The intention of this thread is not to air grievances or hates of AoS, but rather to be a spot where people can be encouraged to ask questions that give them pause in starting AoS. This might be understanding the lore a bit better; or the way the grand alliances work or which armies are good to take or how to use endless spells etc....
So use it as an opportunity to ask questions and find answers so that you can get into the Age of Sigmar fantasy game
I was getting out of fantasy when their world died, got into 40k; kept my Bret and dark elves partially, plan to strip and add some pieces to make them usable at some point, but there is just too much 40k and commissions for me to paint to get there anytime soon.
For me I am not playing Age of Sigmar is because of my depression. The new edition helped, I was able to buy the minis but just don't feel like going out. Now I am having a hard time putting them together.
Nothing about the game is wrong, just not finding any fun right now.
Davor wrote: For me I am not playing Age of Sigmar is because of my depression. The new edition helped, I was able to buy the minis but just don't feel like going out. Now I am having a hard time putting them together.
Nothing about the game is wrong, just not finding any fun right now.
I know what that is like :( it is extraordinarily difficult to manage, more than many realize.
I'll be honest, I'd like a Kill Team-like product for AOS. Love the models and the game system, but don't like big games. Skirmish was a half measure that didn't work very well, in my opinion. A Dreadhold Killzone would make me pee myself in joy. I'm worried that they won't do it because it might interfere with Shadespire/Nightvault (which I do play and enjoy).
Hard to find the time to put everything together and coordinate with others.
I also have a problem with SCE. The army simply doesn't motivate me to play it. I thought about putting some old elves together as I find motivation to paint their miniatures. Painted army is far nicer to see on the table than half grey with some naked gold. However the rules make me sad when I think about their state.
An update to Skirmish or AoS kill team would be awesome!
1) I've never had a plethora of Warhammer Fantasy models. I had the Warhammer Online Orc/Goblin hero and a box of Chaos Hounds to use for Kroot Hounds.
2) I've always had a hard time picking a first faction for Fantasy (and I started looking back when Beasts of Chaos could take Daemons and Mortals in their army). By the time I was ready to jump in, End Times was done, AoS started, and no one was playing.
3) Because of the AoS deployment plan, the army I DID want to run was almost non-existant in terms of getting the models for. That much will be changing soon, though.
4) One of the last GWFAQs for 40K 7th Edition really pissed me off when it comes to their rules-writing. AoS is simpler, so not as prone to cross-eyed rules, but I'm still wary.
5) I am currently unemployed, and can only seem to get underemployed jobs with people who will hire anyone, but not respect them. I can sometimes sell models to trade, but what I have from other games are of little interest in general.
I don't know if these still exist in the latest edition of AoS but when I looked at AoS before the armies books all had 40ks 7th ed formations in the back of them. Formations are the single worst thing about 7th. I was pretty disgusted they made it into AoS. I don't want anything to do with them.
I do play it now, but only since 2nd edition came out.
When the World-that-was ended, I tried the new game on launch day, found it wanting, shrugged and left. I was not desperate to play a GW game at all costs, so I looked around and found other games, primarily KoW and X-wing at the time. By the time the first GHB popped up, I didn't care enough to look. Note that I was never butthurt over the death of the Old World and mass regiment battles, I supported GW's decision for a hard reset from the start. I just didn't find early AoS a satisfying game.
The announcement of a 2nd edition caught my eye, I checked how the game is now and found it had been turned into something pretty neat during the past 3 years, so I jumped in.
I see it as a powered-down version of 40k because units don't have a battleship's worth of ranged firepower each. I am having a good time winning on objectives despite losing most of my combats.
Lance845 wrote: I don't know if these still exist in the latest edition of AoS but when I looked at AoS before the armies books all had 40ks 7th ed formations in the back of them. Formations are the single worst thing about 7th. I was pretty disgusted they made it into AoS. I don't want anything to do with them.
I did not play during 7th, but to my understanding AoS battalions do not work the same way formations did.
I barely get time to play 40K (although I'm finding time for Kill Team!).
If I had more time - I'd be all over Idoneth Deepkin. Even if the presence of them and their monsters on dry land takes a bit of a mental leap, the models look bloody awesome.
I do have a question. How are the Endless Spells working out? Are they being used in casual games?
Davor wrote:For me I am not playing Age of Sigmar is because of my depression. The new edition helped, I was able to buy the minis but just don't feel like going out. Now I am having a hard time putting them together.
Nothing about the game is wrong, just not finding any fun right now.
My sympathies, depression is an utter swine and a very difficult thing to deal with. I hope that you can get some support from your doctor/psychologist or even some of the self help groups or charities out there.
Sqorgar wrote:I'll be honest, I'd like a Kill Team-like product for AOS. Love the models and the game system, but don't like big games. Skirmish was a half measure that didn't work very well, in my opinion. A Dreadhold Killzone would make me pee myself in joy. I'm worried that they won't do it because it might interfere with Shadespire/Nightvault (which I do play and enjoy).
I'd like to see them expand on Skirmish too, at present its sort of there but tacked on and isn't getting the focus that Kill Team is. That said I think you are right in that Shadspire is their skirmish style game, and I'm ok with that as it gives its own unique flavour to the experience.
Knight wrote:I also have a problem with SCE. The army simply doesn't motivate me to play it. I thought about putting some old elves together as I find motivation to paint their miniatures. Painted army is far nicer to see on the table than half grey with some naked gold. However the rules make me sad when I think about their state.
There's hope that the Aelves get some fixing up much like the Chaos Beastmen are right now - ergo combining up some of the multiple subfactions into a single functional Battletome force - plus there's two more full Aelf new factions to come (basically Angel Aelves and Devil Aelves)
Charistoph wrote:
5) I am currently unemployed, and can only seem to get underemployed jobs with people who will hire anyone, but not respect them. I can sometimes sell models to trade, but what I have from other games are of little interest in general.
Fingers crossed you can get out o the unemployment/short term job rut - its a pain today and a serious issue many suffer with.
Lance845 wrote:I don't know if these still exist in the latest edition of AoS but when I looked at AoS before the armies books all had 40ks 7th ed formations in the back of them. Formations are the single worst thing about 7th. I was pretty disgusted they made it into AoS. I don't want anything to do with them.
Battalions (formations) in AoS are very different and since the 2.0 rules dropped many people don't even make use of them. You pay points to use them and get a free command point for each one; but at the same time they are quite expensive now and quite a few can feel very limiting. So they are far more optional and there are many functional armies that don't touch them. That said they are no way near generating the hate/dislike that the 40K formations had - the idea is sound its the points being used to pay for them that I think is their current stumbling block.
Herbington wrote:I barely get time to play 40K (although I'm finding time for Kill Team!).
If I had more time - I'd be all over Idoneth Deepkin. Even if the presence of them and their monsters on dry land takes a bit of a mental leap, the models look bloody awesome.
I do have a question. How are the Endless Spells working out? Are they being used in casual games?
AoS is a much more "epic magic" world than the Old World was; in fact the old world was almost a touch closer to low-magic fantasy (indeed in the early days many of the armies were mostly rank and file regular troops with only the odd fantasy beast here and there). So Idoneth are one of those examples where when they come to the shore they bring mighty spells and the seas with them; rolling on a tide of pure magic and power.
As for Endless Spells they are proving very popular and in many areas are pretty much default include in most casual pick up games. It's a combination of the fact that buying into using them is very cheap (by this hobby's standards) as you get rules and models for less than the cost of a getting started set; plus any army can use the core set so if you've more than one army its a very good investment.
Secondly it gives a new feature that I think lets AoS stand out from the crowd; that of having spells that appear on the game board and last multiple turns; rather than spells that are only seen as dice rolls of buff/debuffs.
There is more debate on realms for maps and realm artifact use as that can get a little bit unbalanced and complicated in terms of choices; so that can be a bit more variable. But the way the Malign Sorcery is setup its basically possible to take and choose what bits to use - so you can bring along endless spells and leave all the realm stuff behind; or you can bring bits of it or all of it (plus the realm stuff is artifacts and spell tables so its all paperwork rather than models so its very easy to add or remove).
Plus GW is boosting it by giving new armies their own trio of faction specific endless spells which gives flavour to many of the factions in addition to their model line up. (although oddly both Daughters of Khaine and Idoneth don't have any and don't have any rumours of any to come as yet - odd only in that they were both built with 2.0 in mind and thus should at least have Endless spells on paper)
Personally I think Endless Spells are here to stay as a core part of the AoS experience and structure. The only issue is one or two older armies (esp the sky dwarves) have trouble dealing with the heavier use of magic, but that's more a balance issue that should be resolved at some point.
Mostly time, only get to game once a week and already have my favourites so picking up and learning a new system doesnt appeal (and its not just GW-phobia, I've skipped on stuff like Infinity and Malifaux for much the same reason)
That said might be interest to see if I can proxy some of my Circle army for Hordes into a Beasts of Chaos force
I do have around 30 of the old Minotaur's (and 2x doom Bulls) the old models that actually look like Minotaur's etc... and are metal over failcast (the bullgors are gak looking lets be honest). When the new codex drop I will buy, but the new (old now I suppose) Models are mostly failcast (now days, I have alot of the metal mins but meh..) if I want a hero and look, ok but is failcast and like gak if want to do anything with.... whats the point.
I didn't read to much thought was about new beast men. As a long time fantasy player, I find it fun and if that the current you have to play. adapt to the new always, cause otherwise never gunna progress and honestly found AOS fun.
I never got into WFB because I wasn't crazy about the blocks of some 20 minis I thought each unit would have to have and it looked rather boring.
Something about AOS drove me to it though, and I have been going back and buying the more recent WFB starter sets and other armies, blown away with what I missed out on. I think I just prefer the look and feel of the old world. I feel like I can relate to it more.
And I hate those Stormcast Eternal guys.
Not to say this wasn't the right move for GW. They needed to put their own stamp on their products, and WFB is just a ripoff of LOTR. I do think they did the right thing trashing their old world and starting over.
But I am a sucker for OOP games and I think the world they created during 6th, with Mordheim as a supplement, and various ways to play the game, is even superior to 40k, where my heart has been since Rogue Trader. But I can't say that I ever loved 40k rules. I had the most fun with 2nd. Was ok with 3rd, and from there its been a model driven hobby versus a gaming one. WFB has kicked my interest in gaming again and its a shame I missed the boat.
I know GW has brought a lot of the older minis back alongside the new ones, but I just can't get into AOS.
I have lost interest in 40k too. Maybe it has more to do with me being a product of my time I guess. I mean, flame throwers against flyers? WTF.
It's not Fantasy. It's 40K with more swords. I played Fantasy to play a different game. When the switch to AoS happened, it took away all of the reasons I played it, and there is nothing in AoS that makes me want to devote time to it, instead of just sticking with 40K.
I'm not a fan of the fantasy genre unless they're within the quasi-realistic scope or pushing into science-fantasy. I enjoy settings where its mostly historically-inspired with a dash of fantasy. AOS is mostly magical/mythical nonsense with a dash of historical flavoring. There probably a term for this - low fantasy vs high fantasy I guess?
I used to enjoy fantasy more, but I lost interest in it at some point and got that much more into science-fiction of all flavors. No idea why.
Overread wrote: There's hope that the Aelves get some fixing up much like the Chaos Beastmen are right now - ergo combining up some of the multiple subfactions into a single functional Battletome force - plus there's two more full Aelf new factions to come (basically Angel Aelves and Devil Aelves).
I know, the current rumors say that that it's likely going to be a long wait.
SirWeeble wrote:I used to enjoy fantasy more, but I lost interest in it at some point and got that much more into science-fiction of all flavors. No idea why.
I'm opposite. I love a good sci fi space opera but the last two years I'm reading and dabbling more into fantasy worlds.
kestral wrote: Can you still play with square bases these days? 'Cause I'm not ripping my figures off their bases just to try a game with them.
I also haven't been able to discern any interesting tactics that make it seem exciting.
You can, however in practice its not as ideal since the game is built with round bases in mind. That said there are several 3rd party companies that are making base attachments that can slot onto a square base to make it round - I've not used them so i don't know who to recommend, but I'm aware that they are out there in the market.
You can play with square bases officially. The rules specifically state that that is fine.
If you want to play in big events though that is not the case since the events tend to outlaw square bases and force you to base your models using the suggested base dimensions that GW put out this past summer.
Pretty much only because I'm still painting my CSM40K army that I've had since the start of 6th edition, and have a Dark Eldar army half-bought waiting in the wings for when I've finished the CSMs...
My kids are starting to get to an age where wargaming is viable though, and AoS does seem a bit simpler than 40K for a youngster to get their head round - so we'll see...
I don't have the time or money to support multiple game systems. When I got started in the early 90s it was s much more affordable. Now you spend five dollars for some of the rank and file for an army. That has lead to new people not starting in the game in my area. GW needs to make their games more affordable if they want people to play. My other problem is that AOS has broken up my orc force so I would have go acquire more models for my army.
I have a full time job, a wife, and a two year old son. My building and painting time has been cut significantly since I got married. But, I love my wife and my kid far more than any piece of plastic, so I choose to spend the time with them. Now, I could probably get an army assembled and maybe primed in plenty of time... painting, no.
Right now, I'm working on 40K Kill Teams as well my 40K Death Guard army. So, both of those are taking up all of my build/paint time.
Because they did what was IMO, tantamount to cultural vandalism by so callously throwing the Old World in the bin. No matter how good this game could get- I will never play it; as giving it any kind of support to me gives vindication to Kirby's bone-headed decision.
Grimtuff wrote: Because they did what was IMO, tantamount to cultural vandalism by so callously throwing the Old World in the bin. No matter how good this game could get- I will never play it; as giving it any kind of support to me gives vindication to Kirby's bone-headed decision.
It's ok now, Kirby's gone; he can't hurt you any more. It's ok to like new things now.
Grimtuff wrote: Because they did what was IMO, tantamount to cultural vandalism by so callously throwing the Old World in the bin. No matter how good this game could get- I will never play it; as giving it any kind of support to me gives vindication to Kirby's bone-headed decision.
It's ok now, Kirby's gone; he can't hurt you any more. It's ok to like new things now.
You asked why I'm not playing and I answered and got mocked.
Nice to see the community has not changed in any way- You're trying to foster a (relatively) new system and actively antagonizing people who give honest answers as to why because they happen to still have a deep love of WHFB. Doesn't really encourage them to come over, eh?
No close order formations.
If I wanted to play a warhammer game with squads that have 360 degree vision arcs and loose formations I'll play 40,000...which I already play.
Also, I don't like the AoS setting. It doesn't really appeal to me all that much.
1. The rules. They are far too simple with too much hand-holding. I want strategic depth and meaningful decisions, and strong elements of positioning and maneuver.
2. I'd been interested in WHFB, and the armies I would have liked to play have been broken up into small one-dimensional forces, or no longer exist at all, either in rules or in terms of in-production kits.
3. The naming of newer units tends to be well past silly and just plain stupid, and the majority of the newer kits are either over-decorated, poorly sculpted and lacking that special "something" many older kits had, or both.
4. GW prices.
djones520 wrote: It's not Fantasy. It's 40K with more swords. I played Fantasy to play a different game. When the switch to AoS happened, it took away all of the reasons I played it, and there is nothing in AoS that makes me want to devote time to it, instead of just sticking with 40K.
Covers it about as well as anything. At the end of the day I'll either like the mechanics of a game or I won't. AOS is one of the games I don't like the mechanics of, pure and simple.
pm713 wrote: GW removed most of my army so now I don't really have much to play.
Ok I'll bite. What army do you play and I will tell you how you are wrong.
There are a good number of WHFB armies that have been butchered. Dwarves, for example, lost half their artillery, miners, slayers, battle standard bearer, and had a number of different hero options reduced down to a handful. Using old slayers as fyreslayers and removed artillery as new artillery does not change that those are proxies and the actual units are gone. Wood Elves lost tree kin, waywatchers, glade riders, wardancers, mounted characters, and special characters. A High Elf army will have no battleline since spearmen and archers are gone. This is without touching on many armies that can technically be run using a Grand Alliance but simply are not viable without retooling them. And obviously Tomb Kings & Brets are gone entirely.
I don't play AoS because it scratches the same itch as 40k.
Back when it was fantasy, the formation rank and file stuff appealed to me. Facing, limited movement options, flanks, etc. That stuff made Fantasy great, and a far more strategic game than 40k. At the very least it was a different game than 40k. And they were 2 different games.
But AoS is just 40k with more melee (or less pew-pew). It literally scratches the same itch. And I barely have enough time for 40k.
Also, while I do like the new models, it's a much different aesthetic than Fantasy. More over the top. I prefer something more subdued in my fantasy, like Middle earth flavored.
I still can't stand Stormcast Eternals. I'm also not really a fan of the newer dwarves, or the deep elves, or the witch elves, or the new names for everything, or the rules. It's also very expensive now.
More in depth, because I just started collecting a bunch of Fantasy Battle stuff and then suddenly it was all nuked. So I figured I'd just concentrate on one game.
Plus some of the new models are kinda lame. Khorne stuff in particular is like way OTT. Valley girl voice and everything. Like, Blood for the Blood God, Totally.
More in depth, because I just started collecting a bunch of Fantasy Battle stuff and then suddenly it was all nuked. So I figured I'd just concentrate on one game.
Plus some of the new models are kinda lame. Khorne stuff in particular is like way OTT. Valley girl voice and everything. Like, Blood for the Blood God, Totally.
None of the factions leap out to me as being a must have, and i'm already invested in several other game systems that i'm falling behind in when it comes to what i'm buying vs what i'm actually finishing. I also preferred the more grounded and historical inspired setting of WHF. I just can't get invested in AoS cause its lacking that human element...the struggle. Even if that element finds its way into the black library books, I don't read those, I care about the models first. And the models are very stylised high fantasy bordering on cartoonish, which i'm not a bit fan of. Also on top of all that, i'm not into playing with armies, and prefer games which consist of 5-20 models per side maximum so skirmish is more my style. The only thing AoS I got into was shadespire and that is simply because the gameplay appealed to me more than GWs usual games.
I'm looking into AoS, but only in a Skirmish level situation. My problem is that AoS is a veritable mountain of material to sift through when thinking about starting.
In addition to my distaste for the large task of painting entire armies anymore, Skirmish (or Hinterlands, as I have that from before Bottle had to stop) seems to distill that down to just needing the Skirmish book, warscrolls for any units I want to take, and the expanded points list that can be found on the Grand Alliance forums that allows other units that aren't in the Skirmish book.
In the meantime, I have been having great fun playing "Age of Sigmar" games by using the rules and army lists found on One Page Games ruleset called "Age of Fantasy" which can be played as army scale or skirmish.
AegisGrimm wrote: I'm looking into AoS, but only in a Skirmish level situation. My problem is that AoS is a veritable mountain of material to sift through when thinking about starting.
Skirmish sadly feels as an abandoned project. I was hopeful that GW would treat it more seriously when they released few Skirmish boxes. I enjoy AoS, but I'm currently really itching for some quality campaign. Characters developing skills and quirks during a campaign. Skirmish is good for a quick after work afternoon game before you pack those models and go to dinner or something similar. I mean, who knows, maybe next year GW will publish AoS version of Kill Team (RIP Shadow War of Armageddon).
I feel the community could come up with something pretty cool for skirmish, as bottle had done, but that the fear of it not being official would mean it would be a waste of time.
auticus wrote: I feel the community could come up with something pretty cool for skirmish, as bottle had done, but that the fear of it not being official would mean it would be a waste of time.
We must send out our prayers and offerings, build shrines and conduct ritual! Skirmish or the skirmish god! Bottles for the bottle throne!
Overread wrote: be encouraged to ask questions that give them pause in starting AoS.
Okay, here's a dumb question and a follow-up. Bear in mind that I'm completely new to all this, so when someone inevitably mocks me, I'd appreciate it if the sarcasm was done in a way that doesn't require me to actually understand the game
Dumb question: Am I understanding it correctly that one Warscroll Batallion always counts for the same number of points irrespective of its size? For example, a Dark Feast is listed in the Blades of Khorne Battletome as containing 3-6 units of Bloodreavers. Does that seriously mean I can double the number of Bloodreavers without a points penalty?
Followup question: If that's the case, how does this not seriously affect the game's balance? The rules have just been revised, so there must be something I'm missing here.
Actually, second dumb question: in case you can't tell, I'm putting together a Blades of Khorne army. Now some Warscroll Batallions call for a Mighty Lord of Khorne, but the only model with that keyword that I can find is Korghos Khul and one in a Start Collecting set that's described as a Mighty Lord, but looks to be identical. Does that mean you basically decide whether your model is Khul or someone else at the start of the game?
Overread wrote: be encouraged to ask questions that give them pause in starting AoS.
Okay, here's a dumb question and a follow-up. Bear in mind that I'm completely new to all this, so when someone inevitably mocks me, I'd appreciate it if the sarcasm was done in a way that doesn't require me to actually understand the game
Dumb question: Am I understanding it correctly that one Warscroll Batallion always counts for the same number of points irrespective of its size? For example, a Dark Feast is listed in the Blades of Khorne Battletome as containing 3-6 units of Bloodreavers. Does that seriously mean I can double the number of Bloodreavers without a points penalty?
Followup question: If that's the case, how does this not seriously affect the game's balance? The rules have just been revised, so there must be something I'm missing here.
Actually, second dumb question: in case you can't tell, I'm putting together a Blades of Khorne army. Now some Warscroll Batallions call for a Mighty Lord of Khorne, but the only model with that keyword that I can find is Korghos Khul and one in a Start Collecting set that's described as a Mighty Lord, but looks to be identical. Does that mean you basically decide whether your model is Khul or someone else at the start of the game?
When you buy a Battalion you spend points on the battalion itself. That gets you the ability that the battalion gives the unit (whatever that is detailed on the battalion warscroll) and you also get a command point as well. However you still have to pay points for all the models in the battalion itself. This is why they become very expensive very fast, you are basically paying a premium for the command point and the additional ability ontop of the units.
Many times this can mean that you have to run most of the units in a battalion at minimum numbers unless its the core focus of the entire army.
Note if any of the key words in the battalion list are bold then you can take any unit that has that key word in it not just a specific unit. Whilst if its regular type you have to take the specific unit with that key word (typically its the unit name so its pretty clear).
I don't know the Khorne army to answer your second question.
Grimtuff wrote: Because they did what was IMO, tantamount to cultural vandalism by so callously throwing the Old World in the bin. No matter how good this game could get- I will never play it; as giving it any kind of support to me gives vindication to Kirby's bone-headed decision.
It's ok now, Kirby's gone; he can't hurt you any more. It's ok to like new things now.
You asked why I'm not playing and I answered and got mocked.
Nice to see the community has not changed in any way- You're trying to foster a (relatively) new system and actively antagonizing people who give honest answers as to why because they happen to still have a deep love of WHFB. Doesn't really encourage them to come over, eh?
I'm sorry, but I honestly took your first post to be partly tongue in cheek considering that its mostly hate against the person behind the change to AoS (a person who is now gone) rather than any specific hate toward the game itself. Plus in keeping with the threads opening post (and not just title) there isn't really anything anyone can do to swing you back if your dislike/hate is focused on the specific lore and the people behind the initial ideal and launch of the game. Save to say that AoS 2.0 is WORLDS away from the 1.0 launch rules and that the fluff is also improving all the time and getting deeper in its own way; its just got to get its feet under it compared to decades of old-world stuff.
Only thing I can say is get a copy of Warhammer Total War (which is utterly fantastic) and relive the old world in huge rank and file army battles!
Automatically Appended Next Post:
AegisGrimm wrote: I'm looking into AoS, but only in a Skirmish level situation. My problem is that AoS is a veritable mountain of material to sift through when thinking about starting.
In addition to my distaste for the large task of painting entire armies anymore, Skirmish (or Hinterlands, as I have that from before Bottle had to stop) seems to distill that down to just needing the Skirmish book, warscrolls for any units I want to take, and the expanded points list that can be found on the Grand Alliance forums that allows other units that aren't in the Skirmish book.
In the meantime, I have been having great fun playing "Age of Sigmar" games by using the rules and army lists found on One Page Games ruleset called "Age of Fantasy" which can be played as army scale or skirmish.
I've honestly not looked at the Skirmish side, but have you considered Shadspire? It's basically the skirmish-ish mode for AoS at present. Whilst its different and has some card mechanics it at least gives you small scale adventures in the AoS world with warbands. It's getting its second season releases with Underworld so a new wave of models and spells and cards are coming for it.
Automatically Appended Next Post: As a general point the Beasts of Chaos release and the recent Nagash release are showing that GW is slowly going through and taking some of the broken up armies and putting them back together once more.
Some are being combined up and bolstered a little; others are being made into their own factions (eg Daughers of Khaine). IF AoS gets a year or so of big releases and focus like 40K has just had then I think in a year or so we might ahve a very different picture for many AoS forces.
Personally, reading the lore, I think that there is strong potential that GW will introduce a fully human force, though what form this takes and the how and when is totally unknown. I also think that there is "potential" that Tomb Kings could return - The realm structure makes it effortlessly easy for GW to throw a new faction in wherever they want through multiple mechanics (heck Seraphon - Lizardmen - basically only exist as summoned armies by Slaan so they don't even need lands or cities or a territory to function so it shows how easy it is for GW to push armies in). That is assuming that GW held onto the moulds for the TK stuff and that there is a will at GW to add them back into the game.
Heck now that Sisters are getting a big release if GW do another community survey it could be an ideal time for Tomb Kings to shine in that and get a re-release!
The people I play AoS with and I are in different cities, so we have to plan months ahead to set aside a day to nerd out. Locally, I'm pretty involved in the Warmachine community and, while I have nothing against other gamers, I simply don't have time to build new relationships at the dork store.
This isn't really airing a grievance, and I am still involved in AoS despite this, but I really find the setting pretty disappointing. I'm happy they fleshed out the mortal realms and such, and my friends and I have had little trouble "forging the narrative" (I write up after action short stories to try and string together the series of contrivances that occur when four gamers converge in one city). However, despite my best efforts not to, I always end up comparing AoS not to Fantasy (my first love) but to 40k. This is a big problem for AoS. 40k is an evocative setting that can envelop people who are not involved in the hobby. Sure, you can argue, AoS doesn't have video games or cheap CGI movies, but I have yet to encounter someone who has read an AoS novel and enjoy it that didn't intend to delve deeper into the hobby.
In 40k, everything lies under the shadow of Big E, the Imperium and the events of the Horus Heresy. Even though the Eldar, the Orks and the Necrons have excellent, venerable (if recently altered) and deep lore, they can only play second fiddle to the Imperium, the Horus Heresy, and Big E. At the heart of it all, there is a latticework of interpersonal tragedies that spiral out and magnify to make gakkier an already gakky galaxy.
With the coming of Chaos in the Mortal Realms, we are told about personal failings of individuals that led to the downfall of their societies and the insidious corruption of chaos, but we aren't really shown it happening. Dwarven holds overrun in Chamon? Why should I care to learn their names when I didn't see how they mattered in the setting before? I still want to know how Belegar's expedition into Karak Eight Peeks COULD play out. Oh, that world blew up? Nothing matters.
Emps really tried, and he still fethed up. He failed as a father and, ultimately, as a sovereign. His very deification and formative godhood are a mockery of the Imperial Truth he promulgated.
When you buy a Battalion you spend points on the battalion itself. That gets you the ability that the battalion gives the unit (whatever that is detailed on the battalion warscroll) and you also get a command point as well. However you still have to pay points for all the models in the battalion itself.
Ah, okay. Well, that makes a lot more sense. Thanks.
thekingofkings wrote: Very very few people in my geographic area play it, hard to get a game with so few players.
Impossible. I have it on very good sources "See the Jervis thread" that not only is AOS a runaway hit, but that it saved GW. I can't see how nobody in your area is playing it. Since moving to 3rd shift, my evenings are more open, so I asked the local store what night was the current night for GW stuff. Apparently it's all ran on the same night as there's not enough players to split it up into multiple nights. I'd like to hope that 40K isn't doing that bad in my area as I still buy kits even though I play retro, but being physically next to a college and having few players doesn't instill me with confidence. Other systems are doing okay, oddly enough.
Generally speaking? AoS models are expensive as hell. Especially SCE. Their basic troops are like $60 for 10 of these goobers. I really like SCE but it's a hard army to justify putting cash down on. I could get a lot more for my dollar from other miniatures games. Even from other GW games. $60 can buy a Kill Team for KT or Shadespire.
I plan on collecting it sooner or later but that's why I'm not playing it currently.
I've certainly considered it, however from the battles reports I've read in White Dwarf the focus of the game is on heros and abilities rather than big blocks of infantry lining up in a battleline.
Perhaps that is a misconception, but that is why I haven't indulged!
Bloviator I do agree and wish that GW had started the game and lore with the founding of the Realms and the beginning of the Chaos invasion as it would seem like a more natural point to jump into the setting. Right now there is a bit of an oddity because there's thus huge past and history of the realms building up and races getting established and aliances forming and crumbling and then BAM its blasted away with a vast Chaos invasion and then Sigmar comes to help a few centuries later.
It kind of means a lot of the lore at present is Sigmar's forces coming to the rescue and winning the day. I think that once we are past this initial hump of the start of the AoS setting (remembering that the 2.0 release is basically AoS's 1.0 release launch) we should see a lot of other factions flesh out and get their own lore and setting. We should see books released that are not all focused or might not even have a single Stormcast within them and see the other factions rise up under their own power as the back of Chaos is broken and factions start to get down to the rebuilding and infighting and such.
GW is setting the ground work for them, but at present it is rather Stormcast dominated.
Kroem - yes and no. There are some very powerful and expensive (points) heroes who can be 400 or even up to 500 points of an army, so they certainly make a big impact on the table. However infantry is still very critical and important. It's no longer rank and file, so it moves and operates similar to 40K; but they are still all important and some swarm/haord groups work really well. Daughters of Khaine can run both an army of Witches/Sisters which is a swarmy hoard of dancing blood spilling Aelves backed up with thrones and queens or they can swap over to almost an all snake force with blocks of Blood Sisters slithering over the battlefield to impale the enemy upon their spears.
So infantry is still very powerful and still very viable. Heroes are powerful, but they are not the be-all and end-all of everything.
Kroem wrote: I've certainly considered it, however from the battles reports I've read in White Dwarf the focus of the game is on heros and abilities rather than big blocks of infantry lining up in a battleline.
Perhaps that is a misconception, but that is why I haven't indulged!
I've read it on numerous forums that it's totally possible to rank up in AOS, but that there's no benefit to doing so at all.
And yes, synergies are a huge thing in both AOS and 40K right now. I doubt that'll go away anytime soon.
A thing to consider while reading WD is that the writers will try to make things more attractive for the readers. I think that for many people heroes and behemoths of various kinds are more attractive than sometimes soulless grunts.
Grunts of various kinds are important, they will tie the opponent and likely be the ones that will start the bar on the victory points meter. AoS simply isn't fantasy or KoW, wanting the same experience or mechanics that the old fantasy or KoW have will result in disappointment.
The community is the main thing. I've never seen quite so many GW white knights in one place. I've seen even fanboys who've praised it to the high heavens otherwise get leaped upon because the had the audacity to politely criticise one facet of it. It's one of the biggest hugboxes yet toxic environments I've seen. The active celebration they seem to have over WHFB being scrapped and disdain for people who played it - even if they're among their own - is pretty off-putting as well. Whenever I look in and consider maybe giving it a shot with more than my old WHFB models, there's always a circle jerk surrounding the 'old WHFB player here' where they take glee in tearing into why literally every single aspect of WHFB, without exception, is terrible and AoS is the saviour of swords and fantasy and rules and that returnee should be grateful that Almighty Games Workshop squat'ed it.
I'm sure we've all seen that 'Happy Place' thread.
I have. It was in a certain other forum renown for banning anything criticizing the game, and that has also carried over into certain other facebook groups as well.
There are clearly two polar opposite groups - those who worship the old world and those who worship the new. They are the extremes of behaviour and most of the time its just trying to shut the other party down when they meet each other.
And for the most part its just people writing short opinions online rather than expanding upon their thoughts in more clear detail, so it can come across differently to others (heck look at a few posts in this thread for examples in miscommunication).
StygianBeach wrote: I am pretty excited about the Beasts of Chaos book on they way.
Unless there are some more up to date rumours I have missed, is this the first (non-legacy) WHFB army in the AoS?
That must be a good sigh for old world fans.
No... Legions of Nagash is essentially the old vampire count book and made up of 0% "new AoS models", all WHFB models.
Also, Seraphon are just the old lizardmen without any new models, but also nothing taken away. So it's not a first by any stretch of the imagination.
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Kroem wrote: I've certainly considered it, however from the battles reports I've read in White Dwarf the focus of the game is on heros and abilities rather than big blocks of infantry lining up in a battleline.
Perhaps that is a misconception, but that is why I haven't indulged!
That's kind of a consequence of WD armies seldom having big infantry blocks/spammed models in there (limitations of it all having to be painted as well). In AoS, a lot of the stronger builds are based around big, maxed out infantry blocks (like fyreslayers, Legions of Nagash, Tzaangor hordes, big blobs of plaguebearers,...). In fact, character buffs tend to scale pretty insanely in bigger blocks because of the nature of AoS.
I do like the fact that there's a maximum unit size in AoS, and that small units aren't necessarily useless. A unit of 10 witch elves is just fine in AoS now, but it would have been useless in the old WHFB though.
I rarly find public opponents that I enjoy as a person.
Playing WH Fantasy/40K takes to long.
Setting up terain is a hassle, along with having a game board.
Packing models and traveling to playing takes to long.
I am short on money, and I feel time. Meaning trying to learn AoS is a barrier.
My army was glorius tomb kings. I do not feel like starting another AoS. I really enjoy painting them. Skeletons are very forgiving. Painting gold and old metal is easy and funn. Red sand looks good. I am unsure if TK can play and perform in AoS.
That being said I think I enjoyed fantasy more then 40k, even though I have 3 40K armies. My strategy was having a big magic phase turn 2 or 3 with a worn powerstone, the scroll of 4 power dice and the casket of souls. I do not know if I can use any of that in AoS?
Aye and whilst AoS has lost the rank and file formation movement that has opened it up to increased use of terrain and the increase in buffs/debuffs and synergies. Your typically AoS table can take a lot more density in terrain and actually benefits from it; whilst your standard Fantasy table had to keep terrain a little lighter to allow for practical formation movements.
So some of the tactical elements have shifted around, and as said the new AoS system makes better use of smaller blocks of infantry as well as larger blocks whilst in Fantasy you generally needed medium to larger blocks all the time.
Some things still need cleaning up though; Banners and Musicians are in a bit of an odd place with some armies in that they give a squad level bonus with no negative (no cost and no unit limits on attacks/weapons) however if you lose the banner you lose the ability. So there's a need to either protect it; say that your entire force is equipped with banners (legal, totally legal just really stupid in visual ways) or GW could reintroduce the old banner rules whereby if the holder falls another unit takes it up.
Of course the attacked player always gets to remove models so in theory most times they can just not take the banner out of the unit until the last.
Arbitrator wrote: The community is the main thing. I've never seen quite so many GW white knights in one place. I've seen even fanboys who've praised it to the high heavens otherwise get leaped upon because the had the audacity to politely criticise one facet of it. It's one of the biggest hugboxes yet toxic environments I've seen. The active celebration they seem to have over WHFB being scrapped and disdain for people who played it - even if they're among their own - is pretty off-putting as well. Whenever I look in and consider maybe giving it a shot with more than my old WHFB models, there's always a circle jerk surrounding the 'old WHFB player here' where they take glee in tearing into why literally every single aspect of WHFB, without exception, is terrible and AoS is the saviour of swords and fantasy and rules and that returnee should be grateful that Almighty Games Workshop squat'ed it.
I'm sure we've all seen that 'Happy Place' thread.
I feel that LoS blocking forests that were introduced with AoS v2 was a step in the right direction and with the combination of the RNG table of terrain attributes it comes out rather neatly. I'm not sure, that I like faction specific pieces, such as the sunken ship for the Cythai, Nurgle tree of disgust or the mausoleum for the legions of Nagash.
I have been doing some research over the weekend. I think one of the Idoneth enclaves gives its allies the Tides of Death benefits. I could proxy Shadow warriors as Namarti Reavers and maybe one archamge as one of the deepkin spellcaster, get some eels that I like with some thralls for the battle line. Include some Sword Masters as allies. Feels like an army composed out of models that I'd like to paint, a unit of Thralls aside.
thekingofkings wrote: Very very few people in my geographic area play it, hard to get a game with so few players.
Impossible. I have it on very good sources "See the Jervis thread" that not only is AOS a runaway hit, but that it saved GW. I can't see how nobody in your area is playing it. Since moving to 3rd shift, my evenings are more open, so I asked the local store what night was the current night for GW stuff. Apparently it's all ran on the same night as there's not enough players to split it up into multiple nights. I'd like to hope that 40K isn't doing that bad in my area as I still buy kits even though I play retro, but being physically next to a college and having few players doesn't instill me with confidence. Other systems are doing okay, oddly enough.
So far the "runaway" part is all I have seen. I usually end up talking with people who tell me how great it is, only to find out they dont play it, or even own anything for it and that I should go to X on Saturdays as there is a big group that does it. The problem is that I and occasionally one or two other guys are said big group at X, and we can just as easily play at my house as there is little to no interest in it at all. Usually get bumped from tables by WM/H, Guildball, X-wing, Infinity, and more and more often now Legions.
Just Tony wrote: I have it on very good sources "See the Jervis thread" that not only is AOS a runaway hit, but that it saved GW.
You just can't stop with the straw men, can you? "Not tanking" is now "runaway hit"? I'll bet you got a C- in English and told everyone you aced the class.
I did say that AOS saved GW, but if you bothered to read anything else, I said that it represented a turning point for GW - the move from old GW to new GW. AOS became the blueprint for the new 40k, which was better liked and more successful than the last several 40k editions. GW's pocketbook was never in danger. AOS saved GW's soul.
AoS saved GW in the sense that it tanked so badly in the initial year it got GW to wake up and realize interaction with customers is important. Also that the games sell the models, the models do not sell the games. Dumping Kirby no doubt helped as well.
Just Tony wrote: I have it on very good sources "See the Jervis thread" that not only is AOS a runaway hit, but that it saved GW.
You just can't stop with the straw men, can you? "Not tanking" is now "runaway hit"? I'll bet you got a C- in English and told everyone you aced the class.
I did say that AOS saved GW, but if you bothered to read anything else, I said that it represented a turning point for GW - the move from old GW to new GW. AOS became the blueprint for the new 40k, which was better liked and more successful than the last several 40k editions. GW's pocketbook was never in danger. AOS saved GW's soul.
There's no strawman at all, my little friend. I referenced your posts directly where you spouted incessantly about the success of a system we have documented PROOF of floundering on launch and the full year following, and you respond with insults to my intelligence. There's no need to get Kitty... er, catty about it. There was a vocal push to make AOS upon launch a success, but the financials revealed a different story. GW righted the ship AND its staff, and is seeing success because of it.
Blind allegiance and demagoguery will not rewrite facts or history.
NinthMusketeer wrote:AoS saved GW in the sense that it tanked so badly in the initial year it got GW to wake up and realize interaction with customers is important. Also that the games sell the models, the models do not sell the games. Dumping Kirby no doubt helped as well.
Just Tony wrote: There's no strawman at all, my little friend. I referenced your posts directly where you spouted incessantly about the success of a system we have documented PROOF of floundering on launch and the full year following, and you respond with insults to my intelligence. There's no need to get Kitty... er, catty about it. There was a vocal push to make AOS upon launch a success, but the financials revealed a different story. GW righted the ship AND its staff, and is seeing success because of it.
First, I didn't insult your intelligence. I insulted your reading comprehension.
We made progress in what was another busy and rewarding year. We started the financial year off with a huge product launch; Warhammer: Age of Sigmar, one of the biggest changes we’ve ever made to one of our core universes. Our design to manufacture was outstanding, over-delivering in terms of original concept art to final manufactured models, producing some of the best models we’ve ever made. The simplified rules, supporting the models for those who like to play, made it much easier to get started. We learnt some valuable lessons during the year on how to deliver product system changes on this scale and as we released more of the range in the second half of the year, we finished the year with sales of Warhammer: Age of Sigmar at a higher rate than Warhammer has enjoyed for several years.
Now there's no doubt that they said they ended the year with sales "at a higher rate than Warhammer has enjoyed for several years" and now the discussion will be about how AOS was initially a disaster and they "righted the ship". Not sure we can quantify the "disaster" without itemized receipts. I believe killing WHFB was a PR disaster, but that AOS' success was in line with the launch of a new game system/product (thus following the diffusion of innovations curve, where initial sales were to innovators and early adopters, with the majority of players still a ways off) .
Expectations were artificially high due to it being a replacement for a tentpole product. AOS was more successful in getting new players than old ones (partly because it was so different, and partly because of WHFB). But at least they righted the ship pretty darn quickly - certainly not "floundering... the full year following", unless you understand floundering to mean "doing better than what it replaced" (which, who knows? You might).
The important thing to note is that they righted the AOS ship BEFORE the General's Handbook came out. Fiscal year ended May 29th, while the first GHB came out in the following June. Adding points to the game didn't fix a failing game system. By then, AOS was established, growing, and doing better than WHFB.
EnTyme wrote: I'm surprised this thread made it to 3 pages before it began spiraling toward the inevitable petty squabble between WHFB players and AoS players.
Though that's not what the squabble is about (it's about whether AoS failed and the GHB "fixed" it), I think we should probably come to terms with the fact that a large part of why people (from GW communities) are not playing AoS is the very negative first impressions, largely due to what happened to WHFB. I don't think it is relevant anymore, but bad first impressions linger (fester?).
No... Legions of Nagash is essentially the old vampire count book and made up of 0% "new AoS models", all WHFB models.
Also, Seraphon are just the old lizardmen without any new models, but also nothing taken away. So it's not a first by any stretch of the imagination.
While I am not fussed I did not think of Legions of Nagash because of End Times, I really should have thought of the Lizardmen. I probably missed it because I hate the name applied to Mezo-American Lizards people (but I love it when being applied to space-nuns).
AegisGrimm wrote: I'm looking into AoS, but only in a Skirmish level situation. My problem is that AoS is a veritable mountain of material to sift through when thinking about starting.
I'm right there with you on that one. AoS 2.0 has made the game more convoluted than 40K 8th. It's so much more difficult to understand and get into than it used to be. I honestly think it's funny that AoS was supposed to be GW's attempt at not only move the story long but bring in new players. Now, it's complexity may be on par with 7th Edition.
AegisGrimm wrote: In addition to my distaste for the large task of painting entire armies anymore, Skirmish (or Hinterlands, as I have that from before Bottle had to stop) seems to distill that down to just needing the Skirmish book, warscrolls for any units I want to take, and the expanded points list that can be found on the Grand Alliance forums that allows other units that aren't in the Skirmish book.
This is another thing I understanding. I recently got married and have a two year old stepson. My time to paint is... well, very very limited. So, trying to work on painting entire armies is tough. This is why I'm focusing more on things like Kill Team, possibly Necromunda in the future (I don't think a single person at the GW shop I play at have any interest in the game), and some form of AoS Skirmish as I hear the current formula for figuring out points for a matched play Skirmish game can make those games very unbalanced.
Bloviator wrote: The people I play AoS with and I are in different cities, so we have to plan months ahead to set aside a day to nerd out. Locally, I'm pretty involved in the Warmachine community and, while I have nothing against other gamers, I simply don't have time to build new relationships at the dork store.
I would probably try to get into Warmachine much more if they seemed at all committed to plastic models. They have the starter kit, the two player starter kit, and a box of plastic models for each army. And, while I could be completely wrong as I don't keep anywhere near as close of an eye on it, it seems like they kinda stagnated there. They haven't pushed ahead to replace all current models with Plastic versions and make sure all new kits are plastic. We already know they can do it... Privateer Press getting to it.
SG
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auticus wrote: Skirmish was never really created to support a matched play mindset is the problem.
The problem here lies in trying to find a game that isn't matched play at my local GW. Seems everyone there is only interested in competitive play (even if it is just friendly competitive play). Noone plays Necromunda. Shadespire seems to be at least somewhat popular as well as Blood Bowl. The main games there are AoS and 40K matched play. Don't think I've ever seen a narrative based game there except maybe the very first battle of an escalation league or if someone is willing to play a boxed game.
SG
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TheCustomLime wrote: Generally speaking? AoS models are expensive as hell. Especially SCE. Their basic troops are like $60 for 10 of these goobers. I really like SCE but it's a hard army to justify putting cash down on. I could get a lot more for my dollar from other miniatures games. Even from other GW games. $60 can buy a Kill Team for KT or Shadespire.
I plan on collecting it sooner or later but that's why I'm not playing it currently.
I gotta agree with you on this one, and it's not just Stormcast. It seems that GW is cranking up prices for ALL of the AoS models. I can understand the rise in prices for Primaris marines as you're honestly getting more plastic. But, the AoS models (saw this really starting to happen with Daughters of Khaine, Idoneth Deepkin, and Stormcast to a point... kinda hard to say Stormcast are overly expensive money-wise when you can get the entire Stormcast half of Soul Wars for approximately $65 USD for 21 models). IMHO, even with the detail going up, the amount of money GW is asking for the newer models is just outrageous while 40K seems to stay pretty consistent money-wise for what you get.
AegisGrimm wrote: I'm looking into AoS, but only in a Skirmish level situation. My problem is that AoS is a veritable mountain of material to sift through when thinking about starting.
I'm right there with you on that one. AoS 2.0 has made the game more convoluted than 40K 8th. It's so much more difficult to understand and get into than it used to be. I honestly think it's funny that AoS was supposed to be GW's attempt at not only move the story long but bring in new players. Now, it's complexity may be on par with 7th Edition.
AegisGrimm wrote: In addition to my distaste for the large task of painting entire armies anymore, Skirmish (or Hinterlands, as I have that from before Bottle had to stop) seems to distill that down to just needing the Skirmish book, warscrolls for any units I want to take, and the expanded points list that can be found on the Grand Alliance forums that allows other units that aren't in the Skirmish book.
This is another thing I understanding. I recently got married and have a two year old stepson. My time to paint is... well, very very limited. So, trying to work on painting entire armies is tough. This is why I'm focusing more on things like Kill Team, possibly Necromunda in the future (I don't think a single person at the GW shop I play at have any interest in the game), and some form of AoS Skirmish as I hear the current formula for figuring out points for a matched play Skirmish game can make those games very unbalanced.
SG
Part of the reason that AOS 2.0 looks the way it does is the initial reaction to the game, and the fixes that had to be put in with GHB. That's also why 40K didn't adopt a carbon copy of AOS when they rolled out 8th. AOS and 40K are sort of meeting in the middle now, and will wind up being identical products far sooner than you'd think. An interchangeable set of systems is the ultimate goal, especially if they want to hedge their bets on the long run. I think that's also why AOS was rolled out with rounds.
Just Tony wrote: There's no strawman at all, my little friend. I referenced your posts directly where you spouted incessantly about the success of a system we have documented PROOF of floundering on launch and the full year following, and you respond with insults to my intelligence. There's no need to get Kitty... er, catty about it. There was a vocal push to make AOS upon launch a success, but the financials revealed a different story. GW righted the ship AND its staff, and is seeing success because of it.
First, I didn't insult your intelligence. I insulted your reading comprehension.
So reading comprehension instead of intelligence. An insult is an insult and speaks volumes of the kind of person you truly are.
We made progress in what was another busy and rewarding year. We started the financial year off with a huge product launch; Warhammer: Age of Sigmar, one of the biggest changes we’ve ever made to one of our core universes. Our design to manufacture was outstanding, over-delivering in terms of original concept art to final manufactured models, producing some of the best models we’ve ever made. The simplified rules, supporting the models for those who like to play, made it much easier to get started. We learnt some valuable lessons during the year on how to deliver product system changes on this scale and as we released more of the range in the second half of the year, we finished the year with sales of Warhammer: Age of Sigmar at a higher rate than Warhammer has enjoyed for several years.
Now there's no doubt that they said they ended the year with sales "at a higher rate than Warhammer has enjoyed for several years" and now the discussion will be about how AOS was initially a disaster and they "righted the ship". Not sure we can quantify the "disaster" without itemized receipts. I believe killing WHFB was a PR disaster, but that AOS' success was in line with the launch of a new game system/product (thus following the diffusion of innovations curve, where initial sales were to innovators and early adopters, with the majority of players still a ways off).
Nor can we quantify the success without receipts, if we're playing that game. From the statement, you can see that the second half of the year was also them slamming product out at a higher rate. It says as much. It also doesn't take into account any WFB purchases made at the time since all counted as AOS sales because of rebranding
Now, as more than a few posters will attest, WFB was dying a slow death due to the high barrier of entry inherent to the 8th Ed. ruleset. Passing that up could have been pulled off by Warmaster, and that game didn't exactly blaze the shelves.
Sqorgar wrote:Expectations were artificially high due to it being a replacement for a tentpole product. AOS was more successful in getting new players than old ones (partly because it was so different, and partly because of WHFB). But at least they righted the ship pretty darn quickly - certainly not "floundering... the full year following", unless you understand floundering to mean "doing better than what it replaced" (which, who knows? You might).
No, expectations were high because AOS was supposed to BE a tentpole product. And do some legwork and check the threads on the other forums. I'm sure there may be some on here as well. There were several US retailers and distributors clearing out the AOS initial release at 50% off. That's not something someone does if product is moving. I view floundering as poor sales and poor player participation. AOS had both for the first year of its release. Once again, I point out the LTD ED books that you flat out ignored at least on three occasions. These were produced at lower volumes than their WFB counterparts, and took well past that year to sell out. The sell out time on the WFB books? Days in some cases, Damning evidence whether you want to ignore it or not.
Sqorgar wrote:The important thing to note is that they righted the AOS ship BEFORE the General's Handbook came out. Fiscal year ended May 29th, while the first GHB came out in the following June. Adding points to the game didn't fix a failing game system. By then, AOS was established, growing, and doing better than WHFB.
How long do you think it takes for them to whip up a hard copy book? If AOS was doing as perfect as you think it was during that year, GHB wouldn't have even been produced. They threw everything at the launch, and wanted it to stick. Their response was to go through the long process of writing, editing, and printing a book to fix things that you state didn't need fixing. Period.
Financially GW is doing well for itself over the past year or two. How much of that is AOS and how much is 40K I'll let you speculate. They have no intention of stopping AOS, so I can only assume that it's still batting better than WFB 8th did. The question yet again is whether the GHB is responsible for the current success of AOS or not. Given how AOS 2.0 looks, I'd say we got our answer there.
Sqorgar wrote:
EnTyme wrote: I'm surprised this thread made it to 3 pages before it began spiraling toward the inevitable petty squabble between WHFB players and AoS players.
Though that's not what the squabble is about (it's about whether AoS failed and the GHB "fixed" it), I think we should probably come to terms with the fact that a large part of why people (from GW communities) are not playing AoS is the very negative first impressions, largely due to what happened to WHFB. I don't think it is relevant anymore, but bad first impressions linger (fester?).
No, this is about your outlandish claim that AOS saved GW. You've since tried to clarify that you meant "Save GW's soul" from the disputing comments you got from the original debate. For my part, I brought it on this thread by mentioning the "saved GW" aspect, and you drug it in here whole hog with insults and flippant tone.
Earlier someone mentioned the demeanor of the players as part of the reason they don't play AOS, and I'm starting to see why.
EnTyme wrote: I'm surprised this thread made it to 3 pages before it began spiraling toward the inevitable petty squabble between WHFB players and AoS players.
Yup, I am just watching this thread with interest as old arguments come out of the woodwork.
shinros wrote: Yup, I am just watching this thread with interest as old arguments come out of the woodwork.
WFB is still playable. You can buy square bases online... some you have to get from eBay and may take a while to get to you, but they are something that can still be gotten (and aren't terribly expensive). To the best of my knowledge, there are no rules in AoS that specify that your models have to be on round bases. They can still be on Square bases making it so that both WFB and AoS can be played. Plus, if you are a WFB fan instead of an AoS fan, there are rulesets like The 9th Age that can be used to play the game.
There's really no reason to squabble. Everyone can play the game they enjoy.
I just can't get into it. I have a large Empire army that also serves as a stand in for mercenaries working for Ulrika in a vampire counts army. I do not want to take the time to rebase everything (150+ Empire troops alone not to mention cavalry plus zombies, ect.) and the fractured nature of the rules and the battalion bonuses make configuring army lists a pain. I have a 2,000 point Khorne Bloodbound army of new models that I could play but I don't have the same connection to them that I had to my Fantasy army. I am happy people are liking AoS and I like looking at the new models. It's a shame I can't enjoy it as well.
There are no rules stating you can't use squares. GW said you use whatever base your model came with.
If you plan on playing in tournaments though, mostly you do have to rebase to rounds because most tournaments, to include pretty much all of the GTs, enforce rounds.
NinthMusketeer wrote: AoS saved GW in the sense that it tanked so badly in the initial year it got GW to wake up and realize interaction with customers is important. Also that the games sell the models, the models do not sell the games. Dumping Kirby no doubt helped as well.
I find this line of thought hilarious.
GW changed because Kirby stepped down and the new CEO had a different (read: actually sane) way of doing things. Kirby left office on january of 2015, half a year before Sigmar even released.
And of course, we have no hard data on the sales for AOS so it "tanking" without anyone making an affirmation on this (aside from a bitter man whose rumourmonger star had faded away for quite a while) is pointless. And tiresome after this long.
For me, I'm wholly uninterested in the AoS world, finding players is problematic, the Stormcast faction comes off as a wholly unimaginative "fantasy marines" copypasta job, none of the new factions really appeal to me, the increasingly exaggerated proportions and styles of the models in Blizzard fashion turn me off, my old Fantasy chaos collection doesnt really translate well to the new rules, and the costs on new kits are too high to interest me.
Time however is probably the biggest issue, with life and so many other games out there, AoS is just not on the radar, so maybe everything else is irrelevant
I have all the rules for 2nd ed AOS but I have yet to get a game in mainly because no one plays it locally. I know a few people with old WHFB models but they just not interested in 2nd ed for whatever reason. I don't have much interest in the game as well since I also have never liked the new fluff for the game. The fact that GW discontinued the army I used to play, Bretonnia, didn't help either. Yea they have rules for them online but I tried them in 1st ed AOS and found them to really lackluster, especially against armies that got updates such as stormcast.
AegisGrimm wrote: I'm looking into AoS, but only in a Skirmish level situation. My problem is that AoS is a veritable mountain of material to sift through when thinking about starting.
I'm right there with you on that one. AoS 2.0 has made the game more convoluted than 40K 8th. It's so much more difficult to understand and get into than it used to be. I honestly think it's funny that AoS was supposed to be GW's attempt at not only move the story long but bring in new players. Now, it's complexity may be on par with 7th Edition.
It looked very daunting to me too when I picked it up starting with 2.0, but there's really just one big hurdle - getting the hang of how force selection works with allegiances and keywords. And that only really applies if you have an old collection of models that might be scattered aross multiple books at this point. Anyone coming in new can just pick up any single tome, buy the units featured in it and they're good to go. Gameplay is much smoother than 40k, IMHO, especially because they kept command point abilities at sane levels and single models don't typically roll 30 attacks that can hit anywhere on the table.
NinthMusketeer wrote: AoS saved GW in the sense that it tanked so badly in the initial year it got GW to wake up and realize interaction with customers is important. Also that the games sell the models, the models do not sell the games. Dumping Kirby no doubt helped as well.
I find this line of thought hilarious.
GW changed because Kirby stepped down and the new CEO had a different (read: actually sane) way of doing things. Kirby left office on january of 2015, half a year before Sigmar even released.
And of course, we have no hard data on the sales for AOS so it "tanking" without anyone making an affirmation on this (aside from a bitter man whose rumourmonger star had faded away for quite a while) is pointless. And tiresome after this long.
The changes did not start happening until 2016--look at the prices on the Fyreslayer release and tell me that is not Kirby-era thinking. Note how the GHB came as a result of feedback instead of being a day 1 release, note how the battletome structure entirely changed, note how the campaign books that were being pushed as a big deal never got continued. The way AoS was managed for the first year/year and a half is completely different than after. If it was so successful why change things so dramatically?
I don't really like a large portion of the models, I feel I need something more to get my teeth into. I don't feel for the game. Nobody in my area admits to playing it. They are all 40k or Lord of the rings.
Personally I am waiting to buy into the new lord of the rings set, and concentrating a lot on collecting vintage miniatures that I like and fondly remember.
Form me, the game is fine and I like the models. However, the list construction is a bit silly. You need a bunch of different books, a matrix of allies, and possibly some downloads. If they had a truly decent army builder, it would go a long way toward increasing interest in the game and some of the armies.
shinros wrote: Yup, I am just watching this thread with interest as old arguments come out of the woodwork.
WFB is still playable. You can buy square bases online... some you have to get from eBay and may take a while to get to you, but they are something that can still be gotten (and aren't terribly expensive). To the best of my knowledge, there are no rules in AoS that specify that your models have to be on round bases. They can still be on Square bases making it so that both WFB and AoS can be played. Plus, if you are a WFB fan instead of an AoS fan, there are rulesets like The 9th Age that can be used to play the game.
There's really no reason to squabble. Everyone can play the game they enjoy.
SG
And I DO play the game I enjoy. I've been very fortunate to have a group of people who play 6th, including what looks to be a new gamer joining, and I pay attention to the models released as the goal is to eventually own each army for 6th, and some of the models released still work for that system.
The reason for the squabbling is that some people are given to hyperbole and either stating their feelings and opinions as facts, misrepresenting facts or fabricating them entirely. Not one to sit idly by and let that lay out in the open without contesting it.
I raise that putting "IMO" in front of every statement is tedious; online it is very easy to seem to be putting out opinions as facts even when there is no intention to do so.
NinthMusketeer wrote: I raise that putting "IMO" in front of every statement is tedious; online it is very easy to seem to be putting out opinions as facts even when there is no intention to do so.
Generally speaking, I do that. My posts tend to be filled with sentences that start with "I think", "I feel", "we must assume", "I believe", "presumably", "apparently", and I even use statement softeners like "generally speaking", "tend to", "probably", and so on. I'm starting to reconsider the difficulty of the part on the SATs where you read a passage and it asks you "which of the following statements are the author's opinion?" Apparently, it is not as trivial as I had once assumed.
A good general rule of thumb for this when discussing online with others is - it is all opinions. Online discussions are rarely factual (if they were, there'd be nothing to discuss) and rarely personal. Enjoy the discussions in the spirit in which they are made, which is a challenging of ideas, not a challenging of character.
Personally, I'm not playing AOS because I simply do not have the time. The release schedule has been so bewilderingly fast, so much new stuff to take in and enjoy, that we've found we have to be selective in our gaming.
We're playing a lot of kill team and bloodbowl, 40k and shadespire and now adeptus titanicus it's too much.
I have the beginnings of a nurgle demons army painted up, but they've sat in a drawer for the last 18 months without budging and probably will do for the forseeable.
Simply put, if GW slow down a bit, then maybe I could catch up.
I just started playing the game after years of refusing to get involved. The models got me into the game. Varanguard knights really caught my eye. Then I decided to go about learning how to play them.
There I learned about the big wall to entry. Learning how to build your army is absolutely insane. Too many books to buy. Plus - the balance seems horribly off. It scares me to invest more. I have watched a few games and it just seems that nighthaunt wreck everyone so what is the point in playing my everchosen - who don't even have real army rules?
The balance is indeed garbage. Your everchosen are one of the worst "armies" in the game right now. They are hugely over pointed, and the Night Haunt are fairly optimal so you will always have lopsided matches against them with everchosen barring your opponent purposely downbuilding them to match a "C" or even a "D list.
auticus wrote: The balance is indeed garbage. Your everchosen are one of the worst "armies" in the game right now. They are hugely over pointed, and the Night Haunt are fairly optimal so you will always have lopsided matches against them with everchosen barring your opponent purposely downbuilding them to match a "C" or even a "D list.
We shall see - I am kind of waiting for the supposed rules update this year they have promised.
Nowhere to play.
Little interest in the new style of art and models.
No interest at all in new fluff.
No value for money.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Nowhere to play.
Little interest in the new style of art and models.
No interest at all in new fluff.
No value for money.
auticus wrote: The balance is indeed garbage. Your everchosen are one of the worst "armies" in the game right now. They are hugely over pointed, and the Night Haunt are fairly optimal so you will always have lopsided matches against them with everchosen barring your opponent purposely downbuilding them to match a "C" or even a "D list.
We shall see - I am kind of waiting for the supposed rules update this year they have promised.
Do you mean the twice a year FAQ? If so they've already released it in July alongside the new edition. The next isn't due until January 2019.
auticus wrote: The balance is indeed garbage. Your everchosen are one of the worst "armies" in the game right now. They are hugely over pointed, and the Night Haunt are fairly optimal so you will always have lopsided matches against them with everchosen barring your opponent purposely downbuilding them to match a "C" or even a "D list.
We shall see - I am kind of waiting for the supposed rules update this year they have promised.
Do you mean the twice a year FAQ? If so they've already released it in July alongside the new edition. The next isn't due until January 2019.
I thought there was supposed to be a STD and ever-chosen update this year. That's what I was told - pretty recently.
Unfortunately for me, I'm just not able to get a game in. When 8th edition launched last summer, our local AoS group literally just dried up and died. Everyone plays 40K exclusively now in my area. :(
I don't think the game is very fun. My experience with Iron Jawz is charge everything and then lose because all the other armies are better then yours in combat.
auticus wrote: The balance is indeed garbage. Your everchosen are one of the worst "armies" in the game right now. They are hugely over pointed, and the Night Haunt are fairly optimal so you will always have lopsided matches against them with everchosen barring your opponent purposely downbuilding them to match a "C" or even a "D list.
We shall see - I am kind of waiting for the supposed rules update this year they have promised.
Do you mean the twice a year FAQ? If so they've already released it in July alongside the new edition. The next isn't due until January 2019.
I thought there was supposed to be a STD and ever-chosen update this year. That's what I was told - pretty recently.
You mean a battletome and not an update for Slave to Darkness then. Anything not announced is just a rumor, with varying levels of reliability depending on where the rumor started. Any sort of 'update' outside of a new battletome for Everchosen would likely be in the General's Handbook which we've already received for this year.
The main reason I don't play is that the factions I'm interested in aren't likely to get new models anytime soon. I like the Seraphon line, but most of the Saurus models are super old and don't match the aesthetic of the newer ones... like the guy who rides the big dino. GW seems almost exclusively interested in releasing models for brand new factions.
I strongly dislike Warmachine/Hordes, but at least there you know your faction will get a few model releases per year. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's been since August of 2013 that Lizardmen/Seraphon got new models. I know some have been reboxed for 9th, but they're not new models. That makes 5 years between releases, and it's not like new models are coming tomorrow. How many years would I have to wait for a new Seraphon unit? My only real hope would be to see a handful of push fit models sold as a Warhammer Underworlds kit.
Because Fantasy was always secondary for me compared to 40K. I had a hard enough time keeping up with it before AoS and once Fantasy died, I just didn't have the time or enthusiasm to relearn a whole new game system. Especially with the complexity of 7E 40K at the time.
And I also played Daemons at the time, so I had the models. I just don't do well with multiple games systems at one time. 40K is enough for me.
auticus wrote: The balance is indeed garbage. Your everchosen are one of the worst "armies" in the game right now. They are hugely over pointed, and the Night Haunt are fairly optimal so you will always have lopsided matches against them with everchosen barring your opponent purposely downbuilding them to match a "C" or even a "D list.
We shall see - I am kind of waiting for the supposed rules update this year they have promised.
Do you mean the twice a year FAQ? If so they've already released it in July alongside the new edition. The next isn't due until January 2019.
I thought there was supposed to be a STD and ever-chosen update this year. That's what I was told - pretty recently.
You mean a battletome and not an update for Slave to Darkness then. Anything not announced is just a rumor, with varying levels of reliability depending on where the rumor started. Any sort of 'update' outside of a new battletome for Everchosen would likely be in the General's Handbook which we've already received for this year.
Well thanks for the info - now I know not to hold my breathe.
Kriswall wrote: The main reason I don't play is that the factions I'm interested in aren't likely to get new models anytime soon. I like the Seraphon line, but most of the Saurus models are super old and don't match the aesthetic of the newer ones... like the guy who rides the big dino. GW seems almost exclusively interested in releasing models for brand new factions.
I strongly dislike Warmachine/Hordes, but at least there you know your faction will get a few model releases per year. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's been since August of 2013 that Lizardmen/Seraphon got new models. I know some have been reboxed for 9th, but they're not new models. That makes 5 years between releases, and it's not like new models are coming tomorrow. How many years would I have to wait for a new Seraphon unit? My only real hope would be to see a handful of push fit models sold as a Warhammer Underworlds kit.
Now imagine if you were a Bretonnian player! Nothing since 6th!
A lot of the old classics are in the same vein, but there have been some things for some of the less fulfilled lines. Nothing really for classic Dwarfs unless you got Full Metal or Flame. Nothing for Dark Elves, High Elves, or Wood Elves, unless you go Under the Sea or Into the Woods. Beastmen sort of had something come in with the Tzaangors and such, but they were more emphasized as Tzeentch then Beast (though that's finally changing). The only real human release has been for the Sigmarines.
Then there are the Khemri. Given beautiful and amazing models in 8th, and then fully subsumed like a stepchild in to Death under the leadership of the Vampires.
Kriswall wrote: The main reason I don't play is that the factions I'm interested in aren't likely to get new models anytime soon. I like the Seraphon line, but most of the Saurus models are super old and don't match the aesthetic of the newer ones... like the guy who rides the big dino. GW seems almost exclusively interested in releasing models for brand new factions.
I strongly dislike Warmachine/Hordes, but at least there you know your faction will get a few model releases per year. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's been since August of 2013 that Lizardmen/Seraphon got new models. I know some have been reboxed for 9th, but they're not new models. That makes 5 years between releases, and it's not like new models are coming tomorrow. How many years would I have to wait for a new Seraphon unit? My only real hope would be to see a handful of push fit models sold as a Warhammer Underworlds kit.
Now imagine if you were a Bretonnian player! Nothing since 6th!
A lot of the old classics are in the same vein, but there have been some things for some of the less fulfilled lines. Nothing really for classic Dwarfs unless you got Full Metal or Flame. Nothing for Dark Elves, High Elves, or Wood Elves, unless you go Under the Sea or Into the Woods. Beastmen sort of had something come in with the Tzaangors and such, but they were more emphasized as Tzeentch then Beast (though that's finally changing). The only real human release has been for the Sigmarines.
Then there are the Khemri. Given beautiful and amazing models in 8th, and then fully subsumed like a stepchild in to Death under the leadership of the Vampires.
Dark Elves had the Daughters of Khaine this year to expand part of their range, and Beastmen are getting a new battletome this weekend that looks pretty solid so far (though only a new terrain piece and new spells as far as models). I'm hoping more of the legacy factions will get these sorts of expansions in the future.
Charistoph wrote: Now imagine if you were a Bretonnian player! Nothing since 6th!
*ahem* Dogs of War player checking in here. Our last Army Book was in 5th...
The Dogs of War concept was dropped during 6th (I remember some of the army books referencing them), and hasn't been paid thrift since, sadly. They were never as cohesive an army set as even Bretonnians were, which is probably why.
Oddly enough, the Mercenaries and Minions in WMH has done pretty good for itself over all, even if they are rather short-sheeted in several departments when it comes to new models.
They also got a bunch of their named regiments and special characters updated for 6th as well. I've been playing against my brother's DOW army a few times recently, and it's a daunting prospect. It's only going to be worse when all the Dwarfs get added.
Charistoph wrote: Now imagine if you were a Bretonnian player! Nothing since 6th!
*ahem* Dogs of War player checking in here. Our last Army Book was in 5th...
The Dogs of War concept was dropped during 6th (I remember some of the army books referencing them), and hasn't been paid thrift since, sadly.
They were never as cohesive an army set as even Bretonnians were, which is probably why.
Nope, Dogs of War got a "Ravening Hordes" list via a couple WD articles during 6th, and a few additional models for the Albion and Chaos campaigns.
Nope, DoW have always had a better, more complete army than Brets. You just don't see it because Brets can't hire DoW.
"During" meaning that it wasn't completely carried through to the end. Ogre Kingdoms did mention them, I believe (it is been a long time since I looked at that book), but I don't think the Dwarfs army book gave much time to them for their last book (again, running on memory here).
"Complete" and "cohesive" are not always the same thing. Mercenaries are a complete army in WMH, but only the Rhulic and Pirates have any cohesive feel to them.
And never played or collected Brets. They were in the running, along with Tomb Kings and Beastmen, but I never did finalize on an army to start collecting.
Geemoney wrote: I don't think the game is very fun. My experience with Iron Jawz is charge everything and then lose because all the other armies are better then yours in combat.
Out of curiosity what sort of list do you run? Iron Jawz tend to do pretty well from what I tend to see.
If he's playing against competitive tournament armies then I believe what he says. Iron jawz in a power gaming environment lack the tools needed in many cases.
"During" meaning that it wasn't completely carried through to the end. Ogre Kingdoms did mention them, I believe (it is been a long time since I looked at that book), but I don't think the Dwarfs army book gave much time to them for their last book (again, running on memory here).
Correct, last book to mention them was the 6th ed OK book with a reference to the best named unit in WHFB ever- The giant pygmies of Lemuria.
Stevefamine wrote: I want blocks of troops and regiments- I play a good amount of Warhammer Total War and prefer the previous factions/characters
The fluff isn't nearly as intriguing as the Old World
The fluff needs to mature itself and also get over the Sigmar Hump as I call it. The Realm structure leaves huge scope in this world for adding things; way more than for the Old World. The writers and story just need to push past Sigmar coming to save the day and get the other factions to get their head up. I greatly enjoyed reading Pestilins where you had Skaven waging war against each other and Sigmar over the back of a vast land worm that carried a city upon its back; with huge towers built around the long hard hairs on its back swaying to and fro with rats scurrying all around whilst also gnawing and eating their way through the worms guts.
As for blocks and regiments I agree that they are great and I love Total War AoS. I can only hope that the GW Specialist Games division keeps doing well and thus they decide to bring back Warmaster or recreate it for AoS. I always felt that was the perfect way to show rank and file as you could have far larger armies and get a real feel for the epic sweep of a cavalry charge into rank and file; of dragons and other beasts really being able to lay waste to companies not just 30 warriors etc..... I'd really love to see that game make a reappearance.
Stevefamine wrote: I want blocks of troops and regiments- I play a good amount of Warhammer Total War and prefer the previous factions/characters
The fluff isn't nearly as intriguing as the Old World
This too. I miss the ranks and blocks of WHFB.
Plus, I was never really much a fan of Epic fantasy like AoS. I prefer more grounded fantasy settings. AoS has great models but the setting itself doesn't interest me as much.
@Service Games
Admittedly SCE are a bad example considering how much starter set love they get. Fyerslayers are just ridiculous. $60 for like 10 basic troops? $40 for five naked dwarves? You must have a lot of spare cash to drop that kind of cheddar on naked dwarves with axes.
AoS strikes me as the kind of game for people who love painting pretty models and has no problem paying an arm and a leg for those pretty models.
JohnHwangDD wrote: It wouldn't have been that difficult to reintroduce block combat under AoS - just a single page of rules to cover RnF vs individual base.
Coupled to some plastic movement trays with deep round slots to hold the models on. Some people already used such for Demons of Chaos armies that could cross both games back in the day (I even started that and was going to use a magnetic sheet and magnets on the underside of models but never got round to finishing it).
IT could certainly be done, but I suspect it might not for a long time. GW is still in the kind of process of building AoS up and you can see that in how the unit counts for many armies are still smaller than some comparable 40K armies.
The fluff needs to mature itself and also get over the Sigmar Hump as I call it. The Realm structure leaves huge scope in this world for adding things; way more than for the Old World.
I think that's the problem, actually. The setting is so large that nothing that happens at a scale the players can relate to actually matters. There are continents too numerous to even bother naming, literally billions of members of every faction in each of the mortal realms, entire kingdoms massacred on a daily basis. It's impossible to be emotionally invested in any of it when there's so much of it that none of it is actually vital to the setting.
In fairness that was kind of the same with the Old World - it was still very big. I think that the killed in droves thing will ease off once we get more named heroes and characters appearing.
At present a lot of factions are relying on the big named god level heroes; with far fewer is any real named lesser heroes or characters. I think once we get them and we get a rise of other factions and settlements of note a lot of the story will come together.
I see AoS as a cake that's still in its goopy not yet fully risen state. It's got huge potential and if nurtured right will rise into a great cake; but make a mess and it can still flounder and fail to rise.
I think the key thing - lore wise - will happen when GW starts shifting off the Stormcast. The risk there is that they focus on Stormcast like they focus on Space Marines and attempt to copy the (lets face it, it works really well for them) marketing approach in that its all about the big superhumans and not really about anyone else.
Overread wrote: In fairness that was kind of the same with the Old World - it was still very big.
Not really, not in the same way AoS is. The thing about the Old World was that it was comparable to a squashed version of our world, with minor (compared to AoS) fantastical elements. It was not a series of 8 interconnecting magical realms, each with their own topography and quirk and are described as being massive. The scale is completely different.
You can look at a faction and go "oh yeah, these guys are based on the Holy Roman Empire and they are geographically in the same area as Germany. These guys are French and they are in the same area as France. These are totally aztec lizards and they come from a continent that looks suspiciously like a starved South America"
You just don't have that in AoS. That's why it feels so alien and extreme, because you have nonsense like that worm city. That just doesn't exist.
I just want some normal dudes, you know? I don't want some magic roided space marine expy from some god dimension. I just want a poor sod named Bob who was conscripted from some farm out in the country to fight demons, vampires and other horrible stuff with an ordinary pointed stick made of wood and iron called a "spear" rather than a "stabmaster extreme" made with bark harvested from a magical tree and metal that was conjured from the dreams of a drunken priest or some other nonsense. That's what Warhammer Fantasy was to me. I can get into Warhammer Fantasy's world. I just can't with AoS.
Disclosure, I do play AoS, but only a small corner of it, namely: small narrative games. Anything 500 to 1.000 points if we did count them.
So, rephrasing the question to "Why isn't AoS your main game system, just like WHFB used to be" the answers, in no particular order, are:
- No more ranked units, just free-flowing blobs moving around the table at ludicrous speed (when not outright teleporting where you want them). WHFB used to be a chess-like system where you had your plan your movements well in advance and a bad deployment would punish the whole game. Here's the absolute opposite.
- Too much emphasis on shooting, with shooting into and out of combat being the cherry on top.
- Squatting of TK which is one of my main armies.
- Lack of people to play with. A lot of those who embraced AoS moved to 40k when 8th hit, and Shadespire also carried away a few.
There are some very good things about AoS which, IMHO, make it work better at the lower point levels, it's just not a WHFB substitute. To me it's closer to Warmahordes and 40k in concept than WHFB, so it's only natural that if WHFB was my main game that place is now held by just playing 8th edition or 9th age.
Geemoney wrote: I don't think the game is very fun. My experience with Iron Jawz is charge everything and then lose because all the other armies are better then yours in combat.
Out of curiosity what sort of list do you run? Iron Jawz tend to do pretty well from what I tend to see.
It was just a start collecting league; we did 1000 points then 1500 maybe...I dropped out after that. My list was ardboyz, brutes, goregruntaz, Warchanter, and Megaboss on foot. I played like four or five games and they all ended the same. The game might be better and higher points; but I just didn't want to invest the time or money in it to find out.
I sold the army, Orktober is coming and I need to buy some buggies.
djones520 wrote: It's not Fantasy. It's 40K with more swords. I played Fantasy to play a different game. When the switch to AoS happened, it took away all of the reasons I played it, and there is nothing in AoS that makes me want to devote time to it, instead of just sticking with 40K.
You know, I have thought about this comment more than any other I have read on dakka. As I am only recently getting into WFB, I am surprised how detailed many of the rules were as opposed to 40k at the time. When I played 40k 2nd, there were a lot of rules, and I know the effect that can have a large games, however, I felt like every model not only made a difference, but tactically I could do more with it. Think about what was the right move was just as enjoyable as making it. I have lost interest in 40k over the years, and over the years I might have had 2-3 armies at a time. So far in diving into WFB (I know I really missed the boat on this, but I just bought my 4th Battalion set, in addition to the other 6 starter armies I have. The biggest reason why? The rules. I am amazed how much flavor each army has, and how that gives them their own character, strengths and weaknesses. For much of 40k, it was the opposite, I just felt like everyone blended together and there was just this generic feel to all of them. I would say this was the case until 6th, which I think swung way over too far in all the special rules and details, but even still I didn't play it that much nor any of the additions since. I imagine there are some that disagree with me, but this is just how 40k has made me feel over the years, and throw in the Primaris, and I am over it all. I do have some fondness for the earlier editions that I will never get rid of, but I am over keeping up with the game.
AOS feels like where 40k is going. Given the popularity of 40k, maybe that's the right move for the masses, but they have lost me. And to be honest, I feel like I am seeing some LOTR in AOS. And while that system was kinda new and I was playing characters from an amazing story, it was still mostly moving single models around a table who fought with swords. Got over that quickly and aren't really interested in going back.
I do like skirmish level games, like Warhammer Skirmish and Mordheim, but I there is more detail in those games.
I have an Age of Sigmar army, complete with round bases. Moonclan Grots.
While night goblins are a part of warhammer the whimsey never really matched the grim horror of the unrelenting orc hordes. So they never left their 7th edition sprue until Age of Sigmar came along.
I wont take Age of Sigmar seriously, so my night goblins found a home on round bases, I bought some squig hoppers and a pair of manglers to go with them
Apparently Moonclan is a top tier army, but I have rarely used them and most are unpainted. They were out of my main fantasy O&G army though.
I am not in a hurry to buy into any more Age of Sigmar, though I frequently buy the models to use with my Warhammer Fantasy armies.
The changes did not start happening until 2016. look at the prices on the Fyreslayer release and tell me that is not Kirby-era thinking. Note how the GHB came as a result of feedback instead of being a day 1 release, note how the battletome structure entirely changed, note how the campaign books that were being pushed as a big deal never got continued. The way AoS was managed for the first year/year and a half is completely different than after. If it was so successful why change things so dramatically?
Look at the prices of chainrasps. or the price increase of wanderers when they shifted to rounds. It's still fairly out of whack.
And yes, of course changes didn't start happening until about 2016. One doesn't say, i need to clean house, and gets a stark white abodement inmediately. you need to start gathering things. In case of company management, it means studying and analizing the innards of the company. And all that while the endless machine of releases churns its product. A book needs to be on the printing machine about 3 or so months before release, meaning for most of the early stuff it was too late to form up a coherent response, which was ready before launch.
The change wasn't done because the game wasn't sucessfull (though we need to be fair and admit it was clearly not a roaring sucess, just doing a-ok) but because the dev team didn't like the way things were imposed to them. We all have seen that reddit thread about the former dev who explained how entire departments had to be evacuated when certain someone passed by to inspect. The change was inevitable, gw just wanted to sped up things by borrowing the job done by scgt and thus shave off months of extra work.
One also has to remember that battletomes have changed in paradigm in two occasions. the first being sylvaneth, where we got alleigance, with the second being kharadrons, where we got sub-faction alleigance (which is a thing all tomes afterwards have, bar the god specific chaos gods' armies and nighthaunt-the later which can be part of a tome which DOES have sub-factions)
Sub faction allegiance is just an evolution of the meta-battalion versions that existed in the first battletome. They just stripped out the part whete a battalion tax had to be paid, the actual benefits are pretty consistent.
I would agree about management simply needing time, etc, except the entire structure changed so dramatically. It was not just the pricing, not just the community engagement, but multiple factors. Again, if the point-less, campaign-book structure of AoS was working, why abandon it? The only reason for them to completely halt those campaign books (and there was most likely intent that they would continue originally--clear if one read All Gates) is that they were not working out. Even fan demands for points did not require the introduction of allegiance abilities that redefined battletomes.
I find it difficult to believe that Roundtree simply wanted to completely change the paradigm of AoS while it was successful--the changes only make sense in the context of the original content not doing well.
GW have abandoned all trappings of war games in exchange for CCG and Video Game expansion pack design.
If i wanted to play LOL or MTG I would play LOL or MTG not AOS or 40k.
Correction. 40K is Age of Sigmar with guns.
40k came first though.
I am sorry, I don't understand. How so? When the rules for Age of Sigmar came out 40K was in 7th edition and had no semblance what AoS was. AoS gave us the key words. Gave us mortal wounds. When 40K went to 8th edition, movement stats were introduced like AoS. Even the wound chart is like AoS wound chart. That wasn't in 40K before. 40K didn't have key words like AoS does and now 40K has mortal wounds when it didn't have them before.
So not sure how 40K before Age of Sigmar. If you are saying 40K was before Age of Sigmar became a game, then you could be correct BUT since AoS is basically from Warhammer Fantasy Battles (not the rules but the miniatures) I am still correct because Fantasy was before 40K. 40K came what around Fantasy third edition?
This is why I say AoS came before 40K. How do you see it? I just don't understand.
I tried AOS and it was, uh, crap
Simply put I dislike the shallowness of the rules and the way that you either have a big thing or you lose. You have the right power units or you lose. You Skaven dont have Verminlords or those new Skyre Ratogres then you dont win, simple as. If you dont bring the Clan formation then you dont get the LD buffs you desperately need (and that used to be army integral and really need to be) and so you lose as your piss-poor LD (or whatever it is called now) coupled with the stupid battleshock system causes entire units to erode away in a single turn. Of course you can counter this by bringing..... What exactly? That one formation again. Thats it.
You see, for me its not just the shallow rules that I cannot stand (and lets face it, there is no such thing as 'tactics' any more, not like there was) but also the need to bring a very limited selection of units from a select number of armies or you will auto-lose.There is no counter-meta, no outsmarting your opponent, none of that. Hell, even your actions dont really have consequences as you can shoot into and even whilst in combat.
For me the game just feels like a desperate attempt from GW to milk the old world one last time.
master of ordinance wrote: Simply put I dislike the shallowness of the rules and the way that you either have a big thing or you lose. You have the right power units or you lose. You Skaven dont have Verminlords or those new Skyre Ratogres then you dont win, simple as. If you dont bring the Clan formation then you dont get the LD buffs you desperately need (and that used to be army integral and really need to be) and so you lose as your piss-poor LD (or whatever it is called now) coupled with the stupid battleshock system causes entire units to erode away in a single turn. Of course you can counter this by bringing..... What exactly? That one formation again. Thats it.
master of ordinance wrote: Simply put I dislike the shallowness of the rules and the way that you either have a big thing or you lose. You have the right power units or you lose. You Skaven dont have Verminlords or those new Skyre Ratogres then you dont win, simple as. If you dont bring the Clan formation then you dont get the LD buffs you desperately need (and that used to be army integral and really need to be) and so you lose as your piss-poor LD (or whatever it is called now) coupled with the stupid battleshock system causes entire units to erode away in a single turn. Of course you can counter this by bringing..... What exactly? That one formation again. Thats it.
So what game is superior to this?
I would consider a lot of games "superior" but very damn few of them could be considered anywhere near as "popular/well known" Finding players for those games? good luck. Part of the reason for so much complaint about AoS is it really could and should be much better than it is.
NH Gunsmith wrote: Once they condense some of the mini-factions down into playable armies... I will seriously consider the game. But until then, I care not.
The Lionranger allegiance has two(?!) model choices... Swifthawk Agents has 3. That is miserable.
Shadowblades have two models, one of which is a duel kit option shared with another faction and one is a finecast unique model. There's Death faction that only has one half of a triple kit as its only model.
I agree GW needs to clean up the little factions - the new Beasts of Chaos is doing just that. What AoS really needs is not just that but for 40K to step back for a year or so and to let AoS dominate the release schedual to catch up. I'm not saying no 40K, just that AoS needs a bit clean up both in terms of what factions there are; in the rules and also in its whole presentation so that new gamers can come to the GW website - see the factions clearly and get into the game not get scared by a billion factions that seem tiny or worthless .
NH Gunsmith wrote: Once they condense some of the mini-factions down into playable armies... I will seriously consider the game. But until then, I care not.
The Lionranger allegiance has two(?!) model choices... Swifthawk Agents has 3. That is miserable.
Shadowblades have two models, one of which is a duel kit option shared with another faction and one is a finecast unique model. There's Death faction that only has one half of a triple kit as its only model.
I agree GW needs to clean up the little factions - the new Beasts of Chaos is doing just that. What AoS really needs is not just that but for 40K to step back for a year or so and to let AoS dominate the release schedual to catch up. I'm not saying no 40K, just that AoS needs a bit clean up both in terms of what factions there are; in the rules and also in its whole presentation so that new gamers can come to the GW website - see the factions clearly and get into the game not get scared by a billion factions that seem tiny or worthless .
Well... The little factions are honestly worthless. The Battletomes give out great benefits for playing the armies they contain, not playing an army with a Battletome is like playing Index 40k armies vs Codex 40k armies. There is little reason to do it unless you LOVE getting punished on the tabletop for your poor life choices of the models you like in every pick up game you play.
master of ordinance wrote: Simply put I dislike the shallowness of the rules and the way that you either have a big thing or you lose. You have the right power units or you lose. You Skaven dont have Verminlords or those new Skyre Ratogres then you dont win, simple as. If you dont bring the Clan formation then you dont get the LD buffs you desperately need (and that used to be army integral and really need to be) and so you lose as your piss-poor LD (or whatever it is called now) coupled with the stupid battleshock system causes entire units to erode away in a single turn. Of course you can counter this by bringing..... What exactly? That one formation again. Thats it.
So what game is superior to this?
Thus far, killteam, it's why I'm likely to not play aos much longer despite only jumping in a bit ago. The diminished factions are ridiculously weak right now, I've been running slaves to darkness since I, you know, actually like their models and lore. Last week my leader and an entire set of chaos warriors were reduced to goo by flying dwarves in two turns. They're roughly equivalent in points, and frankly there wasn't enough damage output on my side to have a freaking prayer. Oh and the dwarves move twice as fast. I was out run, by dwaves, shot, charged, and then bodied without a charge.
Defensively they're identical to chaos warriors, offensively they're absurd in comparison.
Honestly in general offense seems to be remarkably under costed right now. Looking at things they seem to have done little more than continue the design philosophy that total wounds are more important than anything else. That said, I made plenty of errors, but there wasn't a prayer of recovering from them when mass offense wipes things off the board, particularly when your faction doesn't have access to it.
GW have abandoned all trappings of war games in exchange for CCG and Video Game expansion pack design.
If i wanted to play LOL or MTG I would play LOL or MTG not AOS or 40k.
Correction. 40K is Age of Sigmar with guns.
40k came first though.
I am sorry, I don't understand. How so? When the rules for Age of Sigmar came out 40K was in 7th edition and had no semblance what AoS was. AoS gave us the key words. Gave us mortal wounds. When 40K went to 8th edition, movement stats were introduced like AoS. Even the wound chart is like AoS wound chart. That wasn't in 40K before. 40K didn't have key words like AoS does and now 40K has mortal wounds when it didn't have them before.
So not sure how 40K before Age of Sigmar. If you are saying 40K was before Age of Sigmar became a game, then you could be correct BUT since AoS is basically from Warhammer Fantasy Battles (not the rules but the miniatures) I am still correct because Fantasy was before 40K. 40K came what around Fantasy third edition?
This is why I say AoS came before 40K. How do you see it? I just don't understand.
Well like you said: When AoS came out 40k was in 7th. So 40k was around prior to AoS starting therefore 40k came first.
We seem to disagree strongly about the idea that AoS is a continuation of Fantasy though.
master of ordinance wrote: I tried AOS and it was, uh, crap
Simply put I dislike the shallowness of the rules and the way that you either have a big thing or you lose. You have the right power units or you lose. You Skaven dont have Verminlords or those new Skyre Ratogres then you dont win, simple as. If you dont bring the Clan formation then you dont get the LD buffs you desperately need (and that used to be army integral and really need to be) and so you lose as your piss-poor LD (or whatever it is called now) coupled with the stupid battleshock system causes entire units to erode away in a single turn. Of course you can counter this by bringing..... What exactly? That one formation again. Thats it.
You see, for me its not just the shallow rules that I cannot stand (and lets face it, there is no such thing as 'tactics' any more, not like there was) but also the need to bring a very limited selection of units from a select number of armies or you will auto-lose.There is no counter-meta, no outsmarting your opponent, none of that. Hell, even your actions dont really have consequences as you can shoot into and even whilst in combat.
For me the game just feels like a desperate attempt from GW to milk the old world one last time.
This x40000.
The game has been out for over THREE YEARS.
How long will GW prop up this disaster of “game design”?
but also the need to bring a very limited selection of units from a select number of armies or you will auto-lose
This is truth. And also been my biggest complaint about gw games... since forever. Its not limited to AOS. 40k has always been this. WHFB was basically excluding the ravening hordes days of 6th edition like this.
Its a deckbuilding game that rotates its power cards regularly.
That being said... its also making GW money and the big events like Adepticon massively fill out attendance. So disaster of game design or not, its got forward momentum more so than most any other fantasy game that is being played that I can see.
My conclusion on the AOS experiment is that Joe-Gamer doesn't give a **** about outsmarting their opponent or clever game play or anything like that. joe-Gamer cares about playing a game that everyone else is playing, and Joe-Gamer seems to love deckbuilding games where you win in the listbuilding phase. Like it. Hate it. Doesn't matter. Those are the games that seem to have the most traction in the overall tabletop community. Complex games that favor smarter gameplay over deckbuilding are also games you rarely see or have a small turnout at the bigger events.
NH Gunsmith wrote: Once they condense some of the mini-factions down into playable armies... I will seriously consider the game. But until then, I care not.
The Lionranger allegiance has two(?!) model choices... Swifthawk Agents has 3. That is miserable.
Shadowblades have two models, one of which is a duel kit option shared with another faction and one is a finecast unique model. There's Death faction that only has one half of a triple kit as its only model.
Assassins are plastic now. They literally took the model for "Shadowblade", the Hero Assassin from the old Dark Elf book, and renamed him(like they did with Araloth and the Nomad Prince) and took the faction name from him.
I agree GW needs to clean up the little factions - the new Beasts of Chaos is doing just that. What AoS really needs is not just that but for 40K to step back for a year or so and to let AoS dominate the release schedual to catch up. I'm not saying no 40K, just that AoS needs a bit clean up both in terms of what factions there are; in the rules and also in its whole presentation so that new gamers can come to the GW website - see the factions clearly and get into the game not get scared by a billion factions that seem tiny or worthless .
I don't think we necessarily need to "clean up the little factions", we need to either see them get fleshed out or Order needs to get books for the Seeds of Hope/Firestorm cities.
That's what Beasts of Chaos is effectively doing. They're not "cleaning up" anything, they're bringing effectively four factions that can effectively be grouped together into one grouping.
Assassins are plastic now. They literally took the model for "Shadowblade", the Hero Assassin from the old Dark Elf book, and renamed him(like they did with Araloth and the Nomad Prince) and took the faction name from him.
I wait what - I just went and checked and yeah its in plastic! How long has that been the case? I was sure it was a resin sculpt! I might be going insane!
Assassins are plastic now. They literally took the model for "Shadowblade", the Hero Assassin from the old Dark Elf book, and renamed him(like they did with Araloth and the Nomad Prince) and took the faction name from him.
I wait what - I just went and checked and yeah its in plastic! How long has that been the case? I was sure it was a resin sculpt! I might be going insane!
It's been the case since before The End Times.
There was a second sculpt available for awhile(cloaked, half-mask, knife raised) in Finecast. I've made some cash over the past few years selling off my excess stock of old metal Assassins(I used to fill out my Corsairs with Assassins--I had a good 5-6 of the blighters).
Assassins are plastic now. They literally took the model for "Shadowblade", the Hero Assassin from the old Dark Elf book, and renamed him(like they did with Araloth and the Nomad Prince) and took the faction name from him.
I wait what - I just went and checked and yeah its in plastic! How long has that been the case? I was sure it was a resin sculpt! I might be going insane!
It's been the case since before The End Times.
There was a second sculpt available for awhile(cloaked, half-mask, knife raised) in Finecast. I've made some cash over the past few years selling off my excess stock of old metal Assassins(I used to fill out my Corsairs with Assassins--I had a good 5-6 of the blighters).
I'll just list myself as going nuts!
Still I picked up a pair of the bloodbowl assassins for mine and still want to convert something to make a Khinerai Assassin (since for Daughters of Khaine I can't think of a better/more fun delivery than to have an assassin pop out of a sky striking unit of Khinerai!)
GW have abandoned all trappings of war games in exchange for CCG and Video Game expansion pack design.
If i wanted to play LOL or MTG I would play LOL or MTG not AOS or 40k.
Correction. 40K is Age of Sigmar with guns.
40k came first though.
I am sorry, I don't understand. How so? When the rules for Age of Sigmar came out 40K was in 7th edition and had no semblance what AoS was. AoS gave us the key words. Gave us mortal wounds. When 40K went to 8th edition, movement stats were introduced like AoS. Even the wound chart is like AoS wound chart. That wasn't in 40K before. 40K didn't have key words like AoS does and now 40K has mortal wounds when it didn't have them before.
So not sure how 40K before Age of Sigmar. If you are saying 40K was before Age of Sigmar became a game, then you could be correct BUT since AoS is basically from Warhammer Fantasy Battles (not the rules but the miniatures) I am still correct because Fantasy was before 40K. 40K came what around Fantasy third edition?
This is why I say AoS came before 40K. How do you see it? I just don't understand.
Well like you said: When AoS came out 40k was in 7th. So 40k was around prior to AoS starting therefore 40k came first.
So that would mean 40K is AoS with guns then. Since 40K that was out at the time had no resemblence to AoS while there is lots of resemblence to AoS now in 40K 8th edition.
We seem to disagree strongly about the idea that AoS is a continuation of Fantasy though.
Fluff wise yes it's a continuation. Game wise totally different game. Not saying you are wrong just showing my point of view. I would like to see your point of view on this. I will make a new thread if you like to disucss further.
pm713 wrote:We seem to disagree strongly about the idea that AoS is a continuation of Fantasy though.
Fluff wise yes it's a continuation. Game wise totally different game. Not saying you are wrong just showing my point of view. I would like to see your point of view on this. I will make a new thread if you like to discuss further.
Yeah, AoS is definitely more converting 40K in to Fantasy than continuing anything in WHFB. You can see the testing marks all over it now that 40K's 8th Edition came out. Oddly enough, 40K has more connections to WHFB now than AoS does in terms of mechanics. Just by keeping most of the stats from 7th Edition and incorporating them in the different mechanics, they've done that.
WHFB was a huge mess of processes that was great for setting up many of the intricacies of doing rank and file combat at a unit level (albeit ham-stringed by their own ham-handed rules development processes). Then there were times when certain armies couldn't even be fielded without House Rules below 1000 points. A lot of people liked that, and AoS could only get farther away from it by making the processes support a WMH, Malifaux, or Infinity-sized game, rather than providing processes for large forces.
Oddly enough, once they got the point thing back in to play, it started going pretty well in my region. It had been quite dead during most of 8th Edition, to the point that only people who liked the models were buying anything and only those who didn't care much about Sci-Fantasy and Steam Punk really played much of it. When AoS released, it was mocked for its silly extra rules, and people were interested, but were having a hard time nailing the balance of the games. Once the General's Handbook came out, it started picking up steam, especially when Formationhammer was gutting 40K.
auticus wrote: There are tactics. Just not traditional wargaming tactics. The tactics come primarily in winning in the listbuilding phase.
So, traditional Warhammer tactics?
For the most part yes barring whfb 6th edition, which placed a greater emphasis on gameplay over listbuilding. Not suprisingly the architect of that edition was Alessio... who was big into games meaning more than listbuilding (and you can see that with Kings of War and other games he's authored).
I wonder what my opinion would be had I never played 6th edition and only was exposed to the game afterward?
master of ordinance wrote: Simply put I dislike the shallowness of the rules and the way that you either have a big thing or you lose. You have the right power units or you lose. You Skaven dont have Verminlords or those new Skyre Ratogres then you dont win, simple as. If you dont bring the Clan formation then you dont get the LD buffs you desperately need (and that used to be army integral and really need to be) and so you lose as your piss-poor LD (or whatever it is called now) coupled with the stupid battleshock system causes entire units to erode away in a single turn. Of course you can counter this by bringing..... What exactly? That one formation again. Thats it.
So what game is superior to this?
Just about any other game - heck even the free ones I can get online have more depth in a few plainly typed pages than AOS manages with all its fancy decoration. Infinity, Kings of War, Old Warhammer Fantasy, Historicals, Honestly anything. AoS has about as much tactical depth as pushing your toy army mens into the middle of the table and making clangclang noises.
Hell, you can even fire into close combat without any penalties and you can even fire with your missile units if they are locked in combat. In combat and dont want to be? Just quite literally walk out, no penalties, no free strikes, nothing.Your free to go. Even the terrain lacks any actual effect on the table save to occasionally block line of sight if it is big enough - or in other words you could play AoS on a empty table and the only difference would be the table not looking quite as pretty. As someone else said, the only tactical decisions in the entire game are in the list building phase, the game itself is hilariously flat.
For me, Kings of War is much more fun. AoS isn't bad, but the fluff is so silly and over the top (in my opinion), and the figures are all 35-40mm. Can't stand the new sizes.
You need to endure the arrogant attitude and the cult following that makes CB. As long as that situation persists and competitive play is their primary focus, I don't see myself involved with them. Enjoy whatever you do and let others be.
auticus wrote: There are tactics. Just not traditional wargaming tactics. The tactics come primarily in winning in the listbuilding phase.
So, traditional Warhammer tactics?
For the most part yes barring whfb 6th edition, which placed a greater emphasis on gameplay over listbuilding. Not suprisingly the architect of that edition was Alessio... who was big into games meaning more than listbuilding (and you can see that with Kings of War and other games he's authored).
I wonder what my opinion would be had I never played 6th edition and only was exposed to the game afterward?
Agreed, and I think it is also worth noting how popular 6th edition was and still is. I think people would still flock to a game system with more tactical mechanics and a more balanced lineup, provided it was still relatively simple and intuitive. On average people just do not have the energy these days to dive into more complex systems.
In fairness GW streamlining often results in rules that are written in such a way as they don't so much streamline as leave out key bits of information.
So instead of taking the complex rules of 40K and making Chess rules you instead take the complex rules of 40K and just leave bits out.
Eg at present its perfectly possible to shoot around walls in AoS unless the wall has a warscroll of its own.
master of ordinance wrote: I tried AOS and it was, uh, crap
Simply put I dislike the shallowness of the rules and the way that you either have a big thing or you lose. You have the right power units or you lose. You Skaven dont have Verminlords or those new Skyre Ratogres then you dont win, simple as. If you dont bring the Clan formation then you dont get the LD buffs you desperately need (and that used to be army integral and really need to be) and so you lose as your piss-poor LD (or whatever it is called now) coupled with the stupid battleshock system causes entire units to erode away in a single turn. Of course you can counter this by bringing..... What exactly? That one formation again. Thats it.
You see, for me its not just the shallow rules that I cannot stand (and lets face it, there is no such thing as 'tactics' any more, not like there was) but also the need to bring a very limited selection of units from a select number of armies or you will auto-lose.There is no counter-meta, no outsmarting your opponent, none of that. Hell, even your actions dont really have consequences as you can shoot into and even whilst in combat.
For me the game just feels like a desperate attempt from GW to milk the old world one last time.
This x40000.
The game has been out for over THREE YEARS.
How long will GW prop up this disaster of “game design”?
You mean the disaster of game design that was basically dragged and dropped into their #1 game system (and probably the most popular tabletop wargame around)? You mean the disaster of game design that has saw sales skyrocket and community growth on a scale that likely has never happened before? THAT game design disaster?
While GW games may not be your cup of tea (and let's be honest, it's not AoS, it's GW designs in general most seem to have issues with), there is no denying that GW and their two core lines are doing better than ever, so they must be doing something right.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: Are people buying models for the game, or for other reasons though? It could be that people just like the models, but don't care about the game.
Possible and that does happen that people buy the odd miniature they like here and there. However in general custom from such lines is often far less per customer unless they are buying for another game system. So if GW is seeing solid sales over whole lines and seeing customers buying more than a few odd models then its clear that those people are most likely playing the AoS game than any other.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: Are people buying models for the game, or for other reasons though? It could be that people just like the models, but don't care about the game.
This line of thinking is actually what got us the original version of AoS. Kirby and friends thought that they didn't need structure because everyone would just buy the pretty models. That wasn't happening hence the original GHB.
Personally I think AoS is fantastic. It's got better balance than anytime in fantasy since ravening hordes and a great spread of winning armies. There is much more to positioning in AoS than I ever felt with WFB. In 3 years this went from a game on that could have been written on a napkin to a very fun and solid game. Opinions of course will vary.
I think one thing people are still coming to terms with is terrain - even GW - when it comes to fantasy. In the past the board was very open; now AoS actually wants to have tighter terrain rules and more density of terrain on the board and the open moving units favour that kind of setup.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: . There is much more to positioning in AoS than I ever felt with WFB.
Ok, how? In WHFB you had to be careful of your flanks, charges were done before movement so you had to position everything the turn before, and units had facings, so you couldn't just turn around and attack what you want. How is that less positioning than AoS?
CthuluIsSpy wrote: . There is much more to positioning in AoS than I ever felt with WFB.
Ok, how? In WHFB you had to be careful of your flanks, charges were done before movement so you had to position everything the turn before, and units had facings, so you couldn't just turn around and attack what you want. How is that less positioning than AoS?
Individual model position within a unit is extremely important in AoS, thanks to melee weapon ranges, base to base pile-in restrictions, and varying base sizes. While facing isn't important, model position absolutely is. Also, magic happens before movement, and you have the possibility of two consecutive turns for one player, so you want to plan for that.
WHFB had atrocious model balance for most of its lifespan, but it was definitely a much deeper and more challenging and rewarding system than AoS. Not to say AoS is bad - it found a good balance between streamlined play and tactical depth.
The only thing WHFB and AOS have in common is that they both roll D6s to determine outcomes and both lean heavily on listbuilding over gameplay in comparison to other games like Kings of War, DB2, Hordes of the Things, and even Lord of the Rings (though that being a GW game is more middle of the road with the listbuilding shenanigans, not minimal)
IMO they both have atrocious balance issues when it comes to casual games. In either it is too easy to take a tournament level list and plop it down in a casual game and nuke the other player, intentionally or not.
They both have tactics and strategies.
One game favors maneuver and positioning and battlefield management. The other fields micro management of weapon positions, combo chaining, combo buffs, and maximizing dice odds through command abilities and synergies kind of like CCGs like Warhammer: Invasion do (minus the positioning as in a card game there is absolutely none)
Players looking for a game of maneuver and battlefield management and traditional wargaming tropes will find AOS to have no tactics. Not because there are no tactics, but because there are no traditional wargaming tactics present for the most part.
Or in other words "there are no tactics and gameplay that I am interested in."
Warhammer Fantasy 6th edition was the closest and pinnacle to traditional wargaming and less on listbuilding and combo chaining etc.
master of ordinance wrote: I tried AOS and it was, uh, crap
Simply put I dislike the shallowness of the rules and the way that you either have a big thing or you lose. You have the right power units or you lose. You Skaven dont have Verminlords or those new Skyre Ratogres then you dont win, simple as. If you dont bring the Clan formation then you dont get the LD buffs you desperately need (and that used to be army integral and really need to be) and so you lose as your piss-poor LD (or whatever it is called now) coupled with the stupid battleshock system causes entire units to erode away in a single turn. Of course you can counter this by bringing..... What exactly? That one formation again. Thats it.
You see, for me its not just the shallow rules that I cannot stand (and lets face it, there is no such thing as 'tactics' any more, not like there was) but also the need to bring a very limited selection of units from a select number of armies or you will auto-lose.There is no counter-meta, no outsmarting your opponent, none of that. Hell, even your actions dont really have consequences as you can shoot into and even whilst in combat.
For me the game just feels like a desperate attempt from GW to milk the old world one last time.
This x40000.
The game has been out for over THREE YEARS.
How long will GW prop up this disaster of “game design”?
You mean the disaster of game design that was basically dragged and dropped into their #1 game system (and probably the most popular tabletop wargame around)? You mean the disaster of game design that has saw sales skyrocket and community growth on a scale that likely has never happened before? THAT game design disaster?
While GW games may not be your cup of tea (and let's be honest, it's not AoS, it's GW designs in general most seem to have issues with), there is no denying that GW and their two core lines are doing better than ever, so they must be doing something right.
It sells well because newspawn to the hobby enter a GamesWorkshop (or as my local one now calls itself "Warhammer") amd get started in the game because they do not know there is anything better out there, and by the time they learn of the wider spectrum it is usually too late because they are now used to beer-and-pretzels level shallowness.
You need to endure the arrogant attitude and the cult following that makes CB. As long as that situation persists and competitive play is their primary focus, I don't see myself involved with them. Enjoy whatever you do and let others be.
Ive never found arrogance a problem. The rules are tight and the armies balanced (except CA and Tohaa, feth CA and Tohaa) and the players are good natured and fun. There are few rules queries and when there are it takes seconds to resolve them (or as long as it takes to find the relevant rule) and the meta is not stuck in a monotrack like GW's "bring these meta units from these meta factions or have 'fun'. Funnily enough the competitive play nature ot the game eads to it being a lot more relaxing that some of these non-competitive ones, if only because it is actually playtested.
JohnHwangDD wrote:The problem is that the large bulk of the GW players conflate complexity with depth, resulting in a huge pushback against any sort of streamlining.
The problem is GW's games are still too complex even when they are streamlined. Or should I say too messy. Take Bolt Action or Pike and Shot as alternatives, the rules are easy to follow, the activation and fighting mechanisms are simple and the armies are largely similar for the most part. And yet they both manage to have a great scope of tactical depth. WHFB had depth, movement mattered and committing to a charge was a major thing you had to be sure of, but AoS has none of that.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: . There is much more to positioning in AoS than I ever felt with WFB.
Ok, how? In WHFB you had to be careful of your flanks, charges were done before movement so you had to position everything the turn before, and units had facings, so you couldn't just turn around and attack what you want. How is that less positioning than AoS?
Individual model position within a unit is extremely important in AoS, thanks to melee weapon ranges, base to base pile-in restrictions, and varying base sizes. While facing isn't important, model position absolutely is. Also, magic happens before movement, and you have the possibility of two consecutive turns for one player, so you want to plan for that.
Thats micromanagment. In WHFB positioning your units was key, you had to have skirmishers or covering units on your flanks because if you took one in the flank you where in a really bad shape. Charge breakers where needed if you wanted to bait your opponent out of position, or prevent them from hitting your main units. You had to account for terrain and its effect on your moving blocks of troops, you had to guess (at least until 8th) when you where close enough to charge and then go for it, because if you where out you would soon be taking a charge to the face. The position of your general and BSB where key to keeping troops in line and not fleeing. Units had to be facing the correct way or stop and turn or wheel. Positioning and movement where key to winning and losing, and many a time a player has lost because they left a gap in their lines and let skirmishers of cavalry through to ravage their rear, or failed a crucial charge because they failed to account for terrain, or been battered by cannonfire and archers because they left a unit out in the open.
AoS has none of that.
lord_blackfang wrote: WHFB had atrocious model balance for most of its lifespan, but it was definitely a much deeper and more challenging and rewarding system than AoS. Not to say AoS is bad - it found a good balance between streamlined play and tactical depth.
Indeed. One of the saving graces of 6th edition was that it was a little more balanced than most and put a leash on some of the more mental army lists.
As for AOS, seeing how simplified the game was from the start was an immediate turn off. It was ridiculous. It gave the impression that the designers weren't taking it seriously, almost like they were trolling the fanbase after squatting WHFB. On top of that the new lore has no appeal. It just seems a bit boring and ultimately pointless. You could have had AOS in the old fantasy setting. The Stormcast models are pretty cool I have to say, but then GW has long had the knack of creating gorgeous/iconic model lines and the Stormcast join that list I think. The problem is almost all the other new models. The newer additions to the orc range look like they were pulled from a free to play Facebook game.
Oh and £60 for 5 blood knights? Have a fething word with yourself GW.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: Are people buying models for the game, or for other reasons though? It could be that people just like the models, but don't care about the game.
Definitely buying OOP models, but the new stuff is just too expensive. Some of it is nice, but to me, much of it is just over the top silly looking.
I call bs. You're just describing other micro management by your own definition. Field positioning matters in both WFB and AoS. Flanks matter in AoS & WFB. Proper deployment means the difference between winning and losing. And at least there isn't only DE/VC/and Daemons that are viable now
In fact AoS actually requires you to play the game. Something that didn't happen much in WFB because it was just about slugging it out. AoS revolves entirely around objectives and board control.
I call bs. You're just describing other micro management by your own definition. Field positioning matters in both WFB and AoS. Flanks matter in AoS & WFB. Proper deployment means the difference between winning and losing. And at least there isn't only DE/VC/and Daemons that are viable now
In fact AoS actually requires you to play the game. Something that didn't happen much in WFB because it was just about slugging it out. AoS revolves entirely around objectives and board control.
Reread the 6th Edition rulebook, there are plenty of scenarios in that book alone that focused on objectives and themed play. Also I see another dig on 7th, Thankfully, NOBODY here is even MENTIONING playing 7th.
I started in 7th. It was ok. I liked it more than 8th, which added a bunch of stupid crap I didn't like. I thought it was more tactical than 8th, which to me boiled down to "hurr, I have a bigger block then you! I am unstoppable!" or "hurr, I cast purple sun! There goes your elite infantry!" 8th still had the same movement restrictions though, so you could at least try to loop around the huge block and hit something else.
By the sound of it, I probably should have started WHFB earlier. 6th ed sounds more to my liking, and I do have the 6th ed Lizardman Army book, which is just fantastic. Army books back then had so much more content than they do now. Now its just pretty pictures.
I physically CANNOT recommend 6th edition enough, it was pretty much the benchmark for balanced rules that was only spoiled by some poorly written Army Books. You can say the Army Book balance got Thorpe-d.
And before it starts, you'll hear nonsense about how 5 man knight units wiped out all infantry on the charge. Ignore it, there's more than enough math to disprove that as the average.
@Hulksmash I think the key difference is that in the old fantasy rules if you attacked on a flank (side) or rear of an enemy unit block (or monster) then the way the attack resolved was different. You'd gain a bonus in attacking the sides and the rear over just charging in the front; taking down a bigger monster or unit block might have you attack one on the front to tie it up; and then sweep others around the sides whilst trying not to expose one of them to a further counter attack to their rear/sides.
In AoS that is mostly gone because no matter at what angle you attack from the attack profile and the way it plays out is always the same. The only variation is how many units are in and out of range. Which curiously affects how many attacks can be made, but doesn't affect where models can be removed from when the player allocates wounds.
So yes you can still charge the rear or sides but you gain nothing over charging the front - and by nature of how units move now there is no clear front/back/sides to the block of models themselves (unless you choose to move them in a block formation).
Of course now if your opponent has strung out their units into a line you can hit one part of that line to do as much damage as you can whilst getting far less back. And the lack of fixed formations means you can move more tightly around terrain and other units.
So there is gain and loss in how things work; some parts are lost and others are gained. Forward planning is still important, but not in the same way. Indeed this can be a good thing because it cuts down on the skill curve to getting started since now movement is a bit easier to get to grips with without having to consider turn circles etc...
Oh I understand the difference in the how flanking was handled but that's not what they are really saying. They're saying hitting a flank has no purpose in AoS and you don't need to worry about positioning. That's false as hitting a flank is still as "good" of tactics in AoS as it was in WFB. Just annoyed that people point to WFB as a place of superior tactical depth. Like Auticus said, it's different functional tactics but the depth is there for both games.
@JustTony
I was more referring to the tournament scene for 6th. At least for me locally and at west coast GWGT's. Objectives rarely, if ever, came into play. It's why you had gunlines and other issues that some armies simply couldn't play around. 6th was by far my favorite WFB edition (though I liked a lot of the changes in 8th outside of big blocks of win).
Every AOS model I see looks identical to another that I've seen. Is it possible to convert them, and is this something people do? If I start building an army, am I going to have enough options to actually want to customize it's appearance?
Overread wrote: @Hulksmash I think the key difference is that in the old fantasy rules if you attacked on a flank (side) or rear of an enemy unit block (or monster) then the way the attack resolved was different. You'd gain a bonus in attacking the sides and the rear over just charging in the front; taking down a bigger monster or unit block might have you attack one on the front to tie it up; and then sweep others around the sides whilst trying not to expose one of them to a further counter attack to their rear/sides.
In AoS that is mostly gone because no matter at what angle you attack from the attack profile and the way it plays out is always the same. The only variation is how many units are in and out of range. Which curiously affects how many attacks can be made, but doesn't affect where models can be removed from when the player allocates wounds.
So yes you can still charge the rear or sides but you gain nothing over charging the front - and by nature of how units move now there is no clear front/back/sides to the block of models themselves (unless you choose to move them in a block formation).
You can trap the unit and prevent them from retreating, which is kind of a Big Deal. You can also mess up their unit coherency which is a Big Deal.
Every AOS model I see looks identical to another that I've seen. Is it possible to convert them, and is this something people do? If I start building an army, am I going to have enough options to actually want to customize it's appearance?
The downside to the more dynamic posing is that customization is more limited now. It's not quite the monopose apocalypse some people claim, but you definitely can't make your models look quite as unique as you could with things like the squattymarine line.
...hitting a flank is still as "good" of tactics in AoS as it was in WFB..
100% no
I know you won't but please elaborate.
Hitting flanks or rear is still good for reasons elaborated above, but its not the "same" as it was before. Furthermore there is no inherent combat bonus to hitting any one part of the unit save for its relative positioning. That's really where we get down to the main difference. In original if you hit the flank or rear you got combat bonuses over the defending side; in the current you don't inherently get any bonus; the bonus is in if you can prevent a retreat or box in a unit or attacking from a different angle lets you connect more in close combat to do more damage.
So it still hurt, but its not quite the same thing.
It's like in Total War Warhammer there are very few actual formation settings but there are a LOT more activated abilities (many area restricted and/or based on key timing). So the nature of the tactical elements shifts
There is no mechanical benefit to hitting flanks or rears in AOS, which to many people equates to there being no benefit at all.
There can be an actual benefit sometimes to hitting a flank (reduction in return attacks) but those are not guaranteed, whereas in WHFB if you hit the enemy flank there were mathematical bonuses you always got (remove rank bonus and only the models on that flank could fight).
This was an argument I had with someone on warseer before being banned for trolling by supporting AOS back on AOS release (yes... supporting AOS on release back in 2015 was a bannable offense because no one could really like it, so you were trolling)... I argued that there was a benefit to flank charging in AOS, just not a mechanical one and that was shouted down.
If anything flank charging in AOS is less impactful as it was in WHFB, but not negligent.
Holy smokes, the whole AoS has no tactics is still a thing? Lol Honestly, played since 5th ed. and have to say that with 7th and 8th the game was on rails. So what if flanks granted bonuses, because once deployment was over two experienced players could just discuss the outcome with relative certainty due to the restrictive nature of movement. Never understood how an enemy unit outside of your units arc of sight could march block, even though I couldn't see them. See, where some people see tactics I just saw dumb restrictions that made no sense. To me the older editions tactics were defined by what your units "couldn't" do which I didn't know I hated until AoS and the more free flowing gameplay. Sure it may not be everyones cup of tea, but different strokes for different folks. Game on whatever you want so long as you have fun, I say.
...hitting a flank is still as "good" of tactics in AoS as it was in WFB..
100% no
I know you won't but please elaborate.
Hitting flanks or rear is still good for reasons elaborated above, but its not the "same" as it was before. Furthermore there is no inherent combat bonus to hitting any one part of the unit save for its relative positioning. That's really where we get down to the main difference. In original if you hit the flank or rear you got combat bonuses over the defending side; in the current you don't inherently get any bonus; the bonus is in if you can prevent a retreat or box in a unit or attacking from a different angle lets you connect more in close combat to do more damage.
So it still hurt, but its not quite the same thing.
It's like in Total War Warhammer there are very few actual formation settings but there are a LOT more activated abilities (many area restricted and/or based on key timing). So the nature of the tactical elements shifts
Well said!
WHFB had more rules depth. Flanking is a great example.
...hitting a flank is still as "good" of tactics in AoS as it was in WFB..
100% no
I know you won't but please elaborate.
Hitting flanks or rear is still good for reasons elaborated above, but its not the "same" as it was before. Furthermore there is no inherent combat bonus to hitting any one part of the unit save for its relative positioning. That's really where we get down to the main difference. In original if you hit the flank or rear you got combat bonuses over the defending side; in the current you don't inherently get any bonus; the bonus is in if you can prevent a retreat or box in a unit or attacking from a different angle lets you connect more in close combat to do more damage.
So it still hurt, but its not quite the same thing.
It's like in Total War Warhammer there are very few actual formation settings but there are a LOT more activated abilities (many area restricted and/or based on key timing). So the nature of the tactical elements shifts
Well said!
WHFB had more rules depth. Flanking is a great example.
In contrast once your unit was deployed it basically stayed in formation until it was destroyed. In theory (from what I recall) rules did let you change formations, however because most people used movement trays it wasn't often done unless there were few enough units to make a tray not essential. As a result many movement elements were simplified. You couldn't wrap a unit around a building or terrain or file through between a tight spot between terrain features etc... So in some ways AoS has a superior system considering the number of models on the table that we use.
Furthermore it wouldn't be an advantage to have flanking rules now on anything but big based models. Anything smaller is just too numerous to quantify in that manner (could you imagine working out the flank attacks if you had two full units of clan rats blend into each other for combat - it would be far too complex for fun in a tabletop wargame).
So because the movement system changed the rules shifted to be suitable alongside it. Personally I do agree that a lot of AoS rules do feel too simple even now. However GW have basically started a new phase and era of rules and I hope that with annual revisions and with AoS growing in strength we will see some additional depth creep in every so often. We've already gained increased spell depth with not just a wider variety of real spell choices (which if you use realm spells makes allied wizards even more viable as they gain the realm spell lore); but also Endless spell.s
1. no psychology rules
2. the morale system
3: the ttk is way to low (time to kill) with mortal wounds etc
I like games where there is a risk of losing control of one's units.
I'd play if there existed some "advanced" rules that addressed these three issues. Rank and flank is not necessary for my enjoyment of a game, and aos is a veritable sandbox as far as conversions and lore are concerned, which I like.
I'm not playing it because currently although I love the new aesthetic I'm still waiting to see what will happen to some of the old armies we know and love. Whilst I appreciate soulless sea elves, medusa elves, aetheist sky dwarves and naked dragon riding dwarves there's a lot of weird crossover with the WHFB range and some models don't quite fit. When the vision for the Mortal Realms is more unified I'll be more willing to jump in.
I'm playing and currently have 3 armies on the go. To be honest, after playing old WHF for many years, I just got so bored of it (both in play style and aesthetic) that AoS was a real shot in the arm. And purely anecdotal I know, but the new people I've encountered that play AoS seem to be a lot more...pleasant for the lack of a better term. Don't know why, but they just seem more fun to pick up and play against than the older crowd.
Inquisitor Gideon wrote: I'm playing and currently have 3 armies on the go. To be honest, after playing old WHF for many years, I just got so bored of it (both in play style and aesthetic) that AoS was a real shot in the arm. And purely anecdotal I know, but the new people I've encountered that play AoS seem to be a lot more...pleasant for the lack of a better term. Don't know why, but they just seem more fun to pick up and play against than the older crowd.
IT might just be bias in how you're observing things or could be that nearer the end of Fantasy players were getting more and more jaded with GW's attitude and that bled through into how they gamed and were at the club. AoS is currently on a big positive swing because those who are into it see huge potential which often makes them positive; esp when GW is currently releasing things on a weekly basis and thus people can see that in a year or two things will be vastly different - as opposed to thinking that they'll have to wait 5 or 10 years to see big changes.
Having played both WHFB (and, as others have said, the best era was 6th/7th edition) and AoS, WHFB is far more interesting and tactically deep than AoS. I really don't see how it could be considered otherwise.
Units in 6th/7th edition, based on how charging, initiative and such all went, required you to really plan ahead 2-4 rounds in advance, to make sure you had stacked the odds in your favor. I remember some of the best games against good players involved the first 4 rounds or so jockeying for position, and then charges didn't come until the last couple rounds of the game. Those were some interesting games.
I didn't see anything close to that again until I started playing Star Wars: Armada.
X Wing is to 40k/AoS (as regards movement) as Armada is to old WHF.
I am pondering playing something AoS. The models seem standard GW model, so nothing great. The cost doesn't seem to be lower then w40k, what does worry me a lot, in case of the stuff I pick ends up sucking.
Game play wise I do not know enough about the game, but from how the games look to an outsider. there seems to be a lot of mosh pits with huge blobs of 40+ models duking it out in the middle, and psychic power seem to be super powerful, comparing to w40k GK at least, and armies that don't have access to them seem to be less often played. out of 30+ people playing around in my area, which is two stores of people, half play some sort of undead lists or nurgle. Every other faction is maybe 1-2 dudes playing them. Good for not playing many mirror matchs, but those non undead players also seem to be the ones that don't win any prizes or prize money, and it is hard to support the hobby without wining at least some free stuff.
I call bs. You're just describing other micro management by your own definition. Field positioning matters in both WFB and AoS. Flanks matter in AoS & WFB. Proper deployment means the difference between winning and losing. And at least there isn't only DE/VC/and Daemons that are viable now
In fact AoS actually requires you to play the game. Something that didn't happen much in WFB because it was just about slugging it out. AoS revolves entirely around objectives and board control.
What I described was macro-management, or the management of massed units. Micro management is worrying where every little guy in a unit is, piling each bod in for the extra attacks, checking what each guy has, etc. In WHFB that mattered not, because the unit fought as a whole but in AoS you have your 3" pile in move, and you try to maximise the impact from bod X with the killywhatsit, but keep Bod Y to the side, and Caster H wants to stay clear of hitting range. That is micro management.
Field positions in WHFB where held by blocks of infantry. Maybe with a character or two in there. Nothing less.
>DE/VC/Demons viable. Demons where meta for a short period, VC and DE where good but Dwarf/Empire/Elf gun/bow lines and Brettonian 7th ed cavalry smasher where the real nightmare armies to face, so IDK what the meta was in your area, but if those where the nastiest you should be thankful.
Hulksmash wrote:@Overread
Oh I understand the difference in the how flanking was handled but that's not what they are really saying. They're saying hitting a flank has no purpose in AoS and you don't need to worry about positioning. That's false as hitting a flank is still as "good" of tactics in AoS as it was in WFB. Just annoyed that people point to WFB as a place of superior tactical depth. Like Auticus said, it's different functional tactics but the depth is there for both games.
Hitting the flank in AoS does nothing. No morale penalty, no advantage to the attacker, nothing. You might as well have hit the front for all it does.
mikosan wrote:Holy smokes, the whole AoS has no tactics is still a thing? Lol Honestly, played since 5th ed. and have to say that with 7th and 8th the game was on rails. So what if flanks granted bonuses, because once deployment was over two experienced players could just discuss the outcome with relative certainty due to the restrictive nature of movement. Never understood how an enemy unit outside of your units arc of sight could march block, even though I couldn't see them. See, where some people see tactics I just saw dumb restrictions that made no sense. To me the older editions tactics were defined by what your units "couldn't" do which I didn't know I hated until AoS and the more free flowing gameplay. Sure it may not be everyones cup of tea, but different strokes for different folks. Game on whatever you want so long as you have fun, I say.
I am too tired to reply to this but TL;DR AoS tactics are pushing models about in piles. WHFB made you think. Did you advance or wheel? Charge and risk leaving your flank open or wait, but know you will be charged next turn? One last round of shooting or a melee struggle? What about the warmachines, how do you deal with those? Are there any chinks in your line where skirmishers could get through? How do you deploy so as not to be slowed by terrain but to have cover from those archers? Is your cannon better at the back or further forwards firing as a battery gun? Do you move your muskets up and forgo a round of shooting or do you accept you will not be hitting as easily due to long range? Can you bait your foe forwards and then smash them in the flank or would they see the trap? Will those light cavalry try to wheel and charge your main unit in the rear?
WHFB was a game that required a lot of thinking and outsmarting your opponent. AoS lacks this vital element as units can move and shoot freely, regardless of terrain, facing or melee.
WFB has more (fiddly, unrealistic) mechanics, but less actual tactics than AoS. It falls into the trap of having rules for consequences, doubling the effect unnecessarily, and flank bonus is a good example of that.
Wow, that is SO inaccurate. WFB was more about the psychological press of combat, much like real regimental combat actually was. THAT is where the stuff like flank bonus comes in. AOS is synergy stacking, which is what I used to do with my blue/white deck in M:TG. Saying that refused flanks, spearheads, combined arms attacks, and positioning/formation arrangements are not tactics but multiple buff bubble linking IS, now that's a stretch.
Except, it's not. Pseudo-medieval warfare is about concentration of power, hence ranked combat and heavy infantry vs light. Attacking on the flank *is* a tactic to concentrate attack power at a smaller point, but it's across the battleline, not on a single target unit. Tacking on a +1 is a bad mechanic. AOS doing away with that is a good thing.
Definitely agree to disagree. Look at the domino effect of one unit breaking from a flank charge as the attacking unit pursues into fresh flanks, emboldened by the victory. Panic ensues as a flank of the entire battleline collapses. One of the issues I had with 7th Ed. was that they exploited this to a degree that goes above and beyond. AOS didn't do away with it because it was a bad tactic/strategy, they did away with it because it wasn't in 40K, WarmaHordes, or Magic: The Gathering.
But combat resolution directly affected Psychology, just as it did in actual regimental combats. Look at pretty much ANY of Alexander of Macedon's battles as examples. More people were killed from breaking and fleeing than were killed in the actual press of fighting.
Thing is a lot of people prefer the idea of troops killing in the fight rather than being cut down as they retreat. People prefer the idea of their uber warriors standing ground against all odds and holding fast to weather the storm of the enemy attack in a noble and valiant effort to fight back against all odds.
Unless your skaven then you half want them to run away and then charge back again and then run away some more
Lets not forget if we are being faithful to RL ancient warfare then we should be removing most casualties before and after the battle as people die from disease, poor sanitation and their wounds rather than in the battle itself.
Overread wrote: Thing is a lot of people prefer the idea of troops killing in the fight rather than being cut down as they retreat. People prefer the idea of their uber warriors standing ground against all odds and holding fast to weather the storm of the enemy attack in a noble and valiant effort to fight back against all odds.
Which is what the unbreakable rule and leadership bubbles were for.
You don't want your soldiers breaking and getting cut down? That's what tactics are for. Play better.
Lets not forget if we are being faithful to RL ancient warfare then we should be removing most casualties before and after the battle as people die from disease, poor sanitation and their wounds rather than in the battle itself.
What makes you think your forces on the table aren't what's left after all that? Also, Undead don't care about disease and I'm sure most armies have some sort of healer or alchemist to stop exactly that.
Yeah, some people watched 300 too many times, or whatever Conan movie they grew up on.
Regardless, the crux of the sidebar was addressed. Now, back to why people aren't playing AOS
1. Better systems to play the same style of game
2. Prefer a different style of game
3. Prefer a better value for buy in
4. Same pool of customers that AOS is marketed towards would rather play WOW or something else on PC/Console.
A lot of this also comes down to scale. 28mm (and now we're at 32mm) scale is not as great for army tactics. People viewed their armies not as "armies" but as micro manageable skirmish level clashes where each model to a lot of people should represent a guy.
A lot of people are also not interested in recreating historically accurate battle simulation. They want to play a game based on other popular games of today's time and era loosely based on the idea of warfare.
Love it or hate it but magic: the gathering and magic: the gathering with models are hugely over right now and have been for many years.
Synergy buff bubbles and games that represent combo chaining and the like are what joe-gamer wants more than a game steeped in historical combat simulation.
For those that want historical combat simulation we have hail caesar and kings of war, which is where I'm spending a lot of my time. I'd play WHFB 6th but I can't get that to fly with the people I play with because its considered dead to them and they want an active game thats supported by a company, so that forces my hand.
auticus wrote: A lot of this also comes down to scale. 28mm (and now we're at 32mm) scale is not as great for army tactics. People viewed their armies not as "armies" but as micro manageable skirmish level clashes where each model to a lot of people should represent a guy.
A lot of people are also not interested in recreating historically accurate battle simulation. They want to play a game based on other popular games of today's time and era loosely based on the idea of warfare.
Love it or hate it but magic: the gathering and magic: the gathering with models are hugely over right now and have been for many years.
Synergy buff bubbles and games that represent combo chaining and the like are what joe-gamer wants more than a game steeped in historical combat simulation.
For those that want historical combat simulation we have hail caesar and kings of war, which is where I'm spending a lot of my time. I'd play WHFB 6th but I can't get that to fly with the people I play with because its considered dead to them and they want an active game thats supported by a company, so that forces my hand.
Conquest looks pretty neat too. I'm not a fan of how they handle morale though.
Just Tony wrote: Yeah, some people watched 300 too many times, or whatever Conan movie they grew up on.
Spoiler:
Or Malazan Book of the Fallen or David Gemmel, Lord of the Rings or any one of a large number of fantasy style battle stories.
Personally I'd welcome them remaking Warmaster Age of Sigmar edition. I always felt that scale works best not just for representing rank and file and rank and file style battle; but also allowing powerful monsters and dragons and beasties to really let loose with their power. Seeing a dragon blaze several rank and file spearmen not just 4 or 5 in AoS or Fantasy as it is now.
Well the thread question is why we aren't playing AoS. The very nature of that question is going to prompt some negative feedback.
The answer, for a large chunk of us, is that it's not strategically interesting or particularly deep.
And that IS the answer, it seems, for many (and certainly me). One can hate that or think it's a stupid opinion, but that's the reason we/I aren't playing. If one cannot accept that reason, then maybe this isn't the right thread to participate in.
auticus wrote: One of my greatest wishes is for the return of warmaster.
I rebased most of my warmaster stuff for minihammer since I stopped playing warmaster altogether once we got the much improved hail caesar (in addition to DbMM for simpler rules)
This means I can carry a mat, two armies and everything on a smaller bag and play in most tables (garden, kitchen, etc.). Since I have to fly to see my brother that's my prefered setup.
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auticus wrote: A lot of this also comes down to scale. 28mm (and now we're at 32mm) scale is not as great for army tactics. People viewed their armies not as "armies" but as micro manageable skirmish level clashes where each model to a lot of people should represent a guy.
We have always played it as a single WHFB mini meant anything from 20 to 50 actual soldiers, or a battery in case of artillery, etc.
I am sure it was in the rulebook at some point.
A 10-man unit staying in rigid formation makes no sense.
SAGA to me is the perfect game size to play round-base, free-flow units.... which is why our AoS games are always approx 30 minis per side (and often half that). AoS at tournament level points feels totally wrong.
The last time I saw reference to that scale (1 model = 20+ men) was 5th edition which was the 1990s. From then on that was removed from rulebooks though older players carried on suggesting that.
However I know from my own experience that most players from 2000 on did not see it like that, they saw individual models and did not have an army feel at 28mm.
Overread wrote: Or Malazan Book of the Fallen or David Gemmel, Lord of the Rings or any one of a large number of fantasy style battle stories.
LOTR? You mean the movie where you can actually see armies shock horror FLEEING rather than stand and fight to the death?
The good guys - which everyone imagines their own army to be - is never falling back though.
Wrong. The "good" guys, fall back from the ruins of Osgiliath when the Orcs cross the river and are overrun. And, to the extent that they can, they fall back and regroup several times at the Siege of Minas Tirith (mostly inside the city, before Rohan shows up), and the Rohirrim fall back to the main Keep at Helm's Deep before Gandalf shows up.
They were fighting a defensive battle. You can't call for a full retreat in a castle. There's just nowhere to run to, except for a better defensible position.
Sieges are not the same as open battles on a field, where there is somewhere to run to for both armies.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: They were fighting a defensive battle. You can't call for a full retreat in a castle. There's just nowhere to run to, except for a better defensible position.
Sieges are not the same as open battles on a field, where there is somewhere to run to for both armies.
Osgiliath was not in the castle. It was a forward defensive position - realistically you are supposed to fall back into the castle when you get overrun in this situation. There is a scene when the leadership at Osgiliath calls for the retreat. They were fighting until that point. Never saw anyone fleeing before they called the retreat.
Wow so much talk about which system has more depth but no proof. Even when someone says "this" doesn't explain how it is more or less depth.
Just saying something doesn't mean it's true. You want to be correct EXPLAIN WHY it is.
Just saying Wheeling or Piling In doesn't mean that is more depth. Just saying SHOOT THROUGH ANYTHING takes away depth. How? Explain so nobody else can say you are wrong.
So much said on both sides and NOBODY PROVED anything. Stop with the one or two lines that mean and prove NOTHING. Want to be correct then explain it properly and then we can have a proper debate.
All this is proving is both sides are petty right now.
Well, being able to shoot out of or into combat means there's not really any point in tying up a shooty unit with expendable cannon fodder.
In WHFB, and even in 40k, using a throw away unit to stop a unit from firing at your soldiers was a viable and useful tactic. It doesn't matter if they don't kill anything, because that's not their job.
And getting your elite units into melee quickly was a way to protect them from shooting too, which again was a viable tactic. Its why I don't really like 40k 8th ed's falling back rule, because it undermines this interaction and there's not really any penalty. There should really be an attack of opportunity, or a roll off based on the move stat or something.
You can't do that in AoS.
Wheeling is a consequence of the unit facing system. Since you always have a front, and you can only move forward, wheeling was a way of making complex moves with a block, so that they aren't stuck going in a straight line. You still can't use wheeling to scoot your block over the side though. To do that, you need to do a reform, which slows their movement. As you have such movement restrictions, you had to be very careful where you place your regiments. You don't want to put them somewhere where they can't move forward without effectively wasting a turn reforming, for example.
Just Tony wrote: But combat resolution directly affected Psychology, just as it did in actual regimental combats.
Look at pretty much ANY of Alexander of Macedon's battles as examples. More people were killed from breaking and fleeing than were killed in the actual press of fighting.
Yes, except that it's not done properly. The flank wouldn't be of the unit, it'd be of the battleline as a whole.
The problem is that WHFB allowed too many armies to ignore Psychology, which makes the game kinda rubbish. When you get to the top tier, you don't see armies that completely disintegrate on a couple bad rolls, despite that being the realistic result because players won't play that when given the choice of an army that holds like SMs do.
WFB wasn't historical, and it couldn't be. Not with Dragons and Wizards that completely upend classical strategy and tactics. AoS is a better game in the sense that it works with the concept of Fantasy combat vs pseudo-Historical combat. If you want to play Ancients without Fantasy elements, that's fine, but you'd never be doing matched play, either - those were overwhelming imbalances where the question was of who lost less / won faster, and most players don't want to be on the side that's stalling for time / extracting a higher price of victory.
CthuluIsSpy wrote:Well, being able to shoot out of or into combat means there's not really any point in tying up a shooty unit with expendable cannon fodder.
In WHFB, and even in 40k, using a throw away unit to stop a unit from firing at your soldiers was a viable and useful tactic. It doesn't matter if they don't kill anything, because that's not their job.
And getting your elite units into melee quickly was a way to protect them from shooting too, which again was a viable tactic. Its why I don't really like 40k 8th ed's falling back rule, because it undermines this interaction and there's not really any penalty. There should really be an attack of opportunity, or a roll off based on the move stat or something.
You can't do that in AoS.
Wheeling is a consequence of the unit facing system. Since you always have a front, and you can always move forward, wheeling was a way of making complex moves with a block, so that they aren't stuck going in a straight line. You still can't use wheeling to scoot your block over the side though. To do that, you need to do a reform, which slows their movement. As you have such movement restrictions, you had to be very careful where you place your regiments. You don't want to put them somewhere where they can't move forward without effectively wasting a turn reforming, for example.
Very well said. I will agree that in this aspect Fantasy Battles has more depth than Age of Sigmar. Now for some other people do not get upset, I am not saying AoS is any shallower but a good point was made. Anyone else would like to counter this? If not will at least agree? Then give examples as to why Age of Sigmar has depth to it as well.
*edit*
Just saw Johnhawgs post. Good points there. Any counter to that as well?
Well, I for one, am not trying to convince anyone, or argue that WHFB was a more strategically deep game than AoS. I believe it is, and I'm sure, with some time and inclination, I could make such an argument (not necessarily one that convinces every/any one here.)
But I don't have the time or inclination. And since the point of this thread is just asking what we/I am not playing AoS, I can leave it at that.
FWIW, my canonical example of excellent Ancients scenario is to have one player force march their army alongside a lake, only to have the vanguard encounter enemy forces...
This, of course, is the Battle of Lake Trasimene, where the outnumbered Romans get largely slaughtered by Hannibal's Gauls. For the Roman player, the objective would be to avoid having the entire force killed or captured, while killing more than a handful of Gauls.
The problem is that almost no Ancients player wants to play the Romans. In fact, just seeing the setup is often enough to turn them away from the tabletop, because they *know* the scenario. They're unprepared and outnumbered 2:1, and they can't retreat because their flanks are cut off and it's certain death in the lake.
However, as an AoS game, if you add Dragons and Wizards to make up for the lack of infantrymen, and the Romans are actually Chaos Warriors, maybe they have a chance.
JohnHwangDD wrote: FWIW, my canonical example of excellent Ancients scenario is to have one player force march their army alongside a lake, only to have the vanguard encounter enemy forces...
This, of course, is the Battle of Lake Trasimene, where the outnumbered Romans get largely slaughtered by Hannibal's Gauls. For the Roman player, the objective would be to avoid having the entire force killed or captured, while killing more than a handful of Gauls.
The problem is that almost no Ancients player wants to play the Romans. In fact, just seeing the setup is often enough to turn them away from the tabletop, because they *know* the scenario. They're unprepared and outnumbered 2:1, and they can't retreat because their flanks are cut off and it's certain death in the lake.
However, as an AoS game, if you add Dragons and Wizards to make up for the lack of infantrymen, and the Romans are actually Chaos Warriors, maybe they have a chance.
Replace the Chaos Warriors with Idoneth Deepkin (who live in the water) or Nighthaunt (who can FLY) etc.
Rocmistro wrote: Well, I for one, am not trying to convince anyone, or argue that WHFB was a more strategically deep game than AoS. I believe it is, and I'm sure, with some time and inclination, I could make such an argument (not necessarily one that convinces every/any one here.)
But I don't have the time or inclination. And since the point of this thread is just asking what we/I am not playing AoS, I can leave it at that.
Fair enough. I never pointed anyone out so please don't think I was doing so. I do believe it is a good reason why not to play. So further explanations can explain why people do or do not play. Maybe it's "because of the internet" or "we just got lazy" but when reading people's comments they come out as fact which can get people upset. Then they something that seems like fact.
I guess all I am asking is we need to stop being lazy and keep saying "In my opinion...". (again not picking on you or pointing you out, sorry if it comes out that way) If people want to state facts, then they need to prove it. Nobody is really proving anything and we are just shouting over each other. If the mods don't think this is a good reason then I will make a new thread but I believe these are excellent reasons why people play or do not play.
Just Tony wrote: But combat resolution directly affected Psychology, just as it did in actual regimental combats.
Look at pretty much ANY of Alexander of Macedon's battles as examples. More people were killed from breaking and fleeing than were killed in the actual press of fighting.
Yes, except that it's not done properly. The flank wouldn't be of the unit, it'd be of the battleline as a whole..
True-ish. It has to start somewhere, and WFB scales down to the initial breaking point. WFB has a wacky scale, I'll be the first to admit. There weren't very many regimental combats fought that small, but we are also scaled to a certain sized table, which hems in how it can be relayed in miniature form. Warmaster scaled this better in theory, but the Warmaster armies wound up mosty looking to be about the same "size" as their WFB counterpart and, unlike Epic, didn't add things that could ONLY be run in Warmaster. At least nothing of note. It's one of the things I detested about the Apocalypse release for 40K AND that 40K basically rolled Apocalypse into standard gaming: this eliminated the main draw to Epic. Why paint a Titan the size of a Guardsman when you can paint a Titan to use WITH your Guardsman?
JohnHwangDD wrote: The problem is that WHFB allowed too many armies to ignore Psychology, which makes the game kinda rubbish. When you get to the top tier, you don't see armies that completely disintegrate on a couple bad rolls, despite that being the realistic result because players won't play that when given the choice of an army that holds like SMs do.
8th, maybe. 6th did not have that many, and the ones that WERE suffered other weaknesses that could be exploited.
JohnHwangDD wrote: WFB wasn't historical, and it couldn't be. Not with Dragons and Wizards that completely upend classical strategy and tactics. AoS is a better game in the sense that it works with the concept of Fantasy combat vs pseudo-Historical combat. If you want to play Ancients without Fantasy elements, that's fine, but you'd never be doing matched play, either - those were overwhelming imbalances where the question was of who lost less / won faster, and most players don't want to be on the side that's stalling for time / extracting a higher price of victory.
Does the presence of Orbital Bombardment, giant Tyranid Hiveships, or any other over the top 40K thing invalidate the tactics used? The style of combat in 40K is essentially modern small arms combat with light mechanized support, shouldn't the space combat nature of the 40K universe sort of invalidate that? Especially when Virus Bombs exist? Dragons don't change regimental combat in WFB away from historically fought regimental combat any more than Elephants would. Which is good, since Alexander was one of MANY who used Elephants in regimental combat.
Just Tony wrote: Why paint a Titan the size of a Guardsman when you can paint a Titan to use WITH your Guardsman?
JohnHwangDD wrote: The problem is that WHFB allowed too many armies to ignore Psychology, which makes the game kinda rubbish. When you get to the top tier, you don't see armies that completely disintegrate on a couple bad rolls, despite that being the realistic result because players won't play that when given the choice of an army that holds like SMs do.
8th, maybe. 6th did not have that many, and the ones that WERE suffered other weaknesses that could be exploited.
Does the presence of Orbital Bombardment, giant Tyranid Hiveships, or any other over the top 40K thing invalidate the tactics used? The style of combat in 40K is essentially modern small arms combat with light mechanized support, shouldn't the space combat nature of the 40K universe sort of invalidate that? Especially when Virus Bombs exist?
Dragons don't change regimental combat in WFB away from historically fought regimental combat any more than Elephants would. Which is good, since Alexander was one of MANY who used Elephants in regimental combat.
I own multiple Titans for 40k. They are awesome, even if I hardly even play 40k these days.
I played Dogs of War in 6E. Between being human-based *and& saddled with Paymaster Panic, DoW were perhaps the most vulnerable to Psychology of all the WFB armies at the time.
40k has basically no tactics other than "get there with the mostest fastest", which is typical of pretty much every skirmish battle game. It's not modern small arms, it's mob fighting.
Elephants can't fly. If the Romans could drop a couple of Dragons on the enemy flank, that changes everything. Same with having Wizards dropping GIANT Comets from the skies, or Shamans having their God literally stomp the enemy to death. Much less a Purple Sun that annihilates everything in its path...
Personally I want to love AoS...there's lots about the game that gets me excited. The problem is, whenever I actually turn up to play a game I hit the iron wall of reality. AoS is tedious and confused, and as a result never fun (for me).
AoS started out with a lean four-page ruleset: exciting! A simple game can still be fun and challenging, and a simple game is much easier to tweak and hone until it is balanced and streamlined. But sadly this was not GW's gameplan. Instead of improving the existing rules they have decided that the way to make AoS "better" is to constantly add rules that (from my perspective) add nothing to the game whatsoever. I'm talking about Realms, endless spells, etc. These things are just arbitrary bloat, not actual rules additions that add any sort of tactical depth or replay value.
Despite the piles of scenarios in AoS, few to none of them lead to anything other than "I push my dudes toward your dudes until there are no more dudes." Coupled with the fact that there is really only one strategy: buff unit with auras until hit and wound rolls are mere formalities, and the fact that the only thing worse than sitting through your opponent's turn in AoS is doing it twice, and you really have an all-around NPE.
Again, this is my opinion based on my experience. I'm not here to argue with anyone, I am here to answer OP's posed question. I would LOVE to love AoS. The model lines are great, especially the newer ones. But the game itself borders somewhere between boring and infuriating.
I do want to like AoS. I really do. I have somewhere around 300 beastmen that I would love to (24 metal minotaurs, ooh-rah!) that I'd love to use. I'm going to dabble with the new Beastman codex that launches this week, and maybe try a game or two, but we'll see how it goes.
If (*if*) I somehow was convinced (or had an epiphany) that it was the strategy game that some of you guys believe it is, though, there is still another problem. It's basically just 40k with a little more <hack> and a little less <pewpew>. I mean, seriously, the stats are almost the same, the curve, scale, basic flow, is all pretty much the same as 40k. Why burden myself with the extra rules and book-volume overhead? 40k scratches the same itch.
AoS started out with a lean four-page ruleset: exciting! A simple game can still be fun and challenging, and a simple game is much easier to tweak and hone until it is balanced and streamlined. But sadly this was not GW's gameplan.
Actually, it was. That much was obvious from the initial launch: Warhammer narrative play, casual AF.
Except that the WFB players demanded WFB 8E points and "crunch" so here we are.
To me WHFB was extremely unrealistic, but it was cinematic and fun. There are hundreds of reasons WHFB does not match historical battle at all even before getting to the fantasy elements like magic, undead, etc. But that is the nature of games. I still enjoyed it and was able to suspension-of-disbelief and/or explain enough to get immersed. For me AoS has not changed that.
auticus wrote: The last time I saw reference to that scale (1 model = 20+ men) was 5th edition which was the 1990s. From then on that was removed from rulebooks though older players carried on suggesting that.
However I know from my own experience that most players from 2000 on did not see it like that, they saw individual models and did not have an army feel at 28mm.
Every game that uses closed formations has that. Napoleonics, fantasy, historicals, etc.
We just recently mentioned hail caesar, a 28mm scale wargame and no one pretends it's 1-1 scale. Same for KoW.
I just spent tonight pinning/re-basing and priming and undercoating 24 metal Minotaurs for AOS (round 50mm with shattered dominion pieces to match my silver tower stuff) and a metal doom bull, 2x metal Shaggoths and 2x metal shamans. Idk the army will make but the beast of chaos tomb when get in has me excited (been years since had an army I wanted to play and actually covert over to AOS). This is the army and time for me. So why am I not playing AOS? I have a lot of fantasy armies just I haven't had the codex I was looking for, now I might play a bit.
NinthMusketeer wrote: To me WHFB was extremely unrealistic, but it was cinematic and fun. There are hundreds of reasons WHFB does not match historical battle at all even before getting to the fantasy elements like magic, undead, etc. But that is the nature of games. I still enjoyed it and was able to suspension-of-disbelief and/or explain enough to get immersed. For me AoS has not changed that.
Seems exactly the way war was fought durning the spanish succesion war, the Italian wars, more or less anything between the late XV century and up to the 30 year war, and even then some armies were using the tactics they were just losing to the superior new swedish/german tech, plus artilery doing tight formation in real hard. Although durning the napoleonic wars the french did attack in tight colums and it worked fine.
NinthMusketeer wrote: To me WHFB was extremely unrealistic, but it was cinematic and fun. There are hundreds of reasons WHFB does not match historical battle at all even before getting to the fantasy elements like magic, undead, etc. But that is the nature of games. I still enjoyed it and was able to suspension-of-disbelief and/or explain enough to get immersed. For me AoS has not changed that.
Seems exactly the way war was fought durning the spanish succesion war, the Italian wars, more or less anything between the late XV century and up to the 30 year war, and even then some armies were using the tactics they were just losing to the superior new swedish/german tech, plus artilery doing tight formation in real hard. Although durning the napoleonic wars the french did attack in tight colums and it worked fine.
Close order formations actually lasted for a while, up until the end of the 19th century. Due to the inaccuracy of firearms until much later (like...a century ago) and the fact that most of them could only fire one shot before reloading, close order formations were actually the optimal way of organizing firing lines, as the sheer number of concentrated shots made up for the guns' aforementioned weaknesses.
It was only after guns became more accurate and capable of multiple shots before reloading (as well as the invention of the machine gun) that close order formations were rendered obsolete in favor of looser formations and fire team based tactics. I don't know the exact terminology, but that's the gist of it. People have been bunching up in big blocks to fight other big blocks for a very, very long time. It was only about a 100 years ago that they stopped doing that.
NinthMusketeer wrote: To me WHFB was extremely unrealistic, but it was cinematic and fun. There are hundreds of reasons WHFB does not match historical battle at all even before getting to the fantasy elements like magic, undead, etc. But that is the nature of games. I still enjoyed it and was able to suspension-of-disbelief and/or explain enough to get immersed. For me AoS has not changed that.
Seems exactly the way war was fought durning the spanish succesion war, the Italian wars, more or less anything between the late XV century and up to the 30 year war, and even then some armies were using the tactics they were just losing to the superior new swedish/german tech, plus artilery doing tight formation in real hard. Although durning the napoleonic wars the french did attack in tight colums and it worked fine.
Close order formations actually lasted for a while, up until the end of the 19th century.
Due to the inaccuracy of firearms until much later (like...a century ago) and the fact that most of them could only fire one shot before reloading, close order formations were actually the optimal way of organizing firing lines, as the sheer number of concentrated shots made up for the guns' aforementioned weaknesses.
It was only after guns became more accurate and capable of multiple shots before reloading (as well as the invention of the machine gun) that close order formations were rendered obsolete in favor of looser formations and fire team based tactics.
I don't know the exact terminology, but that's the gist of it. People have been bunching up in big blocks to fight other big blocks for a very, very long time. It was only about a 100 years ago that they stopped doing that.
The introduction of the breechloader rifle in the early 19th century around the time Napoleonic Wars was pretty much the end of close order formations. The ability to quickly reload a firearm made formation battles an absolute bloodbath.
NinthMusketeer wrote: To me WHFB was extremely unrealistic, but it was cinematic and fun. There are hundreds of reasons WHFB does not match historical battle at all even before getting to the fantasy elements like magic, undead, etc. But that is the nature of games. I still enjoyed it and was able to suspension-of-disbelief and/or explain enough to get immersed. For me AoS has not changed that.
Seems exactly the way war was fought durning the spanish succesion war, the Italian wars, more or less anything between the late XV century and up to the 30 year war, and even then some armies were using the tactics they were just losing to the superior new swedish/german tech, plus artilery doing tight formation in real hard. Although durning the napoleonic wars the french did attack in tight colums and it worked fine.
NinthMusketeer wrote: To me WHFB was extremely unrealistic, but it was cinematic and fun. There are hundreds of reasons WHFB does not match historical battle at all even before getting to the fantasy elements like magic, undead, etc. But that is the nature of games. I still enjoyed it and was able to suspension-of-disbelief and/or explain enough to get immersed. For me AoS has not changed that.
Seems exactly the way war was fought durning the spanish succesion war, the Italian wars, more or less anything between the late XV century and up to the 30 year war, and even then some armies were using the tactics they were just losing to the superior new swedish/german tech, plus artilery doing tight formation in real hard. Although durning the napoleonic wars the french did attack in tight colums and it worked fine.
Close order formations actually lasted for a while, up until the end of the 19th century. Due to the inaccuracy of firearms until much later (like...a century ago) and the fact that most of them could only fire one shot before reloading, close order formations were actually the optimal way of organizing firing lines, as the sheer number of concentrated shots made up for the guns' aforementioned weaknesses.
It was only after guns became more accurate and capable of multiple shots before reloading (as well as the invention of the machine gun) that close order formations were rendered obsolete in favor of looser formations and fire team based tactics. I don't know the exact terminology, but that's the gist of it. People have been bunching up in big blocks to fight other big blocks for a very, very long time. It was only about a 100 years ago that they stopped doing that.
The introduction of the breechloader rifle in the early 19th century around the time Napoleonic Wars was pretty much the end of close order formations. The ability to quickly reload a firearm made formation battles an absolute bloodbath.
Ranked line formations still existed during the American civil war though, and that was mid 19th century. Then again, that might have been why the American Civil War was such a slaughter.
It was only after guns became more accurate and capable of multiple shots before reloading (as well as the invention of the machine gun) that close order formations were rendered obsolete in favor of looser formations and fire team based tactics.
I don't know the exact terminology, but that's the gist of it. People have been bunching up in big blocks to fight other big blocks for a very, very long time. It was only about a 100 years ago that they stopped doing that.
I think the last time someone tried it with both armies trying to pull it off was durning the american civil war. Dudes were shoting each other from more or less point blank range, considering some of the weapons they were using. I maybe wrong about it though, never been an expert about the far east jap vs rus conflicts etc.
Yeah, the last use of ranked fighting was in the American civil war, a war that also saw the use of rifles and explosive shells, and proved to be an utter slaughter fest because of that. After that ranked formations where not really used, except for during the Zulu wars, although that was more volley lines than anything, and was against tribes people with little more than a few ancient muskets.
The Japanese had stopped using ranked formations by the 1850's, under part of the reforms of the military structure.
JohnHwangDD wrote:Yes, except that it's not done properly. The flank wouldn't be of the unit, it'd be of the battleline as a whole.
That's not strictly true. At Gaugamela, Alexander drew the Persian left wing away from the centre and then attacked the Persian centre with his Companions and other troops. There is a degree of analogy in there with just attacking the flank of one WHFB unit. I see where you're going though, it is a bit tenuous and the way it's handled (+1 resolution) is probably not the best abstraction. But then WHFB has never been that realistic. In the very early days it was more of an RPG type game and some of the rules were more detailed (2nd edition 40k was the same), but as time went by it relied more on broad abstractions and gradually became more unit orientated (and finally more magic orientated). Getting the combat res bonus for flanks and rear charges was more about encouraging people to think about manoeuvre and positioning and the advantages that could accrue from clever movement and forethought.
Part of the problem I have looking at AOS is that there really doesn't seem to be much value in using terrain and moevment to intelligently position a unit. There seems to be no bonus for attacking an enemy in a way that would be genuinely disadvantageous to them, such as from behind where they would have a harder time supporting each other + the shock value of the sudden assault from an unexpected direction. I agree with what you were saying about psychology, there have been far too many units over the years that have just straight up naturally immune to any kind of effect that would give even seasoned warriors cause for concern (arguably some factors would give more cause for concern the more seasoned the warriors were...). Yet AOS doesn't seem to address this at all, so on that basis surely it's worse than WHFB?
Over simplified rules are also what's averting me from 8th ed 40k. The idea that a tank can park with just a smidge of its track showing round a corner and subsequently unload all its weapons, even sponson mounted ones that are on the opposite side, is ludicrous and robs the game of a lot of its prior depth. I also find things like the crazy amount of deepstriking and other units that appear after turn 1 to be quite obnoxious, along with the lack of a decent cover mechanic and some of the weird, virtually terrain less boards that everyone seems to play on now. I want my sci-fi or fantasy game to have a set of very clear and fairly intuitive pluses and minuses to certain actions .e.g moving through terrain is slower but it makes you harder to hit, long range weapons can shoot early but suffer penalties at long ranges, a long charge is risky but you gain some advantage by taking the initiative and attacking.
I think the issue is not so much about "does AOS have tactical choices?". If it has rules and different selections then it almost invariably will have tactics of some kind. The issue seems to be more about "what kind of tactical choices do people want?". AOS seems to be about army selection and stacking buffs. 40k seems to be about the same, plus winning the first turn. 8th WHFB was mainly about who could roll the best spells and who could pull them off in the game.
Personally I prefer games where my choices in the battle have more impact, and positioning, formations, placement and movement are the main factors, with dice as the joker element. On Empire:Total War for example I often fought with my battalions in two even lines, with the less experienced ones up front to absorb the enemies main blow and the more experienced second line as a reserve for counter attacks. The more compact formation was easier for me to handle and often meant I could split the enemy army in half. I mainly used cavalry as a reserve to chase fleeing troops, not as a strike force, which freed up my main liine units to turn on the enemy and start overwhelming them. It had echoes of using Gretchin/Goblins as shock absorbers/disruptors, setting up a counter attack by more meaty units held back in reserve. I'm not sure AOS can really manage this, or give me any advantages to out positioning my opponents. WHFB could to a degree.
NinthMusketeer wrote: To me WHFB was extremely unrealistic, but it was cinematic and fun. There are hundreds of reasons WHFB does not match historical battle at all even before getting to the fantasy elements like magic, undead, etc. But that is the nature of games. I still enjoyed it and was able to suspension-of-disbelief and/or explain enough to get immersed. For me AoS has not changed that.
Seems exactly the way war was fought durning the spanish succesion war, the Italian wars, more or less anything between the late XV century and up to the 30 year war, and even then some armies were using the tactics they were just losing to the superior new swedish/german tech, plus artilery doing tight formation in real hard. Although durning the napoleonic wars the french did attack in tight colums and it worked fine.
Close order formations actually lasted for a while, up until the end of the 19th century.
Due to the inaccuracy of firearms until much later (like...a century ago) and the fact that most of them could only fire one shot before reloading, close order formations were actually the optimal way of organizing firing lines, as the sheer number of concentrated shots made up for the guns' aforementioned weaknesses.
It was only after guns became more accurate and capable of multiple shots before reloading (as well as the invention of the machine gun) that close order formations were rendered obsolete in favor of looser formations and fire team based tactics.
I don't know the exact terminology, but that's the gist of it. People have been bunching up in big blocks to fight other big blocks for a very, very long time. It was only about a 100 years ago that they stopped doing that.
The introduction of the breechloader rifle in the early 19th century around the time Napoleonic Wars was pretty much the end of close order formations. The ability to quickly reload a firearm made formation battles an absolute bloodbath.
Which is why wargames up to the Napoleonic wars/ACW model units as blocks and lines using formations.
master of ordinance wrote: Yeah, the last use of ranked fighting was in the American civil war, a war that also saw the use of rifles and explosive shells, and proved to be an utter slaughter fest because of that. After that ranked formations where not really used, except for during the Zulu wars, although that was more volley lines than anything, and was against tribes people with little more than a few ancient muskets.
The Japanese had stopped using ranked formations by the 1850's, under part of the reforms of the military structure.
Many of the large ranked formations were also used throughout history by relatively untrained troops - they gained confidence by being with their mates and the simplicity of what they needed to do - march towards the enemy and kill them before the kill you.
Also giving the ability for the commander to try and control them at least until he couldn't see what was going on any more due to dust, smoke etc.
Manuevering successfully on a battlefield is apparently more the job of veteran/elite forces.
Beyond magic and the supernatural there were lots of things that WFB did differently to the real world - men on horses do not just charge disciplined formed ranks of infantry, especially spearmen or similar - at last not more than once. Because they die. They go after broken units, fleeing units or other cavalry for the most part and if they defeat their opposite numbers - try for the flanks of the formed units or units such as archers who seldom have spears.
Mr Morden wrote: men on horses do not just charge disciplined formed ranks of infantry, especially spearmen or similar - at last not more than once. Because they die. They go after broken units, fleeing units or other cavalry for the most part and if they defeat their opposite numbers - try for the flanks of the formed units or units such as archers who seldom have spears.
To be fair, a lot of systems and media get that wrong. Even Total War did that until CA realized that it doesn't work like that and made cav next to useless unless you micromanage them in the later games.
Then again, I can totally imagine a cold one being perfectly fine in a melee. I mean, its an hungry velociraptor with an equally hungry crocodile man on its back. That's pretty dangerous, even in the thick of it. The problem with horses is that they are actually really timorous beasts; they are prone to flight and it requires a lot of training to keep them disciplined. With a predatory mount the hard part would be to stop them from engaging the enemy.
I thought TW nearly always had it that charging spearmen was a BAD idea if you were cavalry. Certainly in all the ones I've played if you charge spearmen at any angle other than fully on the rear, your cavalry will generally be terribly torn up - even top end heavy armoured against peasant spearmen is a bad idea.
Media normally gets that one right; that horses VS spears is a bad idea. Other units its more hit and miss and there's a lot of random stuff thrown in too (eg balls on chains which appear to only have any historical reference in a few works of art and have never had any relics found on the battlefield nor record of such weapons ever being used).
Of course a game also has to simplify things, otherwise its far too much for a person to play and enjoy (at least not without reading a thick library of volumes on war)
Overread wrote: I thought TW nearly always had it that charging spearmen was a BAD idea if you were cavalry. Certainly in all the ones I've played if you charge spearmen at any angle other than fully on the rear, your cavalry will generally be terribly torn up - even top end heavy armoured against peasant spearmen is a bad idea.
Media normally gets that one right; that horses VS spears is a bad idea. Other units its more hit and miss and there's a lot of random stuff thrown in too (eg balls on chains which appear to only have any historical reference in a few works of art and have never had any relics found on the battlefield nor record of such weapons ever being used).
Of course a game also has to simplify things, otherwise its far too much for a person to play and enjoy (at least not without reading a thick library of volumes on war)
Yes, TA got that right consistently, but against non-spearmen cav would absolutely wreck infantry in the early games. I remember parthian heavy cav being an absolute wrecking ball against legionnairies. I think they stopped doing that in Medieval. I remember cav not being as dangerous against blocks of infantry in that game, unless they were already on low morale. Which is how cav should be used. As a terror weapon. Well, unless you're riding a mount that's really good at killing things, of course.
Indeed, flails are dumb. The never really existed, but they looked kind of cool so they stuck. Same with scythes, really. One of my favorite parts of the goblin slayer manga is when they took the piss out of flails. Because they are stupid weapons. Scythes at least won't hit you in the face if you try to swing it.
Well it depends on the cavalery and the numbers. For example in 1605 the swedish army which was one of , if not the best, force as far as tactics, arment and officer cadr goes. Faced of against a much smaller army Polish army. The swedish army had 8500 infantry armed with pikes and muskets, supported by artilery and 2500 of cavalery. Poles had 2400 heavy cavalery and around 1000 infantry that didn't take part in fighting, unless one counts what they were doing to the civilians in the swedish camp post battle. the Poles charged 8 times. Broke both sweedish lines, over run the scotish second line and routed the cavalery and then proceded to pillage the swedish camp.
Ottomans also did it a few times to habsburgs and hungarian infantry formations in the XVI and XVII century.
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Many of the large ranked formations were also used throughout history by relatively untrained troops - they gained confidence by being with their mates and the simplicity of what they needed to do - march towards the enemy and kill them before the kill you.
That is not even true for medival times, even the english didn't use dense formations of levy troops. And since the later medival times almost all acting armies were either made up of knights, can't really call those untrained, or professional mercs. There were some rare examples of levy troops beating normal units in "pushing the pike", like the swiss for example or scottish. But those soon turned their fame in to being hired as mercs all around europe.
Mr Morden wrote: men on horses do not just charge disciplined formed ranks of infantry, especially spearmen or similar - at last not more than once. Because they die. They go after broken units, fleeing units or other cavalry for the most part and if they defeat their opposite numbers - try for the flanks of the formed units or units such as archers who seldom have spears.
To be fair, a lot of systems and media get that wrong. Even Total War did that until CA realized that it doesn't work like that and made cav next to useless unless you micromanage them in the later games.
Then again, I can totally imagine a cold one being perfectly fine in a melee. I mean, its an hungry velociraptor with an equally hungry crocodile man on its back. That's pretty dangerous, even in the thick of it.
The problem with horses is that they are actually really timorous beasts; they are prone to flight and it requires a lot of training to keep them disciplined. With a predatory mount the hard part would be to stop them from engaging the enemy.
Agreed, once you throw in carnivorous armoured reptiles as mounts then you are looking at a different world - in fact recently read a novel with Dinosaurs in the Napoleonic era (a book much better than I had anticipated!)
Karol wrote: Well it depends on the cavalery and the numbers. For example in 1605 the swedish army which was one of , if not the best, force as far as tactics, arment and officer cadr goes. Faced of against a much smaller army Polish army. The swedish army had 8500 infantry armed with pikes and muskets, supported by artilery and 2500 of cavalery. Poles had 2400 heavy cavalery and around 1000 infantry that didn't take part in fighting, unless one counts what they were doing to the civilians in the swedish camp post battle. the Poles charged 8 times. Broke both sweedish lines, over run the scotish second line and routed the cavalery and then proceded to pillage the swedish camp.
Ottomans also did it a few times to habsburgs and hungarian infantry formations in the XVI and XVII century.
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Many of the large ranked formations were also used throughout history by relatively untrained troops - they gained confidence by being with their mates and the simplicity of what they needed to do - march towards the enemy and kill them before the kill you.
That is not even true for medival times, even the english didn't use dense formations of levy troops. And since the later medival times almost all acting armies were either made up of knights, can't really call those untrained, or professional mercs. There were some rare examples of levy troops beating normal units in "pushing the pike", like the swiss for example or scottish. But those soon turned their fame in to being hired as mercs all around europe.
Thanks sounds an unusual battle - must look it up.
Sorry i don't mean that all ranked units were untrained just that if you were going to throw green troops into a battle having them together was often used whereas those well trained / veteran ranked units could do much more - or at least from my reading?
The problem about talking about ancient war tactics is not just that the vast majority of people have no real world understanding; but that war evolved and greatly both as time advanced, between different countries and even between different battles and generals within countries.
What can be really simple if you've a Total War understanding of war; can become very complicated if you learn it at a higher level. Plus I'd say that, like a lot of subjects, easy access books and references that make the subject easier to digest and comprehensive are rare to find; and often expensive if you do find them
Overread wrote: The problem about talking about ancient war tactics is not just that the vast majority of people have no real world understanding; but that war evolved and greatly both as time advanced, between different countries and even between different battles and generals within countries.
What can be really simple if you've a Total War understanding of war; can become very complicated if you learn it at a higher level. Plus I'd say that, like a lot of subjects, easy access books and references that make the subject easier to digest and comprehensive are rare to find; and often expensive if you do find them
Also how much logistics and culture play in a given army, how and why it fights. So when different cultures fight it can be a bruising experience to one or even both sides) and quite often transform not only their army but their culture.
Overread wrote: The problem about talking about ancient war tactics is not just that the vast majority of people have no real world understanding; but that war evolved and greatly both as time advanced, between different countries and even between different battles and generals within countries.
What can be really simple if you've a Total War understanding of war; can become very complicated if you learn it at a higher level. Plus I'd say that, like a lot of subjects, easy access books and references that make the subject easier to digest and comprehensive are rare to find; and often expensive if you do find them
Also how much logistics and culture play in a given army, how and why it fights. So when different cultures fight it can be a bruising experience to one or even both sides) and quite often transform not only their army but their culture.
Aye logistics is a massive subject and one we often forget about in wargames as even PC games often don't cover it (Mount and Blade is one of the few that at least makes you feed your troops and a couple - like King Arthur Roleplaying Wargame - have movement limits in winter months). Disease, sourcing of food, proper supply lines, repair and upkeep. Heck the idea of stopping to put your armour on is something we rarely consider and yet would have been very key (a knight didn't spend every day in full plate armour atop their horse).
Heck if we think about horses in most games they are a "get on and go fast" option rather like a car; yet in reality cavalry is very different; horses need food, water and rest and if pushed too far will simply die or be crippled at best. Heck warhammer style horses are also very "racer" type in body build rather than a more stocky heavy build war horse .
Overread wrote: The problem about talking about ancient war tactics is not just that the vast majority of people have no real world understanding; but that war evolved and greatly both as time advanced, between different countries and even between different battles and generals within countries.
What can be really simple if you've a Total War understanding of war; can become very complicated if you learn it at a higher level. Plus I'd say that, like a lot of subjects, easy access books and references that make the subject easier to digest and comprehensive are rare to find; and often expensive if you do find them
Also how much logistics and culture play in a given army, how and why it fights. So when different cultures fight it can be a bruising experience to one or even both sides) and quite often transform not only their army but their culture.
Aye logistics is a massive subject and one we often forget about in wargames as even PC games often don't cover it (Mount and Blade is one of the few that at least makes you feed your troops and a couple - like King Arthur Roleplaying Wargame - have movement limits in winter months). Disease, sourcing of food, proper supply lines, repair and upkeep. Heck the idea of stopping to put your armour on is something we rarely consider and yet would have been very key (a knight didn't spend every day in full plate armour atop their horse).
Heck if we think about horses in most games they are a "get on and go fast" option rather like a car; yet in reality cavalry is very different; horses need food, water and rest and if pushed too far will simply die or be crippled at best. Heck warhammer style horses are also very "racer" type in body build rather than a more stocky heavy build war horse .
Indeed - even modern day military rarely are able to field an complete unit - there is always someone ill, or injured or away or wahtever.
I can imagine the reaction to having to roll to see how many of your unit actually turn up for battle - roll for malingering, diseased, absent, posted elsewhere, and that's without the fantasy elements.
Medical care was patchy across history - some ancient armies being much better served than later, but then their battles could be much bigger - again partly due to culture and logistics.
Campaign Logistics gets equally interesting when you add in fantasy - Undead benefiting from bloodier battles, having to feed those carnivorous mounts - easier for greenskins
Throw in some politics and internal squabbles between officers and rank and file as well, issues with pay.....be that in coin, blood, meat, whatever.
NinthMusketeer wrote: This whole discussion on historical warfare is quite interesting but getting well into off topic territory...
It's still relevant to highlight just how different the feel from square-base, ranked-unit WHFB is from round-base, move-as-you-wish AoS.
Obviously if you liked warhammer fantasy AoS scratches a totally different itch. Which is reinforces my (local, anecdotal, etc.) evidence that AoS hit big on mostly 40K players who dabbled at bit on fantasy rather than players for whom WHFB was their main game and have the option to stay in square-based land (be it 9th age, kow or whatever edition of WHFB they want to keep playing).
I find that AOS hits on players that like synergy combo-building deckbuilding style games, which seems to be the majority of the tabletop market.
WHFB is more maneuver battlefield management based and is not very popular, in large part because its a more difficult set of skills to master and combo building and deckbuilding aren't as important. (though with whfb 8th edition they did do their damndest to make it more powerful and featured)
I dont' know that the bases really play any role.
I know a ton of 40k players that won't touch AOS simply because they aren't interested in fantasy at any level. They are sci-fi fans that like tanks and guns.
auticus wrote: WHFB is more maneuver battlefield management based and is not very popular, in large part because its a more difficult set of skills to master and combo building and deckbuilding aren't as important.
I'd argue it's much less popular on the basis of being a dead game that has no ongoing support. Even then there's still quite a lot of players it seems and WHFB content still draws decently on platforms like YouTube, despite being squatted a few years ago. There was a time when WHFB was huge, much bigger than what AOS is now. Despite all the stick that 4th and 5th edition gets now for being "Herohammer", that was actually the games peak in terms of sales, in large part because it was quite cheap (relatively) to build an army. Then it began the slow descent into madness...
Maybe. But 8th edition was dying out here and additionally, 9th age and Kings of War have very little player base as well. Kings of War is most definitely not dead. Kings of War lets you use any models you want so cost is not a factor really either, but you have to dig deep to find a community in most places that are more than 3 or 4 guys.
If WHFB was dying, KOW has a very small player base, and 9th age doesnt' really exist except for some choice locations on the globe, but AOS is becoming like 40k in that there are players everywhere, I'd argue that battlefield management style games are really not a popular sell. Everything all around me anyway at conventions and the local stores are almost exclusively tied to skirmish games and deckbuilding games that focus on synergy and buffs.
The peak of WHFB I remember was the early 2000s. In the 1990s it was about what AOS is now where I am. I started in 5th edition with undead. The competitive leagues and groups had about 40 players at our peak around 2003 / 2004. When 7th edition dropped, our players started declining for a myriad of reasons.
It might be that rank and file doesn't sell or it could be that Kings of War just doesn't appeal (many of their designs feel rather retro to my eyes at least when compared to a lot of other lines); and that GW actually messed up advertising and marketing their own game. I think running Lord of hte Rings and Fantasy at the same time was a mistake because there was so much pressure on them to push LotR more than fantasy for so long that I think fantasy just fell to one side. A few bad releases; less marketing and a dwindling playerbase all coupled to a game that had a high start up cost (in perception) and no heavily marketed easier/cheaper way in - lots of little and big things that all added up.
It's no surprise AoS has sigmar marines because its marketing GW understands and knows works and have copied over from 40K. They could have easily kept it with square bases and movement trays and I think if they'd put the same energy into that game it would be going well too.
The tactics and challenge of playing are more abstract than many people like to realise. Heck chess and go have very simplistic mechanics and yet the tactics and strategy of them is legendary in terms of how deep some will go.
auticus wrote:Maybe. But 8th edition was dying out here and additionally, 9th age and Kings of War have very little player base as well. Kings of War is most definitely not dead. Kings of War lets you use any models you want so cost is not a factor really either, but you have to dig deep to find a community in most places that are more than 3 or 4 guys.
Oddly if you go back to when 6th edition came around, that's where the numbers seemed to start slipping, because as much as the ravening hordes helped to balance the game out initially, it also started to drive up the cost of building an army. Some of the later army books in that edition began the trend that would cover the next two editions of army book creep, something which did tremendous damage to the game. Nobody wants to hand over a big pile of cash only to find out their army can't win a game without an absurd amount of luck, and so you're left with a handful of power army choices which you either take or leave, and which gradually more and more players opted to leave.
9th age isn't really a game, it's a bunch of fan made rules on a forum. Kings of War seems to have struggled by virtue of a) not being Warhammer and b) being a bit weird. I saw a game the other day on YouTube and it just looked ridiculous with dice behind the units and seemingly was just about pushing blocks of troops forward with no real plan except "make contact with the enemy and hope to roll well". The crazy amount of miniatures on the table (despite only being an average point game) meant there was no real room for any kind of crafty movement. As I understand it that game was written by the same guy that wrote "Infantryhammer" 6th edition.
Overread wrote:I think running Lord of hte Rings and Fantasy at the same time was a mistake because there was so much pressure on them to push LotR more than fantasy for so long that I think fantasy just fell to one side...
It's no surprise AoS has sigmar marines because its marketing GW understands and knows works and have copied over from 40K. They could have easily kept it with square bases and movement trays and I think if they'd put the same energy into that game it would be going well too.
Agreed and agreed. Having two types of fantasy combat game can't have helped, especially as one was based off of what was at the time an insanely popular movie franchise and had lower entry costs. As for Sigmarines, GW knew they'd sell well and they pretty much have. Hell, I'm considering buying some just to paint and put on a shelf, they're that pretty.
The other issue with big start up costs is burn-out. People buy into the faction with good intentions and get the Battletome, starting boxed sets and start building and then burn out in that before they've hardly had a game. Putting movement trays into the boxed sets would have helped (and several of the other games on the market that are going for rank and file are now doing just that); but in the end with bigger time investments its much easier to burn out.
Couple that to all the other things and it didn't help Fantasy - if it had had a lot more marketing and a very active scene the start up costs and issues go away somewhat - esp if a smaller skirmish game also gets pushed alongside. 40K today operates with very similar numbers in several armies and doesn't suffer the burnout issue.
Personally I also expect AoS to increase the model count over time as it gains in popularity and there's more pressure on GW to allow games iwth more models for the growing fanbase. So long as they revamp Skirmish or release Killteam AOS or somesuch it should work wel.
You guys aren't wrong. The thing is there are no actual viable case studies to examine because there isn't a popular rank and flank out there.
I'd say in terms of the public conventions like Adepticon, Kings of War is #1. But it was put into a small corner of a room. Lord of the Rings was double the size of KOW and LOTR is known to be struggling with attendance.
Hail Caesar is another one but also not present at cons at all. In terms of cost, KOW and Hail Caesar armies can be bought for a fraction of the cost of a 40k or AOS army, so cost is not the barrier there.
Marketing sees this. Marketing notices that games that involve rank and flank and maneuver control are hardly present.
Conquest is the newest coming out this winter... the models are beautiful. THe game play was a lot of fun, but I have a feeling it wont' go very far because its not a deckbuilding combo chaining synergy skirmish game.
Thing is Hail Ceasar and Kings of War have marketing that is a tiny fraction of what GW can put into marketing. GW can push marketing way more than any other company in wargaming (except perhaps star-wars tie-ins). That alone does change things because it means that even if other rank and file is doing badly, part of that might just be that no one has noticed it enough - ergo its not gained enough traction.
Of course it could also be that its just not popular; esp at the 30mm scale.
Anecdotally - from 2003 and on rank and file maneuver based gaming has not been popular near me. When Warmachine dropped MK 1, there was a massive exodus toward the combo based synergy deckbuilding game.
I think that was the noticeable point in time where rank and file games were put on notice.
I personally love Kings of War.....at 10mm. I'm not a huge fan of Rank-n-File at 28mm. Just to much big stuff that takes to long to build and paint to be used as a single model or wound markers. Meh. 10mm where you can build a fantastic and fun 2.2k KOW army for around $100 and paint in an afternoon is where rank-n-file belongs.
Hulksmash wrote: I personally love Kings of War.....at 10mm. I'm not a huge fan of Rank-n-File at 28mm. Just to much big stuff that takes to long to build and paint to be used as a single model or wound markers. Meh. 10mm where you can build a fantastic and fun 2.2k KOW army for around $100 and paint in an afternoon is where rank-n-file belongs.
I would agree which is why I'd love if Warmaster came back (original or AoS flavour). Rank and file just makes so much more sense at 10mm where you can get a proper feel from the miniatures and terrain and also not feel like you've got to spend thousands and spend months just getting a viable sensible looking army together.
I have posted a few times on this, but my dream is the return of warmaster. Of any fantasy rank and flank game, that was probably the best in terms of what I need in a game. Sadly other than with a few of my buddies from like 20 years ago, it never went beyond a handful of us because it just never hooked attention due to its smaller scale and its lack of listbuilding weight.
auticus wrote:Maybe. But 8th edition was dying out here and additionally, 9th age and Kings of War have very little player base as well. Kings of War is most definitely not dead. Kings of War lets you use any models you want so cost is not a factor really either, but you have to dig deep to find a community in most places that are more than 3 or 4 guys.
Oddly if you go back to when 6th edition came around, that's where the numbers seemed to start slipping, because as much as the ravening hordes helped to balance the game out initially, it also started to drive up the cost of building an army. Some of the later army books in that edition began the trend that would cover the next two editions of army book creep, something which did tremendous damage to the game. Nobody wants to hand over a big pile of cash only to find out their army can't win a game without an absurd amount of luck, and so you're left with a handful of power army choices which you either take or leave, and which gradually more and more players opted to leave.
9th age isn't really a game, it's a bunch of fan made rules on a forum. Kings of War seems to have struggled by virtue of a) not being Warhammer and b) being a bit weird. I saw a game the other day on YouTube and it just looked ridiculous with dice behind the units and seemingly was just about pushing blocks of troops forward with no real plan except "make contact with the enemy and hope to roll well". The crazy amount of miniatures on the table (despite only being an average point game) meant there was no real room for any kind of crafty movement. As I understand it that game was written by the same guy that wrote "Infantryhammer" 6th edition.
Overread wrote:I think running Lord of hte Rings and Fantasy at the same time was a mistake because there was so much pressure on them to push LotR more than fantasy for so long that I think fantasy just fell to one side...
It's no surprise AoS has sigmar marines because its marketing GW understands and knows works and have copied over from 40K. They could have easily kept it with square bases and movement trays and I think if they'd put the same energy into that game it would be going well too.
Agreed and agreed. Having two types of fantasy combat game can't have helped, especially as one was based off of what was at the time an insanely popular movie franchise and had lower entry costs. As for Sigmarines, GW knew they'd sell well and they pretty much have. Hell, I'm considering buying some just to paint and put on a shelf, they're that pretty.
Armies did get marginally larger, not by a lot. AND it was also cheaper to get in as the plastic sets meant you could build that slightly cheaper points cost army for WAY cheaper in actual money spent. My Bretonnians were collected before the Army Book release, and therefore before the newer plastics hit in 6th. My Men at Arms regiments cost approximately $60 bucks a regiment for a unit of 20. The same unit in plastic was $20 or $25. Marked difference, so I don't think the size ratio hurt 6th as much as you think. If you have actual sales data from that time, I'd love to see it. Anecdotally, that's when the WFB players in both areas I gamed at grew. 7th is when they started to fall off.
auticus wrote:Anecdotally - from 2003 and on rank and file maneuver based gaming has not been popular near me. When Warmachine dropped MK 1, there was a massive exodus toward the combo based synergy deckbuilding game.
I guess one thing that might be worth raising is that 4th/5th WHFB were known as "Herohammer" in large part because you could take characters and then tailor their loadouts to the extreme. There were some ridiculously broken combinations, which would fit the combo based, synergy deckbuilding element. Powerful lords on Dragons could reliably take on whole units single handed if tooled up correctly.
Just Tony wrote:Armies did get marginally larger, not by a lot. AND it was also cheaper to get in as the plastic sets meant you could build that slightly cheaper points cost army for WAY cheaper in actual money spent.
The difference was that you couldn't rely so much on characters anymore. In the older editions it was possible for someone to buy a few boxes of the cheap plastic core troops, maybe a unit of something special, and then a couple of characters laden with their own bodyweight in magical items to meet some decently high points tallies.
Yeah. My first grand tournament was in 1999. I had been playing 5th edition hero hammer for a year. I placed 8th out of around 80 people with a chaos lord that had over 40 attacks by himself.
I didn't even need the rest of his "army" which was 10 other models.
My tournament chaos "army" was indeed eleven models. It was ridiculous lol.
The concept of armies was brought back in 6th edition, which for a few years seemed to be very popular and then once warmachine mark 1 dropped, started steadily losing fans in favor or smaller model count again and skirmish based rules with combo chaining synergies.
I started WHF in 5th edition and the Herohammer stuff is true. Chaos and Undead (curse of years multiple proccing was horrible to sit through) were amongst the worst abusers, but Lizzies were up there too with some powerful Slaan.
6th ed/Ravening Hordes really did a lot for the game. Model counts went up by virtue of the fact that heroes were toned down.
7th edition was still a good system and I think this is where "unit strength" and outnumbering came into existence. There was still no pre-measuring in 7th edition. I thought 7th edition was a good ruleset, but the problem was they started to jump the shark again with respect to army books and power creep.
8th edition, in my opinion, really started to crap out. They instituted pre-measuring, random charged distances, and although they buffed infantry with the steadfast rule (which I liked, since I happen to think that warhammer fantasy ought to be about massive ranked infantry), they then made it super easy to slaughter infantry en masse with powerful unit killer spells like purple sun, lurkers, comet, etc, which just turned it back into magi-hero-hammer and enabling the big magic boys, Slaan and High Elves to come out on top.
7th edition was mostly 6th edition rules, so I consider the rules to be fairly good. It was the garbage dark elves, demons, and vampire counts that torpedoed the game because they were extremely broken, alongside the grey knights of the same era in 40k.
7th edition when the demon codex was at its pinnacle is where my community dried up because we were tired of the imbalances being so gross.
8th edition brought some people back but the steadfast hordes of 200 skaven slave units, death stars crammed with wizards, or the high elf banner of mat ward with the 2+ ward save against any magic attack that most of the army sat in kept people from being as invested as they were in the 6th edition days.
I think really a keystone is people don't want high model count armies as a whole, skirmish systems with low model counts are preferred. You can't really do proper rank and flank and maneuver with small model count though.
I find the two to be mutually exclusive. Army-scale games have for the entire 30 years I've been doing wargaming been very very rare in any genre (historical, fantasy, or sci fi).
Huh. We'll have to agree to disagree, Auticus. All the guys I know for those years had no problem buying huge armies, in fact we all loved it. What drove us out of WHF was that the big armies we purchased were constantly being invalidated, most by power creep/imbalances between codexes, and/or the big changes in rules to 8th edition.
I still think that's true to this day. 7th edition 40k did not NEED the drastic change to 8th edition. It just needed a more reigned in balance between the armies.
Rocmistro wrote: They instituted pre-measuring, random charged distances, and although they buffed infantry with the steadfast rule (which I liked, since I happen to think that warhammer fantasy ought to be about massive ranked infantry), they then made it super easy to slaughter infantry en masse with powerful unit killer spells like purple sun, lurkers, comet, etc, which just turned it back into magi-hero-hammer and enabling the big magic boys, Slaan and High Elves to come out on top.
Have to disagree in particular with the bit in bold. Warhammer had its roots in the RPG genre, especially D&D. It was about a crazy, somewhat over top fantasy setting that drew on pop culture elements like Conan the Barbarian. That always shaped my view of the world and as such I personally want my Warhammer to have Empire Captains riding Griffons doing battle with Elven lords riding star dragons!! C'mon, how can you not love the thought of that?
I think they nailed it with the push towards units of 20-25. They looked nice and neat, with enough bulk to be a company of sorts without breaking the bank to build said units. I've always felt that a big part of the appeal of Warhammer was the characters, either named or ones that you create yourself. They add so much flavour and - well - character, to the game. The problem is finding the balance between the different elements, which starts by taking away the most insane magic items and probably dumping the common pool of magic items (which made it too easy to tailor around the weaknesses of an army) and replacing it with a bigger pool of army specific items, except ones that are actually useful (100 points for +D3 toughness and 1D6 impact hits? Have a word GW). Ideally I'd want to see armies that were a mix of infantry blocks, some war machines and perhaps a general or wizard on some magnificant beast. Keep it so a tooled up beast riding general can take a 20-25 man unit in one turn, but only if he happens to roll remarkably well and pays a solid amount of points for that unit defeating ability. Tone down the magic big time, make it more of a general support/buff/nerf/fireball type system, not one that can kill whole units with one spell. Knock off with the laser guided artillery and I think they'd be headed in the right direction. Give everyone a little bit of what they want.
On a side note, I'm ok with pre-measuring, as even rookie players learned a variety of cheats pretty quickly. Pre-measuring did away with most of the pretence, though you could perhaps keep guessing for the artillery as the longer distances were a bit harder. Random charge ranges I can live with as long success grants some kind of bonus so there is an incentive to take on risky charges and if failure still lets you move up a decent distance (it's ridiculous that often times a unit would stumble forward less than its traditional movement range).
9th age isn't really a game, it's a bunch of fan made rules on a forum.
Yet it draws events with hundreds of people (maybe not in the UK, but over here in the continent it does) . It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but it sure has its crowd.
The record (other than the ETC, that's its own beast) is the Polish team championship this July, with 50(!) 5-man teams. Several singles have been held around the 100 mark.
Rocmistro wrote: Huh. We'll have to agree to disagree, Auticus. All the guys I know for those years had no problem buying huge armies, in fact we all loved it. What drove us out of WHF was that the big armies we purchased were constantly being invalidated, most by power creep/imbalances between codexes, and/or the big changes in rules to 8th edition.
I still think that's true to this day. 7th edition 40k did not NEED the drastic change to 8th edition. It just needed a more reigned in balance between the armies.
My responses are of course only from my own point of view and the perspective of my area. Those were the years I was huge into the tournament scene. I don't think it started out with huge armies driving people out, but yeah I'd say the invalidation coupled with the really really horrible powergaming imbalances played the role of the final nail because no one wanted to have to keep buying huge armies on the regular just so they weren't getting rolled by the bad balance. Thats my same issue with AOS. You have to constantly rotate armies and often the cool models I like are not the ones can give a good game so I lose emotional investment in my force.
9th age isn't really a game, it's a bunch of fan made rules on a forum.
Yet it draws events with hundreds of people (maybe not in the UK, but over here in the continent it does) . It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but it sure has its crowd.
The record (other than the ETC, that's its own beast) is the Polish team championship this July, with 50(!) 5-man teams. Several singles have been held around the 100 mark.
It's still not a proper "game", it's just a set of rules that walk a fine legal line.
Rocmistro wrote: Huh. We'll have to agree to disagree, Auticus. All the guys I know for those years had no problem buying huge armies, in fact we all loved it. What drove us out of WHF was that the big armies we purchased were constantly being invalidated, most by power creep/imbalances between codexes, and/or the big changes in rules to 8th edition.
I still think that's true to this day. 7th edition 40k did not NEED the drastic change to 8th edition. It just needed a more reigned in balance between the armies.
My responses are of course only from my own point of view and the perspective of my area. Those were the years I was huge into the tournament scene. I don't think it started out with huge armies driving people out, but yeah I'd say the invalidation coupled with the really really horrible powergaming imbalances played the role of the final nail because no one wanted to have to keep buying huge armies on the regular just so they weren't getting rolled by the bad balance. Thats my same issue with AOS. You have to constantly rotate armies and often the cool models I like are not the ones can give a good game so I lose emotional investment in my force.
Ok then I can buy that. What I think is wrong (and I'm not saying that *you* are saying this, just that it's been said), is that rank n' flank games have less of an appeal than skirmish based games. I don't know that that is necessarily true. 7th edition 40k is/was a skirmish game, and interest in had more or less died out prior to 8th dropping because of 1.) rules, codex, book "bloat" and 2.) horrible imbalances between armies (taudar vs. my poor blood angels).
My experience is that warhammer fantasy died out not because people don't like wheeling their regiments, but because of similar problems in balance and such.
But compound that with bouncingboredom's response to my other post. He likes big characters and the flavor they bring to the game. I like characters...but in moderation. My feeling has always been that if I want to play a game where my Elf Lord rides a dragon, then I'll go play D&D, as there is already a game system where you can do that. I've always thought that when you build an ARMY list in Warhammer, you should have, you know, something resembling an army. I don't want to play Herohammer...I want to play Warhammer, and it's much harder for GW to balance that whole equation when they have such extremes. That's not to say my vision of Warhammer is the right one, but when 2 polar visions of warhammer (herohammer vs. hordehammer) are both invested in the system, and GW is trying to satisfy both visions, its bound to come apart. I think WHF came apart because GW could not make both camps happy.
Now, normally that wouldn't bother me...except they already had a skirmish based game to offer. It was called 40k. So for me, when they dropped Fantasy and moved to AoS, which is, more or less, 40k with swords, my response is: what's the point? I already have a skirmish game. So bringing it back around to the OP...AoS offers nothing that 40k doesn't. I'm sure it's not a horrible game....but why bother with the overhead of books, and rules and learning all that and understanding all that when it's effectively the same game?
9th age isn't really a game, it's a bunch of fan made rules on a forum.
Yet it draws events with hundreds of people (maybe not in the UK, but over here in the continent it does) . It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but it sure has its crowd.
The record (other than the ETC, that's its own beast) is the Polish team championship this July, with 50(!) 5-man teams. Several singles have been held around the 100 mark.
It's still not a proper "game", it's just a set of rules that walk a fine legal line.
Your own reasons to dislike it doesn't make it less of a game.
It has rules, people play it. The supported/commercial/whatever discussion is so 2015.
