I don't think the arguments surrounding AoS have changed because people's experiences and understanding haven't changed. When AoS came out, I really only had experience with Warmachine (which was largely positive). Since then, I've played Infinity and Malifaux, but not as much as I would've liked, and probably not enough to greatly affect my viewpoint. My experiences with WMH went sour in this time as well, which made me double down in the things I liked about AoS. I've still never played 40k or WHFB. So my arguments have largely been "I like what AoS does" and "I don't like what Warmachine does" - two independent thoughts, arrived at separately and both minority opinions - and extrapolating. Without further competing experiences in the field, that opinion won't change... though I argue that miniature games need not be compared only to other miniature games - they have enough in common with board and video games.
But the same could be said for other people in these discussions. The folks arguing against AoS's features that haven't played AoS, still haven't played AoS. The people holding on too tightly to WHFB and related games like 9th Age and KoW, still hold on too tightly. The people who believe X still believe X. And again, this is because the field doesn't change often enough for competing experiences to illuminate our viewpoints. There haven't been any other new games (few kickstarters, but it'll be a year before those come out, and even then, how different will they be, really?). There haven't been any other games trying new approaches to game design. There hasn't been a third alternative beyond points and no points. The only things that HAS changed has been the further refinement that GW has done on AoS, which we're still only seeing the first steps of (killing Tomb Kings? Reclassifying everything?)
Honestly, I don't think my opinion of AoS will change all that much. It's not going to go from something I greatly like to something I greatly dislike unless I have a particularly horrible experience or two with it (which, to be fair, I did with Warmachine). The most that could happen is that I get tired of it or move on to a different game, which hasn't happened yet (I do like Infinity, but for different reasons than AoS, so they don't compete on anything except budget and time - both of which AoS won due to the great start collecting boxes).
The opposite, though, is different. Time heals all wounds, and the longer AoS is out, the less the sting of losing WHFB will be felt. It won't make people less stubborn, but it will remove the largest obstacle some people have against the game. So even if the miniature games field doesn't change significantly (and sadly, it won't), the passage of time will change the discussion - mostly from why GW sucks to why AoS sucks. Yeah, it'll be some time still before the discussion gets any more helpful.
The arguments haven't changed. It's gone more quiet because people have cemented their respective views. AoS is a very unpopular game in Germany and sees no tournament play whatsoever as it just doesn't work on that level. GW has failed to deliver an actual ruleset and thus missed the chance to broaden its audience.
WHFB 9th and KoW have completely replaced WHFB competitive-wise and people just moved on.
Sqorgar wrote: The people holding on too tightly to WHFB and related games like 9th Age and KoW, still hold on too tightly.
I just wanted to comment on this characterization - it'd been a long time since I played fantasy, as my group died as the 8th edition deathstar slog set in (and thus missed the late 8th revival where MSU tactics became viable again with new books).
In switching to Kings of War, it's not because I was holding on too tightly - actually, myself and many others were building up our collections in anticipation of GW's new fantasy ruleset (and rumors of it being much better). I wasn't happy with AoS' direction, but I certainly had no desire to go back to what stopped our group playing in the first place!
Kings of War is, by all accounts, a different game - much faster to play, more streamlined, simpler. This can be good and bad, but for me, it's good because I wanted a simpler, faster to play game than 8th edition fantasy. Just because AoS isn't that for me, doesn't mean I'm "holding on" to WHFB... I've let that go and in some ways am really glad to be moving to a system that is supported by a different company. But more than anything, I'm just glad to be playing a simpler ruleset - as I'm sure AoS players feel, as well!
You may have a point regarding 9th Age, since it is intentioned as the direct successor to WHFB, but I just wanted to comment on your characterization regarding KoW. I generally try not to mention it too much in this section since folks have made it clear they don't like that and I can understand why. But in the end, this results in myself and other moving on even more, since the traditional areas to discuss fantasy (at least on Dakka) are dedicated to AoS. So, it's not so much holding on, as it is turning a page and starting a new chapter for mass fantasy gaming - similar, in many ways, to what folks who are embracing AoS are doing . Among whom, regarding AoS, is Red_Zeke - my fantasy hero and the one whose posts originally got me really invested in fantasy gaming.
You don't need to play a game as simple as AoS to see that the rules contain features you don't like, or omit features you do like.
Speaking for myself, I am not interested in AoS because it is so similar to 40K. If GW could have made it a different game, I probably would have been more interested.
Hey Bottle, nice to see your post here about your development as a gamer.
It's always annoyed me, the polarization between "casual fluffy" and "hardcore tournament".
As a pretty enthusiastic gamer in my twenties I was often involved in running, organising or attending tournaments. I did this because tournaments are a great way to pack in a lot of gaming into a weekend and meet new hobbyists, see armies outside your local area and generally broaden your wargaming horizons. I never placed above mid table, but I always gave my best with whatever army I was using - I absolutely played to win, and I generally had a fantastic time doing so.
When I wasn't at tournaments, I would play extended narrative campaigns with my local group - I was often organizing these, as well. I love narrative gaming, I'm a serial D'n'D GM and love interactive storytelling. That aspect was what first drew me to wargaming.
I see no reason why people cannot enjoy both aspects of the hobby simultaneously.
I pulled away from AoS because it invalidates one of my prefered ways to enjoy the game. Also, if I'm honest, I prefered the "Fantasy 30 Years War" theme of old WFB to the "Asgard with Demons" theme of AoS. There are other reasons too, to do with exaggerated aesthetic changes, price rises and changes to the base size that I find irksome. I had really begun to pull away during 8th, when those problems became an issue, along with a bloat in the number of minis per battle and magic rules that I just disliked. I try not to come in here and threadcrap too much, but I do read the discussions. I see a lot of people speaking disparagingly of competitive players or players who use points as though we are all awful people, and it's a bit depressing.
These days I am playing KoW (when I get to play, which is not often) and planning on making Fantasy "counts as" lists for Saga if I want to do skirmish style gaming.
Thanks for posting this cry against the continuing polarization of our community.
Sigvatr wrote: AoS is a very unpopular game in Germany and sees no tournament play whatsoever as it just doesn't work on that level.
Well that's kind of like saying monopoly tournaments aren't common in the US.It's not a game designed for competitive play.
I think the dividing line comes with how many people played Warhammer Fantasy as solely a competitive game. AOS is a "beer and pretzels" way to get your figures on the table that you have worked hard painting, collecting, and converting and have some fun enacting battles, whether that's playing with scenarios or running narrative campaigns or just having a silly fun time. It's not really for hyper serious "I just beat you, I am better than you, I am the best" crowd. Not without extensive modification at least.
From my experience I think AoS' issue has been that it is *so* different from WFB some people weren't even prepared to give it a try.
AoS is (I think) a system that requires demonstration far more than others. Because it is *so* unrestricted, you have to figure out what you want to do with it yourself. If you don't 'get' it, then the game'll be dead for you. If you can get a game against/observing someone who *does* 'get' it, then things start to click and you feel like another game.
In terms of what I've seen...
AoS early adopters - the ones who 'got it' - have been fine since day 1. Maybe house ruling or comping, but for them the system had more pros than cons.
Then there's the sceptics. The ones who can't really see how they could enjoy the game - but they still gave it a go. Most were 'converted' - a lot of the time when an early adopter was involved - but a few just weren't getting what they wanted out of it and moved on to something else.
Then finally you have those termed 'haters'. The ones who won't even consider playing the game. They have their reasons, nothing anyone says, does or offers will change their minds.
(Which I think is a shame, but there y'go.)
None of this is intended to be insulting or derisory in any way, and is *definitely* not intended to make out that people who dislike AoS are idiots or whatever. Just a musing on what I've seen in the local scene in terms if AoS uptake.
TLR AoS needs people playing it to get people playing it.
Sigvatr wrote: AoS is a very unpopular game in Germany and sees no tournament play whatsoever as it just doesn't work on that level.
Well that's kind of like saying monopoly tournaments aren't common in the US.It's not a game designed for competitive play.
I think the dividing line comes with how many people played Warhammer Fantasy as solely a competitive game. AOS is a "beer and pretzels" way to get your figures on the table that you have worked hard painting, collecting, and converting and have some fun enacting battles, whether that's playing with scenarios or running narrative campaigns or just having a silly fun time. It's not really for hyper serious "I just beat you, I am better than you, I am the best" crowd. Not without extensive modification at least.
Ummm, I really disagree with your characterisation of tournament gamers there. I'm a tournament gamer and I do not have that attitude, and I enjoy a relaxed game too. But when one avenue of enjoyment is closed off, I am inclined to move to games that allow me to do both, rather than restricting me.
(I also get annoyed at the idea that tournament gamers don't work hard painting, converting and building a narrative for their forces - some of the most beautifully converted and painted armies I've ever seen have been a tournaments)
Then finally you have those termed 'haters'. The ones who won't even consider playing the game. They have their reasons, nothing anyone says, does or offers will change their minds.
(Which I think is a shame, but there y'go.)
None of this is intended to be insulting or derisory in any way, and is *definitely* not intended to make out that people who dislike AoS are idiots or whatever.
There are far wider spectrum than just those who get it, sceptics and haterz. Some people simply aren't all that interested in it. I assume it's an internet and tone thing, but lumping those who don't want to play as haters isn't necessarily fair, or accurate.
I have no intention of playing Aos, despite immensely enjoying the whole narrative play kind of thing. I dislike Aos for a number of reasons (don't like the models, don't like the game mechanics, and I already do what Aos tries to sell. Why should I do the same thing with models,I don't like and gsme mechanics that I don't like?) . Thst doesn't make me a 'hater'. It just makes me uninterested. Plenty others have reasons for disliking it too - doesn't make them haterz either.
On topic though - have an exalt bottle. Good read. very much enjoyed it.
You may have a point regarding 9th Age, since it is intentioned as the direct successor to WHFB, but I just wanted to comment on your characterization regarding KoW.
I wasn't suggesting that every KoW player was a WHFB player trying to hold on to a fading game - but some definitely are.
I can only laugh when people say your not getting AoS.
There's no balancing mechanism my groups tried to make it work but it's always one sided even when we try to make even sides.
Unbalanced games are not fun both sides should have an equal chance of winning but in AoS that never happens.
AoS only succeeded in splitting the community into four groups the GW loyalists, 8th edition die hards, those who adopted kow and finally those that left GW completely.
Of those four GW loyalists seem to be the smallest where kow sells out its rule books GW's limited editions haven't sold out once even after months on the site and in fact are given out free to stores trying to drum up interest.
Games never sell better than the first few weeks of their release if AoS hasn't taken off by now it never will.
Da Boss wrote: Hey Bottle, nice to see your post here about your development as a gamer.
It's always annoyed me, the polarization between "casual fluffy" and "hardcore tournament".
As a pretty enthusiastic gamer in my twenties I was often involved in running, organising or attending tournaments. I did this because tournaments are a great way to pack in a lot of gaming into a weekend and meet new hobbyists, see armies outside your local area and generally broaden your wargaming horizons. I never placed above mid table, but I always gave my best with whatever army I was using - I absolutely played to win, and I generally had a fantastic time doing so.
When I wasn't at tournaments, I would play extended narrative campaigns with my local group - I was often organizing these, as well. I love narrative gaming, I'm a serial D'n'D GM and love interactive storytelling. That aspect was what first drew me to wargaming.
I see no reason why people cannot enjoy both aspects of the hobby simultaneously.
This really resonates with how I feel - for me the best gaming experiences is when you can build a themed and narratively rich army, fully painted, and then take it to battle and try your upmost to win the game. And at that point it doesn't matter at all if you actually win or lose because you have both the spectacle of our hobby at its pinnacle and also a tactically rich and rewarding game where you really get to turn some brain cogs and have fun taking risks and implementing a strategy.
Even narrative wargaming can have a great competitive element, one of my fondest gaming memories was my narrative Necromunda campaign I hosted last year for my brother (link in signature). I spent a month or two preparing, fully painted everything - built a table with scenery - and then we played 4 games where I tried so so hard to win (despite losing all 4!) and every game was full of laughs, excitement and nail biting decisions.
:-)
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hobojebus wrote: Games never sell better than the first few weeks of their release if AoS hasn't taken off by now it never will.
Surely KoW is the case in point against this? :-)
I think that AoSis building up momentum, and once we see something like a big Orc release, long time fans of those armies aren't going to be able to stay away. :-)
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Veshnakar wrote: It's not really for hyper serious "I just beat you, I am better than you, I am the best" crowd. Not without extensive modification at least.
Well, this is the sort of comment I was rallying against. Is everyone who plays to win the wrong fit for AoS?
Setting list building aside and focusing only on the actual game. Do you play to lose? Do you move your figures in the least tactically apt ways?
When I play monopoly, I most definitely go all out to win.
KoW first edition was never that popular always seen as a cheap clone which to be fair it kind of was.
But we are talking about the 2nd edition here and that's blown up mantic is having issues keeping the rulebook in stock and you can get the rules as a free download.
AoS however is being sold at more that 50% off and still not shifting there are plenty of flgs stuck with piles of stock no one wants.
AoS has flopped this first edition is a dud and nothing will save it, if there's a 2nd edition and it's alot better it may take off.
But given the terrible sales it's more likely GW will drop fantasy altogether thinking there's no interest in it when the truth is the released a lazy game and people saw that.
AoS only succeeded in splitting the community into four groups the GW loyalists, 8th edition die hards, those who adopted kow and finally those that left GW completely..
There is another way of looking at it. Imagine you are GW for a moment. Forget those four groups - the only split that matters to you are those who are buying GW miniatures and those who do not. How those miniatures are being used (including Frostgrave and KoW) is less important...
Games never sell better than the first few weeks of their release if AoS hasn't taken off by now it never will.
Remember, there is a whole world out there. What you see with your own eyes may not be everything there is. For example, Fantasy sales have never been higher round these parts...
I've yet to meet anyone irl or on a forum that has played a balanced game with the basic rules if they use anything other than the starter set.
Anecdotal evidence of course but we are talking about dozens of reports from people I know personally and more from people on forums.
And we know tournaments are avoiding AoS like the plague.
So who's playing these balanced games without an extensive comp system?
As for people buying models clearly they are not model sales are down 15% profits are down and they could not pay the same level of dividends they did the same period last year.
The financial report gives a very clear picture.
People get what AoS is, a game system designed to get you to buy the biggest kits that give GW the highest profit margin per unit sale there's no mystery.
And because people understand this they voted with their wallets and left for other games.
hobojebus wrote: I've yet to meet anyone irl or on a forum that has played a balanced game with the basic rules if they use anything other than the starter set..
People get what AoS is, a game system designed to get you to buy the biggest kits that give GW the highest profit margin per unit sale there's no mystery.
And because people understand this they voted with their wallets and left for other games.
I think you have already made your mind up about this. I am going to move on, if you don't mind.
I love painting. I love it. I was never very good at it until a year or two ago, but now it is the biggest part of the hobby for me. Age of Sigmar is a painter's delight as I can paint up 10 soldiers, have a playable unit and then choose something else from anything in the entire range to be my next project.
During WHFB I had my Empire army, and that was it. I painted them as best I could, but at times it was hard to build up motivation to paint 20 more Swordsmen after having already painted 20! I had no desire to build a second army because my Empire seemed like they had such a long way to go and besides, starting a new army would just mean another 60+ rank-n-file models to paint again.
When Age of Sigmar was released I went out and bought a Vampire Counts army straight away. Neferata, a box of Spirit Hosts, Skeleton Warriors and Hexwraithes each, a Banshee, a Cairn Wraith, a Necromancer and a Wight King. This is what Age of Sigmar does great because that would be a tiny unplayable mess in WHFB and now it's a nice little warband that probably only needs another 10 skeleton warriors before it feels "complete".
Not only that, I went and bought 2 High Elf heroes and 1 Dwarf Hero to add to my Empire, + a box of Fyreslayers. I dug out my old Battle For Skull Pass and realised both sets could be made into their own forces (Dwarfs and Night Goblins). I bought some River Trolls to go with the Goblins because they're great models.
Lastly I got the entire Skaven set from Island of Blood new on sprue, and plan to add a box of Stormfiends to it this year.
So basically I went hobby mad, bought a load of models (so many I am now limiting myself this year to six boxes*) and have had an absolute blast painting up everything I have wanted to for years.
I wouldn't say I love painting, but I can enjoy it to an limited extent. I do, however, very quickly find with any mini game that like you being stuck into one samey 'army' puts me off. I also hate making the models. I need the buzz of cutting and gluing something I haven't already made 20 of. So like you I am finding that AoS is great in that way - I have bought lizards, undead, dark elves, terrain, dryads and eyeing yet more stuff. Each being something that I'd like to do cos they look cool or feel like a nice thematic addition, but would have felt a waste of money in a game which would say that is not legal.
That I suppose is less about the game though, and more the army building side.
I love to play competitively. When I play a wargame, I want to play to win. When I started Age of Sigmar I would have never identified myself as this, but having the competitive framework stripped away is what has made me realise this and has left me walking away from a few games feeling very very unsatisfied.
Someone on dakka has a sig that says something like 'The objective of the game is to win, the point of the game is to have fun'.
I always play to win, that is the objective of any game. I am not however into competitive play, that to me isn't what I'd call fun. In some 35-40 years wargaming I have never been to a competitive tourney*, and never plan to. The idea that the point is to show how good you are and win all your games feels like is missing the point to me. Clearly competitiveness is big in our society, and many enjoy it, I can't say it is wrong in anyway. However, its a blurry line, and the fact that you want to play to win, because that is what each individual game is about, is not the same as loving to play competitively IMO.
*[edit] I lie, I played Federation Commander in 3 online tournies a few years ago. An extremely niche game which forced me to look at such play, our small group was maybe 33% of all UK players (based on something the publisher said we figured we accounted for about 2% of global sales of one product!)
Through careful deployment of a refused flank, directed missile fire (against the Minotaurs) and a carefully timed charge with my knights against the Gors, I broke my opponent's army and crushed them. I never gloated about my victory to the opponent - but to tell the truth, I felt so chuffed that my hard work, planning and tactics had paid off with a perfect victory.
Now, this didn't happen all the time (or ever again!) Once I was on the receiving end of the same treatment, getting out-classed by a Dwarf army. And most weeks we had close, fun, and most importantly, tactically engaging games.
If I mastered my tactics and unit composition I could execute a perfect strategy mid game.
Which can be had in AoS.
I have yet to play any of GWs battle plans. I haven't even read the overwhelming majority of them - basically the ones that have been shown on their warhammer world event pages (cos I keep thinking of going to one) and the ones on the Seraphon book, (although even there I mainly just read the background blurb).
To me AoS is a game that tells you the game mechanics, but you decide what the scenario is based on what sort of game you like. I happen to like making my scenarios up (maybe all that time as an RPGGM makes me like that). To me the best scenarios are the one which pit 2 unequal forces against each other, where Victory conditions balance things out. What can be maybe seen as 'problem solving' scenarios as opposed to kill the other side fights. Maybe it is because after all the operational/straegic level wargames I've played I find the idea of 2 equal armies somewhat 'unreal'. That is not to say I can't enjoy such games at all, but I like stuff like Barbarossa where one army is going to be utterly stuffed, but that in itself won't be what wins or loses the game.
So the first AoS games we played involved one player having to wipe out a small rear guard in on corner, to get at a magically sealed door that he would have to spend some random (but with an understandable variance) time getting through (Moria style). Meanwhile from the other corner a more powerful force is arriving to stop him. Both sides are presented from the offset with some high level strategic decisions. How much to allocate to the wipe the rear guard, how much to delay the more powerful force. Should it be fight as close to where he comes on to bottle him in but die faster, or minimise fighting as you retreat but keep his movement forward limited. Does the powerful force go for the quick kill, or send some stuff on an end run to the other side, will it be enough etc.
After that it is about understanding what units can do what, who supports whom best. To win you need to grasp the tactics at the low level (charge, pile ins, magic etc) and unit composition for the challenges in front of you. It took a couple of play throughs to get the balance about right given our available minis, but given it was our first games it didn't take too long, and made for a good scenario. Plenty of Strategy, tactics, understanding what units could do what etc.
I may be wrong, but it sound like what you are meaning by 'competitive framework' is more a scenario which has some pre-game army building element to it. One where those who see the army building as part of the game can really get into. Something that really only works if there is a specific scenario around which the army building is based and balanced. I say that as I have played games where there is/was a highly competitive scene with zero list building, but it does sound like you like the army building aspect and wouldn't actually be so bothered about the competitive scene/framework.
This lack of list building isn't a flaw in the game as such, but more a missing scenario that people can see as the battle plan which emphasizes list building over interesting scenarios (I don't see a simple battle as that interesting as such). There is nothing stopping the community doing that, I expect over time one or two of the AoS point/comp systems will become the sort of thing used for such.
All you have to be careful of is that such a system may also comp away the freeform nature of lists that you so love. Pointing for infinite combos is a vastly harder than pointing for limited sets of choices. For myself I don't have a problem with points, and may well use such, but I am really not keen on limiting the choices. For both of us that freedom sounds like one of our big likes about AoS and such a pointing system would be the defacto game in your pick up games at GW, one you'd probably struggle to change. I haven't done the play in GW shops like you have in many years, however, I am considering it - although I wargame once a week there are so many other things that we play that AoS will only get a rare look in, so trying GW stores is something I'm pondering. I'd be OK to play a pointed game in such a setting, if it still allowed me freedom of unit mix.
Age of Sigmar is won and lost in the.. "Roll for battle round" maybe? Or in the set-up phase?
You've played much more than me by the sounds, but I've never felt that yet. Obviously having played with friends the set up phase hasn't been an issue. The roll for initiative ( as I assume you mean) hasn't felt like an issue either. It has always swung both ways, and whilst it can be a key swing, it has never felt like it was one that screwed an otherwise great plan etc. Of course that may be down to how much poeple account for the initiative roll in their plans. I tend to see it as if you didn't plan for it then obviously it wasn't a great plan, more a gamble that didn't pay.
'The rules are fine as long as you're not "that guy"'
The rules of AoS are fine, that guy or not.
I have voiced 'that guy' but it is context specific. The all hero army at warhammer world 'non-competitive' events, with clear instruction to talk before hand and agree forces for a balanced fun game. I wouldn't call him 'that guy' at a competitive tourney so much. Its about expectations, what is fine for competitive events is less fine for pick up game at store with random stranger and even more for clearly marked don't be a dick events.
Clearly define the limits before the game begins
agreed.
Summoning cannot be left unlimited especially when players set up balanced sides to begin with. Declare all your summoning before the game "I plan to summon x, y and z so deploy in anticipation for it. What do you plan to summon?"
Say a line like that, and it will make your games so much more tactically rewarding! Surprise your opponent with the positioning of your summoned Zombie Dragon, but have him know it's coming before the game begins.
Agreed. With summoning I see Aos as saying how it work mechanically, but again it is up the scenario/players to decide on how it will actually get used. For stuff I was tinkering around with for a warbands style campaign I was just setting summoning as being a mid game deployment mechanic for the set units you had. For many scenarios that can be pretty big, so summoning doesn't have to be about bringing on extra stuff.
And in a round about way, that is why I love points and why Guy Haley is so so wrong about the people who use them.
For myself I don't care whether they are there or not. But I do like that GW didn't do them, and let those who will use them and complain about them be the ones who come up with them. Aos isn't historicals where most armies are made up of very similar stuff with no funcky magic type stuff etc. It isn't KoW where most armies are made of very similar stuff and it is only the models on the base that makes them look different etc. Those sorts of games are hugley easier to point for than something like AoS.
I know a lot of those who didn't like AoS didn't like the loss of block mechanics. If fantasy is not a critical thing then I'd suggest Sam Mustafa games. We've played a few games of Aurelian lately. That has points. But beyond setting the size of the game it really isn't a list building game in the sense WFB/40 was or are. It is a great game though. Maurice was excellent, Aurelian is even better. For block style mass battles they are the 2 best games I have probably played, they are not fantasy, and I use top down image style units cards rather than minis, but if you want points, and balanced straight battles, with block formation type tactics then I can't recommend these games enough. They are not the control freak style command and control games though, with 'you can't order everything every turn' style of play but that makes planning key and tension very high. Some people aren't keen on that style though.
Block mechanics are in several fantasy wargames including Kings of War and Hordes Of The Things. Actually, so called block mechanics are normal for all non-skirmish historical land warfare games up until the first world war.
Block mechanics are in several fantasy wargames including Kings of War and Hordes Of The Things. Actually, so called block mechanics are normal for all non-skirmish historical land warfare games up until the first world war.
I realise that, I never said otherwise.
I was pointing at some block style games I have played recently which I think are awesome. Ones that if you have only really played fantasy or WFB/KoW people might not have heard of, but if block mechanics are your thing then you should give a go.
Veshnakar wrote: It's not really for hyper serious "I just beat you, I am better than you, I am the best" crowd. Not without extensive modification at least.
Well, this is the sort of comment I was rallying against. Is everyone who plays to win the wrong fit for AoS?
Setting list building aside and focusing only on the actual game. Do you play to lose? Do you move your figures in the least tactically apt ways?
When I play monopoly, I most definitely go all out to win.
I don't play to lose. I aim solely to create an enjoyable game, for both sides. My group predominately plays scenarios, some designed by us, or some from various battletomes/campaign books. We play narrative campaigns. I guess what I was getting at is that the problem with being
a more competitive focused player and playing a game like Age of Sigmar is that the game allows you to do things like take 50 bloodthirsters. And a lot of the mentality from people that played WHFB of old is to try and squeeze in the best stuff within the point values given. So when you take that same player and put them into an environment like the one provided with the core rules of AOS you get people who now realize they can take the "best" of everything they want, rather than what miniatures they like, or what they just spent forever painting and want to get on the table.
That was my biggest problem with WHFB. As a tomb king player trying to get a game in, most WHFB players in my area were predominantly tournament players and competitive. Most only had armies with 3 colors just to make it tournament legal. So playing an army like tomb kings was widely considered a handicap, but trying to take units I liked sometimes almost guaranteed a less than enjoyable game. Units like Tomb Swarms or masses of Skeletal Heavy Horsemen that were considered by the masses to be "sub par". And that's just super frustrating to me. To have my army decided by what's good and what's not and having to wait for rules updates from GW versus the units and army structure that I like aesthetically and have spent countless hours lovingly building, painting, and converting and getting to put them on the table without the extremely high chance of having them wiped off the table by hyper optimized net lists.
And to clear it up, I am not trying to make sweeping generalizations here. I am basing this solely on the people that I have played the game with, which is a group of about 8 regulars. And I know their are people that enjoyed the entirety of the hobby of WHFB. My only point is that if you played WHFB as a competitive tournament level game, and the hobby came second or even third for you, that AOS is very more than likely not the game for you without heavy modification.
When I mentioned 'haterz' I was applying the moniker to all those who *won't* play AoS.
All the groups I referred to were done as broad strokes.
Take Jono, for example. He doesn't like it, and involves himself in discussions explaining why. He's not what I would characterise as a 'true hater', because even though I think he is *subjectively* wrong, the facts he has based his position on are objectively correct. That's his prerogative, and after all we are discussing a leisure activity. If you don't like it, why would you do it?
There are, however, others who have written AoS off on demonstrably wrong information,yet continue to argue they aren't.
My point was more that from my experience, AoS has done very well locally from those who *have* decided to play it - whether vanilla or otherwise - playing against those who had misgivings about the system and showing them it isn't the game they thought it was.
Your experience will vary.
On the subject of people 'getting it', I stand by my comments. I genuinely believe AoS is a good system with bags of potential, but it requires enjoying a certain viewpoint on the whole experience.
If you aren't capable of doing that - and again, ZERO judgement implied there - then it's unlikely you'll ever enjoy a game of it.
It's not a two-legs-good, four-legs-bad situation. People like what they like.
Hey Bottle, just wanted to say kudos on a very interesting and well reasoned post. I consider myself in the same boat- love my narrative games and background, love my tournament games. One or the other can ebb or flow at times, but I agree- the two aren't mutually exclusive.
I love to play competitively. When I play a wargame, I want to play to win. When I started Age of Sigmar I would have never identified myself as this, but having the competitive framework stripped away is what has made me realise this and has left me walking away from a few games feeling very very unsatisfied.
Someone on dakka has a sig that says something like 'The objective of the game is to win, the point of the game is to have fun'.
I always play to win, that is the objective of any game. I am not however into competitive play, that to me isn't what I'd call fun. In some 35-40 years wargaming I have never been to a competitive tourney*, and never plan to. The idea that the point is to show how good you are and win all your games feels like is missing the point to me. Clearly competitiveness is big in our society, and many enjoy it, I can't say it is wrong in anyway. However, its a blurry line, and the fact that you want to play to win, because that is what each individual game is about, is not the same as loving to play competitively IMO.
Thanks for this Puree. It's a nice way to categorise things - I can definitely identify as someone who thinks "The objective of the game is to win, the point of the game is to have fun." - another thing I like to say personally which resonates with that is "I play to win once the dice start rolling", which means everything that happens before the game begins is not done to the mantra of winning, it's only when the game starts.
So in that regard you could say that I do not often play competitively, or at least I don't often build competitivley (but from time to time I do really enjoy that too). All I want to do is "go all out" when we actually start playing, and I've found point systems to be a great ready reckoner to make sure two armies are appropriately sized against one another.
I've also found a few frustrations with the game mechanics that prevent me from "going all out" mid-game, but rather than moaning about it, I'm trying to find ways resolve the issues I have (such as setting clear limits before the game begins). :-)
Veshnakar wrote: It's not really for hyper serious "I just beat you, I am better than you, I am the best" crowd. Not without extensive modification at least.
Well, this is the sort of comment I was rallying against. Is everyone who plays to win the wrong fit for AoS?
Setting list building aside and focusing only on the actual game. Do you play to lose? Do you move your figures in the least tactically apt ways?
When I play monopoly, I most definitely go all out to win.
I don't play to lose. I aim solely to create an enjoyable game, for both sides. My group predominately plays scenarios, some designed by us, or some from various battletomes/campaign books. We play narrative campaigns. I guess what I was getting at is that the problem with being
a more competitive focused player and playing a game like Age of Sigmar is that the game allows you to do things like take 50 bloodthirsters. And a lot of the mentality from people that played WHFB of old is to try and squeeze in the best stuff within the point values given. So when you take that same player and put them into an environment like the one provided with the core rules of AOS you get people who now realize they can take the "best" of everything they want, rather than what miniatures they like, or what they just spent forever painting and want to get on the table.
That was my biggest problem with WHFB. As a tomb king player trying to get a game in, most WHFB players in my area were predominantly tournament players and competitive. Most only had armies with 3 colors just to make it tournament legal. So playing an army like tomb kings was widely considered a handicap, but trying to take units I liked sometimes almost guaranteed a less than enjoyable game. Units like Tomb Swarms or masses of Skeletal Heavy Horsemen that were considered by the masses to be "sub par". And that's just super frustrating to me. To have my army decided by what's good and what's not and having to wait for rules updates from GW versus the units and army structure that I like aesthetically and have spent countless hours lovingly building, painting, and converting and getting to put them on the table without the extremely high chance of having them wiped off the table by hyper optimized net lists.
It seems to me these problems are mainly from poorly pointed units rather than points in general. If that means eye-balling it is better for balance with you, then go for it! I play with both points and without - I do recommend you give some of the systems like SDK a try to see if they are better costed in your eyes :-)
Red_Zeke wrote:Hey Bottle, just wanted to say kudos on a very interesting and well reasoned post. I consider myself in the same boat- love my narrative games and background, love my tournament games. One or the other can ebb or flow at times, but I agree- the two aren't mutually exclusive.
Thanks man, well it was a bit of ramble and went off on a few tangents - I just wanted to put together an interesting article for people to mew over :-)
Bottle, I always enjoy your posts on AoS, you often bring up a lot of good points and you're one of the few people willing to discuss AoS without bias. In regards to AoS being tactically unsatisfying, I agree that it doesn't have the same tactical depth of WHFB, but using the battleplans from the books does make it more engaging than a standard pitched battle.
IMHO the problem is that people are still comparing AoS to WHFB. They might use the same models but they're very different games. If people expect the same kind of game they'll be disappointed, but if they're willing to try AoS for it's own merits they might find they like it. I have to admit that I was rather fond of WHFB, but it became apparent as soon as AoS cme out that it wasn't going to be anything like the game we knew and loved.
When you name the new game after one of the most iconic characters of the old one and use all the same models it's kinda inevitable that the new game should be compared to the old one.
hobojebus wrote: I've yet to meet anyone irl or on a forum that has played a balanced game with the basic rules if they use anything other than the starter set..
Hello, pleased to meet you.
How do you decide whether your game was balanced or not?
jonolikespie wrote: When you name the new game after one of the most iconic characters of the old one and use all the same models it's kinda inevitable that the new game should be compared to the old one.
I suppose that's true, but when you put them side by side the similarities are only superficial. The fluff is literally a world apart from the previous setting with little to tie the two together apart from a few recycled names like Nagash and Sigmar. They may have labled it as the sequel to the end times, but you could just as easily ignore any connection between AoS and WHFB; the game itself is different, the fluff is vastly different, and even the aesthetic seems to be moving away from the style of the old world.
Don't get me wrong, I like AoS, but I have no misconceptions about it being a true succesor to WHFB.
How do you decide whether your game was balanced or not?
I can't believe someone just asked that.
Surely if you just played a game you have a very good idea whether it was balanced - you just played it, you know how close it was or how one sided it was. You probably talk to the other guy who is saying the same thing.
AoS is a successor to WHFB for the following reasons:
GW replaced WHFB with AoS.
AoS uses various similar rules mechanisms to WHFB.
The fluff of AoS is derived from the fluff of WHFB.
All the armies from WHFB are available to play in AoS.
The fluff isn't even just derived, yes it is very different and there is a long time skip but it is a direct continuation of the WHFB fluff picking up where the End Times left off.
How do you decide whether your game was balanced or not?
I can't believe someone just asked that.
Surely if you just played a game you have a very good idea whether it was balanced - you just played it, you know how close it was or how one sided it was. You probably talk to the other guy who is saying the same thing.
Maybe a battle between two forces of equal strength where each player has an equal chance of winning? You know, the definition of a balanced game?
Whether or not the outcome is close has nothing to do with whether the two sides are balanced. I've played games where bad rolls and good tactics ensured that one side got decimated. Doesn't mean the two forces weren't balanced.
The question was about whether A game/YOUR game was balanced, that has nothing what so ever with having equal sides, it also has nothing to do with some other random players playing.
Also as I noted, the 2 players who talk about it afterwards are the only the only people who can say it was balanced based how they felt it went. It was a game between them and them only.
So yes it may have been close due to some poor luck, but that is likely to be something obvious that will come out in any post game talk and whether it was balanced.
The fluff of AoS is derived from the fluff of WHFB.
Is it though? Canonically it might be a "continuation" of the end times, but the old fluff isn't mostly irrelevant to the new setting, apart from the occasional backhanded comment about "the world that was". Even the characters who were transferred over (Archaon, Nagash etc.) have been changed from their established image. It's like an alternate universe in a comic book; the character's basic background is essentially the same at first, but then you see that it's nothing like what you're used to. This isn't me hating on AoS, but for all the minor similarities it may as well be a continuation of D&D or Star Gate.
Maybe a battle between two forces of equal strength where each player has an equal chance of winning? You know, the definition of a balanced game?
my emphasis.
This is a flawed statement.
In order for 2 players to have an equal chance of winning (the definition of balanced game!) then the forces involved must account for not only Victory conditions, terrain placement, scenario rules etc but also player ability.
A game with 2 equally strong armies may well be a one sided slaughter even with even luck and other things being equal, simply due to player skill. At least 1 wargame I play I will beat anyone locally in an even pointed fight, it is 'my' game that I have played tons of, I dare say that there are games I will regularly lose at as well.
There is a big difference between an actual balanced game between 2 specific players and a scenario designed to hopefully be balanced between 2 players of equal ability.
The fluff of AoS is derived from the fluff of WHFB.
Is it though? Canonically it might be a "continuation" of the end times, but the old fluff isn't mostly irrelevant to the new setting, apart from the occasional backhanded comment about "the world that was". Even the characters who were transferred over (Archaon, Nagash etc.) have been changed from their established image. It's like an alternate universe in a comic book; the character's basic background is essentially the same at first, but then you see that it's nothing like what you're used to. This isn't me hating on AoS, but for all the minor similarities it may as well be a continuation of D&D or Star Gate.
AoS is going to be seen as WHFB's successor. There's really no getting around that and people are going to be comparing them for years to come. AoS replaced WHFB in GW's line up, they bear the same name, they use the same models. WHFB is what we had, AoS is what we have to replace it. If GW didn't want them to be compared then they handled it in entirely the wrong way.
Maybe a battle between two forces of equal strength where each player has an equal chance of winning? You know, the definition of a balanced game?
my emphasis.
This is a flawed statement.
In order for 2 players to have an equal chance of winning (the definition of balanced game!) then the forces involved must account for not only Victory conditions, terrain placement, scenario rules etc but also player ability.
A game with 2 equally strong armies may well be a one sided slaughter even with even luck and other things being equal, simply due to player skill. At least 1 wargame I play I will beat anyone locally in an even pointed fight, it is 'my' game that I have played tons of, I dare say that there are games I will regularly lose at as well.
There is a big difference between an actual balanced game between 2 specific players and a scenario designed to hopefully be balanced between 2 players of equal ability.
Yes, so yes you are so right. The big difference is one is called good game design, the other well it don't really matter what you call it except for good game design.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: If GW didn't want them to be compared then they handled it in entirely the wrong way.
Well, that I can agree with. It may have worked better if they treated it as a new, separate game IMO, but that's been discussed before. I can see why people compare the two, I just don't think that there's much point in doing so.
The fluff of AoS is derived from the fluff of WHFB.
Is it though? Canonically it might be a "continuation" of the end times, but the old fluff isn't mostly irrelevant to the new setting, apart from the occasional backhanded comment about "the world that was". Even the characters who were transferred over (Archaon, Nagash etc.) have been changed from their established image. It's like an alternate universe in a comic book; the character's basic background is essentially the same at first, but then you see that it's nothing like what you're used to. This isn't me hating on AoS, but for all the minor similarities it may as well be a continuation of D&D or Star Gate.
So, the point you are trying to make is that AOS's fluff is derived from WHFB but isn't exactly the same? I don't think anyone was contesting that.
To address your greater argument saying that AoS has only minor similarities is disingenuous. AoS's titular character, the antagonists, the supporting characters and ideas are from WHFB. They use the same models and terrain. As an example, the newest Seraphon release had zero new models. It was just a repackaging of old WHFB stuff.
It also doesn't hurt that the full name of the game is Warhammer: Age of Sigmar.
So, yes, it is totally valid to compare the two games. Age of Sigmar is a direct replacement for WHFB. If it wasn't they would've just started from scratch and scrapped everything except for Chaos and Sigmar.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: If GW didn't want them to be compared then they handled it in entirely the wrong way.
Well, that I can agree with. It may have worked better if they treated it as a new, separate game IMO, but that's been discussed before. I can see why people compare the two, I just don't think that there's much point in doing so.
The point in doing so is typically to express why a person might have like WHFB but doesn't like AoS.
I'd actually say a lot of the criticism of AoS are direct criticisms of AoS anyway, and even a lot of the comparatives you could ignore WHFB and still apply it as a direct criticism of AoS.
AoS having no balancing mechanism has sod all to do with wfb.
If someone brings 20 goblins and the other guy brings five greater demons and gets the outnumbered bonus there's no doubt who will win but there's nothing to tell people at home not to play like that.
Even poorly done points values are better than no points values.
It's very clear there was no real play testing beyond the starter set and that's why it's a bad game.
In D&D there are no points values. There's nothing to prevent a DM from throwing five balors and a dracolich up as the first encounter against a first level party. Granted, D&D has more guidance not to do this, but the 'balance' systems in D&D (levels, hit dice, experience, encounter pools) have always been pretty much completely unbalanced.
Age of Sigmar is like a tabletop rpg where two DMs set up mutual encounters to play against each other, both responsible for making the game challenging but not unfair, with victory measured in whether both sides had fun and could get invested in the narrative playing out, not in which side 'won'.
That works well enough for me, but that's a pretty niche way of doing things, not far removed from simply playing with the figures as toys without any rules at all. A functional (not 'perfectly balanced', just 'functional') game could still be played that way, but could also be enjoyed by a much broader range of people, and more importantly could be happily played between people with more varried game sensibilities.
I'm a fluff player in other games as well. I pick my malifaux team based on how they fit together aesthetically and narratively, but the games balanced well enough that I can still have enjoyable, engaging games against much more competitive players, players who are my friends, and who I like to play games with despite the fact that they play games for different reasons and get different kinds of enjoyment out of them.
I can't play AoS against those friends, and imo that's a pretty big mark against the game, as much as It seems designed with my sensibilities in mind.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: I'd actually say a lot of the criticism of AoS are direct criticisms of AoS anyway, and even a lot of the comparatives you could ignore WHFB and still apply it as a direct criticism of AoS.
People can and should criticise AoS for it's own flaws, but I've seen people criticise it simply for being different to Warhammer. Now obviously a lot of people liked Warhammer and there will be a lot of things they enjoyed about it that they won't find in AoS. But you could say the same about any two games. Sure, AoS is supposed to be the succesor to Warhammer, but if someone go into a game of AoS expecting it to be like WHFB then they'll mostly be disappointed. If they treat it as a different game then they'll see it has its own pros and cons, like any game does. So yeah, you could compare AoS to Warhammer, and you could also compare it to WMH or Infinity, but at the end of the day they're all different games and people will like or dislike them for different reasons.
No, it isn't. AoS has rules for two opponents facing off with a win condition that says either one of them will win and the other lose or they will draw. Nothing about that makes it an RPG like experience other than YOU deciding it it.
Malisteen wrote: In D&D there are no points values. There's nothing to prevent a DM from throwing five balors and a dracolich up as the first encounter against a first level party. Granted, D&D has more guidance not to do this, but the 'balance' systems in D&D (levels, hit dice, experience, encounter pools) have always been pretty much completely unbalanced
I've always found the critical rating system to be reasonably good at matching players to appropriate encounters.
Tainted wrote: Bottle, I always enjoy your posts on AoS, you often bring up a lot of good points and you're one of the few people willing to discuss AoS without bias. In regards to AoS being tactically unsatisfying, I agree that it doesn't have the same tactical depth of WHFB, but using the battleplans from the books does make it more engaging than a standard pitched battle.
Thanks for the kind words :-)
Yes I agree about the Battleplans, although I have actually had a bad experience with the Battleplan "The Trap" basically because we didn't set any limits on the summoning before the game began and so my Necromancer just hid behind a forest and summoned up units constantly to grind down the ambushee making for a not particularly fun game in the end.
But I wouldn't say AoShas to be tactically unsatisfying, just that it can be without proper planning pre-game. If we had set about including enough extra troops on the other side to deal with my Necromancer's constant summoning - or - set a limit of the summoning so that I couldn't have tipped the balance in my favour so easily, I am sure we would have had a great game!
Battleplans are great, but it's still important to set those limits and expectations before the game begins to make sure it's not a steamroller for one of the sides.
I think I'm about to hit my stride with AoS now and begin having amazing pick up games and custom narrative scenarios - and it's thanks to everyone on this little forum really for giving advice and tips on how to make games enjoyable :-)
Malisteen wrote: In D&D there are no points values. There's nothing to prevent a DM from throwing five balors and a dracolich up as the first encounter against a first level party. Granted, D&D has more guidance not to do this, but the 'balance' systems in D&D (levels, hit dice, experience, encounter pools) have always been pretty much completely unbalanced
I've always found the critical rating system to be reasonably good at matching players to appropriate encounters.
Exactly. Even D&D has a system for roughly matching a party to an equivalently-powerful group of creatures. AoS tells you to use "what you think is right."
Maybe a battle between two forces of equal strength where each player has an equal chance of winning? You know, the definition of a balanced game?
my emphasis.
This is a flawed statement.
In order for 2 players to have an equal chance of winning (the definition of balanced game!) then the forces involved must account for not only Victory conditions, terrain placement, scenario rules etc but also player ability.
A game with 2 equally strong armies may well be a one sided slaughter even with even luck and other things being equal, simply due to player skill. At least 1 wargame I play I will beat anyone locally in an even pointed fight, it is 'my' game that I have played tons of, I dare say that there are games I will regularly lose at as well.
There is a big difference between an actual balanced game between 2 specific players and a scenario designed to hopefully be balanced between 2 players of equal ability.
But I would argue that a ruleset can't and shouldn't account for player ability. A balanced game is one in which each side has an equal chance of achieving their objectives. If one player is much more skilled than the other, then they should win. A well-written game rewards good tactics and a player's ability to use them.
The fluff of AoS is derived from the fluff of WHFB.
Is it though? Canonically it might be a "continuation" of the end times, but the old fluff isn't mostly irrelevant to the new setting, apart from the occasional backhanded comment about "the world that was". Even the characters who were transferred over (Archaon, Nagash etc.) have been changed from their established image. ... ...
That's what 'derived' means. It doesn't mean 'the same', it means 'to base a concept on an extension or modification of (another concept).'
hobojebus wrote: AoS having no balancing mechanism has sod all to do with wfb.
If someone brings 20 goblins and the other guy brings five greater demons and gets the outnumbered bonus there's no doubt who will win but there's nothing to tell people at home not to play like that.
Even poorly done points values are better than no points values.
It's very clear there was no real play testing beyond the starter set and that's why it's a bad game.
So what would happen if someone took Nagash *and* Skarbrand in a 20 or so model game, against infantry with maybe a monster or two?
As you're so certain it's a terrible game?
Bottle wrote: Yes I agree about the Battleplans, although I have actually had a bad experience with the Battleplan "The Trap" basically because we didn't set any limits on the summoning before the game began and so my Necromancer just hid behind a forest and summoned up units constantly to grind down the ambushee making for a not particularly fun game in the end.
But I wouldn't say AoShas to be tactically unsatisfying, just that it can be without proper planning pre-game. If we had set about including enough extra troops on the other side to deal with my Necromancer's constant summoning - or - set a limit of the summoning so that I couldn't have tipped the balance in my favour so easily, I am sure we would have had a great game!
Summoning is problematic because no matter how you try to limit it you're still adding free units to your army. It's a shame since summoning seems to be a big part of an undead army, both in fluff and play style. However a lot of people like to treat summoning as an alternate deployment method, so the total armies including summoned units are still even but you get to summon things when and where you want them, at the risk of not casting the spell succesfully.
It's a shame AoS has to be house-ruled a lot for balance, but apart from that I like the simplified core ruleset with the specific rules on warscrolls. It makes it much easier to learn an army's capabilities when you don't have to keep flipping back a forth to check special rules.
Whilst I disagree with some of the OP's points, I appreciate a level-headed post.
I enjoy what it encourages. It's what I've dubbed as a palette cleaners to more intense (i.e. other) games.
For me, the only thing I don't like is summoning. I get that on a straight battle summoning actually puts you in a negative when it comes to percentage, but on other battleplans it can actually ruin it.
But I would argue that a ruleset can't and shouldn't account for player ability. A balanced game is one in which each side has an equal chance of achieving their objectives. If one player is much more skilled than the other, then they should win. A well-written game rewards good tactics and a player's ability to use them.
I don't think anyone was saying the rule set should handle it.
The argument was that each player had and equal chance of winning is the definition of a balanced game.
However, If a balanced game is players having equal chances of winning then player skill is important. If you will usually win because you are better then by definition you are not playing balanced games as there isn't an even chance of winning/losing.
A rule set cannot handle this as you say (not strictly true, there are mechanisms like handicaps). That is why competitive players like points, it allows them to say I won due to skill as everything else was equal (assuming terrain etc wasn't a factor). The whole tourney concept is predicated on the actual games not being balanced for the most part, but that lack of balance is down to who is the better player. If the actual games were balanced then the tourney winner would simply be the luckiest.
So what competitive players use as a definition is:
A game where both sides played by equally good players have an equal chance of winning. The equal forces (as in the post I was replying to) is neither here not there in reality, though the simple battle with even sides is obviously the most common way of doing it.
This was what was being asked to start of with earlier in the thread:
I've yet to meet anyone irl or on a forum that has played a balanced game
How do you decide whether your game was balanced or not?
No one was asking whether the forces were equal or would 2 random players would find it balanced, it was whether the game that was actually played was considered balanced, only the 2 people who played a game can say that, and that will depend on their own abilities.
Bottle wrote: Yes I agree about the Battleplans, although I have actually had a bad experience with the Battleplan "The Trap" basically because we didn't set any limits on the summoning before the game began and so my Necromancer just hid behind a forest and summoned up units constantly to grind down the ambushee making for a not particularly fun game in the end.
But I wouldn't say AoShas to be tactically unsatisfying, just that it can be without proper planning pre-game. If we had set about including enough extra troops on the other side to deal with my Necromancer's constant summoning - or - set a limit of the summoning so that I couldn't have tipped the balance in my favour so easily, I am sure we would have had a great game!
Summoning is problematic because no matter how you try to limit it you're still adding free units to your army. It's a shame since summoning seems to be a big part of an undead army, both in fluff and play style. However a lot of people like to treat summoning as an alternate deployment method, so the total armies including summoned units are still even but you get to summon things when and where you want them, at the risk of not casting the spell succesfully.
It's a shame AoS has to be house-ruled a lot for balance, but apart from that I like the simplified core ruleset with the specific rules on warscrolls. It makes it much easier to learn an army's capabilities when you don't have to keep flipping back a forth to check special rules.
Yep, this is how I play summoning too. I wouldn't even say it's a house-rule per say, because the rules state you can use as many models from your collection as you wish and a perfectly reasonable interpretation of that is to wish to use as many models as will make a balanced game and no more :-)
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ShaneTB wrote: Whilst I disagree with some of the OP's points, I appreciate a level-headed post.
Thanks, and out of interest which points do you disagree with? Perhaps it can add to the discussion :-)
puree wrote: The question was about whether A game/YOUR game was balanced, that has nothing what so ever with having equal sides, it also has nothing to do with some other random players playing.
Also as I noted, the 2 players who talk about it afterwards are the only the only people who can say it was balanced based how they felt it went. It was a game between them and them only.
So yes it may have been close due to some poor luck, but that is likely to be something obvious that will come out in any post game talk and whether it was balanced.
It wasn't a question about your game being close, it was a question whether that game was balanced or not. Your emphasis of my YOUR changes nothing, you don't have a slightest idea about balance after playing a given game once. You have to take skill, luck, terrain, mission into account. If you told me that you switched armies, then table sides and armies, then with different terrain setup, repeat, I'd say sure we can start talking. If you think you can judge an impact of skill and luck after a single game that was played without balancing mechanism to begin with (and no, sudden death doesnt count lol) then you have no idea.
People coming here claiming that they had a balanced game with basic AoS rules, it's all worthless bs unless they playtested it.
It wasn't a question about your game being close, it was a question whether that game was balanced or not. Your emphasis of my YOUR changes nothing, you don't have a slightest idea about balance after playing a given game once. You have to take skill, luck, terrain, mission into account. If you told me that you switched armies, then table sides and armies, then with different terrain setup, repeat, I'd say sure we can start talking. If you think you can judge an impact of skill and luck after a single game that was played without balancing mechanism to begin with (and no, sudden death doesnt count lol) then you have no idea.
People coming here claiming that they had a balanced game with basic AoS rules, it's all worthless bs unless they playtested it.
You have no idea either, we must both be clueless BSers.
Whether any scenario is balanced for 2 players will quite possibly depend on who plays which side. Playing from both sides multiple times may achieve nothing more than working out that that Player A is indeed better than Player B, as they find Player B with side 1 is balanced but he gets slaughtered with side 2. If the they increase side 2 then Player B playing side 1 now gets slaughtered but finds side 2 balanced.
To take an anecdote from another system, I played Andromedans against Gorn in a local SFU campaign game in a very large (for that system) fleet battle. I was at a very noticeable disadvantage, the Gorn outpointing me by about 40-50% and with the Andromendans generally accepted as being terrible in fleet battles as opposed to small squadron fights. It was a great tense and close game (its not the sort of game where luck really plays a huge part at that scale either). If the sides had been swapped I'd have almost certainly obliterated the Andromedans. Its likely that anyone else in the campaign playing the Andromedans would have never fought that battle at all as they would have expected defeat was a given. For what ever reason that is one game I happen to be very good at, and those I play with openly accept that. Then there are games where I will get my arse handed to me without a bonus, as the other guys have their games that they are good at and I am not.
AoS is designed with the idea that you talk to the other guy to work out what will make a fun interesting balanced game. That is certainly going to be damned hard with a stranger, but with the people you regularly play with it is really not that hard. We know each other, we know playstyles, armies, and who is better or worse etc. With the people you play with regularly it is also not that hard to talk afterwards and work out how balanced it was, for the 2 players with the forces used.
So when people come here and say that yes they have had balanced games then you should probably just accept it.
They may not have a generic scenario that any other 2 players of random ability with random armies can play and get a balanced battle, but that is a different thing altogether.
It wasn't a question about your game being close, it was a question whether that game was balanced or not. Your emphasis of my YOUR changes nothing, you don't have a slightest idea about balance after playing a given game once. You have to take skill, luck, terrain, mission into account. If you told me that you switched armies, then table sides and armies, then with different terrain setup, repeat, I'd say sure we can start talking. If you think you can judge an impact of skill and luck after a single game that was played without balancing mechanism to begin with (and no, sudden death doesnt count lol) then you have no idea.
People coming here claiming that they had a balanced game with basic AoS rules, it's all worthless bs unless they playtested it.
You have no idea either, we must both be clueless BSers.
Whether any scenario is balanced for 2 players will quite possibly depend on who plays which side. Playing from both sides multiple times may achieve nothing more than working out that that Player A is indeed better than Player B, as they find Player B with side 1 is balanced but he gets slaughtered with side 2. If the they increase side 2 then Player B playing side 1 now gets slaughtered but finds side 2 balanced.
To take an anecdote from another system, I played Andromedans against Gorn in a local SFU campaign game in a very large (for that system) fleet battle. I was at a very noticeable disadvantage, the Gorn outpointing me by about 40-50% and with the Andromendans generally accepted as being terrible in fleet battles as opposed to small squadron fights. It was a great tense and close game (its not the sort of game where luck really plays a huge part at that scale either). If the sides had been swapped I'd have almost certainly obliterated the Andromedans. Its likely that anyone else in the campaign playing the Andromedans would have never fought that battle at all as they would have expected defeat was a given. For what ever reason that is one game I happen to be very good at, and those I play with openly accept that. Then there are games where I will get my arse handed to me without a bonus, as the other guys have their games that they are good at and I am not.
AoS is designed with the idea that you talk to the other guy to work out what will make a fun interesting balanced game. That is certainly going to be damned hard with a stranger, but with the people you regularly play with it is really not that hard. We know each other, we know playstyles, armies, and who is better or worse etc. With the people you play with regularly it is also not that hard to talk afterwards and work out how balanced it was, for the 2 players with the forces used.
So when people come here and say that yes they have had balanced games then you should probably just accept it.
They may not have a generic scenario that any other 2 players of random ability with random armies can play and get a balanced battle, but that is a different thing altogether.
Yes obviously just switching sides few times is crude and unreliable as well, but at least it would be something - luck evens out a bit, more sample to analyse etc. As I said, something to start with but I bet people posting their opinion of how they had a balanced game don't even do that.
And no, if you play the game with your well known friends using eyeballed armies without any comp, you can't reliably judge balance of entire army vs entire army.
No, they are not, and a game that both players enjoy is more important, but a well designed game will be balanced and fair for competitive players without hindering the more 'narrative' elements at all.
Serious question - which is more important?
A 'balanced' game, or a game that both players enjoy and have a positive experience?
Because the two are not the same thing.
They're not the same thing.... but they are often very closely related. For a large portion of people I'd say being a balanced game is a prerequisite for having a positive experience.
Malisteen wrote: In D&D there are no points values. There's nothing to prevent a DM from throwing five balors and a dracolich up as the first encounter against a first level party. Granted, D&D has more guidance not to do this, but the 'balance' systems in D&D (levels, hit dice, experience, encounter pools) have always been pretty much completely unbalanced.
D&D has a DM to take care of the balancing, and is a fully formed RPG.
AoS has no DM to deal with balancing, and is a competitive (there are victory conditions) wargame with essentially no RPG elements beyond getting to name your tokens.
Serious question - which is more important?
A 'balanced' game, or a game that both players enjoy and have a positive experience?
Because the two are not the same thing.
They're not the same thing.... but they are often very closely related. For a large portion of people I'd say being a balanced game is a prerequisite for having a positive experience.
That's fine, and a year ago I'd definitely have said the same thing, despite multiple experiences of WFB, 40K, WMH and other games that were absolutely zero fun for one (and in a few cases, both) party.
But AoS was my first experience of a game where players were responsible for the balance, and I had serious misgivings initially.
But I have yet to have a 'bad' game of AoS, and in only a couple of cases was the eventual winner looking obvious before turn 3.
Hand on heart, I doubt I could say *every* game has been balanced, either.
So for my view now, balance and enjoyment are completely dislocated, with the latter the most important.
Serious question - which is more important?
A 'balanced' game, or a game that both players enjoy and have a positive experience?
Because the two are not the same thing.
Neither are they mutually exclusive.
You can have a balanced game that is enjoying to play.
But yeah; fun over balance. Unfortunately, for a lot of gamers, you need some semblance of balance to get towards fun (curbstomping either way is rarely fun).
What people normally mean by a balanced game is one in which both sides have an equal chance to win, with the outcome decided by a combination of luck and skill.
The balancing mechanism can be equally powerful forces, or unequally powerful forces with a compensating factor of time, location or victory conditions that make the stronger force's task harder to achieve.
Another possible aspect of balance is to compensate for differential skill levels by handicapping the stronger player.
If the players have a good feel for a game it's often possible to get pretty good balance without specific army lists, or else well designed scenarios usually give a well balanced game. (I'm not sure GW are much good at balancing their scenarions, given they aren't much good at balancing their games.)
At any rate, if you don't know the game system and the capabilities of the units, without a designed balance system, it's easy to make mistakes in creating a balanced set-up. For instance, if you know nothing about early WW2, you might look at the German army and see that most of its tanks have only got machine-guns or 20mm cannons, 37mm at best, while the French tanks have got 37mm cannons or larger and also better armour.
This might lead you to think that the German armoured forces were much less effective than the French, and you would compensate in your scenario by giving the Germans a lot more tanks.
But of course the opposite actually was the case, due to tactical doctrine, and C3 and morale effects. Not to mention that the French tanks actually outnumbered the Germans.
That said, there are historical games ion which you get a force by random, rolling from setup tables that reflect the overall position of your nation at the time involved, and if the enemy's force is better thanks to better rolling, you just have to lump it and do the best you can. This type of game tends to be more of a simulation than a fairly balanced contest.
RoperPG wrote: So for my view now, balance and enjoyment are completely dislocated, with the latter the most important.
It's sad you wasted so much of your time playing games you didn't think were fun, however for me I find balance a necessity for a fun game otherwise I might as well not be playing a game at all.
So you can find them completely independent concepts... I find them completely intertwined concepts. If a game system isn't balanced I won't be invested in the outcome, if I'm not invested in the outcome I'm not engaged, if I'm not engaged I'm not having fun.
I can of course have fun playing games that are intentionally unbalanced, but I much prefer the game system itself to be balanced and then I can have fun creating unbalanced scenarios to play.
"Fun over balance" is a largely alien concept to me. You don't have to have one over the other.
Serious question - which is more important?
A 'balanced' game, or a game that both players enjoy and have a positive experience?
Because the two are not the same thing.
Serious answer - depends on a person. I guess that most people would prefer a fair game but funnily enough, you would be suprised with how much fun I have playing a lost game in an unbalanced match. I just get the overwhelming last stand mood and change the objective to kill as much as I can before I'm decimated. Still like to have point system or sth to be able to have a rough estimate of how bad my chances really were though.
Anyway there's a misunderstanding here. I never said that you are wrong having fun in a game without balancing mechanism or that balance is more important than fun. I refer directly to statements about having balanced games with basic AoS rules as those, with exception of rare accident, are straight bs and deserve a comment, imo.
There is a possibility ofc that people who claim balanced games just agree to field very similar armies ie 2 basic infantry, 1 elite, 1 hero, 1 monster. That's already comp though and a poor man's FoC, anyway that's why I first asked mr. MoongooseMatt about how he decided whether his game was balanced or not.
Balance and enjoyment obviously are not mutually exclusive. The great majority of games have fairness as a core concept, which argues that people see it as important for fun.
It's simply that some people have become so defensive of AoS that they have started to call balance and points actively bad things in a game, in reaction to so many people who criticise AoS for not including them.
Frankly the argument is a bit silly in both directions when taken to such extremes.
The problem I find with AoS isn't that you can't have fun with the game, its that its lack of (balanced) rules doesn't do anything positive for the game that an actual good rule set couldn't do, but causes negatives for some players instead. Casual and fun focused players don't need a rule set catered to them to make it fun. You are already willing to modify the rules or implement guidelines on how to build army lists (such as house ruling summoning to not be broken or agreeing not to spam only Monsters to abuse the model count win condition) but you can do the same exact thing in any other game. Nothing is stopping players from agreeing not to take Super Heavies in 40k or making up fun scenarios to pay with in WHFB. Players already have the tools to make adjustments to any game in anyway they want to make it more enjoyable (such as talking with your opponent, or self policing), AoS just makes you use those tools. But while casual players are having same fun any other game could offer them, AoS specifically detracts from competitive plays in its massive lack of balance. Competitive players only serve to lose from such a lose rule system as it leads to a long list of unforseen abuses that is practically impossible to account for every single one of them.
Basically my problem with AoS is casual players could find ways to have fun with any rule set while AoS only serve to turn away a significant part of a potential player base for no gain.
Balance is not only not exclusive with fun but also very important to it because few people can take loosing badly few times in a row. I know a self proclaimed casual who flipped the table in the end. I guess some people don't need it though and just go with immersion or sth. With historical games simulation is fun in itself for me (on pc though, never tried tt ones) maybe some have fun with just simulating fantasy.
For me, apart from game mood and visuals, enjoyment comes from depth of the rules and tactics. I have more fun from coming up with a smart manouver than from winning some by-the-numbers game. Balance is still important tough, it's much harder to judge your tactics when you don't even know what your chances were.
Ofc a deeply tactical, even match fairly won is a pinnacle of living heh.
I distinctly remember never once having an interest in playing 40k competitively, but other people in my area wanting to made me quit the game thanks to it being so poorly balanced that me bringing what I wanted to the table usually meant I would be wiped out or have to decline the game after agreeing and then seeing what my opponent puts on the table.
Casual players benefit from balanced rules every bit as much as competitive types.
I have to concur; I played 2 pick-up games of 40K at my club since I got back into the hobby. One was fairly balanced because he was using vanilla marine tactical sqauds (I had guard). I think I lost after a fairly close evening.
The 2nd game was more or less the same guard, up against Tau, with a brand-new riptide. I was tabled by the end of turn 2, and don't think I managed to inflict a single casualty.
I don't know if it was a particularly hard tournament list, but I knew that I'd need to get quite heavily into list building to take it on again, and I decided it just wasn't worth it (as I was playing FoW most weeks).
I'm definitely a casual player (I've never left the bottom quarter of the tables for any events I've been at) but the lack of balance in 40K put me right off; I just don't have the time/inclination/money to try and keep up with the meta.
Nothing about AoS alleviates that for me; if anything it makes it harder because I've got no idea how X compares to Y and I'm not likely to be able to play enough to get a good feel for it.
Herzlos wrote:
D&D has a DM to take care of the balancing, and is a fully formed RPG.
AoS has no DM to deal with balancing, and is a competitive (there are victory conditions) wargame with essentially no RPG elements beyond getting to name your tokens.
The fact that someone wins and someone loses is part of it, but it's not the entirety. Take a step back as a participant and take a step forward as a spectator.
The intent in aos is it has players that fill in the role of the dm. Rpg elements are about 'role playing' first and foremost and getting involved in the storyand having the table top 'cast' fit the story they're acting in.
CrownAxe wrote:The problem I find with AoS isn't that you can't have fun with the game, its that its lack of (balanced) rules doesn't do anything positive for the game that an actual good rule set couldn't do, but causes negatives for some players instead. Casual and fun focused players don't need a rule set catered to them to make it fun. You are already willing to modify the rules or implement guidelines on how to build army lists (such as house ruling summoning to not be broken or agreeing not to spam only Monsters to abuse the model count win condition) but you can do the same exact thing in any other game. Nothing is stopping players from agreeing not to take Super Heavies in 40k or making up fun scenarios to pay with in WHFB. Players already have the tools to make adjustments to any game in anyway they want to make it more enjoyable (such as talking with your opponent, or self policing), AoS just makes you use those tools. But while casual players are having same fun any other game could offer them, AoS specifically detracts from competitive plays in its massive lack of balance. Competitive players only serve to lose from such a lose rule system as it leads to a long list of unforseen abuses that is practically impossible to account for every single one of them.
Basically my problem with AoS is casual players could find ways to have fun with any rule set while AoS only serve to turn away a significant part of a potential player base for no gain.
You are right. People do this. Such as me. And I'd rather play infinity or flames of war in this manner than Aos. The issue is if there is a 'standard' way of play, then people will default to thst method, and will remain unaware, oblivious to or uninterested in the 'diy' approach. Ie there is a 'proper' way of playing and anything else is illegal or immoral. There are numerous anecdotes out there of folks who would only play standard missions, and didn't even know that there was more than just those missions in the book. I personally think this is a shame as a lot of people are missing out on the creative side of wargaming and it can be a lot of fun. Aos, rather ruthlessly, puts all the emphasis on the players to make their games fun and enjoyable.
Plumbumbarum wrote:Balance is not only not exclusive with fun but also very important to it because few people can take loosing badly few times in a row. I know a self proclaimed casual who flipped the table in the end.
No, not really. Unbalanced games can be fun, provided that the scenario is interesting enough to grab both players. I mean, you could do a thermopalae scenario, where one side faces off against an unending horde and 'just holding them off as long as possible' is the goal. 'Winning' is academic, because hey, all your guys died regardless but you can still build a very enjoyable scenario around it. I've played games where I've had no chance of winning, but I got into the game anyway and simply changed the focus from 'trying to win' to enjoying my doomed Saxon Lord fall against the Vikings due to his hubris and arrogance because he felt his glorious Christian warriors had gods blessing and would march right over the bloody pagans. Thor was the stronger God thst day.
AoS is not D&D there's no rp elements there's not even a detailed enough setting to attempt it.
Excuses such as "they are a model company" and their pushing players to "forge the narrative" are there to excuse the company's poor efforts and don't wash.
It's a miniature wargame the whole point is to win, same as every other game.
hobojebus wrote: AoS is not D&D there's no rp elements there's not even a detailed enough setting to attempt it.
I'll leave here a citation from a certain hot article that has been cited over and over as "GW does not want balance and hence - points".
"For me tabletop wargaming is a wonderfully creative hobby where players can flex their imaginations and add directly to the worlds that the games evoke. It's this creative and "interactive story-telling" that really sets our games apart from most other games, with the notable exception of role-playing games like D&D. The creativity and storytelling involved in the hobby is reflected in the painting of the armies and the desire to make superb terrain, but it is most often reflected in the fact that the events in the games we play often seem to tell a story."
The above can be interpreted differently depending on the reader's point of view, but here's mine:
In the games that GW make they don't want to give you every detail of the setting, but just enough to get you going so you can add up the rest yourself and in the process of painting minis and building terrain begin a journey of making your own battlefields, back stories, heroes and battles.
Of course, one can view the cited paragraph as overly pompous and say that you can do exactly the same with other systems that give you a better rule set and more detailed representations of the small backstreets of a town.
Excuses such as "they are a model company" and their pushing players to "forge the narrative" are there to excuse the company's poor efforts and don't wash.
It's a miniature wargame the whole point is to win, same as every other game.
My point is that "their pushing players to "forge the narrative" " are not there " to excuse the company's poor efforts", but has been their agenda for a long time, although with various levels of success.
An overly generic and re-iterated topic, but so is your post.
Literally nothing about the rules themselves of AoS makes them a cooperative endeavor. D&D would not be D&D if players were competing against each other. In fact players fighting each other is considered one of, if not THE worst thing to happen in D&D.
Deadnight wrote: ...
...
...Aos, rather ruthlessly, puts all the emphasis on the players to make their games fun and enjoyable.
...
Apart from the £45 scenario books, of course.
An equally valid interpretation of the "intention" of AoS is that GW rushed out a cheap set of rules because their company policy is to sell models, not rules, and WHFB was in the doldrums and they wanted to replace it at minimum development cost.
When you assign a couple of guys to bash out some simple derivative rules in a few weeks, they are not going to put a lot of effort into an algorithm to calculate points values, especially when their company has spent the last 30 years miscalculating points values.
Much easier to release the rules without designer notes and allow people to make their own attributions as to the why and wherefore behind things.
Of course the AoS rules are available free, allowing defenders to say they are free, but that seems like a bit of a cop-out, especially when there are plenty of other free rules available that didn't need a £120M international development company to write them.
A somewhat more ruthless way to put the emphasis on players would be not to make any rules or figures at all. One wonders why GW bothers to exist.
hobojebus wrote:AoS is not D&D there's no rp elements there's not even a detailed enough setting to attempt it.
Not really true. Regarding the setting, let's be clear as well (and I really have no dog in this fight), but the Aos setting is pretty damn new. It takes years for these settings to attain the level of depth and complexity that you are saying it doesn't have. I think it's a bit unfair to demand it all straight off the bat. Other games, like for example infinity (from a tiny company) are quite bare bones in terms of derailing their setting. I wouldn't judge Corvus belli too harshly for this, considering their size, and I wouldn't necessarily judge gw too harshly either... Yet.
As to rp elements, I mean, what do you really need to tell a story? Setting? Check. And it's open enough that anything goes. Characters? Check. And with a game which has a big push on everyone having their own unique heroes and villains and fighting forces. Scenarios? Check. The materials are there. It's up to you to do something with them. You don't need rules to tell you how to make a story and bring it to life. If you do, you're not getting the point of being creative.
jonolikespie wrote:Literally nothing about the rules themselves of AoS makes them a cooperative endeavor. D&D would not be D&D if players were competing against each other. In fact players fighting each other is considered one of, if not THE worst thing to happen in D&D.
There is a difference between players 'fighting each other' and players 'playing against each other'. Some of my best rpg sessions were where there was conflict in the group and you still had to find a common ground against the big bad.
And both d&d and wargaming share so much of the same core Dna and draw on the same creativity and inspirations, and often share a lot of the same players, that what is true for one is often true for the other. You can still build a game, a world, a story and an experience together in both.
'The rules' don't define everything about this style of wargame (it's not just Aos, but diy wargames in general) and what makes it what it is. In fact it's n even about 'the rules'. It's about being creative and taking charge of your own hobby. This is the root of what wargaming was for a long time Jono - the idea of two people brewing up their own scenarios was the baseline for wargaming all through the sixties and seventies snd continues to this day. It didn't need to be written down.
Remember Jono, once the dice are rolling, then it's time to go for the throat, but up to this point, cooperation can be a huge boon.you don't need the rules to tell you to approach it in a cooperative endeavour. You just decide to do this with a like minded opponent. Show some maturity and shoulder a bit of responsibility and approach it like a grown up. And it's true for all wargames, even the competitive ones. Like I said to you before, in wargamesyou (a) agree to play an opponent, (b) in a specific game and (c) with an agreed size. right there is the 'co-operation' I'm talking about. Literally finding, and Meeting on a common ground to share a game with your mates. I'm just extending this idea of where 'co-operation' can be about. I mean, we paint our dudes, we write lore about them, why shouldn't we also decide how we're going to play with them? When we were kids, we made up games all the time. I'm just approaching wargaming in exactly the same manner. Thst you can't, or rather refuse to see this is your loss, frankly. That you refuse to look beyond 'the rules' is a bit of a shame.
Kilkrazy wrote:
Apart from the £45 scenario books, of course.
An equally valid interpretation of the "intention" of AoS is that GW rushed out a cheap set of rules because their company policy is to sell models, not rules, and WHFB was in the doldrums and they wanted to replace it at minimum development cost.
When you assign a couple of guys to bash out some simple derivative rules in a few weeks, they are not going to put a lot of effort into an algorithm to calculate points values, especially when their company has spent the last 30 years miscalculating points values.
Much easier to release the rules without designer notes and allow people to make their own attributions as to the why and wherefore behind things.
Bwahahahah! Such a cynic kilkrazy - I love it! but I don't think you are necessarily wrong. In fact, I've said the same thing myself. It can certainly be seen as a minimum effort investment (and I won't necessarily disagree with you - I think there is some truth in it) but I have heard that the design team approached management with a list of approaches for the gsme, some with points, some without, and this one was the one that management signed off on. I can't confirm this, but I do sense a shred of truth in it.
How is AoS comparable to an RPG? The only adventure is Khorneman axe's glorious journey into Sigmarine #143's face. There is no character advancement, no loot, no time for any form of meaningful roleplay and no story development. Does AoS allow for your Sigmarine to go into a town and talk to some locals? Does AoS allow your Chaos Lord to poison a duke's wine to throw his fiefdom into disarray?
No. AoS is a wargame. It represents battles and battles only. That is what it was developed for.
The only adventure is Khorneman axe's glorious journey into Sigmarine #143's face. There is no character advancement, no loot, no time for any form of meaningful roleplay and no story development. Does AoS allow for your Sigmarine to go into a town and talk to some locals? Does AoS allow your Chaos Lord to poison a duke's wine to throw his fiefdom into disarray?
No. AoS is a wargame. It represents battles and battles only. That is what it was developed for.
I believe it is the cooperative storytelling aspect of it, where you aren't modeling a competitive game of one-upmanship so much as you are agreeing on the experience that you want to share. The point where your companion becomes your opponent happens much later in the process for AoS than other miniature games.
Edit: Also, some of the silly rules make you behave in character.
Plumbumbarum wrote:Balance is not only not exclusive with fun but also very important to it because few people can take loosing badly few times in a row. I know a self proclaimed casual who flipped the table in the end.
No, not really. Unbalanced games can be fun, provided that the scenario is interesting enough to grab both players. I mean, you could do a thermopalae scenario, where one side faces off against an unending horde and 'just holding them off as long as possible' is the goal. 'Winning' is academic, because hey, all your guys died regardless but you can still build a very enjoyable scenario around it. I've played games where I've had no chance of winning, but I got into the game anyway and simply changed the focus from 'trying to win' to enjoying my doomed Saxon Lord fall against the Vikings due to his hubris and arrogance because he felt his glorious Christian warriors had gods blessing and would march right over the bloody pagans. Thor was the stronger God thst day.
Plumbumbarum wrote:... funnily enough, you would be suprised with how much fun I have playing a lost game in an unbalanced match. I just get the overwhelming last stand mood and change the objective to kill as much as I can before I'm decimated. Still like to have point system or sth to be able to have a rough estimate of how bad my chances really were though.
From my post a few posts back heh. Anyway, most people have hard time loosing, especially when they can do little on the table to help it, or when it turns out than one third of the fluffy army they painted for weeks is worthless in game. That an unbalanced scenario can be fun doesn't mean that balance is not important to fun in general, do you play lost games all the time?
Not to mention that the scenarios would be better playtested and with a reasonable winning condition, as in the underdog player wins if he withstands x turns.
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TheCustomLime wrote: The only adventure is Khorneman axe's glorious journey into Sigmarine #143's face.
This heh.
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Sqorgar wrote: I believe it is the cooperative storytelling aspect of it, where you aren't modeling a competitive game of one-upmanship so much as you are agreeing on the experience that you want to share. The point where your companion becomes your opponent happens much later in the process for AoS than other miniature games.
But that's just good old warcuddling, the branch of wargaming. It has nothing to do with AoS, people were using the same argument for whfb and 40k being narrative wargames.
I really don't understand this idea that if I play Union versus Confederacy in an ACW battle, or Persians versus Greeks in an Ancients battle, or Soviets versus Germans in a WW2 battle, or Royal Navy versus Kriegsmarine in a WW1 naval battle, in some way I am not participating in a shared experience of an unfolding story.
Yet apparently this wonderful dream of a goal can be attained if I play Seraphon versus Chaos in AoS.
I think the fluff background of AoS could have been a lot more in depth and satisfying if GW had put some time, effort and money into development, perhaps by hiring a couple of good writers. I am sorry to say that like the rules, the fluff has the smack of having been rushed out to fulfil the need to launch the game quickly and cheaply.
Obviously this deficiency can be addressed over time, but there really is no reason why that time shouldn't have been put in before launch rather than afterwards, except for the rush job aspect.
TheCustomLime wrote: How is AoS comparable to an RPG? The only adventure is Khorneman axe's glorious journey into Sigmarine #143's face. There is no character advancement, no loot, no time for any form of meaningful roleplay and no story development. Does AoS allow for your Sigmarine to go into a town and talk to some locals? Does AoS allow your Chaos Lord to poison a duke's wine to throw his fiefdom into disarray?
No. AoS is a wargame. It represents battles and battles only. That is what it was developed for.
And what do the battles represent? If there is no story, they are abstract math, vectors and geometry. Fine if you want to boil your games down to that, but I want to dress them up a little bit.
Regarding Aos being comparable to an rpg, I said that a diy approach to wargames (regardless of whatever Wargame you use - we frequently do this with infinity, historicals and flames of war) draws on the same creative energies and shares a lot of the similar dna and focus as RPGs in how we bring our fictional worlds to life, and on 'telling', or rather 'bringing to life' an event or story. You create characters, you write backstories, you read the lore of wargames, right? You live and take part in events in a made up fictional universe. You are being creative.
It is a Wargame. As you say. So it makes sense that a war, or a battle will be a central part of the plot, by definition. It will be Based around battles. No argument. But why can't battles can't have stories and events attached to them, or be a part of greater narratives? Saying it starts and ends with 'the battle' and that there is nothing else is kind of short sighted if you ask me. I mean, you're not necessarily wrong if you just want to view it as 'a battle' but I will wonder - surely there is a reason as to why the battle is taking place? Sacrifices for khorne? Land? Seize the bridge? Stop the ritual? Doomed final stand? Defend the supply convoy? Rescue the princess?
Surely there Is a potential for an antagonistic relationship between the generals who have faced each other countless times before? Just as you frequently play against your mates and have your friendly rivalries with them. And why can't the characters involved in your wargames have goals and motivations and backstories and reasons for why they are doing what they are doing and why they are there?
No character advancement? Then name your khorne man, and Link your games. Chart his course. Describe his deeds. Give him cool names and titles (even if it is captain cantaimtosavehislifeicus.Watch his attempted rise to glory or laugh as he falls. You don't need to 'level up' for your characters story to progress.
No loot? Who cares? No, seriously, I don't. you don't need loot to tell a story. It always bothers me when Things like levelling up and looting corpses is seen as an integral part of RPGs. Some of the best rpg sessions I've been in didn't have a single fight or reason to loot. RPGs are ultimately about telling stories and bringing stories to life. And there is no reason you can't tell a story via a wargames medium.
(And if you really want loot - your reward is to sack the village, glut yourself on blood, sacrifice the villagers to the dark gods and with this, draw more followers to your banner with your success. Loot doesn't have to be a game mechanic, it can be represented by story, and plot.)
No meaningful role play? You're telling a story, right? And charting the course of various events through your game along with your characters role in them. Surely you are capable of imagining your general making decisions, shouting orders through the chaos of battle, visualise him leading the doomed final charge and his final fall on the spears of his enemies?
Can you go into a town and talk to some locals, or poison the Dukes wine? Probably not - I'd argue a Wargame is the wrong medium to describe these events. And that's actually ok. Different things do different kinds of stories better than others. One medium doesn't need to do everything. but since the battle is the central aspect of this story, there is no reason that you can't say that you got to this place based on local information (or maybe thanks to local knowledge of terrain, your guys stage an ambush on the other guys supply convoy, or know a short cut thst lets you cut across the pass and attempt to stop the ritual. There is no reason the battle could be taking place after the Dukes wine got poisoned, his fiefdom is in disarray, and your army is rampaging across while a desperate band of defenders tries to hold them off and give time for the refugees or the Dukes son to escape. When I talk about taking a gm's attitude to the game, I mean precisely that. Base your game within the context of a story and bring it to life. That's all. It's fun.
I agree with you that Wargames can be played in a similar way to Roleplaying Games.
But I disagree that AoS is any better at it than any points based wargame out there. Anything you can do in AoS, I could have done in any previous edition of Warhammer if I wanted. In fact, I did. I had narrative campaigns with growth, consequences, a consistent story, the whole lot.
AoS is not uniquely "better" for narrative gaming. I could make an argument that in some ways it's less good for the type of narrative I enjoy, but that's quite subjective.
However, AoS removes balanced competitive pick up games from the equation, and requires negotiation and compromise before you ever pick up the dice. This subtracts from the potential of the system for no gain - you don't get anything in return for losing points apart from people suddenly realising that they could have ignored points all along. Whoop dee doo, did we need to blow up the setting to lead people to that mundane idea?
Also, in before "Warhammer was never balanced" and "we're better off without those TFG competitive players."
AoS is for playing skirmishes set in the AoS universe. It isn't a rocket ride to the moon and won't suddenly transform your wargaming into an in-depth story telling mode.
There are some wargames designed to tell stories, such as Longstreet by Sam Mustafa. AoS doesn't contain any story telling rules. What it has to frame scenarios is only its own so far admittedly rather sketchy fluff.
The Sigmarines fight Chaos to get a magic hammer. The FyreSlayers fight the Sigmarines because the Chaos will pay them some ur-gold. The Seraphons fight the Fyreslayers because they are fighting for the Chaos and Seraphons hate Chaos. And so on. This is no different to historical scenarios.
To me there isn't any problem with consultation and working out a scenario before having a game, it's just that you can do this with pretty much any wargame. There's nothing unique and special about AoS in that respect.
Da Boss wrote: I agree with you that Wargames can be played in a similar way to Roleplaying Games.
But I disagree that AoS is any better at it than any points based wargame out there. Anything you can do in AoS, I could have done in any previous edition of Warhammer if I wanted. In fact, I did. I had narrative campaigns with growth, consequences, a consistent story, the whole lot.
AoS is not uniquely "better" for narrative gaming. I could make an argument that in some ways it's less good for the type of narrative I enjoy, but that's quite subjective.
However, AoS removes balanced competitive pick up games from the equation, and requires negotiation and compromise before you ever pick up the dice. This subtracts from the potential of the system for no gain - you don't get anything in return for losing points apart from people suddenly realising that they could have ignored points all along. Whoop dee doo, did we need to blow up the setting to lead people to that mundane idea?
Also, in before "Warhammer was never balanced" and "we're better off without those TFG competitive players."
For the record, I agree one hundred percent. Your are completely correct.
Aos did not invent this kind of wargaming, despite the narrative that sprung up in its wake that points are evil, and this is now the one true way. At best, it opened some people's eyes to this way of playing, but unfortunately the narrative took no prisoners. Aos rather ruthlessly forces people down this road. and thats not necessarily a good thing.
There is no reason that you can't do 'story' with any other Wargame. In fact, I'd encourage it with every other Wargame. Alongside your pugs and tournament games. You need the will and the attitude to do it, and I can only encourage people to give it a try. I think it's better to play one Wargame a dozen different ways, than twenty wargames in exactly the same way (you change the language, but the conversation remains the same).
Kilkrazy wrote: AoS is for playing skirmishes set in the AoS universe. It isn't a rocket ride to the moon and won't suddenly transform your wargaming into an in-depth story telling mode.
You need players to evoke and tell the story, not necessarily the 'rules'.
There are some wargames designed to tell stories, such as Longstreet by Sam Mustafa. AoS doesn't contain any story telling rules. What it has to frame scenarios is only its own so far admittedly rather sketchy fluff.
So you need rules to tell you to tell a story? I don't think you do.
And let's be clear - the Fluff is extremely sketchy right now, and this will take years to fill, but there are plenty generic hooks that you can use to tell a story kilkrazy.
The Sigmarines fight Chaos to get a magic hammer. The FyreSlayers fight the Sigmarines because the Chaos will pay them some ur-gold. The Seraphons fight the Fyreslayers because they are fighting for the Chaos and Seraphons hate Chaos. And so on. This is no different to historical scenarios.
To me there isn't any problem with consultation and working out a scenario before having a game, it's just that you can do this with pretty much any wargame. There's nothing unique and special about AoS in that respect.
I find myself agreeing with both Deadknight and Da Boss when reading through the last two comments. With regards to RPG elements, I always thought Necromunda handled it in a very good way because A.) it was fun and B.) the tables and structure did away with the need for a DM.
What I would love for Age of Sigmar is a kind of "Dungeon Master's Guide Book" filled with ideas for running campaigns and rules, charts and tables to use to link your games. Yeah, we could home brew something - but it's fun to have something created for you and to use that. If AoS is designed to be played narratively by the designers it is a shame they do not go to town on some nice campaign supplements for us. (The big books fall short of this, only being scenarios and source material and nothing more).
And with regards to points again. If such a "Dungeon Master's guide book" was to exist for AoS, it could include a number of point systems and talk about the pros and cons of using each or none at all. Kind of like how Inquisitor handled the "Ready Reckoner" - I don't think it was used as standard in Inquistor campaigns (although I was too young when it came out and never got the chance to play it) - probably because the disclaimer included on why you should or should not employ it.
Kilkrazy wrote: I really don't understand this idea that if I play Union versus Confederacy in an ACW battle, or Persians versus Greeks in an Ancients battle, or Soviets versus Germans in a WW2 battle, or Royal Navy versus Kriegsmarine in a WW1 naval battle, in some way I am not participating in a shared experience of an unfolding story.
I am weirded out by historical wargaming. Never got into it, and tried the standard FoW, BA, Saga and WFB Ancients a few times. Hadn't really thought about it until you said this, but this is one of the key things for me.
I always thought that it was down to preferring my factional genocide on the fictional side, but after reading KK's post I've realised it's something else -
It's historical. It's over, done, finished. There's nowhere for it to go, everything you could ever possibly know about the setting is already known (archaeology aside).
You may not know who won the battle, but you know who won the war.
I just can't get behind that, holds no interest for me. The fact that AoS is so open-ended / poorly written (potato, puhtarto) is a big plus for me on that front.
Kilkrazy wrote: I really don't understand this idea that if I play Union versus Confederacy in an ACW battle, or Persians versus Greeks in an Ancients battle, or Soviets versus Germans in a WW2 battle, or Royal Navy versus Kriegsmarine in a WW1 naval battle, in some way I am not participating in a shared experience of an unfolding story.
Yet apparently this wonderful dream of a goal can be attained if I play Seraphon versus Chaos in AoS.
And all the AoS "GW only" types will no doubt write several walls of texts to tell you that AoS can do all this and all those other games are poor quality. (In either Rules, Figures, Sculpts, Background or any combination of those)
While what you are saying is true it is neither unique to AoS nor is the game really built for it. You could have all of that in a game like Bolt Action or Infinity.
Have you tried Frostgrave Deadnight? It seems to have what you are looking for in AoS built in.
While what you are saying is true it is neither unique to AoS nor is the game really built for it. You could have all of that in a game like Bolt Action or Infinity.
Have you tried Frostgrave Deadnight? It seems to have what you are looking for in AoS built in.
One of my group is planning an ice/winter board for AoS because of the winter time of war stuff in Balance of Power - which has been pointed out also gives us the perfect excuse to play Frostgrave...
Kilkrazy wrote: I really don't understand this idea that if I play Union versus Confederacy in an ACW battle, or Persians versus Greeks in an Ancients battle, or Soviets versus Germans in a WW2 battle, or Royal Navy versus Kriegsmarine in a WW1 naval battle, in some way I am not participating in a shared experience of an unfolding story.
I am weirded out by historical wargaming. Never got into it, and tried the standard FoW, BA, Saga and WFB Ancients a few times. Hadn't really thought about it until you said this, but this is one of the key things for me.
I always thought that it was down to preferring my factional genocide on the fictional side, but after reading KK's post I've realised it's something else -
It's historical. It's over, done, finished. There's nowhere for it to go, everything you could ever possibly know about the setting is already known (archaeology aside).
You may not know who won the battle, but you know who won the war.
I just can't get behind that, holds no interest for me. The fact that AoS is so open-ended / poorly written (potato, puhtarto) is a big plus for me on that front.
I hope you will not become increasingly disappointed with AoS as more of the fluff is gradually revealed.
I hope you will not become increasingly disappointed with AoS as more of the fluff is gradually revealed.
Didn't anyone tell you? The realms are infinite!
Seriously though, I get the impression that AoS will run more like 40K than WFB in that regard;
The major players, events & locations, along with a selected supporting cast, will be covered - the rest will just be blanks where people can write "here be dragons" or whatever on their own version of the map.
And no, if you play the game with your well known friends using eyeballed armies without any comp, you can't reliably judge balance of entire army vs entire army.
You are talking about something that was not asked.
The question was
I've yet to meet anyone irl or on a forum that has played a balanced game with the basic rules if they use anything other than the starter set..
The question was not whether 2 players can tell an 2 armies in an upcoming game will be balanced, it was not even whether 2 armies are balanced. It was whether they have played a game that was balanced. It is eminently possible for 2 players to finish a game and discuss that and say yay or nay.
If you want to say that you can't judge balance to the Nth degree and exactly 50%, well fair enough. But balance will generally be taken as 'good enough', and 50% will be beyond any point/comp system..
Automatically Appended Next Post:
I guess that most people would prefer a fair game but funnily enough, you would be suprised with how much fun I have playing a lost game in an unbalanced match.
Many games are known not to be balanced. Chess being one by a small margin. But many old boardgames, like Avalon hills wargames were considered unbalanced to some degree. I pulled TP:Stalingrad out the garage the other week, I game I really liked many many years ago. It was known for favoring the Germans, but in many ways that made me prefer to play the Russians - fighting against the odds is usually more interesting. Such a game also had the advantage that I rarely expect to have 2 players of equal skill for a given game, having the person with more experience or skill at a given game take the harder side to win is a good way to play.
hobojebus wrote:AoS is not D&D there's no rp elements there's not even a detailed enough setting to attempt it.
Not really true. Regarding the setting, let's be clear as well (and I really have no dog in this fight), but the Aos setting is pretty damn new. It takes years for these settings to attain the level of depth and complexity that you are saying it doesn't have. I think it's a bit unfair to demand it all straight off the bat. Other games, like for example infinity (from a tiny company) are quite bare bones in terms of derailing their setting. I wouldn't judge Corvus belli too harshly for this, considering their size, and I wouldn't necessarily judge gw too harshly either... Yet.
I just said this in another thread, but "depth" is for suckers. Adding layers and layers of complexity and detail to a setting is just worldbuilding, that clomping foot of nerdism that'll suffocate a fictional world as quickly as anything else. Infinity's actually a pretty good counterexample - the Human Sphere and AoS have about the same amount of background released for them, despite the former being about ten years old, but Infinity feels infinitely more real and inviting because the creators took the time and the interest to make it so. They work hard to communicate a world that's very clearly something dear to them, a reflection of their own interests and personalities. That world has a soul. AoS doesn't, and no amount of additional verbiage, "depth" or layered complexity is going to fix that. It was a very odd decision on GW's part to try and sell a world like that as the basis of a "narrative" game, but like Killkrazy, I doubt narrative play was actually an idea that really came up in AoS' development before the marketing phase.
While what you are saying is true it is neither unique to AoS nor is the game really built for it. You could have all of that in a game like Bolt Action or Infinity.
.
you're telling me things I already know lime. I've probably said those same words a hundred times here.
*breathes in calmly*.
Ok, I apologise.i really don't mean to sound snarky lime (and apologise if it comes across that way) but you do realise I have been bleating on here for months that I have no interest in playing Aos (I dislike the models, I dislike the game mechanics etc) and that I already do 'all of that' in the wargames that I play with my mates, such as flames of war, infinity, historicals like dux bellorum, occasionally dropzone commander and even had some ideas with firestorm armada. I've frequently talked about this, and brought it up and recommend the approach.
In fact, if you go through my posts, you will see me state this repeatedly. (Sometimes I genuinely wonder if people never read what I write, or just assume 'Aos defender' when they don't see all the negative all the time in my posts and simply charge in.)
Aos is not 'unique' to narrative wargaming, but saying the game isn't built for it is false - it's an approach that is compatible with every game, Aos included. It's just Aos focuses on players using this approach exclusively and does it ruthlessly. (And to be fair, let gw do it. Let them aim for a niche if that's what they want to do. Privateer press carved out their niche by picking a demographic, and aiming primarily at the competitive scene and they've done quite well, it'll be interesting to see if gw can do something similar)
You could have all of that in a game like Bolt Action or Infinity.
Correction. I already have all of that in infinity, flames of war etc. See above.
What I am defending specifically is the approach - whether you call it diy wargaming, narrative wargaming, scenario-base games, forging the narrative or whatever. Too often I see people's utter incomprehension and hostility towards the idea of taking control of your own game, and who refuse to see the value in a co-operative and player driven approach to wargames, spouting that you can't have fun this way, that it doesn't work, and it properly annoys me. Aos merely crystallises all this hostility, and I think it is misplaced ed and unwarranted. And for the record, I get equally annoyed with the idiots on the other side shouting that points are evil and don't work, tournaments are terrible and tournament players is a derogatory term and synonymous with Waac and destroying the hobby and that Aos is the pinnacle of creative wargaming in terms of board design, terrain use and painting. Pfft.
Have you tried Frostgrave Deadnight? It seems to have what you are looking for in AoS built in.
Thank you - while I appreciate the recommendation, I don't think I'll be ablle to. The models thst I e seen didn't really inspire me, but to be honest, I've not had a deep look into it yet. I know a lot of people are talking about it, and I might get round to having a look at it as some point in the future, but bear in mind as well, I already am invested rather heavily in warmachine/hordes (huge khador army, decent circle and retribution armies), infinity (Ariadna, yu-jing, pan-o), and also play flames of war and historicals with my mates on a Friday Evening (their armies, not mine - I generally provide the infinity stuff for our games...)with a small amount of 40k projects on the side (Horus heresy is tempting me) along with Dreamforge and anvil industry models as painting projects.
Then there is that marathon I'm signed up to doing in June, and a new job, and I doubt I'll have time to invest in another Wargame. Sometimes you just have to be ruthless with your time.
Also, I don't use the official Frostgrave minis. I use WLG Romans along with some fantasy creatures for my Warband. That's the beauty of the game. You aren't married to tbe company when you buy into it like with GW.
And no, if you play the game with your well known friends using eyeballed armies without any comp, you can't reliably judge balance of entire army vs entire army.
You are talking about something that was not asked.
The question was
I've yet to meet anyone irl or on a forum that has played a balanced game with the basic rules if they use anything other than the starter set..
The question was not whether 2 players can tell an 2 armies in an upcoming game will be balanced, it was not even whether 2 armies are balanced. It was whether they have played a game that was balanced. It is eminently possible for 2 players to finish a game and discuss that and say yay or nay.
If you want to say that you can't judge balance to the Nth degree and exactly 50%, well fair enough. But balance will generally be taken as 'good enough', and 50% will be beyond any point/comp system..
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I guess that most people would prefer a fair game but funnily enough, you would be suprised with how much fun I have playing a lost game in an unbalanced match.
Many games are known not to be balanced. Chess being one by a small margin. But many old boardgames, like Avalon hills wargames were considered unbalanced to some degree. I pulled TP:Stalingrad out the garage the other week, I game I really liked many many years ago. It was known for favoring the Germans, but in many ways that made me prefer to play the Russians - fighting against the odds is usually more interesting. Such a game also had the advantage that I rarely expect to have 2 players of equal skill for a given game, having the person with more experience or skill at a given game take the harder side to win is a good way to play.
What? Jesus man read the thread.
The first quote is me directly answering your claim that playing with friends, you can make a balanced game in AoSraw without comp.
The second quote is the initial statement of someone else, to which mr. Moongoose answered, then I asked the latter how, then you expressed disbelief that I even asked, which was funny btw, then we had more posts I think, then the first quote happened? Might have changed a subject just a bit by then eh?
Yes we were discussing if you can tell whether the game was balanced or not after a single game. That's what I initialy asked, how does one know and you replied.
Anyway, in 5th edition, Carnifex was what? 160 points? After few years with that nids book, hundreds of games and many discussions, everybody knew that it was overpriced. But how much, especialy when there was no clear terrain guidances? There was no clear answer, you'd have to drop points, wait, see and adjust.
The whole 40k internet and one unit that had point cost already. You don't balance entire armies at once anywhere near proper with your friends, your games might be 60 - 40, might be 70 - 30, who knows especialy if you play with sudden deaths. After few years of playing and with other's reports from internet, yes, you can say you developed some intuition, still not really reliable though.
I'm just about people coming here claiming they had a balanced game with model count or eyeballing. The same applies to countless "we counted wound and it was balanced". Yeah, 100 slaves vs 100 slaves then sure.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Btw my balance doesn't have to be 50 - 50, it' s impossible. But model count, or saurus wound = skink wound? That's obviously not good enough to claim that games are balanced.
Kilkrazy wrote: I really don't understand this idea that if I play Union versus Confederacy in an ACW battle, or Persians versus Greeks in an Ancients battle, or Soviets versus Germans in a WW2 battle, or Royal Navy versus Kriegsmarine in a WW1 naval battle, in some way I am not participating in a shared experience of an unfolding story.
I am weirded out by historical wargaming. Never got into it, and tried the standard FoW, BA, Saga and WFB Ancients a few times. Hadn't really thought about it until you said this, but this is one of the key things for me.
I always thought that it was down to preferring my factional genocide on the fictional side, but after reading KK's post I've realised it's something else -
It's historical. It's over, done, finished. There's nowhere for it to go, everything you could ever possibly know about the setting is already known (archaeology aside).
You may not know who won the battle, but you know who won the war.
I just can't get behind that, holds no interest for me. The fact that AoS is so open-ended / poorly written (potato, puhtarto) is a big plus for me on that front.
On the contrary - we can only ever know so much about history, and there's the realms of what if?
What if Alexander didn't stop in West Asia? What if the Mongols didn't stop in Eastern Europe? What if the greeks fought an intercity war in the summer of 356BC? Or held a retaliatory raid on Persia after Darius was defeated?
What if WW2 didn't stop in 1945, or the Russians didn't enter?
We've no real idea what armies looked like or thought until after the Dark Ages (with the exception Romans).
You could literally spend your gaming career playing historical based games and never touching a real battle.
Kilkrazy wrote: I really don't understand this idea that if I play Union versus Confederacy in an ACW battle, or Persians versus Greeks in an Ancients battle, or Soviets versus Germans in a WW2 battle, or Royal Navy versus Kriegsmarine in a WW1 naval battle, in some way I am not participating in a shared experience of an unfolding story.
I am weirded out by historical wargaming. Never got into it, and tried the standard FoW, BA, Saga and WFB Ancients a few times. Hadn't really thought about it until you said this, but this is one of the key things for me.
I always thought that it was down to preferring my factional genocide on the fictional side, but after reading KK's post I've realised it's something else -
It's historical. It's over, done, finished. There's nowhere for it to go, everything you could ever possibly know about the setting is already known (archaeology aside).
You may not know who won the battle, but you know who won the war.
I just can't get behind that, holds no interest for me. The fact that AoS is so open-ended / poorly written (potato, puhtarto) is a big plus for me on that front.
On the contrary - we can only ever know so much about history, and there's the realms of what if?
What if Alexander didn't stop in West Asia? What if the Mongols didn't stop in Eastern Europe? What if the greeks fought an intercity war in the summer of 356BC? Or held a retaliatory raid on Persia after Darius was defeated?
What if WW2 didn't stop in 1945, or the Russians didn't enter?
We've no real idea what armies looked like or thought until after the Dark Ages (with the exception Romans).
You could literally spend your gaming career playing historical based games and never touching a real battle.
Oh I get that. My post was because KK's post gave me a 'ding!' moment. I wasn't trying to suggest that it's not possible to enjoy historicals in any way, more that I personally have a block on being able to approach them in that way, and the realisation that it's probably why I prefer fantasy settings.
It might also explain why 30k/HH leaves me cold, too.
Some of my best friends are FoW players, etc. etc.
Kilkrazy wrote: What other fantasy and SF games do you like?
At the risk of getting too far off topic, I don't mind WMH - except the bulk of the local players rank quite well in southern tournaments so normally for me it was an exercise in putting stuff back in my case. I've got a reasonable Imperial X-wing fleet, and I've tried Armada.
Curious about Guildball but my usual group aren't that fussed, I've gone off 40K (local meta is now normally just vehicle fleets).
A few of us are looking at giving Frostgrave a proper go.
I've tried most Mantic games, but they just haven't bitten me - although I'll be interested to see how their TWD license works out.
Other than that, Bloodbowl's the only thing I'm looking forward to.
Nobody plays Malifaux locally, after an abortive attempt a year or so ago when a couple of the local neck beards killed any interest because they cheated and cheated and cheated.
DZC just doesn't appeal - never been a fan of small-scale stuff.
Other than that I'd have to generate interest in anything other than those mentioned, and I just don't have the time.
Until AoS came out I'd spent about a year on hiatus from gaming as I was struggling to find anything to be excited about.
Within my local group, AoS is a perfect fit. That's obviously not the same as saying it's a 'perfect' game, I'm aware it isn't. But for us it ticks all the boxes we hadn't realised needed ticking.
When we first heard the rumors of AoS, that points and the Old World were both being tossed aside, I was skeptical about it. I was told by some ever stalwart GW supporters to wait and see and try it when it came out.
Then it released with 3 pages of rules. I read them and understood what GW was trying to do; make a very toned down game where there was no cost of entry and what essentially looked like a skirmish game. However, for me, the appeal of Fantasy was in the infantry blocks and the Movement phase being the most important part of the game (it should come as no surprise that 7th ed was my favorite). I was pretty fair with my opinion; AoS didn't appeal to me, but I could understand how AoS could appeal to some and I refrained from calling it gak. The stalwart GW supporters told me that previous editions of Fantasy were bad, that's why the game failed and that AoS was superior.
After the initial release, one of our more actively competitive (ex)-Fantasy players decided to try to run an AoS tournament and most people who had played Fantasy competitively signed up. Both myself and one of my best friends wanted to run our Tomb Kings; we had both started Fantasy at the same time with Tomb Kings as our first army almost 10 years previously at the local GW. We both loved the theme of them in the Old World, the look of the models, and the types of armies we could make. However, I soon found out that my favorite unit, the Tomb Guard, had lost a lot of its flavour and feel, which upset me because I had created my army around them. My disappointment was compounded when I realized that the Tomb King I had spent days painting no longer could take the Destroyer of Eternities, that I couldn't use Khatep any more and that the Casket of Souls had lost almost all of its flavor and a lot of its power. Some other units had gotten stronger that I owned, but my favorite models that had also been effective units had lost all the character I had known since I picked up the 6th edition books.
In light of my disappointment, I made a Wood Elf list instead. I even managed to get excited by imagining how much more thematic they would be on round bases and how skirmish style would suit them far better. Here too was some confusion when units that had been very good in the 8th edition book were now utterly bad instead, but the core of what had attracted me to Wood Elves changed very little and that was enough to make me feel enthusiastic about AoS.
That changed very quickly at the tournament. I hadn't expected to do well; my Tomb Kings were always a far more competitive army in the past with the Wood Elves being an army I had collected over time, with a few units bought to give it some punch in 8th. However, I was pretty ignorant of a lot of the new combos and units from other armies, which it turned out was pretty common for every player there and it was quickly decided that without points or any other inherent system of army building; lists of Vargheists and Dwarf flame cannons as well as my best friend's Necropolis Knight list were broken beyond belief. The absolute lack of balance wasn't the worst part for me though, my worst game was actually against a player who loved the randomness and new fluff of AoS.
I had decided very early on I would prefer not to be matched up with him when I could hear him across the room explaining at great length to his opponent how much better AoS was than 8th and how much fun the new Khorne army was to play; as I said earlier, the very casual skirmish nature of AoS isn't for me. What really made me remember why I stopped playing pick-up games long ago was when he started mocking me for playing "pansies". So with all this in mind I prepared myself to play the guy, complete with being taunted that he'd charge all my units kill them and that once again, I was playing an army of pansies. His enthusiasm quickly fell apart when he lost Juggerknights to the random dangerous terrain rolls from charging through the Wood Elf forests, when I moved away from his units and shot them with the waywatcher's shots that do 2 wounds per fail. My army was called dumb after getting my first and last win of the tournament.
After the tournament I realized that AoS was absolutely not for me. Competitive play was agonizing at best, as the ban and comp lists as well as list building needed to a ton of work to get to a point where there was a semblance of balance. My experience with the Khorne player reminded me why I dislike casual/fluffy players and pick-up games. To top it off, my favorite army had lost all it's lore, with my favorite units losing the mechanics that made them unique and appealing to me. In the end, I sold my Tomb Kings to my best friend, as I know as disenchanted as we had both become with the game, he loved collecting the army and I knew they'd be in good hands.
And now, finally, it seems like there won't be any more Tomb Kings models. I couldn't be more disappointed with how AoS turned out as it lost all the appeal that 7th and 8th editions of Fantasy had for me; the tactics and strategy, the lore that tied it together and the faction I started with.
Thanks for your account! A really honest look at why AoS wasn't right for you, and I hope the experience wasn't too souring (although the fact you sold your army suggests it probably was).
I'm a fan of AoS but it does sadden me to hear stories like your own.
Skimask Mohawk wrote: It wasn't exactly the game mechanics, just how pretty much 90% of my army lost its flavour and effect on the board.
While I understand this statement, what I want to ask you is... Why not try building a new army with a new flavor then?
This is what I enjoy the most with AoS. Here is a quick round up of the armies I am collecting so far, and it includes Tomb Kings!
- My main army is a Blood Elf army, inspired by said elves, from World of Warcraft. I use a mix of high and dark elves, all painted with the same red gold and green colors. I've added crazy conversions to it, such as a blood cauldron carried by two black stegadons and a female version of Darkblade for Valeera Sanguinar.
- I have a Sylvaneth army in witch I added home made warscrolls to spice it up.
- As soon as the Tomb Kings were announced to disappear, I ordered 240E of miniatures, and built a full charioteer force lead by Setra. It matches the formation warscroll and has a lot of personality!
- I am currently building a savage orcs army with a lot of ogres monsters. I replaced all ogres riders with savage orcs and simply use their normal warscroll.
Anyway. I'm not saying you're wrong, at all. But as a player who loves "flavor" like you say, I believe you can find a new one. What about a full bat-winged themed VC army?
I sincerely hope you will find the inspiration to build a new army. Good luck!
I'd hazard a guess that it's hard to get motivated to drop 240E to try and regain some flavor after having your existing stuff essentially ruined.
I mean, what's the risk that you'd spend all that time and money and still not be happy? What if he could maintain that flavor by just moving to another game?
It may be best to keep playing 8th edition, I think.
I don't think AoS can replicate the feeling of WHFB because AoS lacks various rules that had important tactical effects in WHFB. As well, the legacy army war scrolls are somewhat condensed. Some of the special characters from the army books have been dropped or rolled up into a generic special unit, and clearly a lot of the special rules have been revised.
Accept that AoS is a different type of game. It's better to compare AoS with games like Songs of Blades and Heroes, and Dragon Rampant.
WHFB should be compared with games like Warmaster Fantasy, Hordes Of The Things, and Kings of War.
Herzlos wrote: I'd hazard a guess that it's hard to get motivated to drop 240E to try and regain some flavor after having your existing stuff essentially ruined.
I mean, what's the risk that you'd spend all that time and money and still not be happy? What if he could maintain that flavor by just moving to another game?
I don't know, but I feel like the consumers habits have evolved too. You can get a complete army for 240E. It's money for sure, but it's not that much money either... When you look at the prices of everything these days, how much a new phone costs you, or video games, or just a night out drinking, 240E is not that much for a complete set of units you will play for years without having anything to add to it. I've only just recently come back to the hobby, and of course when I was younger 240E seemed crazy to me. Now I'm 28 and I have a job. It seems more accessible than it used to be =].
But of course I'm not saying he should "gamble" his money on the hope he would have fun with it. But we all like to dream about armies while looking at the lists right? What I'm trying to say to him is that he should try to look at it with a new eye, and maybe find a new flavor he could like =]
Herzlos wrote: I'd hazard a guess that it's hard to get motivated to drop 240E to try and regain some flavor after having your existing stuff essentially ruined.
I mean, what's the risk that you'd spend all that time and money and still not be happy? What if he could maintain that flavor by just moving to another game?
Yeah why would anyone reward GW with more money for killing their army? That's just insane thinking right there.
If a company destroys something you love the correct thing to do is walk away and vote with your wallet not go out and buy another army.
Herzlos wrote: I'd hazard a guess that it's hard to get motivated to drop 240E to try and regain some flavor after having your existing stuff essentially ruined.
I mean, what's the risk that you'd spend all that time and money and still not be happy? What if he could maintain that flavor by just moving to another game?
I don't know, but I feel like the consumers habits have evolved too. You can get a complete army for 240E. It's money for sure, but it's not that much money either... When you look at the prices of everything these days, how much a new phone costs you, or video games, or just a night out drinking, 240E is not that much for a complete set of units you will play for years without having anything to add to it. I've only just recently come back to the hobby, and of course when I was younger 240E seemed crazy to me. Now I'm 28 and I have a job. It seems more accessible than it used to be =].
But of course I'm not saying he should "gamble" his money on the hope he would have fun with it. But we all like to dream about armies while looking at the lists right? What I'm trying to say to him is that he should try to look at it with a new eye, and maybe find a new flavor he could like =]
When I was 24 (out of uni, real job, no real expenses) I'd have agreed with you to a point, but now at 31, 240E is an awful lot of money (like, 60% of my mortgage payment). That money can buy you a lot of entertainment that isn't an army for a game system that just killed off your last army.
Even taking gameplay completely out of it I hated how all the rich background material they had was butchered to create AoS. I tried playing AoS and it just wasn't for me, which is a real pity as the model range is beautiful, I run a gaunt summoner as a night lords sorcerer on disk. They brought the game, in my opinion, in a direction I wasn't comfortable following. On the tournament side of things, which i infrequently attended for fantasy, AoS tournaments are unheard of whereas they are KoW tourneys popping up the last six months or so. I wish the game appealed to me more as I always enjoyed fantasy more than 40k but AoS killed it for me
Herzlos wrote: I'd hazard a guess that it's hard to get motivated to drop 240E to try and regain some flavor after having your existing stuff essentially ruined.
I mean, what's the risk that you'd spend all that time and money and still not be happy? What if he could maintain that flavor by just moving to another game?
Yeah why would anyone reward GW with more money for killing their army? That's just insane thinking right there.
If a company destroys something you love the correct thing to do is walk away and vote with your wallet not go out and buy another army.
Talk about Stockholm syndrome...
If the Empire army was moved to 'Last Chance to Buy', I would be picking up more units to finish off my collection. Don't see the problem really.
Skimask Mohawk wrote: It wasn't exactly the game mechanics, just how pretty much 90% of my army lost its flavour and effect on the board.
Not wishing to pick at scabs, but which units that were good in 8th and became bad in AoS?
I'm curious about this as well. I'm only really familiar with the undead scrolls, which did pretty well by tomb kings (chariots being a sad exception) and mostly maintained the fun, fluffy character that the vamp counts units had in 8th edition (though sadly it didn't do much to spruce up the already lacking corpse cart EDIT I meant black coach, the black coach was and remains lackluster, the corpse cart is fine).
I can certainly understand displeasure with the core rules, or disgruntlement of GW's handling of the transition, but the unit rules I've seen for AoS have mostly been quite enjoyable and characterful, giving most units some unique mechanical effect to bring their fluff to life on the table.
Skimask Mohawk wrote: It wasn't exactly the game mechanics, just how pretty much 90% of my army lost its flavour and effect on the board.
Not wishing to pick at scabs, but which units that were good in 8th and became bad in AoS?
I'm curious about this as well. I'm only really familiar with the undead scrolls, which did pretty well by tomb kings (chariots being a sad exception) and mostly maintained the fun, fluffy character that the vamp counts units had in 8th edition (though sadly it didn't do much to spruce up the already lacking corpse cart EDIT I meant black coach, the black coach was and remains lackluster, the corpse cart is fine).
I can certainly understand displeasure with the core rules, or disgruntlement of GW's handling of the transition, but the unit rules I've seen for AoS have mostly been quite enjoyable and characterful, giving most units some unique mechanical effect to bring their fluff to life on the table.
To answer both your questions, theres a bunch, but a lot of them didn't necessarily get bad in terms of rules, but they lost 2 editions worth of flavor in how their rules got changed.
Liche Priests: really don't feel like their previous versions who made could stack a variety of buffs to help out; the most important spell in the 6th ed book and the default for their lore in 8th was a movement spell that was used in combination with their other spells to give an edge. Now you can only ever cast a version of Smiting along with the generic spells.
Casket: In 6th it affected everyone in Line of Sight and did wound (not very well iirc, but it was very much Indiana Jonesing people who could see). 8th wasn't as wide spread in the effect, but it was more powerful as a result and was also a powerful magic buff. Now they do d3 wounds to the initial target and can only bounce once, they still have a limited magic buff, but since magic has been relegated from one of the most important parts of Tomb Kings to kind of an afterthought its far less relevant. Lost its Arc of the Covenant vibe imo and a lot of its power.
Tomb Guard: Went from being better skeletons with killing blow, to very little difference in hitting and wounding, cursed blades got a lot worse, their shields are worse than the skeletons. Basically vanilla skeletons are better than them now. I owned 50 Tomb Guard to 100 Skeletons and the Skeletons blow them out of the water for less money.
Tomb King: not a fan of how generic they are now. Mostly sour about the loss of the same Tomb King I built the same way throughout all my time of playing fantasy.
Anyway, not everything got worse, a lot of things got really good in fact, but it just so happened that everything I really liked got worse or lost flavor in some ways.
Haechi wrote:
Skimask Mohawk wrote: It wasn't exactly the game mechanics, just how pretty much 90% of my army lost its flavour and effect on the board.
While I understand this statement, what I want to ask you is... Why not try building a new army with a new flavor then?
Anyway. I'm not saying you're wrong, at all. But as a player who loves "flavor" like you say, I believe you can find a new one. What about a full bat-winged themed VC army?
I sincerely hope you will find the inspiration to build a new army. Good luck!
Because no other army is attractive to me? I loved the fluff of the tomb kings and the flavour of my favorite units in particular, but flavour is a combination of the fluff of the unit (like the awesome page for the Tomb Guard in the 6th ed book) and how they play.
The core of what I own of my Wood Elves fortunately didn't lose their flavor, so if some friend of mine does want to play a game of AoS where we're using some comp I can use a force that feels true to their previous incarnations and feel worthwhile to me, but I have no motivation to go out and buy more or start a new army.
Vampires in AoS are one of the big reasons I turned my nose up at the game. In 8th ed they were amazing, you could really build them in a million different ways to do different things and they could be built to fit in with the different bloodlines.
AoS vampires have to friggen options. It;'s awful.
jonolikespie wrote: Vampires in AoS are one of the big reasons I turned my nose up at the game. In 8th ed they were amazing, you could really build them in a million different ways to do different things and they could be built to fit in with the different bloodlines.
AoS vampires have to friggen options. It;'s awful.
I liked that about vampires, even though I didn't play them. It was very cool. Rune weapons was one of the biggest draws for my dwarf army back when I first started playing them in 4th edition. Being able to assemble your own magic weapon (and of course give it a good name) was just so immersive.
jonolikespie wrote: Vampires in AoS are one of the big reasons I turned my nose up at the game. In 8th ed they were amazing, you could really build them in a million different ways to do different things and they could be built to fit in with the different bloodlines.
AoS vampires have to friggen options. It;'s awful.
I liked that about vampires, even though I didn't play them. It was very cool. Rune weapons was one of the biggest draws for my dwarf army back when I first started playing them in 4th edition. Being able to assemble your own magic weapon (and of course give it a good name) was just so immersive.
Not gonna argue that customisation wasn't a good thing, but having been on the receiving end of Dwarf Lords in combat, I *never* encountered a rune weapon that made me howl like the standard weapon they now come with...
Herzlos wrote: I'd hazard a guess that it's hard to get motivated to drop 240E to try and regain some flavor after having your existing stuff essentially ruined.
I mean, what's the risk that you'd spend all that time and money and still not be happy? What if he could maintain that flavor by just moving to another game?
Yeah why would anyone reward GW with more money for killing their army? That's just insane thinking right there.
If a company destroys something you love the correct thing to do is walk away and vote with your wallet not go out and buy another army.
Talk about Stockholm syndrome...
If the Empire army was moved to 'Last Chance to Buy', I would be picking up more units to finish off my collection. Don't see the problem really.
Absolutely, get models you like while you can. Our FLGS will have a clearance sale inApril and hopefully the WHFB still is on the table. It was LotR and Hobbit last time. Personally I predict an immediate price hike in eBay for cancelled models but after 6 months or earlier plunging back down to a buyers market. Some of the Chaos last chances came back in stock last night on the US web store.
Anyway, thanks for sharing your thoughts with us, Bottle.
Nice as the Perry models are, with Fyreslayers already getting close to the height of Empire Statetroopers (who are admittedly quite hunchbacked) - they would probably be taller than the Perry models!
They still do, actually. You could get a Perry Bros ACW 'battle in a box' army and run it as gnomes in AoS. Just replace the rifles with spears or crossbows. Run the cannons as Dwarf Cannons.
Kilkrazy wrote: They still do, actually. You could get a Perry Bros ACW 'battle in a box' army and run it as gnomes in AoS. Just replace the rifles with spears or crossbows. Run the cannons as Dwarf Cannons.
No offence but that is both a ridiculous and terrible idea lol
Bottle wrote: I find myself agreeing with both Deadknight and Da Boss when reading through the last two comments. With regards to RPG elements, I always thought Necromunda handled it in a very good way because A.) it was fun and B.) the tables and structure did away with the need for a DM.
Just a note that the Path to Glory system for Chaos Warbands in AoS is similar to my recollection of the Necromunda campaign system. Doesn't have gang members suffering long term injuries, or being imprisoned for ransom. But the rest of how your chaos warband changes over time, and the fluff of the special chaos scenarios works well.
Bottle wrote: I find myself agreeing with both Deadknight and Da Boss when reading through the last two comments. With regards to RPG elements, I always thought Necromunda handled it in a very good way because A.) it was fun and B.) the tables and structure did away with the need for a DM.
Just a note that the Path to Glory system for Chaos Warbands in AoS is similar to my recollection of the Necromunda campaign system. Doesn't have gang members suffering long term injuries, or being imprisoned for ransom. But the rest of how your chaos warband changes over time, and the fluff of the special chaos scenarios works well.
Yeah! It looked really interesting! Shame I don't play chaos though...
I think "don't be that guy" is a good argument. Maybe this is because I have zero interest in any tournament scene and little more when it comes to pick up gaming. I don't need a game to be "that guy"-proof and therefore don't care to pay the price for that feature. Well, I have never yet seen a game that is actually "that guy"-proof to be honest; games that try end up being designed for "that guy" so far as I have seen. In the context of AoS, "that guy" means someone who needs to be restrained by rules. But AoS is an enabling ruleset. So naturally, when the two meet there are going to be problems.
By that same token I really agree about AoS being very strong for collecting what you want into a playable force, both as a matter of army composition and game scale. This is why I have already bought more for AoS than I ever had purchased for WHFB.
Manchu wrote: I think "don't be that guy" is a good argument.
It's a bad argument because "that guy" in common speak means "the person everyone hates", the jackarse, the jerk, the arsehole.
It's a bad argument because it just lumps a group of people in to something that has an extreme negative connotation. Unless that's what you intended to do, in which case you only need to look in the mirror to find your nearest "that guy".
In the context of AoS, "that guy" means someone who needs to be restrained by rules.
You said that you have little interest in pick up gaming, for those of us who rely on pick up gaming it's not "that guy" that has to be restrained by the rules, it's damned near everyone.
Though I find it funny you equate "that guy" with "someone who needs to be restrained by the rules", to me AoS is a game for people who simultaneously want freedom but also have to be told they're allowed to have freedom because they are restrained by the rules.
A large part of the reason I don't like AoS is because I was never restrained by the rules before, if I had an idea for an army that I thought was cool but was illegal, I just built it anyway. I could frequently talk my opponents in to letting me play with it, and if they weren't happy doing that I could usually pare it back to something that was legal but less points. Probably around half my armies for Epic40k, WH40k and WHFB aren't legal the way I intended them to be.
But despite not being constrained by the WHFB rules, they created the structure for when it was needed (pick up games, games where you didn't want to spend time beforehand negotiating the particulars of the game, games that you wanted to be more competitive rather than narrative, or the times when you and your opponent can't come to an agreement you can just fall back on the rules as written *cough* I mean when you're playing "that guy" ).
Evoking the concept of a person with whom I personally would rather not play a game of toy soldiers is hardly conjuring "extreme" negativity. And to the extent that the connotation is negative, well ... yeah, that is in fact the point. I don't want to play toy soldiers with someone who is only restrained by (their interpretation of) RAW. There are games that assume that approach and I don't play them because I don't want to play with (read: against) people attracted to that mindset.*
Rules are designed. They express a point of view. They are intentional. Mechanics are meant to achieve certain goals. For example, points-based list building is intended to restrict the players' options. Boundaries can be really fun; list building is pretty much a mini-game in itself. It can be very satisfying to puzzle over writing an efficient list. This isn't a coincidence; it's what the designer(s) intended. The challenge is to make the best use of every single point. Other considerations, such as whether you like the model or whether the list makes any kind of narrative sense, are ancillary as a matter of design. Those considerations may be important to a given player but they are external to the design of the game.
For that reason, I don't understand why anyone would bring an illegal list to the LGS. The points stand in for an assumption of mutual consent. If your list is legal, I should be willing to play against it as a matter of being willing to play the game at all. That's the logic of pick up play. Take that a step further, in the tournament context, and it becomes "if the list is legal, I cannot refuse to play it without disqualifying myself." This is just to demonstrate the huge emphasis the points mechanic places on "legality," the concept of faithfully applying the rules as written. In this style of game design, the rules are meant to restrain the players. And despite half-assed references to "fun being the most important thing" (whose definition of fun?), this design encourages players to play right up to the rules.
* This is my feeling about miniatures gaming. I feel the opposite about wargaming. Even so, my wargame of choice is ASL; a scenario-based game with (basically) no list building.
I preferred 8th Edition, the End Times (barring the Archaon Unbound and Battalion rules) were fantastic as well. As much as you can run whatever you want now for thematic armies, the complete lack of character customization outside of one or two weapon choices on a model really kills so much of the fun of making an army.
However, the game is fun and I like it for what it is. On the few occasions that I do play it we use the battle-plans in the "big rulebook" and agree to rough wound limits, the removal of the "silly" rules, toning down summoning if necessary (though the battle-plans often do a good job of this on their own) and make sure to play properly with mission rules and percentages in play. The games are always fun and usually fairly close as the sudden death victory conditions can be smartly achieved by different armies.
It's not the best game system in the world by any stretch and I prefer 8th Edition rules, narrative, setting, characters, customization, etc, but I still like it and have lots of fun whenever I play.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I think a huge factor in whether you enjoy Age of Sigmar or not is how your community is as Manchu pointed out, and this is not saying "good community" versus "bad community". Those looking for fully balanced competitive games will have to adopt house rules and third party systems to really enjoy it. The more casual crowd will have an easier time getting by but still have to be careful not to pull a "I want to field all eight of my Bloodthirsters" on an unprepared opponent, no matter how thematic it might be.
Caederes wrote: this is not saying "good community" versus "bad community"
Strong point. What I want from a game is the guideline for with whom I want to play, that's all. In this context, "that guy" is someone who begins and ends with RAW. It's no coincidence that four pages of rules strikes critics of AoS as a flaw rather than a feature. The larger example is, of course, the unforgivable absence of points-based list building. In fact, most of the criticisms of AoS that I have seen focus on what it is supposedly missing rather than what it is.
My sympathy for AoS is probably rooted in my experience with RPGs. I hate playing RPGs in the legalistic RAW-style and there are many RPGs written with exactly that kind of play in mind, including some of the most prolific. To me, that approach entirely misses the point. I prefer game premised on guidelines, where the gameplay itself is a matter of rulings. While a rule is a universal imperative to be applied or executed whenever it is triggered, a ruling is a judgment call that makes the most sense in a certain circumstance. I think AoS is intentionally designed to be played in this spirit.
I definitely agree that AoS is more suited to an RPG style of play. It's just a shame they didn't incorporate more RPG elements (a la Mordheim) and really go for it that way! They've left it up to players to fill in the blanks, which again RPG players are good at doing, but isn't something usually needed in a wargame.
I also think AoS lends itself better to smaller scale games, another positive for approaching it like an RPG. If they had elements of gaining experience / etc for your warband, that also could have been really cool
RiTides wrote: I definitely agree that AoS is more suited to an RPG style of play. It's just a shame they didn't incorporate more RPG elements (a la Mordheim) and really go for it that way! They've left it up to players to fill in the blanks, which again RPG players are good at doing, but isn't something usually needed in a wargame.
I also think AoS lends itself better to smaller scale games, another positive for approaching it like an RPG. If they had elements of gaining experience / etc for your warband, that also could have been really cool
I would concur completely about adding more mordheim feel, this game could have/should have been soo much better, there were so many missed opportunities here its mind boggling.
Manchu wrote: Evoking the concept of a person with whom I personally would rather not play a game of toy soldiers is hardly conjuring "extreme" negativity. And to the extent that the connotation is negative, well ... yeah, that is in fact the point. I don't want to play toy soldiers with someone who is only restrained by (their interpretation of) RAW. There are games that assume that approach and I don't play them because I don't want to play with (read: against) people attracted to that mindset.*
So you simply equate "person I do not want to play against for reasons" as "that guy". I think intelligent civilised conversation should avoid labelling large swathes of people as jerks. But that's just me.
Rules are designed. They express a point of view. They are intentional. Mechanics are meant to achieve certain goals. For example, points-based list building is intended to restrict the players' options. Boundaries can be really fun; list building is pretty much a mini-game in itself. It can be very satisfying to puzzle over writing an efficient list. This isn't a coincidence; it's what the designer(s) intended. The challenge is to make the best use of every single point. Other considerations, such as whether you like the model or whether the list makes any kind of narrative sense, are ancillary as a matter of design. Those considerations may be important to a given player but they are external to the design of the game.
For that reason, I don't understand why anyone would bring an illegal list to the LGS. The points stand in for an assumption of mutual consent. If your list is legal, I should be willing to play against it as a matter of being willing to play the game at all. That's the logic of pick up play. Take that a step further, in the tournament context, and it becomes "if the list is legal, I cannot refuse to play it without disqualifying myself." This is just to demonstrate the huge emphasis the points mechanic places on "legality," the concept of faithfully applying the rules as written. In this style of game design, the rules are meant to restrain the players. And despite half-assed references to "fun being the most important thing" (whose definition of fun?), this design encourages players to play right up to the rules.
You sure come across as someone overly restrained by the rules.
Yes of course rules express a point of view. But they only impress that point of view if you and the people you play with are too narrow minded to see outside the box.
You don't understand why anyone would bring an illegal list to the LGS.... I don't understand why anyone would limit themselves to a legal list if what they want to play isn't legal. The trick is to not be a jerk ("that guy" if we want to use the vernacular) about it AND don't assume someone you don't agree with is a jerk for no other reason than they don't agree with you.
Maybe I'm lucky that I started WHFB when I was young enough and creative enough to see it as a sandbox to do what I wanted to do rather than a rigid structure I must follow.... but it sure seems to me like a lot of the praise AoS gets for being free and open comes from people who must have been too narrow minded to see WHFB could be as free and as open as you wanted it to be.
The structure was always there as a fall back for the times when you don't feel like negotiating something out of the ordinary with someone you don't know (given you said you have little interest in pick up games that shouldn't have affected you) or times you couldn't agree with someone (and having a "that guy" present is not a prerequisite for disagreement, some of my best friends and best gaming mates were the ones I disagreed with the most on game balance issues, I'd typically just concede and play how they wanted to play and use the outcome as a springboard on how to balance the next game).
I mean, don't get me wrong, probably 50-75% of the games I played of WHFB were RAW legal, mostly because I did tend to play pick up games more than anything (though even pick up games I often negotiated to play something not RAW), when gaming among friends we were not RAW more often than we were (usually screwing around with army construction, points values we didn't think were fair and some core rules we didn't like).
I completely disagree that AoS should be more like Mordheim. As Bottle mentioned in the OP, one of the great and largely overlooked strength's of AoS's design is how it scales. Mordheim's design is extremely scale reductive; it's a paragon skirmish campaign game. This makes no sense for AoS as either a fantasy battles game or as one of GW's major product lines.
And although I also disagree that Mordheim has anything to do with RPGs, I was just using the example of RPGs to contrast rules against rulings. In terms of a design that emphasizes execution of rules, writing illegal lists makes no sense because the points system mechanic is the basis of good faith play. Your would-be opponents have no interest in you breaking the rules. The perceived strength of this design perspective is that consent to the fairness of the game is implicit in the rules themselves.
AoS is designed from an entirely different paradigm. The rules of AoS do not establish the parameters of what is fair; the design assumes the players will come to their own understanding (like the classic D&D group would). This isn't asking all that much. We managed it as kids on the playground, after all. Now I will be (have been) the first to concede this makes AoS unsuited to pick-up gaming.
Experience with miniatures games, much less the point system mechanic, is not required to have a sense of what is fair or, for that matter, what is fun.
thekingofkings wrote: my experience is that AoS scales quite badly, especially with the mish mash combat system, the bigger the fight, the poorer AoS handles it.
In my experience bigger AoS battles work really well. And when both sides have support units in the back, hard hitting monsters, elite troops, sorcerers, etc, suddenly it's not about making everybody run straight and fight anymore. You try to send your faster units around to pick up artillery and wizards, and, as a reaction to that, you build defensive lines trying to prevent it. On larger scales, the alternated combat mechanic is way more in depth and require careful choices and mind games with your opponent.
thekingofkings wrote: my experience is that AoS scales quite badly, especially with the mish mash combat system, the bigger the fight, the poorer AoS handles it.
In my experience bigger AoS battles work really well. And when both sides have support units in the back, hard hitting monsters, elite troops, sorcerers, etc, suddenly it's not about making everybody run straight and fight anymore. You try to send your faster units around to pick up artillery and wizards, and, as a reaction to that, you build defensive lines trying to prevent it. On larger scales, the alternated combat mechanic is way more in depth and require careful choices and mind games with your opponent.
all we got was frustrated with the masses of models all mixed in, the alternating mechanic as it is written in AoS performed abysmally, especially when the model count hit about 450+ per side. This game for us( sounds like your experience was different) was absolute rubbish at 1000+ models. the game bogged fast and was just a mess. we saw no depth, just poorly conceived mechanic. IMO the initiative system worked alot better than this. Chronopia had a much better model of alternating as well.
Manchu wrote: Experience with miniatures games, much less the point system mechanic, is not required to have a sense of what is fair or, for that matter, what is fun.
Experience is helpful if you don't want to do it via trial and error. As for what's fun, that's subjective. I'm sure some crazy kids could find the quest for a balanced game given no inherent balancing mechanism a fun endeavour.
I didn't play a pointed game of anything until I started back in the hobby in 2011.
Before that, I had 8 years or so of Buy it, Build it, Play it and we had tons of fun (casual and at the local GW).
I can see some people worrying that their pick up games might be affected by the Eyeball It In nature of AoS, but do they never play the same person twice at their LGS? Ever?
AoS provides rules for movement and combat, plus a wide selection of unit types, and leaves the scenario design -- including balance -- up to the players.
Plenty of games are like this, though in historicals you usually create your army on its historical original, rather than picking units from different armies.
However I think most AoS players will build an army from one 'race' or faction, which is more or less the same thing.
At any rate, that is the game and there isn't anything fundamentally wrong with it. If you're looking for a tightly balanced game with points values and army lists, you have come to the wrong shop.
In regard of scaling, there's no doubt that in any game, as you add more types of units, and larger numbers of units, there are more possible combinations, which gives you more interesting tactical decisions.
The draw back is that the game takes longer to play. Ultimately the added complication can become a diminishing return. IMO40K reached that point by added Flyers. It partly depends on the space and time available.
In Achtung Schweinehunde! (Harry Pearson) there is a brilliant story of a group of Napoleonic officers who, while on leave, built and painted a large model castle and toy soldiers and had a narrative siege game that went on for days.
It's rare that we have the time for such elaborate games, so rules for larger battles usually have mechanisms to reduce the amount of processing players have to do to operate the game. For example, the figures are mounted in blocks so they don't have to be moved one by one. The combat process might use a look-up table or a multiplication factor to reduce the amount of dice rolling.
In this respect, it seems to me that AoS won't scale well. If you have 10 figures in a fight, you have to roll 10 To Hit dice. If you have 50 figures in a fight, you have to roll 50 To Hit dice (possibly more, if any of the troops get bonus attacks for being en masse.
As you add more units to the fight, you are presented with more decisions about what order to activate units. This will add to the time needed. The 50 figure fight involving six or eight units might take five and a half or six times longer than the 10 figure fight with only two units.
Obviously if you want to play really large scenarios, that is something you accept, and as long as it's fun, why worry?
Kilkrazy wrote: Obviously if you want to play really large scenarios, that is something you accept, and as long as it's fun, why worry?
Obviously because sometimes tedium starts to override fun. It's why I played about 2 big games with my Tyranids and then never again, they ceased being fun.
thekingofkings wrote: my experience is that AoS scales quite badly, especially with the mish mash combat system, the bigger the fight, the poorer AoS handles it.
My thoughts exactly.
I loved the 40K look of large IG infantry armies. But moving them is a chore. Placing them to benefit from cover is another one. Deciding who gets to strike, etc. is another one. That's part of the reason I've almost left 40K for good.
In AoS you have rules encouraging you to take large blobs (like spear skellies) and again moving, knowing who gets to strike etc. is another one.
There's a point in which looks take a backseat to practicality.
Kilkrazy wrote: Obviously if you want to play really large scenarios, that is something you accept, and as long as it's fun, why worry?
Obviously because sometimes tedium starts to override fun. It's why I played about 2 big games with my Tyranids and then never again, they ceased being fun.
When it stops being fun you stop, and decide not to repeat the experiment until a bank holiday weekend. That doesn't invalidate the experience of people who do have fun playing 1,000 figures a side using AoS.
I've spent bank holiday weekends playing massive WW1 naval battles like Jutland. There aren't any shortcuts in this, because a ship is a ship and has to be manoeuvred and fought separately. Not everyone would enjoy it.
Kilkrazy wrote: Obviously if you want to play really large scenarios, that is something you accept, and as long as it's fun, why worry?
Obviously because sometimes tedium starts to override fun. It's why I played about 2 big games with my Tyranids and then never again, they ceased being fun.
When it stops being fun you stop, and decide not to repeat the experiment until a bank holiday weekend. That doesn't invalidate the experience of people who do have fun playing 1,000 figures a side using AoS.
I've spent bank holiday weekends playing massive WW1 naval battles like Jutland. There aren't any shortcuts in this, because a ship is a ship and has to be manoeuvred and fought separately. Not everyone would enjoy it.
Of course, it's subjective, but being subjective doesn't invalidate it as a point. One of the things I liked about WHFB was having 100 models lined up but only a few "entities" to move around. The aesthetic of 20 dudes facing off against 20 other dudes just doesn't inspire me.... meanwhile the prospect of spending 20 hours playing a single game also doesn't inspire me.
There's a reason many people lament the loss of Epic 40k, some of us liked the large scale game without the hassle that large scale 28mm 40k comes with.
My main game is KoW, but I hold the opinion that AoS was a huge missed opportunity to create a high quality fantasy skirmish game. I played a demo game of it and just wasn't impressed.
All they needed to do was adapt the excellent LotR SBG rules, actually bother to create a points system and it would have been perfect.
hobojebus wrote: Pretty sure they can't use lotr for licensing reasons.
I thought I read they had renewed the LotR license exclusively to block other miniature manufacturer from getting their hands in a well-known IP?
No I mean they can't use that system for their own games because it's linked to lotr which is a IP they don't own, that combat system will only be useable for that game.
No I mean they can't use that system for their own games because it's linked to lotr which is a IP they don't own, that combat system will only be useable for that game.
Sorry but that's BS.
Both X-wing and ST-Attack wing are based on the same system, developed by two independent companies (and in turn based heavily off wings of glory, which uses basically the same system on a generic WWI and WW2 setting).
The game mechanics are totally independent of the setting. GW could perfectly release a Warhammer New Dawn (or whatever fancy name they came up with) based on WotR mechanics.
hobojebus wrote: Pretty sure they can't use lotr for licensing reasons.
I thought I read they had renewed the LotR license exclusively to block other miniature manufacturer from getting their hands in a well-known IP?
No I mean they can't use that system for their own games because it's linked to lotr which is a IP they don't own, that combat system will only be useable for that game.
Considering the LotR mechanic was used for warhammer historical skirmish games for Pirates, cowboys n whatnot............are you sure about that?
Kilkrazy wrote: Obviously if you want to play really large scenarios, that is something you accept, and as long as it's fun, why worry?
Obviously because sometimes tedium starts to override fun. It's why I played about 2 big games with my Tyranids and then never again, they ceased being fun.
When it stops being fun you stop, and decide not to repeat the experiment until a bank holiday weekend. That doesn't invalidate the experience of people who do have fun playing 1,000 figures a side using AoS.
I've spent bank holiday weekends playing massive WW1 naval battles like Jutland. There aren't any shortcuts in this, because a ship is a ship and has to be manoeuvred and fought separately. Not everyone would enjoy it.
Of course, it's subjective, but being subjective doesn't invalidate it as a point. One of the things I liked about WHFB was having 100 models lined up but only a few "entities" to move around. The aesthetic of 20 dudes facing off against 20 other dudes just doesn't inspire me.... meanwhile the prospect of spending 20 hours playing a single game also doesn't inspire me.
There's a reason many people lament the loss of Epic 40k, some of us liked the large scale game without the hassle that large scale 28mm 40k comes with.
Being subjective means it's only a valid point for you.
AoS isn't designed as a mass battle system, it doesn't scale up to mass battles very well, but if people enjoy such battles anyway, you won't stop them by saying that you don't enjoy such battles.
Kilkrazy wrote: AoS isn't designed as a mass battle system, it doesn't scale up to mass battles very well, but if people enjoy such battles anyway, you won't stop them by saying that you don't enjoy such battles.
Since there are warscroll battalions built upon other warscroll battalions, specific bonus rules for having 20+, 30+, and 40+ models within a unit, and no limit to the maximum size of your units, I do think AoS was designed, for better or worse, for people who want to play AoS as "massed battles."
Keep in mind that mass battles games tend to deal with units in the strict sense of formation. So hundreds of miniatures can end up counting for just a dozen or so "game pieces." The idea of playing AoS with thousands of miniatures strikes me as severely misguided, especially when deployed as an argument against the game's design.
Manchu wrote: Keep in mind that mass battles games tend to deal with units in the strict sense of formation. So hundreds of miniatures can end up counting for just a dozen or so "game pieces." The idea of playing AoS with thousands of miniatures strikes me as severely misguided, especially when deployed as an argument against the game's design.
I see your point but to be fair all of the games I played have actually been with a large model count and we find, kind of like infantry in hordes, that the body count rises quickly and you very very soon, probably by turn two, have much less models on your side .
Kilkrazy wrote: AoS isn't designed as a mass battle system, it doesn't scale up to mass battles very well, but if people enjoy such battles anyway, you won't stop them by saying that you don't enjoy such battles.
Since there are warscroll battalions built upon other warscroll battalions, specific bonus rules for having 20+, 30+, and 40+ models within a unit, and no limit to the maximum size of your units, I do think AoS was designed, for better or worse, for people who want to play AoS as "massed battles."
People wanting to play mass battles with it is not the same as it being a mass battle system. That's just writing in some bonuses for making big units. It actually makes things worse for mass battle, because you have to keep counting the figures in a unit and referring to their special rules. More importantly, you still have to move every figure and roll every shot individually.
Whatever constitutes 'large model count' is relative to a particular design. A big game of Hail Caesar is going to be much, much bigger than a big game of SBG in terms of model count. (And the game of SBG may even so take longer to play.) There may be some who enjoy playing SBG with as many models as you might see in a big HC battle but that is hardly a reasonable method for evaluating the design of SBG. Looking to the accumulated deposit of miniatures gaming wisdom, what folks have done in the past to accommodate significant stress on a design is draft scenario rules. This is easier to accomplish with designs that do not emphasize out-of-the-box precision (independently of whether they achieve it). It's hard to imagine that anyone needed to actually run "RAWAoS" (in quotation marks because it is an ironic phrase too often used unironically) with a thousand and more models in order to discover that it plays a bit rough.
I've spent bank holiday weekends playing massive WW1 naval battles like Jutland. There aren't any shortcuts in this, because a ship is a ship and has to be manoeuvred and fought separately. Not everyone would enjoy it.
Of course there are shortcuts/abstractions if you so desire, ships no more have to be manoeuvred and fought separately than men, squads, companies, battalions, brigades, divisions, corps or armies. Same with tanks and all the upward formations, or aircraft etc. It all depends on the level of detail/abstraction you want vs time/playability.
Justand was, what, something like 150+ UK ships vs ~100 germans ships. That would be a large and probably long game. However, formations that tended to stick together and operate in unison were as common in such a large naval action of the age as they are in any land battle. Most ships of the era were organised into divisions of about 3-5 ships of similar type, so you could probably play a ~40 vs ~25 battle instead at division level. Much smaller and more manageable.
Not much difference to say Prokhorovka, do you play 100s of individual tanks, or take it up a level or two so that you only have a few dozen armor units etc.
To be fair, in naval games that big you generally group destroyers into flotillas, and don't track the damage to individual ships. That's because the Grand Fleet had over 100 destroyers and light cruisers present, the models are about the size of an inch cut from a thin knitting needle, and you're playing on the floor of a hall 40 feet wide and 100 long. But you play all the capital ships individually because that is the point of playing such a large game. One of the factors to take into account is possible collisions during formation manoeuvres.
AoS is only a problem if you where an invested 8th player and spent money on end times books. Though all those books can still be played. I personal was not an 8th player and I like AoS very much.
Kilkrazy wrote: But you play all the capital ships individually because that is the point of playing such a large game.
Emphasis added. Maybe folks are missing this? People who invest the time, effort, and money into organizing such a spectacle are hardly likely to complain that it takes too long to play. At the same time, the organizers also tend to figure out ways to streamline what can be streamlined including which rule set they use. For example, I'd love to play more huge Star Wars space battles. But IME the X-Wing rules are not a great fit. They don't scale too well in either direction. Even more importantly, the design is not conducive to tinkering.
Manchu wrote: Keep in mind that mass battles games tend to deal with units in the strict sense of formation. So hundreds of miniatures can end up counting for just a dozen or so "game pieces." The idea of playing AoS with thousands of miniatures strikes me as severely misguided, especially when deployed as an argument against the game's design.
I tend to think of "mass battles" as using lots of "game pieces." In that sense, I think playing AoS with hundreds of game pieces was considered part of the game design. From my experience, those type of AoS games are playable within 3 hours max. "Mass battles" in the sense of big blocks of rigid formation representing thousands of people, of course AoS is not that type of game imo. When i want to play games representing thousands of men, I switch back to Fantasy Battle rules.
Kilkrazy wrote: AoS isn't designed as a mass battle system, it doesn't scale up to mass battles very well, but if people enjoy such battles anyway, you won't stop them by saying that you don't enjoy such battles.
Since there are warscroll battalions built upon other warscroll battalions, specific bonus rules for having 20+, 30+, and 40+ models within a unit, and no limit to the maximum size of your units, I do think AoS was designed, for better or worse, for people who want to play AoS as "massed battles."
People wanting to play mass battles with it is not the same as it being a mass battle system. That's just writing in some bonuses for making big units. It actually makes things worse for mass battle, because you have to keep counting the figures in a unit and referring to their special rules. More importantly, you still have to move every figure and roll every shot individually.
"That's just writing in some bonuses" should be more appropriately stated as GW "writing in many bonuses" for using many miniatures . About your last two sentences, that would be an issue of all Games Workshop 25-28mm mass battle games. I think Warhammer Fantasy would be consider in the traditional sense "a massed battle game." As for moving every figure individually in AoS...in my games with AoS in which I have used hundreds of models (the most being ~400 versus ~600 models), the purpose of having large units is not to move every single model to get every single attack in, but to hold positions and deny maneuverability of opponents. Putting large units in AoS on movement trays saves a lot of time. I can see of course, anyone trying to play AoS with hundreds of models (or other 28mm war games) by moving them individually would not find it fun .
Right "mass of miniatures" is just a matter of model count but "mass battles" tends to mean a game in which a single model stands in for many soldiers and where soldiers operate in formations. Even so, mass battles games can entail a huge number of models but of course they only function together as game pieces. You could very well have 100 models representing a single game piece in a mass battles game. As far as I know, the scale of AoS is 1:1. Each soldier represents a character even if most of them are what you might call extras. Each model is a game piece. Design-wise, the only problem with that is if the game pieces have no potential impact on gameplay. But that's not the case. Even if a bunch of models get wiped out before doing anything, it's not like they couldn't have done anything.
To be fair, in naval games that big you generally group destroyers into flotillas, and don't track the damage to individual ships. That's because the Grand Fleet had over 100 destroyers and light cruisers present, the models are about the size of an inch cut from a thin knitting needle, and you're playing on the floor of a hall 40 feet wide and 100 long. But you play all the capital ships individually because that is the point of playing such a large game. One of the factors to take into account is possible collisions during formation manoeuvres.
As manchu said above, if that is what you want then that is what you want. But the same argument means that AoS is as good as big battles as any other game - if that sort of level of individual elements and control of such is your sort of thing.
This reminds me of Blucher (Sam Mustafa Napoleonic game). There are a couple of people in my local group who are not really keen on it as, for them, Napoleonics are about lines, column and squares etc. Blucher plays at a level higher than that, where those low level formations are assumed to be dealt with by the brigade commanders and not you. However, blucher allows large napoleonic battles to be fought relatively easily and quickly and with an emphasis on being a higher level commander working to a higher level plan and orders.
So in Jutland you do not have to worry about moving ships in formation and worrying about collisions, your division commanders and ship captains will worry about that, you just direct which division should be doing what and leave low level decisions to those best placed to organise.
Not to say either is the best or worst way. It all comes down to what you want, either from a playability/time perspective, or even just a visual perspective of seeing lots of minis across a gym floor or more a birds eye view of divisional bases on a tabletop.
Kilkrazy wrote: Being subjective means it's only a valid point for you.
I'm sure it's valid for a lot of people. I know I'm not the only one who finds games that take a very long time to play tedious. Subjective or not it's still a valid reply to what I was replying to, which was....
Kilkrazy wrote: Obviously if you want to play really large scenarios, that is something you accept, and as long as it's fun, why worry?
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Manchu wrote: People who invest the time, effort, and money into organizing such a spectacle are hardly likely to complain that it takes too long to play.
Depends on the person I guess. I've invested the time, money and effort in to creating games that are spectacles.... I don't like it when they take too long to play.
I like the spectacle of a large game as much as the next guy, doesn't mean I enjoy the part where we go "Ok, lets spend the next hour moving each model individually to represent a single movement phase!"
That's, like, half the point of a regiment based game
akai wrote: I think Warhammer Fantasy would be consider in the traditional sense "a massed battle game."
Warhammer Fantasy was never intended to be a mass battles games - but over the editions, a much smaller scale game, such as in 3rd, when regiments were ~10 figures, expanded to the deathstars of 80 figures by 8th edition. Individual model stats and individual casualty removal put it on the opposite end of the spectrum of a "mass battle" game.
akai wrote: I think Warhammer Fantasy would be consider in the traditional sense "a massed battle game."
Warhammer Fantasy was never intended to be a mass battles games - but over the editions, a much smaller scale game, such as in 3rd, when regiments were ~10 figures, expanded to the deathstars of 80 figures by 8th edition. Individual model stats and individual casualty removal put it on the opposite end of the spectrum of a "mass battle" game.
Yeah, that's one of the things that I believe led to the demise of 8th edition. Honestly 6th edition was the sweet spot with regiments of 20 human sized soldiers being perfectly viable, combined with the regiment kits for $20-$25 made army building simple. That was most likely the peak in popularity and sales, but the price gauging and horde obsession sank that ship.
I thought we established AoS was in fact intended as a mass battle game and everyone here was just playing it wrong from the creators point of view thanks to that blog post from a GW employee who was trying to point out people's misconceptions about the game?
jonolikespie wrote: I thought we established AoS was in fact intended as a mass battle game and everyone here was just playing it wrong from the creators point of view thanks to that blog post from a GW employee who was trying to point out people's misconceptions about the game?
No no, someone once ran a tournament with it. Therefore it's 100% supposed to be a tournament game, right?
akai wrote: I think Warhammer Fantasy would be consider in the traditional sense "a massed battle game."
Warhammer Fantasy was never intended to be a mass battles games - but over the editions, a much smaller scale game, such as in 3rd, when regiments were ~10 figures, expanded to the deathstars of 80 figures by 8th edition. Individual model stats and individual casualty removal put it on the opposite end of the spectrum of a "mass battle" game.
I guess I should clarify that when I wrote "traditional sense 'a massed battle game" I was referring to WFB use of each game piece to represent more than just one soldier.
AoS 1:1 scale it seems
WFB 1:20 or some other ratio that is not 1:1
Both games have rules to allow the use of "massed amount of miniatures"
Traditionally, skirmish rules count each figure as an individual soldier who moves and fights by himself in very small battles (skirmishes) with usually 10 to 20 figures per side. There is usually a lot of detail, with individual weapon and armour loads, skills, and often the ability to kneel, lie down, climb trees and so on, for advantages. The ultimate format of this is role-playing games.
Mass battle rules count each figure as a multiple, typically 20 up to 100 men per figure, and these large units move and fight in formations. (Because that is how people move and fight in real battles.) A lot of detail is abstracted because individual differences are unimportant and impossible to deal with when you have hundreds or thousands of men involved. You can take a large scale game and play it at different sizes for larger or smaller engagements, but generally you are simulating combats involving hundreds to thousands of men per side.
Mass battle rules don't necessarily make for big, long games. De Bellis Antiquitatis, for example, is designed as a fast play system. While each army represents an army that might be 5,000 or 50,000 strong, they are all abstracted to a standard 12 elements. This enables you to play a game quickly in a small area, and play more games in the course of an evening or tournament day.
Equally, you can take a skirmish game and keep adding more figures until you get closer to the size of a battle, but of course it will take lomnger and longer to play.
I don't remember WHFB ever being defined as a 20:1 ratio mass battle game. Of course you can assume that is what's happening, though the use of initiative to determine the order of combat seems more like a skirmish rule. IRL you don't get the situation where 600 men hit their 500 opponents before a single one of the 500 can attack back.
40K and AoS are what I call mass skirmish. They use more figures than a traditional skirmish game, with a similar amount of detail per figure, but organise a lot of the figures into loose units that must maintain coherency. This seems like a hybrid of the two ideas of skirmish and mass battle.
Yeah that 1:20 ratio thing was just the answer to questions like "why does the Empire army defending Altdorf only consist of 200 men?", "well, just imagine that each of your models represents 100 men instead!"
There was nothing in the rules that suggested the models were worth more than 1 man in my opinion.
In 4th or 5th edition, I can't remember which, there was part of the rulebook that spoke to scale and mentioned that 1 man could be 1 man, 10 men, 20 men, 100 men, etc. It was not a hard fast rule. It was just a blurb. But it was taken as concrete by much of the community. This was also referenced in white dwarf articles once in a while when discussing scales. Bear in mind we're talking back in the 1990s the last time I can remember GW talking scale.
auticus wrote: In 4th or 5th edition, I can't remember which, there was part of the rulebook that spoke to scale and mentioned that 1 man could be 1 man, 10 men, 20 men, 100 men, etc. It was not a hard fast rule. It was just a blurb. But it was taken as concrete by much of the community. This was also referenced in white dwarf articles once in a while when discussing scales. Bear in mind we're talking back in the 1990s the last time I can remember GW talking scale.
I can confirm that at least 5th Edition WFB rulebook discusses scale as you have recounted, in appendix 2:
"In Warhammer each model represents a single warrior, monster, machine or whatever, whilst an inch on the tabletop is equivalent to about five feet in real life - the same as the scale height of the models themselves.
Players might correctly point out that in the real world a bowman can shoot an arrow well over 200 yards rather than the paltry 40 yards or so represented by the weapon's maximum Warhammer range of 24". The reason is that we have reduced all measured distances to produce a playable tabletop game. The game's designers reduced distances roughly in the proportion of 1" equals 10 yards, so a bow with a range of 24" is judged to have an effective range of 240 yards. The alternative is to allow the bow a range of 144" and fight all battles in a car park!
A similar observation could be made about the number of models comprising a regiment of troops. It would be impractical though not actually impossible to field regiments comprising hundreds of models, so battles are represented using fewer troops than a literalist might demand. The ten or twenty models in a game unit stand for a regiment of several hundred troops, and for this reason regiments manoeuvre and react as if they were larger formations. As both sides field regiments reduced in size, the relative values are preserved and the results amount to the same thing. To put it another way, if 10 Elves can beat 10 Goblins then 100 Elves can beat 100 Goblins just as convincingly!"
Kilkrazy wrote: Mass battle rules count each figure as a multiple...
I don't think I've ever heard "mass battle" being defined, and googling doesn't bring up any specific definition.
I've always just heard "mass battle" in the context of "a lot of models" or "large scale battles" or even just "not skirmish". When Bolt Action released optional rules for what they called "mass battle" they simply meant bigger games, nothing about single figures counting as multiples.
I've heard WHFB called a mass battle game vs 40k simply because even though individual models have profiles in WHFB, they are essentially wound and rank counters for a single entity so you can have a bunch of models without running in to the time consuming issues 40k has.
As far as I can see there is no specific definition for "mass battle" and we don't really need one as context is typically enough to figure out what people meant.
Idiosyncratic usage abounds. But KK's post reflects my own understanding and experience, as well. Reading "Bolt Action" and "mass battles" together strikes me as bizarre and disinformative. Whoever at WLG that strung that together was certainly playing fast and loose.
Manchu wrote: Reading "Bolt Action" and "mass battles" together strikes me as bizarre and disinformative. Whoever at WLG that strung that together was certainly playing fast and loose.
Well the rules are from Alessio Cavatore, I don't know if he wrote the article that contains them though.
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Kilkrazy wrote: Mass combat is often used to refer to large scale battle games.
There needs to be some distinction between how we refer to skirmish and battle rules because there is a difference between the rules themselves.
I don't think we need to define specific terms that are in widespread use but don't already have widespread specific definitions. Context is usually enough, if you mean something more specific then other terms like "platoon level", "company level", "battallion level", "brigade level" or just flat out stating "50-100 models".
and I can understand why. But in the end, this results in myself and other moving on even more, since the traditional areas to discuss fantasy (at least on Dakka) are dedicated to 
. Among whom, regarding 
and the one whose posts originally got me really invested in fantasy gaming.
).
