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 Overread wrote:
I can see GW releasing an expansion for a deeper campaign system. Letting the core game focus on the casual easy to approach system and then letting the games popularity build so that more want an in-depth system that works with organised play groups and then GW coming along to service that need. Esp as AoS hasn't got a "deeptactical" game like Necromunda

I don't think so. If that was the case (and had demands for such), they would have done something a bit deeper with Kill Team. They didn't.

Did you see the interview with Bottle on Stormcast ? The campaign system was made so so that it wasn't as unforgiving as Mordheim or Necromunda, where you just had bad luck with rolls and lost so much your band was basically destroyed and had to restart over. They wanted to make it more positive while minimizing the negatives. That's why deaths don't matter and players can refill their band roster however they want. It's a design choice.

To me, I feel they missed some of the reasons why Necromunda and Mordheim were games so popular. There is no glory without pain nor risks. The feeling when you lose your beloved hero with unique abilities to a bad fall was perfectly translating the sense of danger and mortality described in the narrative of these games. Here in Warcry, it should be as lethal, but the game doesn't translate it at all with the campaign system.

Its a poor design choice in my opinion. Again with the no risk all reward road they love to pave.


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It will take fan enhancements to bring it near a mordheim level of quality. Which is a deep shame to me.

 Sarouan wrote:


To me, I feel they missed some of the reasons why Necromunda and Mordheim were games so popular. There is no glory without pain nor risks. The feeling when you lose your beloved hero with unique abilities to a bad fall was perfectly translating the sense of danger and mortality described in the narrative of these games. Here in Warcry, it should be as lethal, but the game doesn't translate it at all with the campaign system.

At the same time perhaps with Killteam and Warcry they want that more casual game - esp if it designed to be their entry point into the franchises for people who are on budget or who don't want to buy whole armies to start with. As a result a simpler and more rewarding overall system without the crippling defeats aspect plays right into that approach of encouraging people to go deeper. Might be GW has their own idea for a separate high-risk more indepth game with AoS in the future.

Underworld - unqiue models but very much a board game
Warcry - some unique models, but also an entry point into general wargaming models with some boardgame aspects
Something else -

At what point can we jump off the casual train?

Aos was supposed to be more casual and easy too. Skirmish was super casual and streamlined.

When can we get back some substance to the rules?

Where do you go to get “deeper”?

 auticus wrote:
At what point can we jump off the casual train?

Aos was supposed to be more casual and easy too. Skirmish was super casual and streamlined.

When can we get back some substance to the rules?

Where do you go to get “deeper”?

Right now deeper seems to be Necromunda and Adepticus Titanicus with perhaps Aeronautica when it comes out. Like I said AoS is missing a trick with a deeper system, though one could argue that the RPG game (in development still) could fit that, but RPG systems are often slightly different to typical wargame presentations and rely heavily on a DM to make them fun; whilst even games like Necromunda which has a game organiser, still work fun and in-depth on their own.

Also if Warcry is the entry point then the Skirmish rules might dwindle away. Certainly I can't see GW pushing skirmish and warcry at the same time when they fit into such a similar slot. The only difference is that skirmish was around first and got into the battletomes whilst warcry will likely have to wait until the next generation of game rules and battletomes before its stats are added into the battletomes. That, of course, assumes it survives. It could still go belly up, though I honestly hope not.

 auticus wrote:
At what point can we jump off the casual train?

Aos was supposed to be more casual and easy too. Skirmish was super casual and streamlined.

When can we get back some substance to the rules?

Where do you go to get “deeper”?

When players support deeper rulesets with purchases.

Kind of a catch 22. There are zero deep rulesets that gw produces for fantasy. Titanicus and aeronautica do zero for a fantasy player. Therefore no players will buy their deeper rules.

In the wargames industry as a whole, I mean. GW doesn't exist in a vacuum anymore.

Most of the wargames industry period isnt selling well, past a kickstarter or long term.

The market is biblically flooded with streamlined casual mixups of miniatures/board/ccg style games.

Mantic’s version of warcry (Vanguard) has 10x the substance but you need to have a mantic fanbase to play.

People constantly bring up wanting a mordheim but then they get a hollow mordheim.

The point being customers as a whole just don't support deeper rulesets. And honestly it isn't difficult to see why, considering the amount of effort it takes to get models ready to play with, to get simple rules learned, to get everything set up, on top of just life being exhausting...

As a person who generally has a very easy time learning and figuring out new rulesets it is easy for me to imagine dealing with more complex ones, but I have to recall that many people take some time to get simple/shallow ones down.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
The point being customers as a whole just don't support deeper rulesets. And honestly it isn't difficult to see why, considering the amount of effort it takes to get models ready to play with, to get simple rules learned, to get everything set up, on top of just life being exhausting...

As a person who generally has a very easy time learning and figuring out new rulesets it is easy for me to imagine dealing with more complex ones, but I have to recall that many people take some time to get simple/shallow ones down.

The other big issue is that deeper rule-sets and more involved campaigns often require a core set of regular players turning up each week to play. This can be a huge issue for some market segments. Once you leave school its very easy for life to get in the way of a weekly activity and even if it doesn't your time there might be limited. With deeper systems its much easier to get left behind to the point where if you've not appeared for 2 or 3 weeks you're really far behind. That means either the organiser has to cut you some slack or you're running a high chance of getting beaten upon return and bashed all the way back down.

It's a bit of a catch - older gamers are more likely to adapt and want newer deeper systems, but its the younger players who have more regular time slots to play (most often).


Still I agree, at present GW isn't offering a deeper fantasy game so there isn't even the option. We can but hope and wait that they will develop one. AoS is really still only a 1 or 2 year old game as such (if we forget that whilst its closer to 5 a bulk of those years were Kirby influenced mania)

Dudes...im not asking for bloody battletech total war complexity.

Im asking for lego blocks instead of duplo blocks. Somewhere.

Aos, 40k, warcry... can all be made “deeper” with a page of extra considerations.

Not chartmaster level of add ons.

I know, I am just raising the trends as to why it doesn't happen.

Looking at things a different way, how much do you trust GW to produce a well-designed deeper ruleset?

Actually, I don't think it's that "casual" focused. It's more like it's intended so that everyone can find their pleasure and no one is disturbed. Let players build their roster band as they want, so that they can replace instantly all their losses. Let death not matter that much, so that players don't get upset when a roll kills their character. Let make everyone roll for destiny levels, no matter what they do as long as they survived - that way you don't farm experience and players who lose the game can still have a chance to gain progression as well. Let's make the search roll all positive with artifacts (with the only downfall being "you find nothing") rather than random events in Mordheim that can give you bigger treasures randomly or something bad happening just because that's how lethal Mordheim is. I would have thought the 8 points were a deadly place by reading at the (small) background in the book.

That's indeed the "all rewards road" they've taken. But to me, it's not casual. It's just showering the player in a all positive experience, even if it goes against what the game narrative should translate.

Its the same route d&d took as well.

Dont kill the players. Its not fun.

Danger is fun. So long as its artificial and you cant lose anything.

And there are rumors of gw dicking with blood bowl new edition and i can totally see them doing this stuff there too.

Its not fun when your players get dead or injured. Its not fun when you fail to pick up the ball. Its not fun when something bad happens.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:


Looking at things a different way, how much do you trust GW to produce a well-designed deeper ruleset?

I think they have the potential to do a very complex ruleset if they want. If you watch the Bottle interview on Stormcast, you realize the core of Warcry is actually coming from the prototype of Jervis Johnson. If you give all freedom to some of their rule designers, they can make a small treasure with all the ressources they have at hand.

The will is an entire another question, though. It is clearly not a question of skills, here.

Bottle has already shown hes capable. The community as well.

GW mandates these baby rails to keep the game accessible.

I think thats fine for some products. But they have done so at the exclusion of everything else.


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And then you look at the poll results and apparently everyone loves that kind of thing.

Fortunately everyone seems to also love Vanguard, which has a ton more depth, and can probably easily have the warcry factions ported over to it with minimal fuss.

The fun is getting a GW centric group to go get a mantic ruleset.

lol. I'd still love to hear the people that voted it 8, 9, or 10/10 can explain why they feel that in the realm of fantasy skirmish games (vanguard, frostgrave, ragnarok, mordheim, etc) that warcry is apparently the best option. Truthfully answer that is.

 auticus wrote:


lol. I'd still love to hear the people that voted it 8, 9, or 10/10 can explain why they feel that in the realm of fantasy skirmish games (vanguard, frostgrave, ragnarok, mordheim, etc) that warcry is apparently the best option. Truthfully answer that is.

They certainly rated more on the gameplay itself rather than the campaign system, IMHO.

Thing is, if you focus only on the gameplay like a pick up game with Mordheim for example, Mordheim is pretty bad - horrible scenarios, armors that are useless, completely unbalanced warbands, and so on. It's only good with the campaign system (and I'd say with all the supplements, fanmade creations and town cryers that came as years passed on - it's important to remember that as well), when you play narratively. Nostalgia shouldn't make us forget that fact.

Warcry ? It is clearly thought with other ways to play like the usual three modes GW shows in their games now, including the competitive tournament scene. So I'm not surprised if some people just don't care about the campaign. I do believe however that the players loving campaigns are the ones who are willing to create more content and play on a longer term, though.

Perhaps they, truthfully, actually enjoy the game? I know I'll miss the more in-depth campaign elements, but not everyone does.

A pick up game friendly "campaign" system may be the most they felt they could include in the base game without setting unattainable expectations for new players. Getting a solid group of people who show up every week for months without things going off the rails is difficult, and often impossible. Setting the base expectations with these quests let's them add in a more detailed system later while at least having something.

Besides, any group that can survive running an actual campaign should be able to slap some grittier advancement rules onto the game. Edits to a pick up game are effectively a no-go (so that's where the initial rules push needs to be), but long haul campaigners can talk things out.

One big question with warcry, esp since they introduced the warbands, is how GW is going to expand it.

With Killteam most of the models were already main-army models, so adding in elites, leaders etc.. was a purely natural evolution because it was just adding more core-game models into the Killteam format


For Warcry GW has launched with these 6 unique warbands which all fit into only 1 faction - Slaves to Darkness - in the core game. Now it might be that GW has different plans in how to evolve the game and advance it in the months to come. So instead of purely adding another "unit type" (esp since AoS only has troops - leaders - monsters) they might well add new layers of depth to the game. Allowing them to get more out of the current setup.

 auticus wrote:
Bottle has already shown hes capable. The community as well.

GW mandates these baby rails to keep the game accessible.

I think thats fine for some products. But they have done so at the exclusion of everything else.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And then you look at the poll results and apparently everyone loves that kind of thing.

Fortunately everyone seems to also love Vanguard, which has a ton more depth, and can probably easily have the warcry factions ported over to it with minimal fuss.

The fun is getting a GW centric group to go get a mantic ruleset.

lol. I'd still love to hear the people that voted it 8, 9, or 10/10 can explain why they feel that in the realm of fantasy skirmish games (vanguard, frostgrave, ragnarok, mordheim, etc) that warcry is apparently the best option. Truthfully answer that is.

Oh I for sure gave it an 8.

Why? B.c i do "not" play it for an deep ruleset game, if i wanted that i'll play necromunda or something else, what this game is good for, is for fast pick up games when you dont have enough time, space, etc.. and you still want to do something. We played a game in 30min easily, thats why its good, its good for a fast game, just like chess/checker/go, etc.. are, something you dont need to invest to heavily into to get it to work and work well for what it is. The game is heavily based on movement and timing of your abilities. Also its actually a good tournament game as well, 90min rounds, best of 3, 3 rounds, a 5hour tournament with 9 games. And its great to play with people that dont like 50+ models and only want to play with 5-10 models, or dont like the insane about of rules. Sometimes less is more for many people.

If you are looking for a deeper game, then play Underworlds, thats AoS deep ruleset small scale game, yes it is a CCG style but it has a lot more tactics and combos. I would honestly wait a little as well, as they might add more to the game later, expansions that gives more rules, you never know.

You have to understand that I'm coming from a wargaming standpoint so CCGs don't interest me (which is why I don't play underworlds).

So as I understand it, the people that love warcry largely are just loving it for the gameplay elements, and don't give a sod about the campaign. Its basically a replacement for skirmish that they can do to pack in 3 or 4 games in an afternoon instead of one aos game.

I guess I can understand that from that angle. My complaints are largely centered around the weak campaign structure and not the gameplay.

Intentionally or otherwise it fills the AoS skirmish slot because AoS skirmish is more or less unplayable. I still think they just should have published "Hinterlands II: The Copywritening" and gone from there. Bottle's ruleset, IMO, remains the best way to play skirmish style AoS period. And it is fan made, years old. Which sums up my faith in GW as a company putting out deeper rulesets.

 auticus wrote:

My complaints are largely centered around the weak campaign structure and not the gameplay.

But that can be changed and improved. Necromunda has, what, 5 different official campaigns now? I don't have my copy yet, but from what I've seen, the basic campaign structure that exists can be expanded upon in interesting way. For instance, it could be a branching path, where one path could allow you to gain a hired gun-like special named hero, while going the other way is filled with specific chaos beasts that you can defeat and add to your team. The limited treasure tables can be redone with more interesting things (Frostgrave has about 10 different treasure tables at this point). Doing a more challenging injury system could easily be built on top of what's there.

The important thing is that Warcry is extremely modular, and every module can be taken out and reconfigured, or even replaced with something else. I think GW will opt more for additional modules - new layers added on top of what's available - and allow players to pick and choose how they want to play. I thought that this was the direction that Kill Team would be going, but they really only dabbled with it through Arena (though technically, Urban Conquest was a compatible campaign system). The AoS team is more comfortable experimenting outside of matched play, so I'm hoping it will be better. Even if they just add more stuff (more factions, more units in each faction, more chaos beasts, more ravaged lands, more battleplan cards, more campaign quests), it will exponentially grow the game in way more interesting ways that Kill Team.

 auticus wrote:
lol. I'd still love to hear the people that voted it 8, 9, or 10/10 can explain why they feel that in the realm of fantasy skirmish games (vanguard, frostgrave, ragnarok, mordheim, etc) that warcry is apparently the best option. Truthfully answer that is.

On the flip side, I’d like to hear from the folks who gave it a 1 or 3.

I gave it a 10 of 10* out of the totality of what it offers.

In no particular order:

-The overall value of the boxed set.
-The Terrain. My main worry was that it wouldn’t be compatible with the Azyrite Ruins or Townscape and though it uses a different fitment scheme, they are compatible. The possibilities are going to be awesome. That alone had me hyped for this game and the main reason I bought 2 boxes.
-The models. The mini’s are fantastic. Would’ve been nice to get a Chaos version of the Mordheim Warband/Militia multi-part kit, but I’m happy with whats available. These mini’s will change the footprint of Chaos armies from here on out.
-Half a dozen (with more on the way) wholly unique looking/playing warbands within a month of the games release, not to mention warband ports from main AoS.
-The rules. I’ve played 5 games since Friday and the rules are fun, fast, easy to learn and I can see the possibilities for modularity/added complexity through supplements down the line.
-I’ll have opponents to play against.
-Straight unapologetic fanboy. I only have time/inclination for one game ruleset and I’ve hitched my wagon to AoS and its affiliates.

Thats what I want from a small skirmish game.

Aside from Mordheim (with 20 years under its belt it is largely dead as well as mostly viewed with rose colored glasses), to the best of my knowledge none of the games you listed above have any of that in a complete package.

*I’d knock it down to a 8 or 9 because the assembly instructions for the terrain are misleading and I wouldn’t have known without social media. The directions overall seem like a cluster.

To me the biggest thing is if those ranking it low are ranking it low because they don't enjoy it as a game; or because they want it to be something different than what it is.

Well yes, if you were hoping for a certain game and this landed on your feet and its not what you wanted out of a skirmish game, youd mark it low. I marked it a 4 for mediocre gameplay and shallow campaign system. It can be salvaged but requires houserulimg, which takes both energy and a ton of social engineering.

I dont consider models or terrain as part of the evaluation for its rules.

Had gw released frostgrave verbatim only gave the magical schools a realms spin, the people who voted high would still have voted high im pretty sure.

And thats what sucks imo, they can release literally anything and it will get cheered.

As a pure replacement for skirmish with no campaign consideration id give it a 6. Just for its pick up game culture approach.

 auticus wrote:
Well yes, if you were hoping for a certain game and this landed on your feet and its not what you wanted out of a skirmish game, youd mark it low.

And the folks who were hoping for a certain game and this landed on their feet and its exactly what they wanted out of a skirmish game, marked it high.

But you needed to request clarification (more than once) on how they voted, as if they are wrong. Bogus.

Its not as if they are wrong its to get their perspective. Your perspective is as you already said an unapologistic fanboy that would have high marked pretty much anything they put out.

It was the explanation that as a replacement for skirmish that i understand.

As a fanboy you always strongly rebuke what i have to say without ever really getting into detail why most of the time, and when you do things like try to strawman me by saying im trying to prove an opinion wrong and how thats bogus (my intent is most certainly not to try to prove anyone wrong, but white knighting is just as bad as black knighting) you completely destroy the nature of conversation by trying to place an intent on me that is malevolent and akin to comic book guy character simply because you dont like what i have to say.

We dont need any of that.

 auticus wrote:
Your perspective is as you already said an unapologistic fanboy that would have high marked pretty much anything they put out.

Nah, not everything. I think Path to Glory is a waste of battletome/rulebook space and it needs to go. Perhaps it will now that a legit replacement has appeared. And both WHQ’s missed the mark. A worthy effort, but misses none the less.

 auticus wrote:
It was the explanation that as a replacement for skirmish that i understand.

Why do you even need an explanation? People like what they like. Move on.

 auticus wrote:
As a fanboy you always strongly rebuke what i have to say without ever really getting into detail why most of the time,

I usually rebuke you because you lay on the hyperbole and anecdotes pretty thick. And the fact that for every release you find something to be a martyr about. “Lets complain about Slaves to Darkness in the Free Cities thread!” for one example.

 auticus wrote:
and when you do things like try to strawman me by saying im trying to prove an opinion wrong and how thats bogus (my intent is most certainly not to try to prove anyone wrong, but white knighting is just as bad as black knighting)

Here are your words dude:

 auticus wrote:
People voting 10 / 10 huh? I'd love to know how it received max score from multiple people and why they voted that way and how it is superior to other fantasy skirmish games on the market right now to be rated at the top.

The poll asked how folks enjoyed Warcry’s gameplay on the scale of 1-10. Not how it stacked up against any other game. No other game is mentioned. You are the only person mentioning other games. But folks who enjoy Warcry’s gameplay need to explain to you how its better than whatever skirmish system you’re playing this month.

 auticus wrote:
you completely destroy the nature of conversation by trying to place an intent on me that is malevolent and akin to comic book guy character simply because you dont like what i have to say.

I will freely say that I agree with you on half of what you say, usually on balance issues, and the other half you are making gak up outright or being overly hyperbolic. Thats where the rebukes come in.

 auticus wrote:
We dont need any of that.

Indeed.