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

 frozenwastes wrote:


The issue is though, that multiplayer campaigns without a game master can have problems.

It seems there is this weird fear spreading around players, thinking that there is no way a group of players can agree amongst themselves about what could be good to play for the fun of all players. You talk with them and eventually, you find a common ground - because the purpose for players playing games is to keep playing said games - and that's hard when you have no one willing to play with you.

Sometimes, it can go wrong, yes, but as Auticus said - the amount of failures is way down in comparison to the number of successes and good memories. But yet, that small possibility it can go wrong seems to be enough to make people afraid.

I find it quite funny that GW is talking about the huge amount of customisation with Warcry's campaign system. Because you can give your warriors some artifact and a command trait. But well, that's how it is now, youngsters nowadays don't understand what real customisation is.

But then games like Pathfinder still sell well and Pathfinder is all about extreme customization vs D&D's GW approach of ultra streamlined simplicity.

Wayniac wrote:
I mean I have found there's a lot to be said about trying to organize games around a store/club without a lot of fuss. Especially since in most of those cases, you can't be selective and only invite certain people (stores don't seem to like that). So for mass-market this sort of thing where it's barely a campaign and more like a series of games with something that kinda resembles a story being cobbled together works wonders, and I'd expect the idea is you house rule (there's that word again...) if you're doing a campaign because you typically don't run campaigns with a huge amount of people.

It actually works really well, IMO, because it sets each person as doing their 'own' quest. Other people are around too, but it's your Warband that is trying to do something.

 auticus wrote:
But then games like Pathfinder still sell well and Pathfinder is all about extreme customization vs D&D's GW approach of ultra streamlined simplicity.

I would love to get into the nitty-gritty of this stuff, and my experiences in different systems. But I feel like we need another thread for it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sarouan wrote:

I find it quite funny that GW is talking about the huge amount of customisation with Warcry's campaign system. Because you can give your warriors some artifact and a command trait. But well, that's how it is now, youngsters nowadays don't understand what real customisation is.

Listening to people talk about how they used to just cut off a necromunda gangers hand and glue a different weapon on mid-campaign is insane to me. Both due to the way the new models are sculpted and the lack of weapon options included in a box. GW models are expensive and I don't really want to buy another box of 10 models just for bits.

The issue with the campaign systems not working has nothing to do with organization but with the distribution of results. Some amount of the time the various injuries and deaths will be distributed across the participants. And the really good experience rolls will be similarly distributed. But a non insignificant amount of the time the various good and bad results will be distributed in such a way that the campaign or league breaks. Games become foregone conclusions as the gang/team that both dodged all the bad injury/death results and also got all the best experience and resource rolls will just be so much stronger than the one that got the worst of both the negative stuff and had poor money and experience rolls.

And then the next game happens and the disparate power levels means the team/gang that's falling behind takes more death and injury rolls because they are playing against a superior team/gang. And the issue just gets worse.

The campaigns can be great and memorable when the distribution of injury and experience rolls happen to stack up in a more even manner but so many times it usually goes horribly wrong for at least one person in a league/campaign and there's just nothing they can do.

 nurgle5 wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
"Balance" in this context just means "everyone has a chance to win" and death mechanics can easily mean that a bad roll puts a player permanently out.of the campaign because they cannot catch up.

On the flipside, my warband was the "runaway" that got really far ahead during my group's last Mordheim campaign, but that meant I couldn't get any proper games towards the end of the campaign. The other players would usually Rout as soon as they could, because the alternative was my Vampire blending everything he touched. Understandable of course, but not a lot of fun for me!

I still think that injury/experience tables are fun and flavoursome, but they can become a problem when they start impeding the fun of the actual games themselves.

This is kind of what I mean. The idea of lasting repercussions both good and bad are really compelling, but ultimately when they spoil the core gameplay it sours the experience. People get into these to play their favorite game in a more meaningful way, but its not worth it if it makes the experience of their favorite game itself less fun. I liken it to the double jump in videogames. It's a bit of fairly common character progression and its always exciting to acquire, but if the game is 100% playable without it; all it does is make the game easier and less interesting. Games need to create mechanics that utilize and require the double jump to make that enhancement enhance the game. The main problem with campaigns is that your progress results in more of a win-more state unless your opponents are able to progress at a similar level.

The ultimate point I was trying to make is that neither approach is wrong, and GW is simply catering to what customers want right now. Begrudging them for that is futile and begrudging the system for being what it is, more so. It is easy to slip into, intentionally or otherwise, implying that one way is better than the other and I personally see a lot of that in the last few pages.

is simply catering to what customers want right now.

I'd love to get an overall set of statistics that say the vast majority of everyone wants ultra slimmed down rules and campaigns that are now akin to leagues.

I know there is a demand for those things, but the way we make it out to be is that people like me are abominations and grotesques that are some tiny minority for wanting a little more in their rules.

 auticus wrote:

is simply catering to what customers want right now.

I'd love to get an overall set of statistics that say the vast majority of everyone wants ultra slimmed down rules and campaigns that are now akin to leagues.

I know there is a demand for those things, but the way we make it out to be is that people like me are abominations and grotesques that are some tiny minority for wanting a little more in their rules.

I don't think its a case that you're an abomination; just that Warcry is clearly like Killteam and thus an introductory game in GW's view. So they want it simpler and easier to get into and more friendly in long term campaigns because they want people more easily drawn in and encouraged to build up that warband - then that AoS army then more!

I'm sure we'll one day see a necromunda or other similar style complex game for AoS, but it might be a while before we see such a product. Also don't forget there's the huge RPG game coming next year (I think now) which can easily be used with models to create even more detailed and deadly games.

 auticus wrote:
But then games like Pathfinder still sell well and Pathfinder is all about extreme customization vs D&D's GW approach of ultra streamlined simplicity.

Not sure it's the same with the second edition of Pathfinder, that looks really a lot like D&D 4th edition.

balmong7 wrote:

Listening to people talk about how they used to just cut off a necromunda gangers hand and glue a different weapon on mid-campaign is insane to me. Both due to the way the new models are sculpted and the lack of weapon options included in a box. GW models are expensive and I don't really want to buy another box of 10 models just for bits.

It's not insane, it's actually the whole center of GW games : building and painting miniatures to play with. And you don't have to go that far to have customisation - it can be done simply by having a different profile, be it with options you can buy with points like skills or upgrades in aptitudes, or even the simple experience progression.

Gaining artifacts is really the poor guy of customization. I'm not talking about destiny levels because I feel generous today.

But I agree, old games weren't/aren't perfect as well. And there is always room for trying new things/improvements, of course. In the end, I still want to play Warcry, even if I feel like it's not catering to my "Mordheimesque" desires.

 auticus wrote:

is simply catering to what customers want right now.

I'd love to get an overall set of statistics that say the vast majority of everyone wants ultra slimmed down rules and campaigns that are now akin to leagues.

I know there is a demand for those things, but the way we make it out to be is that people like me are abominations and grotesques that are some tiny minority for wanting a little more in their rules.

Seems a little hyperbolic...

So having played through about half a campaign already, I must say that it works and is fun. Had I compared it to the times when BB/mordheim/Necromunda campaigns actually worked and declared it substandard and not given it a try, I definitely would have missed out on the fun I've already had.

We had a little event with six players in my mancave last wednesday and everybody did like the new rules.

Very slimmed down, but fast paced and easy to get the hang of, but still with enough speed to the gameplay.



Oh: on a final note: this is the first time they went full on cards for gameplay rules for the models and everybody agreed it was a far superior and more relaxing method of playing. It's something I've been advocating for AoS for years now in their big survey.


NOBODY like having to flip through a book mid game, it just slows down and breaks the immersion you have during gameplay.

Also, putting the wound counters on the cards themselves is so much more elegant and causes a lot less clutter during gameplay. It would be hard in regular AoS as it's footprint is already massive.

Some further thoughts:

I've been experimenting with drawing two objective cards instead of one and scoring 'victory' based on whether someone's got more wins than their opponent to try and counteract people winning in the first activation of turn two before the game has had time to get rolling, and what I've discovered is that GW's one-dimensional faction design seems to end up allowing one warband to just win any given objective. If I'm playing Iron Golems and you're playing Mindbound, and we draw Higher Ground, if we're using the terrain in the starter box you can't use your mobility to play hit-and-run or gang up on small elements of my warband, I just win because the scenario requires we stand clumped together with each other in tight spaces and my Defense is higher than yours.

The AoS faction cards partially rescue it, but most of them fall victim to the same one-dimensional "let's make a faction consisting of about six different ways to do the same thing!" issue that the Warcry warbands do; the Stormcast, Daughters of Khaine, and Idoneth can be built to do a wider variety of things, but the rest feel just as limited as the Warcry-specific cards.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Elmir wrote:
...Oh: on a final note: this is the first time they went full on cards for gameplay rules for the models and everybody agreed it was a far superior and more relaxing method of playing. It's something I've been advocating for AoS for years now in their big survey.


NOBODY like having to flip through a book mid game, it just slows down and breaks the immersion you have during gameplay.

Also, putting the wound counters on the cards themselves is so much more elegant and causes a lot less clutter during gameplay. It would be hard in regular AoS as it's footprint is already massive.

You wouldn't need that much footprint in regular AoS if you could make the cards standard playing-card sized; there's usually a strip along the edge of the table at the back of the deployment zone nobody's using (we used to have no trouble fitting all the cards and the game inside the 4'x4' tables for Warmachine). Someone would need to design cards for the purpose (individual cards that only have the options you selected on them, and are double-sided to fit in all the text legibly rather than trying to have splash-panel artwork on the back the way the warscroll cards they sell do) but you could totally do it.

I think it's pretty great. They've nailed it for me- the warbands are nicely variable enough and not like underworlds, the cards mean the game is streamlined, I love the priority mechanic, but I am as of yet to choose a warband. Recommendations for rules wise- they all look pretty spectacular.

 auticus wrote:

is simply catering to what customers want right now.

I'd love to get an overall set of statistics that say the vast majority of everyone wants ultra slimmed down rules and campaigns that are now akin to leagues.

I know there is a demand for those things, but the way we make it out to be is that people like me are abominations and grotesques that are some tiny minority for wanting a little more in their rules.

I think you're overreacting a little there...

The rules are quick, the gameplay is fun and most importantly a bunch of guys with incredibly little free gaming time (me and mateS) due to family and work obligations can comfortably fit in several games with minimal fuss is amazing and something Mordheim and other similar games can quite often struggle with.

GW streamlined rules are great for us, if we had more time I'd love campaign rules but Im also a believer campaign rules need to be made for that specific campaign, as your local meta/player group needs to be adjusted around, not players adjusting to the campaign rules so to speak to ensure smooth as possible campaign.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
If I'm playing Iron Golems and you're playing Mindbound, and we draw Higher Ground, if we're using the terrain in the starter box you can't use your mobility to play hit-and-run or gang up on small elements of my warband, I just win because the scenario requires we stand clumped together with each other in tight spaces and my Defense is higher than yours.

Not necessarily.

1) Iron Golems are slow, moving only 4 or 5 inches. This means that they need to spend all their actions just moving to get up on top of the terrain. If you can take out even just one guy early on, or get a lead by getting more models to platforms in the first turn, they won't be able to catch up without going on the offensive - and they'll never catch you.

2) Being on a platform means that you can get knocked off. Even one guy getting knocked off could give you a lead, as it'll take two actions just to crawl back up.

3) The Cypher Lords have a sweeping attack which can hit all the models within 2" (so clumping is bad) and ignores toughness. It has a 50% chance of causing at least 1 point of damage, with a roll of 6 inflicting the number shown on the double (potentially 6 damage from a lucky roll). This is in addition to your regular attack actions (which can knock them off). Those little shield guys with the toughness of 5 only have 10 hitpoints. Sit back two inches and pick on them. They shouldn't last too long. As soon as you have more models, run away.


I agree that the Iron Golems have a major defensive advantage, but I don't think their victory is absolute here unless they were lucky enough to basically all be deployed on platforms from the start. More importantly, if you are playing a campaign game, there's no real punishment for losing a campaign game (outside of having to repeat lost convergences). You can still get a few glory points and a lesser artifact. Then play the next game. There are missions where the Iron Golems have the disadvantage too.

The AoS faction cards partially rescue it, but most of them fall victim to the same one-dimensional "let's make a faction consisting of about six different ways to do the same thing!" issue that the Warcry warbands do; the Stormcast, Daughters of Khaine, and Idoneth can be built to do a wider variety of things, but the rest feel just as limited as the Warcry-specific cards.

It is a safe bet that we'll be seeing more for the six (eight?) core warbands (there's even rules for models which don't exist yet: mounted and gargantuan). The current balance doesn't represent Warcry's final form.

The rulebook also mentions campaign quests with more than one faction runemark, and narrative play allows you to fill your roster with any models sharing at least one of the faction runemarks. This means you could have, for example, a campaign with Stormcast and Daughters of Khaine in the same roster. However, matched play and the basic non-narrative rules limit warbands to same faction.

It also said there will be new campaign quests in White Dwarf, so that should be fun.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
It also said there will be new campaign quests in White Dwarf, so that should be fun.

Yeah, I thought it was weird for them to explicitly mention White Dwarf. I guess they are committed to White Dwarf being a place for game releases, rather than a glorified catalogue.

At first, I was a little down on the campaign quests. The ones in the book are the bare minimum. Why have territory rules when they all have the same rule? (Technically, the AoS factions don't gain thralls with territory like the Chaos factions). They seemed too simple and didn't seem to add much, but I now think they could be the defining characteristic of the game. The genius of it is that the lesser artifacts are all usable (last for one game) or perishable (50% chance of disappearing after each scenario), so you only really gain permanent upgrades with major artifacts and command traits, which are very limited - you get three total per campaign quest (and command traits are limited to, at most, two models in your roster). So new abilities are temporary, and even destiny points and major artifacts can be lost if your model dies. You also lose all glory points and territories between quests.

Because the general level of upgrades will decay over time, you are always in the market for more upgrades, while each campaign quest also has a number of unique artifacts and command traits to make it worth going through. This means that you can take the same warband through a dozen campaign quests and still not be greatly overpowered compared to a warband that has done one or two. The only permanent upgrades are on the leader, who can't die (can still lose destiny levels though), and the more you've built up your warband, the more losing a model to death will matter (losing a major artifact or even a command trait will be a major loss). The more you play, the more you have to lose.

A big book of quest, with multiple faction runemarks, unique territory rules, branching paths, more artifacts - basically, the Warcry equivalent to a Frostgrave expansion - would just be amazing. I'm really eager to see where they take it.

To simple, some mechanics mean auto win. Pass for me. Played a few games with mates before committed to buy and watched all on Miniwargamming and GMG etc. Not enough depth and total pass for me 100% not worth the money.

Spectral Ceramite wrote:
To simple, some mechanics mean auto win. Pass for me. Played a few games with mates before committed to buy and watched all on Miniwargamming and GMG etc. Not enough depth and total pass for me 100% not worth the money.

To each their own, of course, but I think GW has done something uncharacteristically nice for us by including the non-Chaos warbands. I couldn't justify getting the starter box to get the hole game myself, but if you have this as a group, a single card pack for 6.50€ to use with your existing models is a very low buy in for a GW game. I could certainly stomach that for what was at the time an untested game.

That seems to have enticed a few other people at my local store, too. Which at the end of the day puts a fair few potential players in the same room. That's a good thing.

Of course if you don't like the game mechanics not even that is going to help.

 Geifer wrote:

Spectral Ceramite wrote:
Of course if you don't like the game mechanics not even that is going to help.

Big point


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I mean this is coming from some1 who has bought every single thing necromunda that they have released, and I could buy all warcry but I chose not to because I don't see depth in the game and long last ability for me.

I don't think including the other forces was a nice turn; if GW wants Warcry to be what Killteam is to 40K then adding the other armies was almost required. The only real difference is that in 40K GW encouraged you to get into the game with a single box of troops and enhanced that by having terrain sets with starter boxes for each force.

In Warcry GW lets oyu buy one box for warbands, but the regular armies need two or three boxes to make up a varied warparty. They also didn't market them as heavily during the build-up; so at present Warcry has a stronger warband focus.

This might dwindle in time if they release more models for the warbands; though if they do I hope they don't bloat them if only because at present Warcry ties very nicely ito Slaves to darkness and I'd rather not see them bloat thewarbands to the point where it makes them break that tie into AoS.

So we're about a month after release and we have zero community for this game. The stores that went in on it are doing their spam advertisement now trying to hook interest. This is typically followed by giving it a massive discount and being rid of it.

Interested in why this is (since I was foolish enough to buy a box and now it looks like I have another box of models sitting in my house that will only be good for painting and little else) the answers mainly echo:

"Its not 40k"
"It looks cool but I don't want to buy in to another game that no one else will play because its not 40k"
"The campaign system is crud and too simple"

Thats just my area. Your mileage of course will vary.

Now I will be fair and say that the top two answers are also universal to every other game that is not 40k, to include games I love like Kings of War, classic WHFB, or Conquest.

Additionally our annual AOS campaign starts in two weeks and runs through the end of the year and I have inquired about adding it to our campaign (warcry) and the answer was most people not answering at all, followed by a resounding "meh I don't care if other people play it but I'm not".

This game will die....just saying it now, it will be warcried

I think Warcry will survive just fine. It's a better game than Kill Team that seems popular enough. Moreover, the game is hardly in its final form.

The main rulebook contains multiple hints of things to come in the near future - two more warband factions, hints that more campaigns will come in White Dwarf and future GW releases, campaigns with multiple faction runemarks for mixed rosters, universal, generic chaos beast rules for only two kinds of chaos beasts, and runemarks for gargantuan and mounted that don't have any models in the game yet.

Kill Team was similarly limited with just the core book, but it got Commanders, Elites, Arena, and Rogue Trader which substantially expanded and improved the game. But as of yet, we have no idea how Warcry will expand - the Ravaged Lands are the only add ons which we know what to expect for future releases. We really don't know if or how the core warbands will even be expanded.

Warcry has plenty of space to expand, and in doing so, will maintain and gain interest from people over time. What's there is a good foundation that should last people for a good while until the next release.

I will wait then to see how they decide to expand it. For me it will require more than just factions, it will require a reason beyond pick up or tournament play for me to invest anything additional into it.

I actually think Warcry might be deeper in real terms than pretty much every other GW game. Depth isn't about having loads of rules procedures to work through. It's about making decisions and in Warcry you need to think ahead multiple activations and try to figure out the various decision tree forks that will satisfy the objectives of the scenario.

Depth is an emergent property of simpler rules. Chess is a classic example where the game can be learnt by a child but even the most advanced computer can't figure out a complete game tree for it.

Depth is a word that means many things to many people.

Just like a lot of people feel that the double turn in aos is hugely tactical and others feel its flaming garbage.

It often gets misconstrued that "this has no depth" is a cry for a ton of complex rules, which is often not the case.

A call for a deep campaign doesn't mean that the campaign has to have 300 pages of Battletech: Total War style rules.

The campaign in its current form is a glorified version of World of Warcraft to me. Its disjointed, and created primarily to allow pick up gamers to have their own quests in their heads without needing a unified campaign, much like world of warcraft where people pvp because pvp, but where they all have their own list of things to do and where the other person might as well not even exist other than to give sweet sweet xp.

A military campaign has at the very least two opposing forces fighting over a common objective, not just over the course of a single battle (thats not a military campaign, thats a border skirmish).

Saying warcry's campaign is a campaign is using the word in its loosest form of "a linked set of battles leading up to a conclusion".

It is - to me - the same as comparing D&D adventures league games as a campaign vs a home game campaign. Adventures league games are a series of disjointed meetups with random faces every meetup that technically meet the standard of a campaign in that it is a linked set of games for each player where they develop, but where the missions are hugely disjointed as opposed to a home campaign which from beginning to end is about a series of events for the party where the party is the entity that is developing.

Or a third way because why not - a warcry campaign is a book of short stories that are all set in the AOS world but have nothing to do with each other other than they are in AOS, whereas a campaign I am talking about is a trilogy of novels with the same set of forces developing and clashing over a period of time.

 auticus wrote:
Depth is a word that means many things to many people.

I would hope that it meant "The extent, measurement, or dimension downward, backward, or inward." to most people...

Seriously though, the game actually has quite a bit of depth, but it is in the interactions of dozens, if not hundreds, of small, simple pieces. If you think the game has no depth, then you are missing the forest for the trees. Hell, you might be missing the forest for the leaves.

The campaign in its current form is a glorified version of World of Warcraft to me...Saying warcry's campaign is a campaign is using the word in its loosest form of "a linked set of battles leading up to a conclusion".

Your opinion on Warcry is well noted in your 30-something posts in this thread. But we should be clear here - it is YOUR opinion. It is not anything more than that. You are behaving in a manner that suggests that you blame Warcry for you not liking it. Like, if Warcry only did what you wanted it to do, it would be a good game, and since it doesn't, it isn't. That's not really how it works though...

I get that the game isn't what you wanted it to be, but that's okay. Maybe the game is what other people want it to be instead. Of the 144 people who voted on this thread's poll, 84 of them rated it an 8 or higher. The response to Warcry has been overwhelmingly positive - I'd even argue giddy. In fact, outside of you and Owen from the GMG review, I don't think I've seen much negativity about the game at all - and both of you are more bitter that the game isn't a different game instead of being reasonable about what the game actually is.

Warcry may not be the game for you. It may never be the game for you. But rather than be resentful of this fact, just go find all the other games that are for you. Chances are, the games that are for you, aren't for me. No harm, no foul. It's a big enough world for everybody to have something they like. Everybody doesn't have to like everything. But it isn't Warcry's fault that you don't like it, man. That's all on you.