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http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/655877.page

Thanks!

First things first, a bit of introduction: I am relatively new to tabletop wargaming, having only played Warhammer 40,000 for around 3 years now. I've built up a 2000 point army of Eldar, and am getting more as part of adapting to the new codex. In any case, I've been taking a look at other tabletop wargames to see what else is out there. Warhammer Fantasy was definitely on my radar for a while.

However, two main things prevented me from getting into Fantasy (apart from already being committed to 40k):
-The sheer cost of entry. 2500 points is the equivalent of 1500 in 40k, and the rules also encourage larger armies of troops.
-The magic system. I've heard and read horror stories about how OP and broken the magic in 8th edition was

As a consequence, I have been looking forward to the new Warhammer: Age of Sigmar to see how much changed and whether or not it was a game I could get into. Here are my general impressions from looking at the rules already available.

Positives:
1. Basic rules are free. Can't complain about that.
2. Only four pages long. Solves the problems of having overcomplicated systems and flipping through a massive rulebook with one stone.
3. Rules are much more streamlined compared to Fantasy and even 40k. Anyone familiar with Warmahordes will feel at home, and it should be easy to pick up for brand new players.
4. New statline formula. Makes things a lot more modern in design as well as more intuitive, and could even be applied to 40k.
5. Bonuses carrying over between games. For league play, this could be something very interesting.
6. Rules favoring heroes and characters. Definitely a good break from the blobs of infantry and useless character upgrades of 8th edition (or what I heard).
7. Streamlined Magic system. Just cast and go.

Negatives:
1. THE BIG ONE: No internal mechanism for balance. You can't simply shove all responsibility for game balance onto the players; that's just lazy design.
2. Measuring from the model. This can potentially lead to all sorts of modeling-for-advantage shenanigans. Also, there's no allowance for pivoting on the spot.
3. Rules for deployment aren't consistent. Maybe more scenarios will fix this. Until then, it's quite vague as to how you are actually supposed to deploy.
4. Extremely questionable rules for certain models. The novelty of talking to your models during a game will wear thin very quickly.

Overall, I am cautious about what I'm seeing with Warhammer: Age of Sigmar. I definitely think that the potential is there with this game, and may people are reporting that the game can be very fun under the right circumstances. My gut instinct tells me that the free rules are just the beginning, and more options for play and internal balance will come with the release of the full-size rulebook for Age of Sigmar.

My FLGS is holding an event where people can come in with their Warhammer Fantasy armies to demo the rules for Age of Sigmar. I'm going to head over there to see how the game plays as well as other players' reactions to the game.

I'm wondering if anyone else's reactions are similar, and if any Warhammer: Fantasy veterans are enjoying the changes Age of Sigmar has brought.

Eh -- I don't see the point of the triumph system.

If I win a friendly against an opponent, and play against another (with no other games in between) a few days later against another, how'd my opponent know if I won the game I claim I won? And if my opponent doesn't care because just doesn't care about the game, then what's the point of the system? We might as well assume both won the previous game and roll on the table, or both forgo that rule.
You see, if it were to grant a bone to the winners, if fails in a non-competitive, unsupervised environment. What you gonna do, call the store manager about your opponent's game a few days before? Odds are the manager won't remember it. If it were a handicap system, well, it's no as if you can't do it outside the rules before -- afterall, the rules can't be enforced in this case anyways.

And if it were a competitive environment, like a tournament. Well firstly the system doesn't enforce balance, so a tournament without house rules will be pointless. And in that scenario, do you really want to give a winning player additional advantages over another?

Overall, that's just a very silly rule created to promote social gaming that cannot be enforced, thus, is pointless. The only way this works is when your play group is a very limited one, where everybody knows every body. It's only in such a small society, like that of a upper-class Gentlemen's club and the likes, can a rule like that be enforced. I mean, what's a gamer new to the game gonna do when his first game is against a player with such a bonus? Whether or not the gamer's collection is more "Killy" than the opponent's, he/she is still gonna call BS on that, since that's the one thing he/she cannot predict nor counteract.

Joke rules were a one time thing for the old models, most of those old models will probably be replaced or forgotten for the reboot factions/new model lines/new characters. They did it as a "send off" to old WFB.

Triumphs are actually something I find really awesome. Between opponents that's worthless, no one is actually going to continue them (and if they do I question their logic.) If they do, or if you expect Triumphs to carry over days between, you're just being absurd.

Its obviously meant as a narrative system between friendly games to drive a story or such. Games can be short enough to make it interesting to gain small bonuses for a few repeat rounds.

Icmiracle Read the scenarios leaked in the rumours thread. The triumph system is designed for scenario strings, or for multiple battles eithin one scenario. Its a "play against one person multiple times" mechanic.

I suppose I'm just rebutting to a few things, but FWIW:

 TheNewBlood wrote:
-The sheer cost of entry. 2500 points is the equivalent of 1500 in 40k, and the rules also encourage larger armies of troops.

2500 WHFB is more like 2000 W40K, while 2000 WHFB is like 1500 W40K. But sure, point taken. AOS is a much smaller game, particularly if we end up going by wounds for balancing (which I'm not 100% in support of).

-The magic system. I've heard and read horror stories about how OP and broken the magic in 8th edition was

My problem with 8E magic is the IF system and the huge advantage that high level mages get, not really the nuke spells themselves. Those serve a balancing purpose to rein in the meta of giant units that the rules appear to support at first glance.

7. Streamlined Magic system. Just cast and go.

But you know what? I'm beginning to think that magic is worse in AOS, and that's entirely because summoning is so broken. Remove that horrible mechanic and magic is a happy afterthought, like psychic powers in 3-4E 40k.

2. Measuring from the model. This can potentially lead to all sorts of modeling-for-advantage shenanigans. Also, there's no allowance for pivoting on the spot.

Pro Tip: suggest measuring from the base instead? Has worked for me thus far, and made moving models as hassle free as it was intended to be!

My FLGS is holding an event where people can come in with their Warhammer Fantasy armies to demo the rules for Age of Sigmar. I'm going to head over there to see how the game plays as well as other players' reactions to the game.

Check back in once you've had your first game? I ... enjoyed mine, though we put some house rules in effect even then, because Obviously Dumb Things are obvious.

- Salvage

 TheNewBlood wrote:

Negatives:
1. THE BIG ONE: No internal mechanism for balance. You can't simply shove all responsibility for game balance onto the players; that's just lazy design.
2. Measuring from the model. This can potentially lead to all sorts of modeling-for-advantage shenanigans. Also, there's no allowance for pivoting on the spot.

Well, some would argue (myself being one of them, surprise!) that constantly demanding watertight 200 page manuals on How to Have Fun drafted by a team of experienced attorneys is the players being lazy. If you want a real rank and file wargame, go play DBA or Warmaster at a scale that's appropriate for it, like 10mm or 6mm. 28mm doesn't make any sense for mass battles. Or come up with your own rules. If you want pretty, shiny models and dumb rules, play Age of Sigmar, by all means. Or use the pretty shiny models with another rule system. I just don't understand why GW customers don't just move along when GW has shown time and time again that it's not interested in writing balanced rules for competitive play. Just move on already.

If you're worried about modelling for advantage shenanigans, then you are playing with ass holes. Stop playing with ass holes. Don't like the previous game won boon? Don't play with them. Problems solved. Humans have these amazing tools called language and social conventions for reaching agreements. No 200 page rules manual necessary.

Some of the most revered systems of all time never had point systems. Stargrunt II, for example.

I agree with you on a lot of other things. The sheer monetary and painting requirements for playing Fantasy meant I wasn't interested in it. I already painted 150 models, and then 8th comes around and I have to paint 80 more to keep up with all the neckbeards in my area who are playing a casual game "competitively"? No thanks.

But seriously. Stop thinking GW is here to make "competitive" and "balanced" games. They're clearly not, and no amount of wishing otherwise will make it so.

AncientSkarbrand wrote:
Icmiracle Read the scenarios leaked in the rumours thread. The triumph system is designed for scenario strings, or for multiple battles eithin one scenario. Its a "play against one person multiple times" mechanic.

Haven't checked it, but if that's not stated in the current rules, we are supposed to use it for every game until the scenarios come out. That's still a very weird move for GW, putting it in what might be the equivalent of a warmachine stater rule pamphlet. What'd you expect the players to think of? Assuming the 4 page rule pdf to be a joke?

 Xenocidal Maniac wrote:

 TheNewBlood wrote:

Negatives:
1. THE BIG ONE: No internal mechanism for balance. You can't simply shove all responsibility for game balance onto the players; that's just lazy design.
2. Measuring from the model. This can potentially lead to all sorts of modeling-for-advantage shenanigans. Also, there's no allowance for pivoting on the spot.

Well, some would argue (myself being one of them, surprise!) that constantly demanding watertight 200 page manuals on How to Have Fun drafted by a team of experienced attorneys is the players being lazy. If you want a real rank and file wargame, go play DBA or Warmaster at a scale that's appropriate for it, like 10mm or 6mm. 28mm doesn't make any sense for mass battles. Or come up with your own rules. If you want pretty, shiny models and dumb rules, play Age of Sigmar, by all means. Or use the pretty shiny models with another rule system. I just don't understand why GW customers don't just move along when GW has shown time and time again that it's not interested in writing balanced rules for competitive play. Just move on already.

If you're worried about modelling for advantage shenanigans, then you are playing with ass holes. Stop playing with ass holes. Don't like the previous game won boon? Don't play with them. Problems solved. Humans have these amazing tools called language and social conventions for reaching agreements. No 200 page rules manual necessary.

Some of the most revered systems of all time never had point systems. Stargrunt II, for example.

I agree with you on a lot of other things. The sheer monetary and painting requirements for playing Fantasy meant I wasn't interested in it. I already painted 150 models, and then 8th comes around and I have to paint 80 more to keep up with all the neckbeards in my area who are playing a casual game "competitively"? No thanks.

But seriously. Stop thinking GW is here to make "competitive" and "balanced" games. They're clearly not, and no amount of wishing otherwise will make it so.

Believe me, I don't really want GW to make a tournament-caliber tabletop game out of either Warhammer Fantasy or 40k. It would take a lot of what I personally enjoy out of those games.

However, I'm going to have to disagree. The rules don't have to be totally strict as far as balance goes; they can provide guidelines for play without limiting what players can do. But they still have to provide something to the players as far as structure goes. From what I've seen, Age of Sigmar does not provide that necessary structure for players. I'm not saying that this won't change in the near future; there's going to have to be more than four pages of rules in the Age of Sigmar BRB to sell the book. What I am saying is that Age of Sigmar is, in the full GW tradition, apparently written without any input from an editor.

Casual/friendly players are the ones most hurt by this lack of balance. Suppose I bring Nagash or the Glottkin or an army composed solely of Treebros against your Empire spearmen. Under Age of Sigmar, this is perfectly legal and hunky-dory. I would be willing to bet you might not want to play this matchup without similar allowances. These poorly-written rules force the players into a constant grey area when playing, where things have to be constantly fudged and muddled through so that the game can continue. Don't get me stated on the summoning rules; those make 40k's seem airtight by comparison.

I don't suggest continuing down this line of argument. We have our differences, and I'm willing to acknowledge them. Besides, you might attract Peregrine to this topic, and he can be rather more belligerent than me.

 TheNewBlood wrote:

Rules are much more streamlined compared to Fantasy and even 40k. Anyone familiar with Warmahordes will feel at home, and it should be easy to pick up for brand new players.

I'm interested in what led you to that conclusion.

 Eldarain wrote:

 TheNewBlood wrote:

Rules are much more streamlined compared to Fantasy and even 40k. Anyone familiar with Warmahordes will feel at home, and it should be easy to pick up for brand new players.

I'm interested in what led you to that conclusion.

Full disclosure: I do not play Warmahordes. I only drew that conclusion based on my experiences talking with people who do play about the game and how it works. It should be noted that Age of Sigmar and Warmahordes are still fundamentally different games. The only reason I would compare the two is that from the free rules the games seem to take place on a similar scale.

Honestly, I don't even find summoning THAT broken. Does it work well? Oh yeah. Did it ruin the game I had today or kill the balance? Nope. A first turn summoning was kind of like shooting a well placed cannon ball that crashed through one of my opponent's units. But my summoned units, when he killed them, counted against those 80 wounds we started the game with. He killed 48 points of my stuff, 23 of it was from summoned models! I got 42 points from him, without anything being summoned on his side (straight khorne demons). In an old Warhammer game, those 23 wounds of summoned stuff would have meant nothing. Here they do good stuff for me, but have a negative consequence if they're lost. I don't find them "be-all, end-all" by any stretch. Then again, there were no dick moves like, say, taking 4 wizards and a demon prince, then making 4 attempts at summoning 4 more demon princes in an 80 wound game. THAT would be a dick thing to do. But Demon princes aren't too hard to pop either. So...meh?

 TheNewBlood wrote:

 Xenocidal Maniac wrote:

 TheNewBlood wrote:

Negatives:
1. THE BIG ONE: No internal mechanism for balance. You can't simply shove all responsibility for game balance onto the players; that's just lazy design.
2. Measuring from the model. This can potentially lead to all sorts of modeling-for-advantage shenanigans. Also, there's no allowance for pivoting on the spot.

Well, some would argue (myself being one of them, surprise!) that constantly demanding watertight 200 page manuals on How to Have Fun drafted by a team of experienced attorneys is the players being lazy. If you want a real rank and file wargame, go play DBA or Warmaster at a scale that's appropriate for it, like 10mm or 6mm. 28mm doesn't make any sense for mass battles. Or come up with your own rules. If you want pretty, shiny models and dumb rules, play Age of Sigmar, by all means. Or use the pretty shiny models with another rule system. I just don't understand why GW customers don't just move along when GW has shown time and time again that it's not interested in writing balanced rules for competitive play. Just move on already.

If you're worried about modelling for advantage shenanigans, then you are playing with ass holes. Stop playing with ass holes. Don't like the previous game won boon? Don't play with them. Problems solved. Humans have these amazing tools called language and social conventions for reaching agreements. No 200 page rules manual necessary.

Some of the most revered systems of all time never had point systems. Stargrunt II, for example.

I agree with you on a lot of other things. The sheer monetary and painting requirements for playing Fantasy meant I wasn't interested in it. I already painted 150 models, and then 8th comes around and I have to paint 80 more to keep up with all the neckbeards in my area who are playing a casual game "competitively"? No thanks.

But seriously. Stop thinking GW is here to make "competitive" and "balanced" games. They're clearly not, and no amount of wishing otherwise will make it so.

Believe me, I don't really want GW to make a tournament-caliber tabletop game out of either Warhammer Fantasy or 40k. It would take a lot of what I personally enjoy out of those games.

However, I'm going to have to disagree. The rules don't have to be totally strict as far as balance goes; they can provide guidelines for play without limiting what players can do. But they still have to provide something to the players as far as structure goes. From what I've seen, Age of Sigmar does not provide that necessary structure for players. I'm not saying that this won't change in the near future; there's going to have to be more than four pages of rules in the Age of Sigmar BRB to sell the book. What I am saying is that Age of Sigmar is, in the full GW tradition, apparently written without any input from an editor.

Casual/friendly players are the ones most hurt by this lack of balance. Suppose I bring Nagash or the Glottkin or an army composed solely of Treebros against your Empire spearmen. Under Age of Sigmar, this is perfectly legal and hunky-dory. I would be willing to bet you might not want to play this matchup without similar allowances. These poorly-written rules force the players into a constant grey area when playing, where things have to be constantly fudged and muddled through so that the game can continue. Don't get me stated on the summoning rules; those make 40k's seem airtight by comparison.

I don't suggest continuing down this line of argument. We have our differences, and I'm willing to acknowledge them. Besides, you might attract Peregrine to this topic, and he can be rather more belligerent than me.

You know what? Sorry for my belligerent tone. I was trying to get my thoughts down quickly and I'm frustrated by some of the attitudes I've seen surrounding AoS lately. You seem very reasonable and I apologize for being terse.

Peregrine can feel free to say whatever he likes (with 15,000+ posts on this forum, he's never demonstrated any reluctance to do just that!). I believe that he is the only guy I've got on my ignore list on this forum, so he'll be blowing hot air as far as I'm concerned anyway. I'm frankly shocked that he hasn't been banned for trolling by now.

I'm preparing an essay regarding this whole thing that I'm thinking about posting to my blog, and maybe here as well. Especially regarding your points about legislation of fair play. I actually think that what you propose is incorrect - primarily because anyone who will try to get one over on you in the absence of a point systems is still going to try to get one over on you with one. It more comes down to the community self-policing obnoxious behavior, which, unfortunately, rules can't really do for us. But you're right, let's not go down this road. I'll save it for my essay.

Woops, one more edit: To answer your original question - yes, I am excited about Age of Sigmar. I agree with many of your complaints about Fantasy, and AoS has be excited to bring my models out of storage. My issue at the moment is that I can't find anyone locally even willing to give a try - hence my frustration.

Hmm, well I agree with pretty much everything said. I am not a fan of change (and the goof rules are just plain stupid), but they did seem to streamline the game a bit. It looks more like a skirmish game like infinity or wild west exodus which is cool. I am sad that they changed the game completely but as an outsider the game still looks cool.

I had bought some fantasy units back in the day because they looked cool but never had enough for an army list or played. Now it seems I could get a game in! It looks like GW is catering to new players in this fashion with AOS.

I do have a problem with this however:
4. New statline formula. Makes things a lot more modern in design as well as more intuitive, and could even be applied to 40k.

No... hell no... keep fantasy different and 40k what it is. Though I am not a fan of some of the changes with 7th edition (especially formations, I liked the old FOC), 40k has always been a unique future fantasy game. I will not yell sermons before my interrogator chaplain kills/captures a fallen... nope not going to do it!

GW you can mess with fantasy or any of your other smaller games... and I'm not saying AOS is bad for what it is, but don't you dare turn my 40k into this!!

 timetowaste85 wrote:
But my summoned units, when he killed them, counted against those 80 wounds we started the game with. He killed 48 points of my stuff, 23 of it was from summoned models! I got 42 points from him, without anything being summoned on his side (straight khorne demons). In an old Warhammer game, those 23 wounds of summoned stuff would have meant nothing. Here they do good stuff for me, but have a negative consequence if they're lost.

You're talking about 'points' like in regards to Minor Victory calculation? Is that how summoning 'counts against' the summoning player? I actually have trouble reading that line or two of rules about summons and casualties. Far as I knew, the point was that summoned units didn't count towards the number you needed to kill to table to other army, and that was the downside. Or something.

Then again, there were no dick moves like, say, taking 4 wizards and a demon prince, then making 4 attempts at summoning 4 more demon princes in an 80 wound game. THAT would be a dick thing to do. But Demon princes aren't too hard to pop either. So...meh?

Current Plan: play these WAAC summoning lists, but demand that all summoned models a) exist and b) are painted. I mean if all five of those DP are painted up, that's pretty impressive, so by all means, spam away, filthy spammer

- Salvage