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Sqorgar wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
When making a street team/shill/recruitment thread, you need to be clear, ESPECIALLY with a game as divisive as AOS.

Is AoS still divisive?

auticus wrote:Not as much as it was a couple of years ago but yes to a lot of communities (from what I gather, mainly in the states), AOS is still a filthy word.

WAS.


Nowadays I think people just either play it or ignore it. The vocal outcry has died down but at the same time you don't see the swell of players (at least in my region of the US) that we're led to believe exists. The main thing is that people who choose not to play have reasons that may be something other than "I need handheld through it", which seems to have apparently been the intent of this thread.

I think if you ask "Why are you not playing AoS?" then "I think it is gak" has to be a valid answer.

I think the game looks better rules wise than it did when it started. They seem to be hammering the backstory into something a little bit more cohesive. The improved rules are more important to me, because I find the background generally uninspiring and odious, particularly the naming of units and weapons (I hate that everything has to have a super special name, like nothing is ever just a javelin or a sword, it has to be a Celestite Strike Spear or a Cold Steel Runeblade. And the naming of monsters and units is pretty asinine, even by GW standards).

The models are hit and miss. Some of the new models are absolutely awesome, others to me are over designed and suffer from really bad scale creep due to the change to the bigger bases, which annoys me becasue 25mm has been the standard for this kind of gaming for decades. It seems a pointlessly petty and controlling move to try to keep people from using their models in other systems easily. The naming schemes and scrapping of lines likewise seem more driven by a certain view of IP than a desire to make a good game or a compelling world.

That said, there is some really creative stuff coming out of the game. The Deepkin are very cool, and GW predictably pulled off an undersea empire with more panache than any other company. The new spectral army is very cool too, and a good army for new players to learn. A lot of the new demonic stuff is awesome, Tzeentch is getting more love than it has in years.

So it is a mixed bag for me. I am going to give the game a try if only because I think it will be easy to get a pick up game, but I am not happy with all aspects and some of them have been a particular barrier for entry for me.

Actually, the biggest is probably that I am confused about what books I need to buy and what is needed for a standard game, which is a problem with all GW games these days as far as I can see. There seem to be two different big rule books and then I also need a battle tome and then also to be up to date on the FAQs and stuff. Given other companies can put army lists and core rules in one book this seems excessive.

 Da Boss wrote:
I think if you ask "Why are you not playing AoS?" then "I think it is gak" has to be a valid answer.

I'm not sure it is a valid one. A valid answer would why you think it is gak. "I don't wanna" is hardly the beginning of a productive discussion.

The models are hit and miss. Some of the new models are absolutely awesome, others to me are over designed and suffer from really bad scale creep due to the change to the bigger bases, which annoys me becasue 25mm has been the standard for this kind of gaming for decades.

25mm hasn't been the standard for miniature games in years. I don't think there's a major miniature game out there under 28mm, with many of them being 32mm these days. That's not an AoS problem.

Actually, the biggest is probably that I am confused about what books I need to buy and what is needed for a standard game, which is a problem with all GW games these days as far as I can see. There seem to be two different big rule books and then I also need a battle tome and then also to be up to date on the FAQs and stuff. Given other companies can put army lists and core rules in one book this seems excessive.

Unlike 40k, you don't need Battletomes to play AoS. All the warscrolls are available for free, either on GW's website or through the app. The Battletomes have abilities and mods you can use to customize your army, but they aren't required.

You don't need the big rulebook either. The actual rules are like 18 pages and also free on the website. The rulebook has some things you might want (matched play scenarios, updated rules for older armies, allegiance abilities), but how useful that stuff is might depend on what army you decide to play and whether you also have the GHB or not. Someone else will have to go into detail on this as I haven't really delved into 2.0 too much yet.

The General's Handbook is not technically required either, but it is the location of the unit points, so if you want to have a 2000 pt game, for example, you'll need the GHB for that. The points are not given away for free unlike most everything else. There's also additional matched play scenarios.

Malign Sorcery has the rules for endless spells. Again, optional, but probably something worth picking up. I don't have it myself.

Anyway, if you want to try out the game, you really just need models as all the required rules are provided for free. If you want to play the game competitively, you'll want the GHB and Battletome for your army, possibly the big rulebook and malign sorcery.

25mm is the standard for bases, is what I meant. 1 inch, it has always been a popular standard because it is useful for all sorts of games. The move to 32mm bases for normal infantry I find obnoxious.

I really appreciate you clarifying the books. Thank you. I still think it is offputting that there are so many and it is kind of ambiguous which ones you "need" to play, you know what I mean? Like I want to play with points, so I need to get the GHB. I did not know that was where the points were, and assumed they were in the battletome. Since I do not care for the background, I am happy to avoid the battletomes and just buy the generals handbook.

What you get in Battletomes is more than points you get:

Army Allegiance Abilities and battle traites - unique army wide bonuses that apply to the army.

Faction specific relics and equipment for leaders.

Spell Lores for Wizards from the faction. In AoS wizards can only use spells from the army allegiance that you're a part of and only if the wizard is a direct unit from that group (ergo its not allied). Allied wizards can only use the spells on their warscroll and (if you choose to use it) any realm spell lores.

Faction specific Battalions - formations of units that have a bonus or ability.

Any other additional rules or equipment that the army has. For example Daughters of Khaine get their Prayer table.


So a Battletome has a general complete list of bonuses and abilities which are important for the faction. Generals Handbook has "some" of these for armies that don't yet have a Battletome, but does not cover them all.

Armies covered in 2018


I fully agree that at present AoS is messy when it comes to armies that don't yet have a Battletome. The shining hope is that after 2018 being a heavy 40K year, we can cross our fingers that 2019 turns into a heavy AoS year and GW have resources to repeat what they've done to clean things up and make it more obvious what is needed for each group and what each groups role and intention is.




Also the Warscroll Builder on the GW community website is pretty good. It has points and other basic stats listed so you can use that to build an army from. So points are free on there, whilst warscrolls are on the unit tabs in the store. It's more about the lores and abilities that bind an army together where you need a specific book.
Baring in mind some of the earlier books (such as the Grand Alliance books) are a bit out of date now. AoS 2.0 is really akin to a 1.0 release with the earlier stuff being closer to a beta.

Considering how messy GW scheduling is, expect about 2/3 get a Battletome or update before the next major GHB update. That's one of the two biggest issues with the GW production system. I think only 6th Edition saw all the armies addressed, with one of the books being split in 7th.

 Da Boss wrote:
Like I want to play with points, so I need to get the GHB. I did not know that was where the points were, and assumed they were in the battletome.

The newer battletomes include points but are quickly outdated, as the GHB is updated yearly while the battletomes are not. It gives them an opportunity to rebalance the game as needed. Like comparing the Daughters of Khaine battletome (came first) to the GHB'18, the points for the individual units are the same, but the battalion point values have increased.

I still run into the problems of no one really to play it with. GW has few people who play it (mostly its 40k, but with the small size of the tables been seeing more kill team and such) I have 2 buddies I have dragged kicking and screaming into it, but that is successful only because C7 is supposed to be making an AoS RPG, and my buds love some C7 and rpg much more than tabletop. A couple are plotting to RP as Stormcast if they are allowable and so have bought some of those models to go for a char concept.

It might be that this is why GW is pushing Skirmish forward "early " In my view. I'd have thought they'd wait for more battletomes to be out, but perhaps they want skirmish out there sooner to tempt more people into AoS the same way killteam does for 40K

 Overread wrote:
It might be that this is why GW is pushing Skirmish forward "early " In my view. I'd have thought they'd wait for more battletomes to be out, but perhaps they want skirmish out there sooner to tempt more people into AoS the same way killteam does for 40K

While even with 2nd edition, AoS as a mass game has little appeal to me, but I LOVE the original skirmish and would equally like to see it expanded on. The game lends itself to be a better mordheim than mordheim and campaigns in hammerhal are a blast.

I think if I wanted to try skirmish for AoS I would pick up Night vault / Shadow Spire instead.

I am one of the old dogs that played warhammer before the end times and AoS still hasn't done anything to make me want to come back.

At the same time I had stopped playing 40k, Kill Team really has brought me back, but don't feel that's what AoS needs.

 Genoside07 wrote:
I think if I wanted to try skirmish for AoS I would pick up Night vault / Shadow Spire instead.

I am one of the old dogs that played warhammer before the end times and AoS still hasn't done anything to make me want to come back.

At the same time I had stopped playing 40k, Kill Team really has brought me back, but don't feel that's what AoS needs.

We have shadespire, but its pretty much just an "ok" boardgame that happens to use miniatures.

 Da Boss wrote:
And the naming of monsters and units is pretty asinine, even by GW standards

Ripperdactyls were named during WHFB though, so AoS at least does not hold the top spot yet.

Random tangent: for funsies I went through the list of Nighthaunt units and separated them into their component nouns/adjectives!
Banshee
Banshees
Black
Blade
Blade
Cairn
Chain
Chain
Coach
Dread
Dread
Executioner
Ghast
Ghasts
Gheist
Glaive
Grim
Guardian
Harridans
Harrow
Hex
Horde
Hosts
Knight
Lord
Myrmourn
Rasp
Reapers
Revenants
Scythe
Shrouds
Souls
Spirit
Spirit
Stalkers
Tomb
Torment
Wraith
Wraith
Wraiths

Remember thst the 'popularity' of AoS is recorded by the huge increase in sales, not visible fan base.

People are not playing AoS in great numbers, what they are doing is buying AoS miniatures which is attributed to AoS.

It should really be attributed to four factors.

1. AoS, because despite what i say above it isn't a dead system.
2. A general renaissance in sales post Kirby, mostly linked to more client sensitive pricing policies..
3. A rush of panic buying of deleted or soon tom be deleted items. hough this phase is now over.
4. Continuing popularity of legacy gaming via Oldhammer, 9th Age or Kings of War.

I don't think AoS is even popular at GW. After 2.0 came out, there's been six months of basically nothing. Old battletomes weren't updated. Factions haven't gotten their endless spells or warscroll cards. I think a faction or two doesn't even have a wizard yet. New better lore, then it just stops. We got Beasts of Chaos, and I can't remember if there was anything else. From what I can tell, AoS's biggest success is Shadespire, and that's convincing probably about 0% of people to try out AoS.

Meanwhile, we got a ton of stuff for Kill Team, all but wiping AoS from memory, and 40k has had a constant barrage of codices and releases. I don't even play 40k, but I've bought some of them.

I really love AoS's design style. When they release a new army, they almost universally knock it out of the park. Sylvaneth, Deepkin, DoK, Kharadron, Nighthaunts, Ironjawz - just some really, really amazing models. I really think AoS has what it takes to be as popular as 40k, it just doesn't get the same level of support, and without that support, it doesn't get the same mindshare.

I don't think AoS's future is in 2,000 pt matched play. It has a lot of strengths, but I don't think matched play is one of them. The people who seem to be the happiest with AoS all say they play skirmish or Path to Glory. MongooseMatt, the biggest AoS fan ever, stopped caring about the game when the game dropped the narrative elements in favor of matched play. Same with me. I think, as a community, we should probably focus on a different way to play AoS such that it isn't just 40k-lite.

It's been doing pretty good here locally in the Phoenix, AZ, metropolis. There are regular game nights at the GW and several of the local stores, and they even run tournaments on a regular basis. Maybe not as much as Steamroller or 40K, but I see more on that than I have for those not the Big 3.

I think its more that GW were focused on finishing 40K rather than shifting all focus onto AoS. Also AoS wasn't forgotten about for that period of time, it just wasn't the primary focus of GW. Perhaps a mistake, but I think rolling out 2.0 was a solid move and the game did need it.

What it now needs is for 40K to take a step back and let AoS march forward, whcih should happen considering that GW has now released most of the Codex for 40K (they've actually been really slow these last few months as Specialist games and AoS have taken a bit more focus - Cultists and Space Wolves lagged quite a bit after the earlier part of the year).

GW need someone in charge of ...I dunno, what would you call it, the new player experience?
Since I started running D&D in my school, some of the kids have gotten really interested in fantasy miniatures. They want to start AoS but they are pretty intimidated by the sheer amount of crap out there. They should get rid of this idea of charging for rules entirely and put everything up for free, or alternatively, update points and so on for everything at once in one centralised place.

At the moment the SC boxes give a great starting point in terms of model purchases. The game is also easy to get into in terms of model count required. It is a shame that the disorganised approach to rules releases is a stumbling block, because everything else is in place.

I might try and teach them the game (sneaky way for me to learn the game as well ) so this advice is useful because I want to spare their parents any extra spend. I tried getting the kids into KoW but they just prefer the look of AoS.

Charging for rules isn't the problem and having lots of FAQ documents isn't either. A beginner just needs a clear set of directions.

To Play X army you get Core Rules and X Battletome and play.

To get started that really is all you need for AoS. The complicating factor is that not every army has its own Battletome and its not always clear where an armies rules actually are. Even Generals Handbook doesn't cover them all.


Once a person is through the initial battles and getting into the game they can expand with Malign Sorcery; with the FAQ documents and the Generals Handbook updates. Most lf that latter lot is either answering common questions or updating minor elements of the printed core rules to better balance the game.


I don't think GW will ever go free because things like the Big Rulebook and the Battletomes are more than just game rules. They are artwork, lore, painting, guides, showcase - they are a huge smattering of everything. And lets face it it works really well; most people have a good grasp of the basic lore of the world they play in and the faction they play as. GW has built a lot of lore around their titles and it really helps with immersion. It really helps to tie people into their armies for more than just pretty models and statistical rules. It feeds the creative ideas when modelling and painting.
You only have to look at the wealth of conversions, home stories; army tales and stuff that you get with 40K and Fantasy and AoS that you just don't tend to see from a lot of other franchises where the lore is often far more simplistic.

I think charging for it when it is so disorganised compounds the problem. The game is much better set up than it used to be for people to get into, in terms of price, required model count and force building rules. But it seems they have to drop the ball somewhere and that seems to be organisation of the rules. It is a shame, but the GW design studio has always been unashamedly unprofessional.

Agreed and its really odd that GW lets this confusion continue when they could resolve it a single A4 page or less of details of the basic future of AoS. As they've already got long term plans they could already say that "XYZ" factions will be combined in the future etc.. whilst factions J and L will be small alliance focused forces etc..


I figure the only reason they don't is to prevent any 3rd party jumping the gun. If GW said Scourge Privateers were going to be their own full army then you can bet the 3rd parties would start mining the lore and cranking out units based on the lore of the game as alternate sculpts before GW ever got off the ground. Whilst a vibrant market of alternative parts and models is good for gamers in general; it has its downsides in how it has altered GW's behaviour and attitude.


Then again at least GW isn't like old Spartan Games - brimming with ideas and sharing concepts way before they are viable products or event past testing phases .

Part of the problem are the "three ways to play".

Lets face it. The vast vast majority of people expect matched play and points.

I cannot count the number of times new players have given the :wtf: face when they try to understand what non-matched play is, because its so anti anything in modern game design, and want to turn directly to the points.

They expect that to be the core game and belong to the core game rulebook.

To play the game ideally you should need: the core rulebook. the battletome that your army belongs to. If you are "souping" then all of the battletomes that your army belongs to.

The generals handbook which has point updates.

Thats it.

The core rules should be in the core rulebook. The battletomes being what they are today is fine. The GHB being what it is is also fine.

Whats not fine are the rules being shotgunned across multiple sources.

That is neither new player friendly nor veteran friendly. It is rather a giant pain in the ...

Whether or not AOS is a great mass battle game is largely in the eye of the beholder. I think for a game that focuses on individual model movement (40k... AOS) that the less models on the table the better.

Which is why I'm drawn more towards Killteam and a "skirmish" version of AOS over a full 2000 pt game. The tedium of moving 80-150 individual models, or watching my opponent do so (twice in a row when they get double turn) is something that I think needs reviewed.

It's definitely something that the "Warhammer Community" site should be addressing. Even a link to it from their main page would be helpful.

Now, they do have a "get started" page as well as kits to get you rolling. It doesn't do a good job on explaining what else you need, though. And as someone has mentioned, we're in the second GHB, and there are many "armies" which have not been left to the sands of Khemri or lost to the Green Lady, which have yet to receive a proper Battletome.

To continue the point further, some armies have models from mixed groups, such as Death's tomes, and are very crazily mixed up in theme in the Order group, which makes it difficult to track down without a Battletome. Their sale site is an absolute mess if you are looking at Order with 22 groups of armies when compared to Death's 8 or Destruction's 12 (and most of those are mixed company).

And then you have the old grognards who still have Khemri or Green Lady's forces who still play them, and potentially get another player interested in them, only to find out they are completely 2nd hand now.

I have never seen what GW defines as Open Play being used in AoS, or any wargame, ever. But even if I had the idea of giving rules to play without rules is silly. Narrative, on the other hand, I have seen plenty of. Not nearly as much as Matched Play and YMMV depending on the group but it is a not-insignificant part of play.

Even the narrative games I run or have been a part of are cored around the matched play foundation though.

I've not seen a narrative game that had no points yet.

 Charistoph wrote:
It's definitely something that the "Warhammer Community" site should be addressing. Even a link to it from their main page would be helpful.

Now, they do have a "get started" page as well as kits to get you rolling. It doesn't do a good job on explaining what else you need, though. And as someone has mentioned, we're in the second GHB, and there are many "armies" which have not been left to the sands of Khemri or lost to the Green Lady, which have yet to receive a proper Battletome.

To continue the point further, some armies have models from mixed groups, such as Death's tomes, and are very crazily mixed up in theme in the Order group, which makes it difficult to track down without a Battletome. Their sale site is an absolute mess if you are looking at Order with 22 groups of armies when compared to Death's 8 or Destruction's 12 (and most of those are mixed company).

And then you have the old grognards who still have Khemri or Green Lady's forces who still play them, and potentially get another player interested in them, only to find out they are completely 2nd hand now.

I think it was a mistake to break up the factions so much. But the Beasts Of Chaos book shows how you can get around this. I'm pretty sure Order and Destruction could get something similar.

I've been interested in AoS for a while, but while most of the newly released minis are very nice they don't scratch my particular itch...an Empire style army. I REALLY liked oldhammer Empire and something similar to it might draw me into AoS. Though I guess it's possible no such army will be forthcoming.

I think cleaning up the factions and giving everything a battletome would go a long way toward making the game more accessible to new players and old. If I had any input in GW's business strategy, this would be my first suggestion.

auticus wrote:
I've not seen a narrative game that had no points yet.

Path to Glory?

As for the three ways to play - Open Play has a bunch of random scenarios without a lot of overhead, or cool scenarios that break the game in some way (sky scenarios), where balance is up to the players and the points don't matter. Narrative play has stuff you do between matches (like upgrading units, doing that siege minigame, campaigns) where the game can be intentionally unbalanced and that's okay. And matched play is a (supposedly) balanced match between armies, with the better general being the victor.

I think it is relatively simple to get into AoS, but it is difficult to know how to continue from there. There are three levels of starter set. From there, big rulebook, GHB. If you want to continue with Stormcast or Nighthaunt, their battletomes are available and up to date. But if you don't want Stormcast or Nighthaunt, it gets a little challenging. I think everything that has a Start Collecting has a battletome, but they aren't all up to date.

Technically true - path to glory has no "points" but has a build structure which works like points.

Also I find that a lot of people figure out what choices are worth more points and focus on getting those so that they aren't handicapping themselves.

So in a roundabout way while there are not technically points, there are points.