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*edit* quoted the wrong person.

It's shallow, lazy, weird, silly, bloated by special rules, broken for any serious play and written with a marketing department checklist in hand. It is, deliberately or not, a big feth off towards the playerbase of the game it replaced.

It could be somehow excused as just another silly "fun" little game if it was a different company in a different context.

In current circumstances and context, the quality of AoS rules is abysmal.

Plumbumbarum wrote:
It's shallow, lazy, weird, silly, bloated by special rules, broken for any serious play and written with a marketing department checklist in hand. It is, deliberately or not, a big feth off towards the playerbase of the game it replaced.

It could be somehow excused as just another silly "fun" little game if it was a different company in a different context.

In current circumstances and context, the quality of AoS rules is abysmal.

I think AoS's problem, like 40k, is that the game designers can't agree on what it is supposed to be. Is it a simple, easy to learn ruleset or is it a deep, rules intensive game? The core rules seem to imply the former while the warscrolls/books imply the latter. Is AoS a quick skirmish game with focus on what every model is carrying/how many wounds they have or is it a mass battle game? Was AoS's intent to lower the cost barrier or is it to milk the remaining fans of every penny?

These contradictions are what make AoS the odd ruleset that it is. AoS has the makings for a quality platoon level game if they would just cut the fat out.

There isn't a huge disconnect between the simple core rules and involved unit rules. That's deliberate. The same mindset built magic the gathering (a game originally conceptualized to have no 'core rules' at all, and have all game rules on the card).

The execution is lacking, but frankly I like the idea. In a game that wants to have a narrative tone, it pays to give individual units the design space to do unique things mechanically to bring that narrative to life on the table.

Were this a new game from someone else and not GW's replacement for Warhammer, I'd consider it an interesting, though clearly not fully baked, first draft of a game that showed a fair amount of promise.

I am a fan of the warscrolls too, although it is a lot to remember and can really slow down the game when the opponent is constantly flicking from page to page on their smartphone.

If I ever make it to a Warhammer World tournament, my "best player" votes are likely to go to opponents with a great grasp of their army rules because it really makes the experience much smoother.

The thing I like the most about the warscrolls is how nicely they could be converted into a deck of cards for each faction.

GW, please make faction decks of warscrolls like the 40k tactical objectives decks.

 TheCustomLime wrote:

Plumbumbarum wrote:
It's shallow, lazy, weird, silly, bloated by special rules, broken for any serious play and written with a marketing department checklist in hand. It is, deliberately or not, a big feth off towards the playerbase of the game it replaced.

It could be somehow excused as just another silly "fun" little game if it was a different company in a different context.

In current circumstances and context, the quality of AoS rules is abysmal.

I think AoS's problem, like 40k, is that the game designers can't agree on what it is supposed to be. Is it a simple, easy to learn ruleset or is it a deep, rules intensive game? The core rules seem to imply the former while the warscrolls/books imply the latter. Is AoS a quick skirmish game with focus on what every model is carrying/how many wounds they have or is it a mass battle game? Was AoS's intent to lower the cost barrier or is it to milk the remaining fans of every penny?

These contradictions are what make AoS the odd ruleset that it is. AoS has the makings for a quality platoon level game if they would just cut the fat out.

It's a quick, easy to learn ruleset that covers the absolute basics of skirmish combat, moving and fighting, and adds feth tons of exceptions and special rules to provide all the different models and monsters with marginally different capabilities that have cool names.

Yet the core mechanics, despite being so stripped down, are clunky and time-consuming.

I am not saying this is a bad thing, because a lot of people want a simple game that involves scads of special rules and dice rolling.

The clunkyness is definitely a bad thing. I like the idea of simple core rules, detailed unit rules, but the core rules need to be absolutely clear and play as smoothly as possible for that to work well, and AoS has, to put it as kindly as possible, room to improve here.

I am a fan of the warscrolls too, although it is a lot to remember and can really slow down the game when the opponent is constantly flicking from page to page on their smartphone.

If I ever make it to a Warhammer World tournament, my "best player" votes are likely to go to opponents with a great grasp of their army rules because it really makes the experience much smoother.

The thing I like the most about the warscrolls is how nicely they could be converted into a deck of cards for each faction.

If I do go to one that is exactly what I'll be doing - printing off the units I'm using. I don't have a smart phone to flip through them with