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like have a number of tokens equal the number of turns per player put in a bag and players pick them blind, so if you are lucky you can have all of your 5 turns in a row.....

Double Turn Standard.

Because we love the doubleturn we've decided that all players automatically get a double turn each turn! This means twice as many turns per player. Just roll for who goes first and that player takes their regular turn and then their double turn; then it passes to their opponent and they get their regular and double.

This way everyone gets a double turn and the random element of the doubleturn is removed! No other wargame uses the Doubleturn Standard!




Honestly it still baffles me that people defend the doubleturn as a mechanic. As noted above if it was just a double activation or such on alternating unit activation it wouldn't be so bad;

 Overread wrote:

Honestly it still baffles me that people defend the doubleturn as a mechanic. As noted above if it was just a double activation or such on alternating unit activation it wouldn't be so bad;

I vaguely understand its intentions a purposes. None of them work, but I can see what they're attempting to accomplish.

 LunarSol wrote:

 Overread wrote:

Honestly it still baffles me that people defend the doubleturn as a mechanic. As noted above if it was just a double activation or such on alternating unit activation it wouldn't be so bad;

I vaguely understand its intentions a purposes. None of them work, but I can see what they're attempting to accomplish.

Yeah one I often hear is "ahh but it makes it so the win/loss isn't defined by the list you took or who the better player is, there's a chance the weaker can win by getting the double turn."
Which isn't a fair statement because the double turn in no way links to player ability, army potential, game state or anything. If it linked into the game, eg if a player has 50% less models (in points) than their opponent at the start of a new turn they can roll for a double turn. Then that would indeed feel like it was trying to address a player being on a weaker footing getting a chance at winning the game or at least providing more challenge.

If your point value is 50% less than your opponents at the start of a turn, roll a D6. In a score of 3+ you get to take a double turn"


If it were like that then yes I could see justification for it. I wouldn't want that as a mechanic because it would require way too much math-tracking during the game to be fun and could even break when GW starts doing things like in 40K where you aren't playing for units individually any more.

I don't think people are engaging with the reason the priority role exists. In a standard old Warhammer game, the turn order is predictable.
I know that if I have a wizard with an 18 inch range spell and you have a melee unit with a movie of 4, I can safely move up one turn, and I'll still be alive the next turn to cast the spell.
With the priority roll this is much less certain. I have the aware that If I go first round then lose the priority, my wizard is vulnerable to that unit. So on my turn I have to think about the risk reward or I have to move the unit behind a screen to protect it incase the other player takes the double.

The people who love the priority roll, mostly do so because they enjoy processing this kind of tactical problem. It's not really to do with the ability to come back or the ability to stomp another player, it's the engagement with a grand risk reward mechanism. To me this is the appeal of the priority roll.

The downside is the downtime issue and the potential to win big due to a single roll.
The challenge is to keep the tactical challenge and the unpredictability while minimising the issues. I'm sure the are other ways to do this that don't involve the priority roll.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2024/03/28/warhammer-age-of-sigmar-what-are-modular-rules-and-what-do-they-mean-for-you/

Wow, we have some 30 year old game mechanics back
You can leave certain rules behind if you don't want them?

So lets hope they are not going full retro and each part of the advanced rules is not released in its own supplement box

They rather say the quiet part out loud in that article.

Say, for example, we find out during the course of a season of Matched Play that the economy of Command points isn’t quite right for competitive play. We don’t need to issue an errata online; instead, we could have a new General’s Handbook with a new Command Module that is both thematically resonant and helps evolve the internal balance. If we want to bring that Advanced Rule module back in the future, we can.”

'If command points are a problem, we could just fix it in an update, but instead we will sell you a new book.'
No mention of the fact that an update could take a couple weeks at most, but a new book will take months, by which time the meta will adjust to the problem.


I also note that they're doing Spearhead the same way 40k messed up combat patrols. Instead of teaching you the game, spearhead will have its own unique cards that teaches a slightly different game. Sticking to the core rules would've at least been functional for a teaching tool.

 Shadow Walker wrote:
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2024/03/28/warhammer-age-of-sigmar-what-are-modular-rules-and-what-do-they-mean-for-you/

Hm, so different levels of rules. Cool, will make it a bit easier with teaching new players to different levels.

this seems... alright for new players? i think it matters for new players and won't really be relevant for established players (aka any of us). would have to see how it's written out in practice, but this seems entirely harmless

You know I'd like this IF they did rules in a ring binder design where you can pop the pages in and out. So you could build your modular rulebook.


Because right now it just sounds like what we had before, only this time GW is going to swap much larger chunks of "core" rules for new chunks in expansion books. So you could well end up with "Matched play" needing multiple books. In fact it almost seems like its a mandatory part of the design.


At which point it almost feels like GW wants spearhead to be THE way you play and the way that defines the game going forward rather than Matched Play. So make MP " more complex and adaptable" but also insanely more difficult to practically run.



Honestly my gut feeling is that a lot of this is just changing the packaging and not the content.My worry is that in changing the packaging they are going to make it worse to engage with after 3 years.

There's elements in there that could really work well nad be a very good idea - heck modular bolt-on rules is how OPR adds its more advanced rules. However theirs are all in one publicatoin and neatly laid out. I don't need 3 or 4 expansion books (at £30 each) and to flip between all those books to run a game.


I'd like to give GW the benefit of the doubt but they are GW and their rules writing and information flow and organising are NOT their strong points.

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:

Hm, so different levels of rules. Cool, will make it a bit easier with teaching new players to different levels.

yeah, just like now, but with fancy numbers instead of boring names

Voss wrote:
They rather say the quiet part out loud in that article.

Say, for example, we find out during the course of a season of Matched Play that the economy of Command points isn’t quite right for competitive play. We don’t need to issue an errata online; instead, we could have a new General’s Handbook with a new Command Module that is both thematically resonant and helps evolve the internal balance. If we want to bring that Advanced Rule module back in the future, we can.”

'If command points are a problem, we could just fix it in an update, but instead we will sell you a new book.'
No mention of the fact that an update could take a couple weeks at most, but a new book will take months, by which time the meta will adjust to the problem.

if command points are a problem they remove them instead of trying to fix them, and replace them with something else and if this is a problem they also don't bother fixing it but remove it and replace it with something else

I think its funny the rules are modular but all but one page is what most people consider "core".

 LunarSol wrote:
I think its funny the rules are modular but all but one page is what most people consider "core".

Well yes, but you can swap out bits and pieces of that 'core', which is what makes it modular. So alternate magic rules, list-building and so on. Not sure it's as revolutionary as GW thinks it is, but they'll probably turn it on 40k as well if it proves well-received.

Voss wrote:
I also note that they're doing Spearhead the same way 40k messed up combat patrols. Instead of teaching you the game, spearhead will have its own unique cards that teaches a slightly different game. Sticking to the core rules would've at least been functional for a teaching tool.

Combat Patrol was a solved problem as far back as it's introduction as 40K in 40 Minutes in 4th edition.

But GW can't sell that.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
I also note that they're doing Spearhead the same way 40k messed up combat patrols. Instead of teaching you the game, spearhead will have its own unique cards that teaches a slightly different game. Sticking to the core rules would've at least been functional for a teaching tool.

The problem is if you try and keep it the same as the main game then it hits its own issues of not scaling right. You have too few models to make some elements work right with some armies.
I think having it as its own distinct game is actually a better thing. It's not trying to be a tutorial game for the main game; its trying to be a "buy one box get playing" game format. Spearhead is actually superior in the sense that it gives you several models so you've a diverse group whilst all those models translate into full armies easily.

The downside is it costs more than 1 box of regular infantry.

However the core focus is not to get people into AoS or 40K; but to get them into gaming within the GW ecosystem.

Having it as its own game also means its more likely established people will pick it up to play too. It's not a tutorial; its not a non-serious throw away thing; its totally its own thing and format and you can grow from it into the other games or stick with it.

This makes it really attractive to people on hard budgets who just can't get up to a full army affordably; or who can't justify the time and money sink; or who just burn out. Heck one of (not the only) the contributing factors in Fantasy Old World not growing before it was killed was that you had to reach 1.5-2K points for most of the game and armies to "work properly". That was a huge barrier to many people who burned out just building stuff.

spearhead lets you jump right into the action; if you're new and don't care about mould lines you can even jump in within 1 afternoon. Throw the models together and get them on the table.

 kodos wrote:
Wow, we have some 30 year old game mechanics back
You can leave certain rules behind if you don't want them?

So lets hope they are not going full retro and each part of the advanced rules is not released in its own supplement box

People have been asking for this exact system on this and other AOS discussion forums since basically 2nd edition.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Overread wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
I also note that they're doing Spearhead the same way 40k messed up combat patrols. Instead of teaching you the game, spearhead will have its own unique cards that teaches a slightly different game. Sticking to the core rules would've at least been functional for a teaching tool.

The problem is if you try and keep it the same as the main game then it hits its own issues of not scaling right. You have too few models to make some elements work right with some armies.
I think having it as its own distinct game is actually a better thing. It's not trying to be a tutorial game for the main game; its trying to be a "buy one box get playing" game format. Spearhead is actually superior in the sense that it gives you several models so you've a diverse group whilst all those models translate into full armies easily.

The downside is it costs more than 1 box of regular infantry.

However the core focus is not to get people into AoS or 40K; but to get them into gaming within the GW ecosystem.

Having it as its own game also means its more likely established people will pick it up to play too. It's not a tutorial; its not a non-serious throw away thing; its totally its own thing and format and you can grow from it into the other games or stick with it.

This makes it really attractive to people on hard budgets who just can't get up to a full army affordably; or who can't justify the time and money sink; or who just burn out. Heck one of (not the only) the contributing factors in Fantasy Old World not growing before it was killed was that you had to reach 1.5-2K points for most of the game and armies to "work properly". That was a huge barrier to many people who burned out just building stuff.

spearhead lets you jump right into the action; if you're new and don't care about mould lines you can even jump in within 1 afternoon. Throw the models together and get them on the table.

To expand on its value for more establish players: This system also lets you get a game of AoS done in less than 2 hours including setup.

The time commitment to a 1500 or 2000 point AoS game isn't just the 2.5+ hours it takes to play them, it's the 1+ hour of building a list, getting everything out of storage, double checking you have the right models, setting up the table, etc, etc. If the game can take 90 minutes and the setup is a half hour or less, I might be able to convince my roomates to dust off their old AoS stuff.

 Overread wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
I also note that they're doing Spearhead the same way 40k messed up combat patrols. Instead of teaching you the game, spearhead will have its own unique cards that teaches a slightly different game. Sticking to the core rules would've at least been functional for a teaching tool.

The problem is if you try and keep it the same as the main game then it hits its own issues of not scaling right. You have too few models to make some elements work right with some armies.
I think having it as its own distinct game is actually a better thing. It's not trying to be a tutorial game for the main game; its trying to be a "buy one box get playing" game format. Spearhead is actually superior in the sense that it gives you several models so you've a diverse group whilst all those models translate into full armies easily.

The downside is it costs more than 1 box of regular infantry.

However the core focus is not to get people into AoS or 40K; but to get them into gaming within the GW ecosystem.

Having it as its own game also means its more likely established people will pick it up to play too. It's not a tutorial; its not a non-serious throw away thing; its totally its own thing and format and you can grow from it into the other games or stick with it.

This makes it really attractive to people on hard budgets who just can't get up to a full army affordably; or who can't justify the time and money sink; or who just burn out. Heck one of (not the only) the contributing factors in Fantasy Old World not growing before it was killed was that you had to reach 1.5-2K points for most of the game and armies to "work properly". That was a huge barrier to many people who burned out just building stuff.

spearhead lets you jump right into the action; if you're new and don't care about mould lines you can even jump in within 1 afternoon. Throw the models together and get them on the table.

You're presenting a weird argument. None of that involves having units that work differently (unique cards!) than they do in the real game.
If it isn't 'scaling right' then GW has chosen the wrong models for the boxed sets.

I get having a small format games and introductory games. But making it arbitrarily different (and with 'fixed' lists and unique abilities) is gibberish.

Voss wrote:

 Overread wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
I also note that they're doing Spearhead the same way 40k messed up combat patrols. Instead of teaching you the game, spearhead will have its own unique cards that teaches a slightly different game. Sticking to the core rules would've at least been functional for a teaching tool.

The problem is if you try and keep it the same as the main game then it hits its own issues of not scaling right. You have too few models to make some elements work right with some armies.
I think having it as its own distinct game is actually a better thing. It's not trying to be a tutorial game for the main game; its trying to be a "buy one box get playing" game format. Spearhead is actually superior in the sense that it gives you several models so you've a diverse group whilst all those models translate into full armies easily.

The downside is it costs more than 1 box of regular infantry.

However the core focus is not to get people into AoS or 40K; but to get them into gaming within the GW ecosystem.

Having it as its own game also means its more likely established people will pick it up to play too. It's not a tutorial; its not a non-serious throw away thing; its totally its own thing and format and you can grow from it into the other games or stick with it.

This makes it really attractive to people on hard budgets who just can't get up to a full army affordably; or who can't justify the time and money sink; or who just burn out. Heck one of (not the only) the contributing factors in Fantasy Old World not growing before it was killed was that you had to reach 1.5-2K points for most of the game and armies to "work properly". That was a huge barrier to many people who burned out just building stuff.

spearhead lets you jump right into the action; if you're new and don't care about mould lines you can even jump in within 1 afternoon. Throw the models together and get them on the table.

You're presenting a weird argument. None of that involves having units that work differently (unique cards!) than they do in the real game.
If it isn't 'scaling right' then GW has chosen the wrong models for the boxed sets.

I get having a small format games and introductory games. But making it arbitrarily different (and with 'fixed' lists and unique abilities) is gibberish.

Not really, some units are just not going to scale perfectly without changing their stats and some rules mechanics just don't work the same if you've 5 models as opposed to 20 in a unit. Old World and other rank and file games show this quite well with mechanics that - well they work at low points but they often aren't as engaging or fun and they feel wrong/wonky to play when you've formation rules and such but only a tiny number of models in each unit.

Plus it also creates a stigma within the group; established players have no reason to step down to the lower point game unless its a tutorial game. Otherwise they are going to stick to the main game at the higher point values because they've got the models already. They don't need coaxing to build another 500points of models or such.


Instead having a separate game with its own rules that works at a smaller skirmish level works far better at being its own thing. It just has to introduce new people to playing tabletop games, building models, painting them and rolling dice. Once you breach that a new rules system is a LOT easier to get them into. Esp if they've got one or two spearheads from a faction and a few cool models and now they've got an army ready for that 1K game or that 2K game without realising it.




This isn't really anything new. Underworlds, Warcry, Killteam, have all been doing this job already for a while and I'd argue better than when Killteam was just a watered down corner of the main rules. As its own thing it gets attention. GW markets it and talks about it; there's products on the shelf for people to be tempted into; there's "oh yeah just get this box put them together and you can start playing" marketing for the store staff and gamers to get newbies into.

we have seen how the small format went with 40k why should it be different with AoS?

ERJAK wrote:

 kodos wrote:
Wow, we have some 30 year old game mechanics back
You can leave certain rules behind if you don't want them?

So lets hope they are not going full retro and each part of the advanced rules is not released in its own supplement box

People have been asking for this exact system on this and other AOS discussion forums since basically 2nd edition.

and why haven't they used it during 2nd and 3rd Edition?
because people never leave "optional" rules behind but always want to play the full game?

Modular = Homebrew but official, gotchu

Do you guys seriously know anyone who plays Kiddy Pool 40k?

Amusingly enough, some of the younger kids who are interested but we don't want to bombard with reams of pages and rules?

It's always the same ol' same, countrary game is the kids/casual/beer game.

"Instead of publishing an errata we simply replace a whole chapter of the book and allow you to hunt for hidden changes!"

Ah yes excellent, errata with extra steps

So the "Command Models" module sounds like attached heroes is coming to AoS, similar to what they did with 40k. Will be interesting to see what that looks like, unless that's just encompassing standard "Musicians, Standards, and Leaders".

Groat wrote:
So the "Command Models" module sounds like attached heroes is coming to AoS, similar to what they did with 40k. Will be interesting to see what that looks like, unless that's just encompassing standard "Musicians, Standards, and Leaders".

Honestly I'd utterly love if they go back to the old style of 1 command stand per unit. It always looks so wrong to me that AoS basically has 1 leader, but then 1 per X for banners and musicians - esp for cavalry units.

In hindsight GW had the right idea during 8th edition, where it was Kill Team for a team of soliders, 40K for small-to-medium battles, and Apocalypse for large battles.

I like that everyone fights on a 3" bubble, lowkey 1" melee hand weapons fething sucked, now hopefully with the return of USR hand wepons will have in some cases special effects.

I kinda dread they bring back Fantasy Ethereal and NH becomes incredibly difficult to deal with but GW has a clean record of not breaking their own games, right?

 RaptorusRex wrote:
Do you guys seriously know anyone who plays Kiddy Pool 40k?

If you mean Combat Patrol, it's quite popular in my city, and the last WD has pretty decent multiplayer rules, as well as a Rogue Trader Combat Patrol (which I could already field and therefore might paint up).

To get back on topic though, have they announced yet whether new AoS will have free rules and Indexes online?

I'm too poor to invest in another GW game, but I do have an existing Daemons of Slaanesh army already, and with free rules and an Index, I'd try it out.