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Well this is certainly interesting - posted by pretre in N&R but definitely worth discussing in more depth here!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3iUmocmCYCUWFRzcWdQTGcxS0U/view


Check out the link and post what you think of those restrictions for army selection + scenarios for playing AoS in way that, as the document puts it, is "more conducive to competitive play".

I'm intrigued, and hope it's legit!

Edit: Note pretre's comment below that this is from a particular GW store, not the HQ... but still, it's something

Scenarios are a good start, the whole "kill everything or sudden death" that's in the game right now doesn't appeal to me.

Keep in mind it is actually from a GW store, not Nottingham.

Unfortunately they still don't fix things like 2+/3+ zombies hordes of doom. Still, the game is going to be much better off with those rules.
The Scenarios could be cool though, might be interesting to port hem to games of 40k too.

It's very late, so I might be a bit dumb...but I don't understand the Wound rules.

For every 25 wounds counted, you may take 4 warscrolls.

What does that mean? That you can take 4 warscrolls with 25 wounds in total? But...a lot of warscrolls are 10+ models, so with the bare minimum, you're looking at 40 wounds already, and some models are multi-wound with 2+ wpm. Isn't that a huge disadvantage for bigger units? Quite confused.

 Sigvatr wrote:
It's very late, so I might be a bit dumb...but I don't understand the Wound rules.

For every 25 wounds counted, you may take 4 warscrolls.

What does that mean? That you can take 4 warscrolls with 25 wounds in total? But...a lot of warscrolls are 10+ models, so with the bare minimum, you're looking at 40 wounds already, and some models are multi-wound with 2+ wpm. Isn't that a huge disadvantage for bigger units? Quite confused.

Aren't characters, monsters, and war engines also "warscrolls?"

Maybe this means that for every 25 wounds, you can have a maximum of 4 warscrolls - to prevent you from bringing 25 one-wound units, I suppose.

Lots of those rules are really boring and fun sucking in my opinion. Others are unnecessary like the removing from front and the overly complicated wound allocation (having to shuffle your command models backwards? Wtf)

Really hope they become no way semi-official.

Characters look impossible to kill now. They must have forgot most characters have 5+ wounds now.

The army building is too restrictive on armies such as skaven and goblins that rely on lots of cheap heroes.

Blah

How does Lord Kroak from the Lizardmen fit into the wounds limit? Instead of having a wounds value, he has a * symbol and a special rule with a dice roll for killing him.

This game is unfixable...

 Bottle wrote:
Lots of those rules are really boring and fun sucking in my opinion. Others are unnecessary like the removing from front and the overly complicated wound allocation (having to shuffle your command models backwards? Wtf)

Really hope they become no way semi-official.

Characters look impossible to kill now. They must have forgot most characters have 5+ wounds now.

The army building is too restrictive on armies such as skaven and goblins that rely on lots of cheap heroes.

Blah

I only had one game , but it's basically whoever gets in range with ranged/wizards first. Since there is no cover from interventing troops and tehy can't join other squads. They can hide in blobs from melee, since there does't seem to be a rule that enforces a minimum distance between two units. But it's open season for ranged weapons. In my game two arcane bolts vaporized skulltaker that was fighting in melee.

Roknar wrote:

 Bottle wrote:
Lots of those rules are really boring and fun sucking in my opinion. Others are unnecessary like the removing from front and the overly complicated wound allocation (having to shuffle your command models backwards? Wtf)

Really hope they become no way semi-official.

Characters look impossible to kill now. They must have forgot most characters have 5+ wounds now.

The army building is too restrictive on armies such as skaven and goblins that rely on lots of cheap heroes.

Blah

I only had one game , but it's basically whoever gets in range with ranged/wizards first. Since there is no cover from interventing troops and tehy can't join other squads. They can hide in blobs from melee, since there does't seem to be a rule that enforces a minimum distance between two units. But it's open season for ranged weapons. In my game two arcane bolts vaporized skulltaker that was fighting in melee.

"When targeting an enemy unit with models engaged with allied models, only those which are greater than 3” of an allied model are eligible to take Wounds."

With the rules from this PDF you cannot shoot into engaged units. Or rather you can shoot at engaged units, but not engaged models - you can shoot at models 3" away from your guys. Which makes perfect sense - if there's a column of soldiers fighting, only the front ones are engaged, so you don't shoot at them as you can hit your guys, but the rear ranks? Feel free to bolt them to the ground with your crossbow, but no more sniping that hero in the middle of the melee mosh pit.

I like that. If this is the official rule restriction for competitive play at that Warhammer World event, I think this game will become better and people at my FLGS will actually want to try it out.

Since there is no cover from interventing troops and tehy can't join other squads.

LoS still applies in both - you cant pewpew what you cannot see.

Interesting that this GW store decided to use both woulds, warscrolls, AND unit types to try to form some balance. I've seen a lot of people advocating one or two of these options. I'm not planning to get involved in AOS at all, but these rules seem to fix some of the glaring problems that come from a game with no points.

First, these changes are not nearly good enough to play a competative, balanced, GOOD game.

Second, LOL they EXACTLY ripped off warmachine/hordes scenarios. Its so blatant its not even funny.

 Emicrania wrote:
This game is unfixable...

Nah, I personally like seeing how many plasters they can put on this particular broken leg.

 Orock wrote:

Second, LOL they EXACTLY ripped off warmachine/hordes scenarios. Its so blatant its not even funny.

Isn't it the same in WarZone Resurrection? I mean... feel free to convince me otherwise but, isn't this just the best formula for competitive scenarios for skirmish games in general? Why not use it in their game too then? Those scenarios aren't really Warmachine-only, there's no fluff or even game mechanic backing them up, they're 120% generic, thus making them usable in every single skirmish game that comes to mind.

I really understand wanting to bash AoS when you're unhappy with what they did to your beloved WFB, but situations where they used the best competitive skirmish scenarios for their competitive skirmish tournament is far from bad in my idea.

I love how GW is getting bashed over good ideas just as much as for bad ideas.

 Ratius wrote:

Since there is no cover from interventing troops and tehy can't join other squads.

LoS still applies in both - you cant pewpew what you cannot see.

That's true, but with characters that becomes particularly difficult lol. Especially since you now only need to see the tip of a spear or so. It does give some incentive to stand on higher terrain though, which is nice.

@Klerych: If those new rules come to pass the game as a system will work a lot better indeed, hell, the rules aren't even half bad at that point.

I still don't like how you can't actually customize your stuff. I don't like using special characters. I always take the generic HQ's and customize them to my liking. That isn't possible here really. Or not to the same extent you used to be able to anyway. But I'd be willing to give the game another chance with their tournament rules.

The normal ones are just pure wild west anything goes. I really don't like them.

 Orock wrote:
First, these changes are not nearly good enough to play a competative, balanced, GOOD game.

Second, LOL they EXACTLY ripped off warmachine/hordes scenarios. Its so blatant its not even funny.

I worked for Privateer as an infernal during the MK2 development (actually a good amount of time pre and post MK2) I can guarantee you that they were not the first people to to design "capture the geometry" scenarios.

Almost every major game played competitively has some version of capture the geometry scenarios. It's essentially impossible to claim that one game was the genesis of them at this point, because they are essentially ubiquitous.

That said, i find the scenarios insufferably boring. The errata is ... promising, but doesn't quite go far enough in a few areas.

"When targeting an enemy unit with models engaged with allied models, only those which are greater than 3” of an allied model are eligible to take Wounds."

With the rules from this PDF you cannot shoot into engaged units. Or rather you can shoot at engaged units, but not engaged models - you can shoot at models 3" away from your guys. Which makes perfect sense - if there's a column of soldiers fighting, only the front ones are engaged, so you don't shoot at them as you can hit your guys, but the rear ranks? Feel free to bolt them to the ground with your crossbow, but no more sniping that hero in the middle of the melee mosh pit.

I think that is the PERFECT balance between no shooting into melee, and shooting into melee all you want.

Nearly every game that involves the latter I have played has a chance to kill your own troops as the balance.

AegisGrimm wrote:
I think that is the PERFECT balance between no shooting into melee, and shooting into melee all you want.

Nearly every game that involves the latter I have played has a chance to kill your own troops as the balance.

I agree wholeheartedly - this is one of the best approaches at shooting into melee I've seen so far. Now you can have a column of chaos warriors trying to get past the halberdiers blocking the bridge as crossbowmen and handgunners try to pick off as many of them as possible.

Roknar wrote:
That's true, but with characters that becomes particularly difficult lol. Especially since you now only need to see the tip of a spear or so. It does give some incentive to stand on higher terrain though, which is nice.

I believe they will sooner or later FAQ it to actually mean model's body just like every other game does including their own 40k where you can't shoot a marine in his... heraldry.

Roknar wrote:I still don't like how you can't actually customize your stuff. I don't like using special characters. I always take the generic HQ's and customize them to my liking. That isn't possible here really. Or not to the same extent you used to be able to anyway. But I'd be willing to give the game another chance with their tournament rules.

I agree - a slight bit of additional customization like magic items would be really nice as it gave a lot of options to people, although I am not sure how would they apply that to a game with no points costs - would they cost wounds or what?

Read through and don't like the additions. Do like some scenarios to toy with.

I have some more games booked in for Friday/Saturday so we'll continue to see how vanilla deployment works out.

Honestly if GW's allow this i will give GW a lot more leeway. They're not perfect but at least it isn't just take everything and hope balance shows up somewhere.

I really liked the modifications to the shooting rules, the rest seemed unnecessary.

 Crimson wrote:
I really liked the modifications to the shooting rules, the rest seemed unnecessary.

Come on, son, how is any of it unnecessary? I mean... this is for competitive play, do you think army composition rules are not necessary for competitive events...? Clarifying that summoned units can't activate until next turn to render turn one billion self-summoning daemon factory impossible is unnecessary? Seriously!

I do hope this official (it does look it, to be fair) as it goes a good way in order to try and make AoS a better game for those who want a fair wargame and whose battles aren't accompanied by large quantities of beer and pretzels. It would be great to see GW recognising there are people who want this and them releasing erratas and scenarios like this to meet those desires.

 Klerych wrote:

 Crimson wrote:
I really liked the modifications to the shooting rules, the rest seemed unnecessary.

Come on, son, how is any of it unnecessary? I mean... this is for competitive play, do you think army composition rules are not necessary for competitive events...? Clarifying that summoned units can't activate until next turn to render turn one billion self-summoning daemon factory impossible is unnecessary? Seriously!

You are right, those things are useful. What I didn't like were the annoying 40K style wound-allocation rules.

 Crimson wrote:

You are right, those things are useful. What I didn't like were the annoying 40K style wound-allocation rules.

I don't know... what's so bad about them? Models dying in front rows? I think it's reasonable - it's often the front guys that get shot first anyway and laying a devastating barrage should be keeping enemies away from your missile troops... unless you meant something else. :-)

Those scenarios look pretty good. I am a big fan of objectives, and we all know they were coming, so no surprise there.

Removing initiative from the game happened for us in our first couple of games, because we forgot about it. LOL.

The mechanism for choosing armies should help satisfy the people who are screaming about the lack of points. Obviously, not every wound is worth the same, but I suppose this is a good a method as any if you're trying to nail it to a competition list. It just means that in a competition, people won't take models that are crappy, which is ok, I suppose.

The restrictions sound pretty reasonable, and along the same lines of what some community members have already cobbled together for the first AoS tournaments.

I like what I see. I get why some people are a bit opposed to wounds being the new 'points'. A couple of my local group harped about that some units were far greater than others for the same 'points' in this system. But isn't that the case in GW games as it is? And why points are an arbitrary and flawed sense of 'balance' anyway?

At least now, you have some structure (if these turn legit rules). It's a start.

I am not a fan of those force comp rules. I don't like how they restrict lists – didn't we just get away from blocks of dudes? – and they're unnecessary complicated. (And poorly written. Had to re-read how to calculate bonus dudes a few times; it's a simple rule, but miserably parsed.)

Seriously, I was interested in AoS because it wasn't WFB. I'd broken out my stegadons and skinks for the first time in years, but if these errata are the future, I'll just put 'em away again. I have zero interest in playing blocks of 40-plus dudes, or armies that are 40% rank-and-file mooks.