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That's dumb. AoS is a sequel to Fantasy, you can't just ignore it.

Tell that to the east ortodox church or old star wars fans. Or generaly followers or fans of anything that people liked and cherished, and which then was changed to be something drasticly different.

AoS is a sequel, that's correct, in the same sense that WW2 is sequel to WW1. You don't expect to bring a force of Mk IV tanks from 1918 to a D-Day landing game of Flames of War. The remaining "old" armies have now been fully updated, so the problem is resolved anyway. All that's left is for three oldest books (lizards, tzeench and KO) to be updated.

Speaking of release schedule, last 2 years AoS schedule was incredibly hectic when it came to updating armies, even if most only had a handful of new kits.

I'm not playing because I don't like the game.

I played 3rd ed WHFB and 7/8th editions. I have one army - high elves. Not shark-riding, whale jumping sea elves, not dark elves, not tree-hugging sylvaneth.

I had my 3rd ed army stolen back in the day, and started late 6th ed from scratch with HE after a decade and a half (at least) on the wagon. Then GW went and nuked the old world.

Fortunately for me, GW wasn't my entry point. I came in via WW2 and moderns back in the late 80s, moved to battletech, then across to 40k when I saw it, then WHFB. I knew there were other games apart from GW from the get-go, and not being part of a store-gaming clique, meant I didn't have to "play what's in the shop".

I loathe the current model aesthetic for AoS. just about all of it. My HE are my elves on the shelf and have been for a few years.

These days, I build the models I like, and play the odd other spaceship game, or SF miniatures game when I feel the need to. I have a core group of players who play the same games, and our gaming life is cool.

pm713 wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:
The only thing I really disagree with is the "can't play" connotation. You can play with any of them, but just prepared to be flat out stomped unless the other player is willing to leave their 'Tome out of it (and even then...). "Playing" doesn't mean "win".

Playing means that you have a reasonable chance to win most of the time. Not by playing this army you will certainly lose barring incompetence or extreme luck.

I reject this slang. Ask Merriam-Webster or Oxford for the definition of "play" and the term "win" is never used in the definitions.

 Charistoph wrote:

pm713 wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:
The only thing I really disagree with is the "can't play" connotation. You can play with any of them, but just prepared to be flat out stomped unless the other player is willing to leave their 'Tome out of it (and even then...). "Playing" doesn't mean "win".

Playing means that you have a reasonable chance to win most of the time. Not by playing this army you will certainly lose barring incompetence or extreme luck.

I reject this slang. Ask Merriam-Webster or Oxford for the definition of "play" and the term "win" is never used in the definitions.

Play - engage in activity for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious or practical purpose.

Either way it fails. It's not fun to be neglected.

We're going to play a game of monopoly. I'm going to pick the dog pawn, because the dog pawn starts with $20,000 more than you and gets to take two turns in a row every time its his turn, because he's the dog pawn. Additionally if you own any property you have to pay a special dog tax to the player that is the dog every turn because the dog is awesome.

All the other pawns just function as normal. And I figured out that having those advantages means I want to always be the dog.

Sound like a good game to play?

How about we play a different game involving cards, but you have to use the deck of cards that has all the weak effects in it because the rules say someone has to play the weak deck and someone has to play the strong deck, because you dont play this game to try to win, you just play this game for fun and drink beer.

Think that game would fly off shelves?

Or is the expectation with a game that you and I sit down and we both have a reasonably good chance of being able to win it through good gameplay and better choices in-game as opposed to picking the (obviously)better pawn?

I suppose each person is different. But trying to go off of the dictionary definition of play to try and disqualify someone's desire to have a game decided on gameplay as opposed to picking the best pawn is stretching. Because for my money its not much fun or enjoyable to spend hundreds of dollars, hundreds of hours hobbying, to walk to a table and get crushed by virtue of liking the models that don't have the hot rules, nor wanting to have to buy/sell my armies and keep up with the meta to have an enjoyable game.

Auticus is a poster who I always enjoy reading content from, and respect the opinion of, but for fairness sake I do want to add that the inverse... an overly homogenized game... can be problematic for our hobby too.

I just wrote a review of Marvel: Crisis Protocol for Frontline that essentially had to damn it with faint praise for being sooo safe that the resulting game is soulless, and dull.

I have been playing huge amounts of AoS as of late, and I have to say, if we could excise the stupid-tier books, and if everything floated around Gitz-tier, it would be a genuinely fun system. Those mid-tier books played against one-another are like a pocket-dimension of what the whole game should aspire to be.

Definitely don't want an overly homogenized game.

But definitely don't want the game AOS has been for its lifetime where a subset of factions are clearly going to clean your clock if you aren't playing one of them. (and yes that extends back to whfb all the way to 2007 or so with the demon, dark elf, and vc army books when they were the beginning of the "trifecta" that always existed that ran people off)

If everything was around gitz tier or khorne tier then I'd agree the game would at least have its balance issues reigned in and be a lot more fun from a gameplay standpoint where you don't want to sit down and just get mule kicked in the face for liking the wrong faction.

The fan comp days of AOS showed that this could be done. Kings of War and Conquest have some armies that are harder and easier which is to be expected, but nothing like don't bother showing up if you like this faction levels that need addressed today here.

 auticus wrote:
Definitely don't want an overly homogenized game.

But definitely don't want the game AOS has been for its lifetime where a subset of factions are clearly going to clean your clock if you aren't playing one of them. (and yes that extends back to whfb all the way to 2007 or so with the demon, dark elf, and vc army books when they were the beginning of the "trifecta" that always existed that ran people off)

If everything was around gitz tier or khorne tier then I'd agree the game would at least have its balance issues reigned in and be a lot more fun from a gameplay standpoint where you don't want to sit down and just get mule kicked in the face for liking the wrong faction.

The fan comp days of AOS showed that this could be done. Kings of War and Conquest have some armies that are harder and easier which is to be expected, but nothing like don't bother showing up if you like this faction levels that need addressed today here.

Totally agree. Uphill battles because the enemy brought a stronger list/army are one thing. Sometimes I even appreciate the challenge. But what has brought me close to quitting AoS more than once is when I show up and either me or my opponent has no realistic means of victory.

pm713 wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:

pm713 wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:
The only thing I really disagree with is the "can't play" connotation. You can play with any of them, but just prepared to be flat out stomped unless the other player is willing to leave their 'Tome out of it (and even then...). "Playing" doesn't mean "win".

Playing means that you have a reasonable chance to win most of the time. Not by playing this army you will certainly lose barring incompetence or extreme luck.

I reject this slang. Ask Merriam-Webster or Oxford for the definition of "play" and the term "win" is never used in the definitions.

Play - engage in activity for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious or practical purpose.

See? "Win" is not a requirement to play, unless you are the type to tip tables if you lose.

pm713 wrote:
Either way it fails. It's not fun to be neglected.

In that I am in agreement. But there is a difference between being ignored and still can put pieces on the table.

Win is not a requirement to play.

However in the real world talking about people not about words; its rare that one can enjoy the competitive/gaming side of an activity if a person continually loses. Especially if their loss is basically boiled down to "you can't actually win unless through insane luck or the opponent playing exceptionally badly".

Most people need a degree of wins in order to maintain the fun element. Interestingly continual winning can also hamper enthusiasm (esp if its very easy winning) after a while. Even more so if there's no out-of-game reward (eg getting paid to win)

I don't need to win all the time. I don't even mind losing more than I win. I just need to know that I'm not out of the game before I've unpacked my $1000 worth of models because you're a genius reincarnation of Napolean and Patton all wrapped into a sleek velvet gamer shell, and figured out three keeper of secrets summoning 2000 points and having 4000 points in a 2000 point game is awesome and I liked an army that wasn't in the power trifecta so I've already lost before that case of models is even opened.

You could always concede and then ask the Slaanesh player to use a different army composition or take a handicap if the result is that forgone a conclusion in your local area.

Or just not play the slaanesh army.

Hopefully half-year update (I think its coming in January) might start to chip away at the powerhouse that is Slaanesh.

You can't do those things in public events. Well... you can. But that ruins the point of having public gaming events in the first place if people are having to concede matches because they either bring their slaanesh/Flesh eater court/masters of the universe undead / whatever is currently busted or they are ok with getting crushed.

I can tell you from years of doing public events that asking players to not max power their lists results in hostile reactions. Some VERY hostile reactions. Some very dramatic reactions, that carry over into your regional facebook chat with people using all caps responses.

Which shouldn't happen if the company that made the game would stop letting things like that happen regularly.

I'm just using slaanesh as the example now since it is as of today the worst of the bunch. In the history of AOS with official points there has always been a slaanesh though, so slaanesh will get toned down and something will rise to take its place.

Thats why most recently i can point to our 2019 player group losing 14 players and having gained I believe 4, for a net loss of 10. Warcry is bigger now than AOS here, as is the Kings of War an hour south, and our Conquest group is currently at 16 which is now bigger than our AOS as well. Its not good for the health of the game other than if you are ok with burn and churn of your player base. So long as new players are jumping on and dumping cash on a new force I guess it doesn't matter if they leave a year later so long as their replacement is lined up.

Overread wrote:You could always concede and then ask the Slaanesh player to use a different army composition or take a handicap if the result is that forgone a conclusion in your local area.

Or just not play the slaanesh army.

Or play a game where you don't need to.

Hopefully half-year update (I think its coming in January) might start to chip away at the powerhouse that is Slaanesh.

There is always something or other that will fix things with GW coming soon, but things stay fethed after all these years and releases.
GW have no intention of fixing the game, the OP will just keep shifting.

Honestly nobody plays AoS, and 40k I barely play anymore but I'm soo deep in models I might as well get a game in now and again. Even though the rules just annoy me and I don't play for the next 6 months.
We had a large new 40K group once the ITC tournaments started they tried a few tournaments, and just quit altogether. A small AoS group started, they just quit before they even finished painting their models.
Locally it's just a dead game, and no point in buying a bunch of models for a dead game. Except for that steampunk dwarf with the top hat...I couldn't resist that.
In fact the only game that seems to be growing locally is Malifaux.

 auticus wrote:
You can't do those things in public events. Well... you can. But that ruins the point of having public gaming events in the first place if people are having to concede matches because they either bring their slaanesh/Flesh eater court/masters of the universe undead / whatever is currently busted or they are ok with getting crushed.

And not all play will be in public events. Realistically, if one is already planning on participating in public events, one will plan to build in to a competitive army, which makes any discussion on the other type of play moot.

However, a good portion of play for the game is in private games where that competitive aspect can be dropped. I know that's not always the case, of course, as my locals have a lot of people who spend their weekday play time preparing for the weekend public events, and that usually applies no matter which game it is, but it is short-sighted and foolish to ignore that some people are just happy to have someone to push models against no matter what the outcome is.

I'm not ignoring that people are happy to push models against each other no matter what the outcome is.

Thats obviously GWs target audience; them and the people that love the bad balance that tells them exactly what armies to look at taking without having to put much thought into it.

However this thread is "why are you not playing AOS" - and I'd say for a lot of the people not playing AOS its because we don't want to mash models together without caring about the outcome or walking into a game at the store and seeing our opponent drop 3 keeper of secrets onto the table knowing that its about to be a 4000 pt vs 2000 pt game.

The primary reason I have stopped playing AoS is that I haven't found a good balance between the amount of time invested into it and the joy I was getting out of it. When I was attending public events, mostly tournaments, I found 80%of my games to be very boring and uninspired. It just seems to me that AoS is geared towards the extremes of either playing totally casual or chasing the competitive scene. If you exist in the middle, you kind of either have to accept that is how it is, or move onto other things.

 auticus wrote:
I'm not ignoring that people are happy to push models against each other no matter what the outcome is.

Thats obviously GWs target audience; them and the people that love the bad balance that tells them exactly what armies to look at taking without having to put much thought into it.

However this thread is "why are you not playing AOS" - and I'd say for a lot of the people not playing AOS its because we don't want to mash models together without caring about the outcome or walking into a game at the store and seeing our opponent drop 3 keeper of secrets onto the table knowing that its about to be a 4000 pt vs 2000 pt game.

Yet that same imbalance is in 40K, and often worse, and not as much in WMH, yet 40K is still the king of the pile. Though, I think X-Wing still is running a close second.

If I get in to 40K or AoS, it is because I like the models and I want to bash them against another. Expecting a competitive game really doesn't come in to it at this point. It's not GW that's trying to make it competitive, after all, as opposed to the American games I just mentioned.

Karol wrote:

That's dumb. AoS is a sequel to Fantasy, you can't just ignore it.

Tell that to the east ortodox church or old star wars fans. Or generaly followers or fans of anything that people liked and cherished, and which then was changed to be something drasticly different.

A sequel to Fantasy? Not allowed to ignore it? Jesus Chrysler, the suits in Nottingham took Fantasy behind the shed, shot it, humiliated it in WD and replaced it with a shoddy IP called AoS.

 auticus wrote:


However this thread is "why are you not playing AOS" -

True, but then again the first post did sort of establish that it was about people on the fence not playing but interested and needing advice on how to get into it. Rather than a generalist complaining thread

I would say anyone listing any reason why they don't like AOS and are not playing it could be construed as complaining.

So the thread's name should have been "Why are you still not playing AOS?" ? Like in an add?

I got the matched play book and Khorne codex the other day, and since I already have a 40k Khorne daemon army, I'll probably be playing AoS pretty soon.

Anyone reading through this would probably not choose to play based on the usual negativity from the usual suspects, multiple times

And everyone who wants to play the game (and does not start for other reasons) should be aware of the negative experience

if you want buy a PC/console game for the gameplay and people are telling you to ignore the negative comments about it because the graphics are great and it can still be fun if you ignore the flaws

would you still buy it for the full price and also recommend it to others?

 Grimoir wrote:
Anyone reading through this would probably not choose to play based on the usual negativity from the usual suspects, multiple times

I would say if someone is considering AoS and bases their opinion solely on the thread titled "why aren't you playing AoS" they were just looking to find reasons not to. And with all due respect anyone who looks at internet discussion and does not acknowledge the negative-skew that exists across it is rather naive.

On the flip side, I think it would be highly dishonest to ban all negative talk about the game portion and then sell a product to a newb that they'd sink a few hundred dollars in to have to find out this stuff later after its too late.

If I'm going to invest hundreds into a game you can bet im looking for all the pros and cons and want to hear all the pros and cons, not just the everything is awesome sales pitch from the super fans.

I know when I'm looking for buy a game I read both positive and negative reviews.