of equal weight to plug into a list.

This could actually be expanded in a few other directions. A FOC would be easy to implement (just say X Warscrolls of type Y), and it even meshes well with the 'hidden' lists/'bidding' idea in the deployment rules. Since all units are of equal value, you could bring 'extra' Warscrolls to swap in and out as you go, so you keep the countering aspect but impose some order on it. For example, you see the enemy deploy a unit of Knights so you swap your Cannon for some Musketeers. They then see your gunners so bring some plentiful chaff unit to cover the Knights. So on and so forth. I think that's a cool idea, and much simpler here than with other systems.

You could also allow units from the same Warscroll to Combine at deployment, which gets away from homogenising armies and allows more customisation. 3 Warscrolls of White Lions could be three single units, one mega unit or a bigger and smaller unit.


Pros: units are balanced against each other, easily built on, little maths involved, works with what we've been given.
Considering: more initial work to secure balance, potentially makes things predictable, harder to implement with characters (simple fix: better characters cost 2 or 3 scrolls)

While my idea above was leaning to #3, I think #2 here is a really neat option. Very simplicity-oriented, less counting & so. Only downside is customization, which is a fun part of the hobby IMHO.

EDIT: some quote-issues ...

I really like the look of option #2 there, especially the additional strategic aspects offered by counter-play and counter-counter-play during deployment.

You're right though that such system would require a fair bit of work to balance all of the warscrolls against one another. From what I heard, about 400 warscrolls will be hitting the website on Saturday.

How could we go about implementing this 'all warscrolls are created equal' system? Would we compare each warscroll to every single other one, or just those within the same general battlefield role, as far as we can discern it?

Option 2 still needs to have a "number of models value" for each scroll.

But it can still be tricky. In those cases where 1 model is pre-specified, there may be scrolls that are just totally OP in comparison. Possibly the warband charts can remedy this, as Dr D suggested.

What does the points value system look like in WHFB? I haven't played it since 3rd ed ... Can it be used as a starting base line?

 pinkmarine wrote:


How does the points value system look like in WHFB? I haven't played it sine 3rd ed ... Can it be used as a starting base line? (That of course also depend on how the scrolls released on Sat will look like. I guess we can get more operative when we see those.)

The statline used by Age of Sigmar models/units doesn't much resemble that of previous editions. It looks like the stats are:


(In the circle on the left): Wounds, Move, Save, Bravery

Then the offensive capacity of the model is determined by its melee weapon (and ranged weapon, if it has one).

Weapons use the following profile: Range, Attacks, To Hit, To Wound, Rend, and Damage.

I myself have been thinking the all war scrolls are created equal method with a warscroll force org chart. But instead of make core/special/rare like previous books, I think we should attempt to use the key words. Something like this.

Pick 10 total warscroll:
1-3 Heroes
0-2 Monsters
0-3 Warmachines
2-8 Other Units types

Basically Cavalry/infantry would end up in other and your single model units would end up with restrictions to prevent spam abuse.

I think this combined with set unit sizes for the Cavalry/infantry would make for a balanced game. The hard part of course would be setting units sizes, but if thats the only thing you have to balanced, it's doable.

If that is the plan, when the warscrolls are released, I think we should start making a list of warscrolls that need sizes set.

What do you think?

Dr. Delorean wrote:I really like the look of option #2 there, especially the additional strategic aspects offered by counter-play and counter-counter-play during deployment.

You're right though that such system would require a fair bit of work to balance all of the warscrolls against one another. From what I heard, about 400 warscrolls will be hitting the website on Saturday.

How could we go about implementing this 'all warscrolls are created equal' system? Would we compare each warscroll to every single other one, or just those within the same general battlefield role, as far as we can discern it?

You wouldn't need to test every entry against every other one for sure, especially if a FOC of sorts limits how many of a given unit type you can take (eg it won't necessarily matter if all Elite units are slightly better than Core units if any army can only bring 2-3 of them), I think a good place to start would be what used to be Core units; establish sizes for them, and the rest of the army should be able to function around that. I'm thinking at first the thing to do would be agree on a set of incremental unit sizes that every unit adherres to, and go from there (I'm imagining 3, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25)

I also think that a lot of the work might end up being done for us; for example, if all Elf core troops (HE Spears/Archers, DE Swords/Spears/Xbows, WE Glade Guard) get broadly similar stats, then you can essentially treat them as a single unit 'type'. They'd still play differently thanks to their individual rules, but the general effectiveness of each would be pretty similar.

pinkmarine wrote:Option 2 still needs to have a "number of models value" for each scroll.

But it can still be tricky. In those cases where 1 model is pre-specified, there may be scrolls that are just totally OP in comparison. Possibly the warband charts can remedy this, as Dr D suggested.

That is the one issue I've thought of, and it seems the easiest way would be to just have those scrolls treated as more than one for building an army. Eg where 25 Goblins might be 1 Scroll, an Elf Prince might be 2, a named character 3, Nagash 4 ect. You could also 'split' the big units a bit; for example an Elf Prince and a Dragon would be bought separately for the appropriate value, then deployed together (or apart, if rules for unridden Monsters emerge).




Automatically Appended Next Post:
@Coyote: I like it!

It seems to me that once a general vision for how balancing will work is decided upon (and I think the best idea will be identifiable once we have access to all the warscrolls) the first step is to find the most generic units and assign them points. The more special rules a unit has the more difficult it will be to predict the amount of points they should be worth. If we assign points to the most generic units first then everything else can be balanced off of these.

For special rules, we might be able to at least ballpark their value if we can sort them into general categories. That way, you only have to price the category and not the particular special ability.

Anyway, it's ~1am here so I better sleep, keep up the good work!

Yeah, as I think almost every unit is probably going to have a unique Special Rule of some kind, it should again sort itself out a bit. If we take the Points route, you can assign X points for 'reroll 1s when making an [insert roll]', Y points to full rerolls, A points to extra roll, B points to active attacks ect.


I think the first thing we ought to look at is getting to the point where you can take two forces of equal value in whatever system we chose and not have the game be completely one-sided, rather than shooting for 100% tournament-ready balancing from day 1. If we can build a base to work from that even roughly evens things out, we've got a better chance of getting some playtesters on board, and can go from there. I think this will end up a rather ongoing project, but the more traction we can get the faster it'll develop.

If we can build a force org chart and assign a model count to each scroll it sounds like quite a fun game.

Another issue to deal with is the silly "measure from the model" rule. Since all models have a melee weapon range (I think there was a number for that on the scrolls), it would make so much more sense to (1) measure from the base and (2) allow melee attacks if the model is within melee range with its weapons.

It would generally mean that long-reach weapons are an advantage in the sense that it's easier to pile in models within their range. Hence they should be punished in terms of eg having fewer models per scroll, or we will only see halberds at the battlefield.

Sounds like you've fixed that already. Units within their range can strike, and measure everything from the closest point between 2 bases.

Do we know yet if spears ect will have longer range? I could see all melee weapons having a blanket 1" range, just there to keep the Profiles the same as ranged weapons.

I think a simple number assgined by unit type rather than specifics would work to at least get the game running. after play testing it can be adjusted

like a unit of 10 gobos would be like 5 points

Heros around there too

siege engines and big baddies around 20

Calv around 15 and so on.

Guesstimate the effective mess of what one would kill vs the other. then work it out from there.

Otherwise you would need to make some gnarly algorithms to figure it out more accurately (actually i think the algorithm method would work better now since we are on a fresh new game with almost no complexity)

I like Paradagrim's second suggestion. If we make it so that warscrolls and/or formations are all standardized to the same power level, then pick up games suddenly become balanced and easy. It's just a lot of initial work and would require some playtesting feedback from the community. The only other issue is that having to take your army in multiples of 3 Chaos Warriors or whatever could get annoying, though I suppose this could be fixed by playing games of warscrolls with decimal points.

 The Shadow wrote:
I like Paradagrim's second suggestion. If we make it so that warscrolls and/or formations are all standardized to the same power level, then pick up games suddenly become balanced and easy. It's just a lot of initial work and would require some playtesting feedback from the community. The only other issue is that having to take your army in multiples of 3 Chaos Warriors or whatever could get annoying, though I suppose this could be fixed by playing games of warscrolls with decimal points.

I thought it would be an easy fix to allow units of the same warscroll to combined together into bigger units. it keeps track of the amount of warscrolls used in a game but still let people field bigger units.

I suggest we need to fix 2 things (we don't need points values), 1st We need to set maximum numbers of models in units, I suggest this could be through unit classification (so horde, Militia, Veteran, Elite) each with different wound unit sizes. (e.g. Horde-30 wounds, Militia 20 wounds, veteran 15 wounds, Elite- 10 wounds.

Then a force org based on these classifications (We would need to ensure that elves who would be mostly veterans and Elites could be taken in the force org as well as a mostly horde army such as Orcs).

 Coyote81 wrote:

 The Shadow wrote:
I like Paradagrim's second suggestion. If we make it so that warscrolls and/or formations are all standardized to the same power level, then pick up games suddenly become balanced and easy. It's just a lot of initial work and would require some playtesting feedback from the community. The only other issue is that having to take your army in multiples of 3 Chaos Warriors or whatever could get annoying, though I suppose this could be fixed by playing games of warscrolls with decimal points.

I thought it would be an easy fix to allow units of the same warscroll to combined together into bigger units. it keeps track of the amount of warscrolls used in a game but still let people field bigger units.

Yeah, exactly. You can take, say, 3 Warscrolls worth of a unit type, then at deployment can choose to combine them and go for a Death star of Doom or a more MSU approach.

I'm thinking (pending stats) that units of 3 will basically be reserved for the Ultra-Elites of an army, so basic CSM might be 5-per-scroll while Chosen would be 3-per-scroll, Blood crushers say 2 per scroll. It won't be quite as customisable as a free-form points system, but the more I think about it, the more I think it fits with AoS's simple, accessible style, emphasis on speed (you can build a list in seconds and without a calculator) and the fluid list-building from the deployment rules.

Going roughly off the old points as an example, here what I'm thinking for approximate core unit sizes, although obviously it could all change:

3 models: Ogres
5 models: Stormcast Liberators, Chaos Warriors, maybe Saurus?
10 models: Elf Spearmen/Swordsmen/Archers, Orcs? Bret Knights?
15: Empire State Troops, Skinks
20: Goblins, Gnoblars, Skeletons, Zombies, Clanrats

Obviously that's not comprehensive, and a complete shot in the dark as all stats could change completely, but it gives you an idea of where I'm going.

For sure, if unit sizes are set per warscroll. Then we just give you the option take take a certain amount of warscrolls per battle. Limit certain options based of keywords to prevent spam and complete unbalance.

Tada! You have a semi-balanced game (which is fine, because if a game is perfectly balance, what is the purpose of list building?) with enough structure to play pickup games against people.


EX: Lets play a 10 warscroll game?

You bring a Orc bigboss, a goblin shaman, 2x doom divers, a giant, 3x units of goblins(that you decide to field as one big unit), a unit of black orcs and a unit of orc boar boys.

I bring an Empire Grand Wizard, a Priest of Sigmar, 1x cannon, 2x mortars, 1 unit of great swords, 2x units of swordsmen, 2x units of knights.


No need to worry about points, everything else is already balanced out. Now the base rules of the game come into play. I don't have to put all of these warscrolls on the table, I can stop early and make the orc player make the hard decisions. Does he bring those extra models and push me into sudden death.

-Which is much harder to manage since you can't take partial unit sizes. In the current AoS rules, I can calculate exactly how many models it take to get sudden death and then take one less. This system it's much harder to manage and less likely someone will go way above and beyond.

If I did stop early, say I leave my cannon and my priest at home, now the most I can be outnumbered is by 2 warscrolls, making for a game that will still be somewhat balanced, and if it's too unbalance, sudden death is almost guaranteed.

That's a good point on the option to hold back Warscrolls in deployment, an aspect I hadn't considered. Conversely, it could go the other way; you could both bring 13-15 Scrolls to a 10-scroll game and basically have multiple list setups ready to go. You'd still only ever have 10 in play at most, but it opens up more options.

Limiting by keyword is a neat idea, I'm intrigued to see what kind of keywords we end up with. That could end up being a base for all kinds of interactions, expansions and systems.

I thought Warscrolls didn't limit unit size? Sure, most people are thinking it is best, from a tactical point of view, to only take units of single models (and hence a large number of warscrolls) but this means that having games limited by warscrolls could potentially become unbalanced, as one person brings a warscroll of 10 goblins and their opponent brings one of 10 skullcrushers. Am I right here?

And I really need to read up on this Sudden Death thing... I'll have to get back to you all on all these shenanigans that people seem to be dreaming up around it

That's where we're going here; Warscrolls don't offer any limit other than on 1-model characters, so the first port of call is to assign fixed unit sizes to each Warscroll that roughly balances them. That way, the Scrolls themselves become a valid way of both balancing forces and determining game size.

In theory, the end result here is that a Scroll of Elves will equal a Scroll of Goblins will equal a Scroll of Ogres ect.

Ah yeah, that's what I was driving at. Though it'd take a lot of work, standardising the warscrolls would make for the easiest in-game solution, I believe.