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The only real issue I have is the lack of framework on how to build a balanced list. Sure people constantly say that "this game is meant for fun" but to me personally having 0 means on how to build an army leaves even more potential for abuse then with points. I am going to give the game a chance (because I have played it and it is fun) however I will only play it if both armies are of similar Wound count or if and when a means to balance armies comes out.

How did wanting to win in a player vs player wargame become bad?
Games need rules to be fun. When you're a kid, you just make up whatever, but real games for fun require a framework. Games need structure or otherwise you're back to being 10 years old and shouting "You're dead!" "Nuh uh, you're dead!"

Drozer, I'm sorry you ran afoul of the 'WAAC RULEZ" 40K crowd in an Unfriendly Local Game Store.

In my FRIENDLY Local Game Store the employees would be attentive and helpful; there's more WFB product available than you can shake a stick at (figuratively), and the WFB group is friendly and willing to play a good game, and teach newbies not just the rules, but the tactics.

Of course, this did not happen by accident. The owner of our FLGS is a businessman first and hobby enthusiast second - so he understands customer service makes or breaks a business. And those of us in the WFB crowd do not tolerate jerk behavior, period. WAAC has it's place... if both players agree to pull out all the stops, or at a formal tournament with real prizes. But even then, it's not an excuse to be a jerk about it.

Please do not judge ALL WFB players by the ones you had the misfortune to encounter; I can promise you we're not ALL like that.

OP: I'm sorry you had a bad experience, but you have to understand that your situation is an isolated one, and the case of many people - many people who are angry/disappointed with the AoS release - have had very different experiences.

It may not have been the case when you had your first game of WHFB, but with 8th edition things were pretty balanced and you were quite unlikely to come across someone with a "WAAC" list and, even if you did, it was certainly not as bad as some of the "WAAC" lists you could field in other games like 40k.

I get it that you, and everyone else who likes AoS, just wants to have a few beers, stick some models on the table, throw some dice around and have a laugh, that's fine. What you, an everyone else who likes AoS, has to understand is that there were many of us who, for a long time, enjoyed playing WHFB in our (admittedly more welcoming) local gaming stores and GWs, an enjoyment which is now heavily threatened by GW's dropping of WHFB and only further dampened by the fact that the alternative we've been given in return is just a bad game and nothing like WHFB at all.

Yeah, I feel like you didn't read anything anyone else posted.

I'll repeat myself then. The game itself is not why people act like nobheads. You could take the most friendly game in the world and you'll still find people who are there to derive satisfaction out of acting churlish. If you've never played Dungeons and Dragons with a player that ran it like a skirmish strategy game, or just for living out their violent fantasies, count yourself very lucky. Can you think of a game that is more based on playing with Intention versus the Rules as Written as Dungeons and Dragons is? And yet, TFG will find a way to ruin a perfectly good gaming night. How then do you figure that Age of Sigmar is going to usher in a new golden age of happy good fun times with only cool awesome people, when literally - AND I DO MEAN LITERALLY - every single other game, activity, community, sport, class, and club has selfish people who ruin the fun for others? It's just a fact of life, and FWIW, most communities manage to survive just fine despite their presence.

Warmachine and Hordes has an excellent community of friendly and helpful players. Competitive? Sure - but no more or less full of TFGs than any other wargame. I'd count WMH as one of the more positive communities, simply because they can stay focused on the game and not the politics that comes along with a lot of GW's games. I played WMH very briefly as part of a local competitive scene - none of the guys I've ever played Warhammer with took me out for beer and food afterwards!

You seem to equate a competitive mindset with being TFG - these things are not one and the same, and to suggest that shows a great lack of awareness on your part. Keep in mind that different people play games for different reasons, that your way of playing them is not the only one, and that others are not wrong for doing so. Acting like a jerk is poor sportsmanship; but playing to win is not being a jerk, or a poor sportsman - it's just, well, playing.

 Desubot wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

I do feel though, that with its increasing focus on 'narrative play', GW is increasingly trying to push away competitive players in favour of more casual (and therefore maybe more friendly?) players. Don't know if it will help though. I tried playing D&D only once, and that is really a narrative game where you actually have to work together instead of compete, but I found that it was full of TFGs. etc. too, so the issue does not seem limited to competitive play.

Doesn't stop power builders and meta knights.

never will.

Desubot, you and I met a couple times, and you have a standing invitation from me to join our Epic league! PM me.

But come on - you know what stops meta knights and power builders better than any rule system? When everyone turns their back on him and refuses to play games of toy soldiers with that guy. Doesn't matter how tight a rules system is, some jerk is always gonna find ways to abuse them and make things miserable for everyone else. Shun that guy. Make him go away. What did you do with that one guy who showed up to every party and got drunk and harassed girls and started fights in college? You stopped inviting him to parties. You could have legislated as many party fouls as you wanted. He still would have effed your whole night up.

And that's what GW is doing. I completely agree with the OP. I think GW is trying to make the jerks ragequit. I like it. They can eff right off, as far as I'm concerned.

Come play Epic with us if you want a tight ruleset and a cool group of dudes!

 Xenocidal Maniac wrote:

 Desubot wrote:


Desubot, you and I met a couple times, and you have a standing invitation from me to join our Epic league! PM me.

But come on - you know what stops meta knights and power builders better than any rule system? When everyone turns their back on him and refuses to play games of toy soldiers with that guy. Doesn't matter how tight a rules system is, some jerk is always gonna find ways to abuse them and make things miserable for everyone else. Shun that guy. Make him go away. What did you do with that one guy who showed up to every party and got drunk and harassed girls and started fights in college? You stopped inviting him to parties. You could have legislated as many party fouls as you wanted. He still would have effed your whole night up.

And that's what GW is doing. I completely agree with the OP. I think GW is trying to make the jerks ragequit. I like it. They can eff right off, as far as I'm concerned.

Come play Epic with us if you want a tight ruleset and a cool group of dudes!

And what if because of high cost of the hobby the main focus of gross majority of players always goes for the good options, in any game. What do you do then. I had some test game last weekend, and what I noticed was that special characters are way better then normal ones, specialy if they were mounted. Tyrions, archons they just plowed through whole units on their own. Worse because there is no points system there was no entice to run weaker normal lords, like my dwarf army used to run in 8th. We had a talk about AoS and everyone said that in all editions before points were the balancing factor, someone could go for bling someone could go for brawn. It didn't always end with a super list, but people had a choice. Now there is no choice, you either spam cavalery, untouchable flyer units and super melee lords, or you may as well not play at all. And by the way we were ignoring the special rules AoS brought, so it is not like the silly part made the game bad. Although I won't say that archon charging orcs ass to the front wasn't stupid, just because ogers and him couldn't get in to 0,5" range otherwise.


Also what the hell was GW thinking sending 2 starter boxs to each shop. there is over 40 people here and it is kind of a hard to judge how the WFB marines are when there are 6 boxs, because there are three shops in city. Not everyone can take the train and go Warsaw to buy a starter set in the only GW shop in Poland.

 MWHistorian wrote:
How did wanting to win in a player vs player wargame become bad?
Games need rules to be fun. When you're a kid, you just make up whatever, but real games for fun require a framework. Games need structure or otherwise you're back to being 10 years old and shouting "You're dead!" "Nuh uh, you're dead!"

Exactly what I think too.

It's a wargame. It basically is about killing people (in imagination, of course.) The victory condition in AOS is killing the whole enemey army. How can people possibly want to play such a game without some kind of competitive spirit. This doesn't mean you have to be WAAC or TFG to play well.

IMO the problem with GW games is that there are areas of rules where they are weak; command and control, morale, terrain effects, tactical modifiers (I know WHFB had these but 40K doesn't.) These weak spots reduce the ability to Use Tactics to win. Instead, there are lots of special rules and a lack of balance, that make it more possible to win by finding exploits in list-building.

AOS has reduced the list-building exploit system by eliminating lists, of course, but there probably still are exploits and there is no balance system at all. I doubt that AOS will actually reduce WAAC-ness and TFG-ness of itself. It will be more diffuse.

Same old stupid argument about how playing a wargame without any thought put into the strategies and tactics of it is the best way. It's a wargame! This is not Cards Against Humanity -- there is a place for that: a short burst, drunken party most likely.

Play a damn wargame with the goal of winning? Optimizing your army's chance of winning by creating synergy with limited resources? Why, what a dick!

Bog off.

I will give AoS ago but I think in the long run i'll keep playing 8th if I'm gonna keep playing.

Thanks not to say I think AoS is bad or for that matter good idea, it hasn't been out long enough for us to correctly judge the effect it is going to have on the gaming community if any at all.

Also I don't think its about wanting to win being a bad thing, it's about you win.

If you want less "competition" and just more general goofiness fun, RPG's had been typically the outlet and some tabletop games lean that way.

Anything that simulates combat and some win conditions inherently requires some measure of competition.

Sounding like the cranky old guy telling kids to get of his lawn: to say that we decided to play the game so we "are all winners!" is silly and painful to me.
Socializing and engaging in a game is worthwhile but the mental exorcise to try to win, like solving a puzzle is a worthy thing in itself as well.

I suddenly feel I must give back to the community with this article: https://www.caulirice.com/en/we-can-all-be-winners/
For a more childhood psychology view of winning an losing I liked this: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/pride-and-joy/201209/winning-and-losing

AoS is just different, it may very well be best thing GW has done in a long time, I am not in a position to know yet.
As long as it has any element of social interaction never mind competition, WAAC, TFG and "toxic" people will still be part of the scene, you may only be exchanging old ones for new ones.

Personal opinion: the less balanced and unclear worded a rule-set is, the more it attracts those who prefer ignoring or "reinterpreting" rules to win.

There's so much wrong with this.
Wanting to win isn't bad.
Wanting a tight rule set with fair and close battles isn't bad.

What you want is some kind of socialist kindergarten where everyone gets a ribbon no matter what they do. "We can't have winners now because that makes the losers feel bad."

I'm not a competitive gamer. I'm all about fluff and fun, but I also want to win and expect the person across from me to want to win as well. And for a fair battle to happen, the rules have to be good and balanced. Without that it's less a game and more a joke, like kids playing army men with rubber band sling shots.

 MWHistorian wrote:
There's so much wrong with this.
Wanting to win isn't bad.

Nah, you're wrong. Anyone who wants to have a fair game with both players on eye level clearly is a TFG WAAC player who kills puppies on a regular basis.

I see many people understand that my point was "it have to be a non competitive game, it have to be only phew phew with toy soldiers and who roll high win"

Maybe my english is bad and I was not clear, so let me try to explain it better here.

WHFB was selling poor. Why? because there was a barrier of entry for new people.

Everyone thought the barrier was the money

Everyone thought the barrier was the rules

It never was. It was the toxic and elitist community, for the reasons I explained before.

GW finally understood it, and this is the point of AOS: it REQUIRE that you put some of your effort to be playable, it REQUIRE a friendly social contract to be fun AND BALANCED.

AOS IS FUN AND BALANCED BUT TO BE SO REQUIRE COMMON SENSE AND A MUTUAL AGREEMENT TO HAVE A FAIR GAME, AND A BIG UNDERSTANDING OF THE MORE IMPORTANT RULE

The toxic people, TFG and WAAC don't know what the hell to do in a scenario where no one can play if you don't agree beforehand not to be an donkey-cave. And you just can't play a game of AOS while being an donkey-cave - all the system is based around that concept.

GW is for once is doing something right: thinking ahead of just "let see how many SM we can sell next week" but "we know many people will ragequit, but the ones that remain are the ones more fonded in the hobby and will bring a more stable userbase"

Is AOS making you leaving fantasy, stop the hobby, stop buy GW?

I'm sorry to tell you but that's exactly what GW want. They pretty clearly making you feel not welcome. Is the whole target of AOS to make you go away.

In case you didn't noticed it: it's a fething purge.

Drozer wrote:


AOS IS FUN AND BALANCED

Wrong. You're objectively wrong. The game has no balance mechanism. Period. It offers none. What you then make out of it is your thing. AoS, however, has no innate balancing mechanism.

 Sigvatr wrote:

Drozer wrote:


AOS IS FUN AND BALANCED

Wrong. You're objectively wrong. The game has no balance mechanism. Period. It offers none. What you then make out of it is your thing. AoS, however, has no innate balancing mechanism.

"... BUT TO BE SO REQUIRE COMMON SENSE AND A MUTUAL AGREEMENT TO HAVE A FAIR GAME"

just so you quote what I said and not just the part you want....

The fact you quoted only that anyway means you didn't understand my point at all. Again maybe is my English, I apologize for that.

It's not your English, your English is quite good

You have to differentiate the game and what you make out of it. When discussing the game, you're discussing the bare rules - and those don't come with anything in regards to balance.

When playing, you will likely come up with a few rules on your own in order to have balanced games - but that's not the rules we're discussing then, it's your version of the game. You altered the rules as they were presented by Games Workshop.

AoS itself has no balance at all.

 Xenocidal Maniac wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

I do feel though, that with its increasing focus on 'narrative play', GW is increasingly trying to push away competitive players in favour of more casual (and therefore maybe more friendly?) players. Don't know if it will help though. I tried playing D&D only once, and that is really a narrative game where you actually have to work together instead of compete, but I found that it was full of TFGs. etc. too, so the issue does not seem limited to competitive play.

Doesn't stop power builders and meta knights.

never will.

Desubot, you and I met a couple times, and you have a standing invitation from me to join our Epic league! PM me.

But come on - you know what stops meta knights and power builders better than any rule system? When everyone turns their back on him and refuses to play games of toy soldiers with that guy. Doesn't matter how tight a rules system is, some jerk is always gonna find ways to abuse them and make things miserable for everyone else. Shun that guy. Make him go away. What did you do with that one guy who showed up to every party and got drunk and harassed girls and started fights in college? You stopped inviting him to parties. You could have legislated as many party fouls as you wanted. He still would have effed your whole night up.

And that's what GW is doing. I completely agree with the OP. I think GW is trying to make the jerks ragequit. I like it. They can eff right off, as far as I'm concerned.

Come play Epic with us if you want a tight ruleset and a cool group of dudes!

well never said we cant deal with them. they just exist.

if i ever find a decent deal on some Epic stuff id love to join.

Drozer wrote:
"... BUT TO BE SO REQUIRE COMMON SENSE AND A MUTUAL AGREEMENT TO HAVE A FAIR GAME"

But that's just a poor excuse for poor rule writing. Playing Chess can be fun, boxing can be fun, 100 meter sprint can be fun, F1 Racing can be fun, if all play by the rules. It don't require a mutual agreement to be fun, it requires a third party to enforce the rules. AoS doesn't have an official third party enforcing the game.

Sure as long as the participating members mutually agree to play by the rules, many well-written games can be fun; Pandemic can be fun, Magic the Gathering can be fun, Warmachine can be fun. Those good games can be fun for everyone involved just by playing by the rules. Even Cards Against Humanity can be fun, the least effort required to achieve this is by having everyone play exactly according to the rules.

You know what? I'm not convinced anyone can play AoS just by following the rules the to have fun; everyone who argues for it either says "anyone who puts effort into building their army towards wining is TFG and shouldn't be played with" (houserule) or "there are houserules we must have to have fun" -- sure, I'm sure two people, upon mutual agreement, perhaps under the influence of something, can arrange their own rules on playing a piece of turd, an actual piece of turd, and find it fun. At least until the effects wear off, anyways. That don't make turd-playing a good nor a fun game.

Drozer, first off welcome to Dakka.

Drozer wrote:
I see many people understand that my point was "it have to be a non competitive game, it have to be only phew phew with toy soldiers and who roll high win"
Maybe my english is bad and I was not clear, so let me try to explain it better here.

Your English is passably good, and will get better over time. You certainly have the literacy skill to hold your ground here.

Drozer wrote:

WHFB was selling poor. Why? because there was a barrier of entry for new people.
Everyone thought the barrier was the money
Everyone thought the barrier was the rules
It never was. It was the toxic and elitist community, for the reasons I explained before.

I think this was your experience, the community can be very welcoming elsewhere.

Also money was and is a barrier, Dakka has lots of threads on the cost of the games.
The rules are a barrier too many Gw games are badly written badly balanced or both.

Drozer wrote:

GW finally understood it, and this is the point of AOS: it REQUIRE that you put some of your effort to be playable, it REQUIRE a friendly social contract to be fun AND BALANCED.

What GW 'got' was that Warhammer Fantasy sold as much as once single faction for 40K and wanted to downsize. Also they wanted a game to introduce to an ever younger age group to gain their core sales target of new gamers.

Drozer wrote:

AOS IS FUN AND BALANCED BUT TO BE SO REQUIRE COMMON SENSE AND A MUTUAL AGREEMENT TO HAVE A FAIR GAME, AND A BIG UNDERSTANDING OF THE MORE IMPORTANT RULE

Most tabletop miniatures games can be fun, however the AOS is very thin, too thin to have arguments, which is a good thing, but also too thin to have substance, which is a bad thing.

Drozer wrote:

The toxic people, TFG and WAAC don't know what the hell to do in a scenario where no one can play if you don't agree beforehand not to be an donkey-cave. And you just can't play a game of AOS while being an donkey-cave - all the system is based around that concept.

Give it a week, even less and the 'toxic people' will learn how to be toxic while playing Sigmarites too.

Drozer wrote:

Is AOS making you leaving fantasy, stop the hobby, stop buy GW?

I'm sorry to tell you but that's exactly what GW want. They pretty clearly making you feel not welcome. Is the whole target of AOS to make you go away.

In case you didn't noticed it: it's a fething purge.

Now most established Warhammer Fantasy players already have armies, but some do buy more. Killng off that market to entice more new gamers wont work.
1. They lose their incumbency. Warhammer Fantasy is the most popular because it is established, AOS is a new game, its now newer than Warmachine, Kings of War etc and needs to fight for a market share left vacant.
2. Players who invested £K over the years will be despondent and angry. Yes they can use som e of the models in the new game, and formally don't need to rebase, but its not the same.
3. Children dont have the buying power of adult gamers and with prices raised so high parents are not willing to pay for intro sets and unit boxsets, Warhammer has priced intselfout of the pocket money market for most of its target audience and replies on birthday and Christmas money and wealthier customers.
4. The rules are fun, but the fluff is gutted. Gone is a thirty year backstory in the making, gone is Games Worshiops de facto stranglehold on generic fantasy wargaming. AOS isnt even regular fantasy anymore, its weird fantasy. Fantasy is about the orcs coming down from the mountains, the dwarves emerging from their halls and the elves from their forests while Lord of Men raise companies of soldiers and knights. All that is gone in favour of sig-marines and a portalverse. generic fantasy is where the money is at, preferably Tolkienesque with common fairy tale and medieval references.

 Sigvatr wrote:
AoS itself has no balance at all.

I think they do require matching "selections" so an "excuse" or a token nod of the head to balance is made but the truth of little balance is correct.

I shudder to think how the "negotiation" for a AoS pick-up game would be like.

I wonder if this "playing a game to win is evil" mindset can be attributed to the "everyone gets a trophy! age of little league sports I grew up in. It seems people can't handle being a winner or a loser, everyone has to do the best and challenges are meant to be avoided.

Drozer, you are exactly right - it is a purge. I saw it for what it was immediately. And when the rules came out about needing to dance and sing and stuff, I knew that it was a giant middle finger to all the toxic types.

We are witnessing the death throes of the elitist and toxic types in the community - hopefully. Everyone screaming about rules and balance doesn't get it, has never gotten it, and never will. "Poor excuse for lazy rules writing!!!" is code for "I don't get it". They've been threatening to drop off for the past 10 years now. Hopefully they actually do it this time.

You would have thought clearly imbalanced rules design and all this talk of "forging narratives" would have been big hints, but now they're being very clear. "Bog off". You're not wanted.

 Xenocidal Maniac wrote:
Drozer, you are exactly right - it is a purge. I saw it for what it was immediately. And when the rules came out about needing to dance and sing and stuff, I knew that it was a giant middle finger to all the toxic types.

We are witnessing the death throes of the elitist and toxic types in the community - hopefully. Everyone screaming about rules and balance doesn't get it, has never gotten it, and never will. "Poor excuse for lazy rules writing!!!" is code for "I don't get it". They've been threatening to drop off for the past 10 years now. Hopefully they actually do it this time.

You would have thought clearly imbalanced rules design and all this talk of "forging narratives" would have been big hints, but now they're being very clear. "Bog off". You're not wanted.

Neither are you.

 Accolade wrote:
I wonder if this "playing a game to win is evil" mindset can be attributed to the "everyone gets a trophy! age of little league sports I grew up in. It seems people can't handle being a winner or a loser, everyone has to do the best and challenges are meant to be avoided.

No. I'm not one of those "everyone gets a trophy" types at all. I'm so not one of those types that I train in cage fighting as a hobby... hopefully you'll forgive me if I think playing to "win" a game of toy soldiers is a little bit silly.

It's that GW's games are clearly not designed for competitive play and never have been. They are basically cooperative role playing games in which you "forge narratives". If you want to Play Like You've Got a Pair, there's a game for you. 40k or Fantasy is not it. Playing to "win" in a game that is explicitly designed to not be about winning is being a dick. And we are tired of it.

Playing to win in a game of toy soldiers is no more silly than playing to win in a video game. Or playing to win in a game of monopoly. Just because there's no prize in the end doesn't mean that we should quash our competitive spirits.

I don't think it's the "playing to win is evil"
I think it's more like "it's just a game. sure I'll try to win, but if I don't it's not the end of the world, I still had fun"

I think when people think of competitive play, they think of the stereotype of the high school football quarterback who's going to smack-talk the whole game, check the rules with a magnifying glass every move and will bring the toughest units they can muster because they expect you to do the same.

Me personally, Sure I want to win when I play, but it's not the end-all-be-all. If I lose, I still had fun (hopefully) and I try to think of how I could improve for next time, what tactics I could try, use a unit differently than I had, etc.

So there's still some competitiveness, but it's a lot less than the casual style.

@Xenocidal Maniac
So if "Forging the Narrative" is so important to you, what part of the 8e WHFB you can't forge your narrative in?

You can play severally under your opponent's army point value; you are still limited to using named characters to one per army. And how does one forge the narrative when your opponent does not co-operate? So you are clearly playing with friends, in a friendly game, for a friendly narrative. Nothing stopped you from "forging the narrative" -- it's called a handicap or homebrew and the rules even made clear that you can do so.

WHFB supported your narrative forging, and while AoS has many good changes, it doesn't have to forgo game balance for everyone to accommodate just one crowd. It's your self interest to promote this single type of play, and thus, AoS as it stands.

"Toxic" is just a term you use for players who don't play exactly the way you play. I can't even fathom how you can call anyone else toxic while you are one trying to propagate you self interest onto everyone.

 Melissia wrote:
Playing to win in a game of toy soldiers is no more silly than playing to win in a video game. Or playing to win in a game of monopoly. Just because there's no prize in the end doesn't mean that we should quash our competitive spirits.

No, I get you - and I'm having a hard time articulating the difference between what you are describing and what actually has been going on in the GW-gaming community for the past 10 years. There is a difference and I am working to put my finger on it. You can play to win and be competitive without being a jerk... but what has been happening is that GW's games, which are so clearly designed not to be played competitively, is that they have been hijacked by people who don't actually want to play competitively - they want to win. And it's not about having a fair game. It's about them winning, and they demand legislation that would prevent anyone from ever possibly getting one over on them and bruising their fragile egos. And they've mangled it into the toxic clusterufck we see today in which I can't even get a game of AoS locally because everyone is so terrified that their opponent is going to try to get one over on them without a points system. It's ridiculous. Is this what it's become?

 Talizvar wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
AoS itself has no balance at all.

I think they do require matching "selections" so an "excuse" or a token nod of the head to balance is made but the truth of little balance is correct.

? No they don't. There is literally nothing in the rules that suggests, alludes to, describes, hints at, or even vaguely refers to in a secretive mythical manner the idea of balance.

You place a unit.
I place a unit.
Repeat until one person stops.
Other person places as many more units as they want.

The only limitation for your (starting) force is the size of your deployment zone. Summoned units, Chaos Lord posse units ... these can both increase the size of your force beyond anything your opponent might have. (Since not all armies have summoning or a way to add units to the game, which is totes balanced...)