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Only serious answers please.

I'm guessing a team of 2-3 people over the course of 4-5 days, working a typical 8 hour day.

I'd guess each of the 'legacy' army PDFs was one day's work for one single employee. The 4 pages of rules themselves maybe a whole other days work.

I'd guess that once end times was mostly released they started work on it, maybe even before.

I know that some folks are going to say things like "they scribbled it on a napkin during lunch" just to be spiteful cause they feel wronged by GW, but I'd venture to guess they took their time and worked on this as they brought down the curtain on the old world if not before.

It was planned well in advance, and I think it paid off for them even if only by double tapping their customer base.

I think a single scroll doesn't take that much time. How many models come in a box? Fill it in minimum model per unit. Fill the weapons. Does the model look like it is strong or is the weapon brutal enough? Give it a better to wound. Is it heavily armored - better save. Does it look like it is slow? 4" of movement. Can it dig? Make it look like it can burrow by placing it in reserves. Do all the previous stats make it too weak compared to other models? Make it summonable or slap some re-rolls somewhere. It is just a guess but I also think that there wasn't that much time put in the model rules just because they represent the model and not so much its place in the rule framework as an abstract working piece. IMO, the game doesn't suffer from it, though. It somewhat falls in line with the "toolbox" definition given by some players.

"Here's a big pile of models with rules, some are more alike, some are very different. Have fun with them."

To be honest I think it took them longer than you would think. Those PDFs are far, far more balanced than any armybook they splurted out past 7th edition and their rules are more immersive and give better feel of the units than the old ones did.

Not sure about the core rules, but I assume that reducing all those unnecessary stats from previous editions into this streamlined, better form took some forethought. The core rules are solid in general, only need some more precise wording (like shooting in combat) and a little expansion (magic, cover saves from obstacles on the way). Although I am fairly sure they will release some magic expansion kit like the old magic cards, just available to various Alliances.

I'm a little baffled by your post, though, because on one hand you say that you expect serious answers and on the other you say that it took them about 4-5 days. If you're not trolling you might be uninformed, which is perfectly fine - you don't work at a game development studio, so let me catch the bait and tell you - playtesting takes months. Even GW, which is often accused of not doing playtests must have done at least weeks upon weeks of testing to get the stats, special rules and balance right (and I assure you, the balance is quite nice actually - definetely better than in 8th ed). Developing rules also is a bit more than just "let's give them that" - it, again, takes a lot of testing in various scenarios and it also goes through intense filtration by other people who decide if it's okay or not.

Believe me, making a game, even as simple as AoS is much harder than you'd think and everyone who says "I could come up with better game" probably... should. Go, be the brilliant geniuses, come up with the game, write it down, put it on kickstarter and overthrow GW! I mean, you can do better than them, right?

That's usually my view on such claims.

Id have to say, about 3 months for the whole thing which includes starting to write them, testing it out, proofing it out, then testing it again.

3 Months of half hearted effort really, because it is likely these writers and designers are working on multiple tasks.

Developing the rend mechanic or what avarge stats they want on troops could take them some time. But after they got that out doing the armies probabaly went very fast. The stupid addon rules either took them no time, which would tell a lot about the design team, or took them ages or was added at the very end by someone crazy like Jervis.

I think the most time they spent on warmachine and monsters of the old armies, and trying to fit them in with the new AoS stuff. Depending on the staff size probably a few months.

In total, 1 day of work for each old army. 3-4 hours to think of the rules, 1-2 hours for the layout, rest for checking.

I wouldn't be surprised if these rules have been worked on, in one capacity or another, for years. The lead time on the models and books alone are probably over a year (new art, fiction, and visual design takes time), which suggests they've at least had these rules for that long - I doubt they just made the rules and sat on them for a year, doing absolutely no playtesting or revisions during this time.

If you are asking how long the initial draft took? Probably a few weeks, at the least, but I guarantee you, it looked nothing like it does now. I'm sure it was much longer and much more complicated initially. I wouldn't be surprised if they went through five or six different rulesets before deciding on refining AoS.

I'm guessing about a year. The warscrolls are fairly balanced for what each unit is. Writing a whole game rules and testing it takes longer than most think too.

AoS has been what games workshop wanted to have done for the last 4 to 5 years. There was never going to be a 9th. They only did 8th to fix the mess of 7th which held back AoS.

As for rules and how long it took. Long enough. The butthurt really is getting boring now

 Motograter wrote:
The butthurt really is getting boring now

Then quit reading threads like this one?

the balance is quite nice actually - definetely better than in 8th ed

No and no. That's not even a matter of opinion. There isn't balance in AoS because there is no baseline to balance against, unless you mean to suggest that every warscroll is relatively equal in power.

Believe me, making a game, even as simple as AoS is much harder than you'd think and everyone who says "I could come up with better game" probably... should. Go, be the brilliant geniuses, come up with the game, write it down, put it on kickstarter and overthrow GW! I mean, you can do better than them, right?

That's an oversimplification, and you know it. The content of your post makes it seem like you are just here to bash people who have low opinions of AoS. That may not be your intent, but that's what it comes across as.


In regards to the OP, its hard to tell. I could see them spending months discussing different ideas and stats and such, and I can also see the AoS design just being the first one they came up with. Once the 4-page rules were set the armies could easily be hammered out in a week, but again they may have spent time discussing and modifying. In short: we don't know how many documents preceded the ones we have. So I'd say between 2 weeks and 6 months.

I'm not at all surprised at the snark from some faces that can't seem to escape the AoS bards despite seemingly loathing it.

OP: Probably been working on them since before End Times.

Ashtastic wrote:
I'm not at all surprised at the snark from some faces that can't seem to escape the AoS bards despite seemingly loathing it.

I find this hypocritical; it looks like you are using snark to jab at those who seem snarky to you. I'm counting three people in this thread alone taking shots (directly or implied) at people who dislike AoS or certain features of AoS (which does not automatically mean they loathe every aspect of it). Let's drop that line of discussion before it spirals into yet another pro-AoS vs anti-AoS debate that we have already seen too many of.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Motograter wrote:
The butthurt really is getting boring now

Then quit reading threads like this one?

Actually this thread was not one of butthurt, unless OP only started it to start a flame war because he hates AoS, but I don't think he did.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

the balance is quite nice actually - definetely better than in 8th ed

No and no. That's not even a matter of opinion. There isn't balance in AoS because there is no baseline to balance against, unless you mean to suggest that every warscroll is relatively equal in power.

I'm basing my opinion off the leaked store tournament comp and Azyr comp. Yes, you are right, the base rules of AoS have no force composition so it's hard to tell the balance apart, but if those simple comps suddenly make the game more balanced than 8th ed ever was then I feel free to state that. Even the 2 pages long store tournament "errata" comp with army composition rules based on wounds suddenly made all the armies -very- similar in power level when you field the most optimized forces available in them.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

Believe me, making a game, even as simple as AoS is much harder than you'd think and everyone who says "I could come up with better game" probably... should. Go, be the brilliant geniuses, come up with the game, write it down, put it on kickstarter and overthrow GW! I mean, you can do better than them, right?

That's an oversimplification, and you know it. The content of your post makes it seem like you are just here to bash people who have low opinions of AoS. That may not be your intent, but that's what it comes across as.

No, I was only bashing mindless haters who say stuff I quoted. I've seen a lot of those comments on this forum and, frankly, if someone believes he can do better, why hasn't he? AoS is selling, so what's barring him from making a better game? I have nothing against people who dislike the game - I don't like Bolt Action and it's okay, but I don't like when people just bash it for the sake of bashing and act like their subjective opinion is an objective truth when they rave on how terrible this game is, especially in threads where such comments aren't even called for or even were more inclined towards positive attitudes and yet those people had to crash it because, apparently, if they don't enjoy it, then noone should.

That being said, I think it's been going on for a long time now, although there could've been several totally different game drafts going on in last two years and AoS' rule set turned out to be the best one (to GW). It must've taken at least a couple months of fine-tuning, fiddling with the rules, finding the perfect spot for some rules and overall making (virtually) all the units viable. And the fluff must've been worked on for a long time as things like that don't just pop up overnight - not the artworks, the designs, the storyline, the campaigns. It was all deliberately planned by GW after all.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Let's drop that line of discussion before it spirals into yet another pro-AoS vs anti-AoS debate that we have already seen too many of.

This thread is simply flame-bait and it would be naive to think otherwise.

There will be posters who will realize that this has probably been in the pipeline for a while and wouldn't have just been tossed together over a weekend and on the other side ... well, what we have seen already.

 Klerych wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

the balance is quite nice actually - definetely better than in 8th ed

No and no. That's not even a matter of opinion. There isn't balance in AoS because there is no baseline to balance against, unless you mean to suggest that every warscroll is relatively equal in power.

I'm basing my opinion off the leaked store tournament comp and Azyr comp. Yes, you are right, the base rules of AoS have no force composition so it's hard to tell the balance apart, but if those simple comps suddenly make the game more balanced than 8th ed ever was then I feel free to state that. Even the 2 pages long store tournament "errata" comp with army composition rules based on wounds suddenly made all the armies -very- similar in power level when you field the most optimized forces available in them.

I do agree that certain comps do make AoS more balanced than 8th ever was (by a large margin), but the large number of comps that try and fail to produce a balanced games make it, in my view, unjustified to say that AoS is balanced without a great deal of effort. For example, at my FLGS Azyr comp has been abandoned because of how unbalanced it is. I would go further to say that any comp which has a "most optimized force" or even a handful isn't all that balanced--that's what we had in 8th. Wounds count suffers from this as well; stormvermin at 1 wound per model are better than skavenslaves at 1 wound per model. so why would a skaven player take the latter? I don't think GW designed or intended AoS to have balance or to facilitate people making their own comp systems since there simply isn't an easy way to do it.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

Believe me, making a game, even as simple as AoS is much harder than you'd think and everyone who says "I could come up with better game" probably... should. Go, be the brilliant geniuses, come up with the game, write it down, put it on kickstarter and overthrow GW! I mean, you can do better than them, right?

That's an oversimplification, and you know it. The content of your post makes it seem like you are just here to bash people who have low opinions of AoS. That may not be your intent, but that's what it comes across as.

No, I was only bashing mindless haters who say stuff I quoted. I've seen a lot of those comments on this forum and, frankly, if someone believes he can do better, why hasn't he? AoS is selling, so what's barring him from making a better game? I have nothing against people who dislike the game - I don't like Bolt Action and it's okay, but I don't like when people just bash it for the sake of bashing and act like their subjective opinion is an objective truth when they rave on how terrible this game is, especially in threads where such comments aren't even called for or even were more inclined towards positive attitudes and yet those people had to crash it because, apparently, if they don't enjoy it, then noone should.

Fair enough, but from my perspective I see no one in this thread mindlessly hating AoS, and no one claiming that they could make a better ruleset. I don't feel like people saying development time was in the days are trolling or bashing; given some of the grey areas of rules and a low level of internal consistency (how many different rules for shields do we have?) it's not a stretch to suggest that they didn't do any playtesting, or simply not very much. A design team could conceivably have constructed AoS in 4-5 days, I don't personally think they did but that opinion doesn't really qualify as mindless hate. There ARE threads and posts like that (too many...) but I don't see them here.

[edit]

Ashtastic wrote:
This thread is simply flame-bait and it would be naive to think otherwise.

If you do believe that, then given the response you made it seems like you feel the best response to flame-bait is flaming? I get that you radically disagree with the OP, but there's no need to take a negative tone because of that.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

the balance is quite nice actually - definetely better than in 8th ed

No and no. That's not even a matter of opinion. There isn't balance in AoS because there is no baseline to balance against, unless you mean to suggest that every warscroll is relatively equal in power.

I think that's a very fair point.

What strikes me as actually taking quite a bit of time though is how all the units compare against one another in their design. I'm not talking about balance, but rather making units feel "right" with their stats and abilities. Not to mention they added rules for almost every existing model with all of its options including (as for Warriors of Chaos) their upgrade packs. So units like Warriors of Chaos, Blood Warriors, Putrid Blightkings, and Stormcast Liberators are all almost identical in model stats but then are differentiated through very thematic rules. I haven't had a chance to try every old unit (and a lot of them will likely be replaced/updated as AoS continues to update factions) but from all the ones I've tried and looked at everything just feels "right" to me.

And I personally doubt that took a short amount of time.

Only options I've found missing are goblins/night goblins with hand weapon and shield, warriors with great weapons, and mournfangs with great weapons.
4 out of five bazillions is pretty good.

I think putting together the basic feel for each army took some time. Like goblins being more brave at a distance, and orcs wanting to get up close, beastmen rapidly hoofing it across the table and so on.
After that, you'd need units within the list to be somewhat balanced to each other and the fluff, and then units between lists somewhat balanced as well.

All in all, I think the scrolls took a fair bit of work, more so than people gives them credit for.

6-12 months is a realistic estimate.

My understanding is that it took a few years to get the rules / mechanics down to what they were.

This started as an exercise in reducing complexity for the overall ruleset, and took on a new life when the End Times came around.

But the AoS rules came first. There were a lot of other iterations of the ruleset before we ended up with what we have now.

So units like Warriors of Chaos, Blood Warriors, Putrid Blightkings, and Stormcast Liberators are all almost identical in model stats but then are differentiated through very thematic rules.

That is an intersting insight, wouldn't that make AoS a lot like W40k, where most armies played are some sort of marines with identical stats too and only difference being thematic rules?

 Mymearan wrote:
6-12 months is a realistic estimate.

I think that is far longer than required.

Consider that the rules are a stripped down version of 40K with some WHFB elements mixed in.

Far more work had to be done in deciding what things to reject, rathe than inventing new ways of doing things. There was a minor change to stat lines that necessitated the writing of the war scrolls. This conversion could be done automatically using spreadsheet macros, if GW keep their unit data in a database rather than in paper form.

The special rules and fluff descriptions would take a lot more work, of course.

Not long enough to notice that an army of a single Carrion breaks the sudden death rules.

Cutting something down is usually a lot harder/time consuming than just adding stuff in.

 TheWaspinator wrote:
Not long enough to notice that an army of a single Carrion breaks the sudden death rules.

That arguably doesn't work either RAW or RAI, since endure only applies to units which start on the battlefield and carrion must start above the battlefield which based on its swoop rule is clearly intended as a seperate gamestate.

clearly intended as a seperate gamestate.

Where does it say that in the rules, because in the corrior rule description it says they are flying above the battlefiel and are not off the table.

Yeah, that's a not what the rules say. They are on the table and can move around, they're clearly in play.

 techsoldaten wrote:
My understanding is that it took a few years to get the rules / mechanics down to what they were.

This started as an exercise in reducing complexity for the overall ruleset, and took on a new life when the End Times came around.

But the AoS rules came first. There were a lot of other iterations of the ruleset before we ended up with what we have now.

That's how I could see it having taken a long time; multiple attempts that were discarded before the final iteration. The trick is where do we draw the theoretical line and say stuff on one side is a modification of existing rules, and stuff on the other side is AoS development. Ultimately if they knew what they wanted straight off then AoS would not have taken long, but as development goes that isn't always so clear (for anyone, not bashing GW here).

I think that when a rule or mechanic is spamed through different factions, like let say rend or how monster or machines are suppose to work, we got what the design team wanted at least most of the time, I doubt they checked how hard it is for a dward model to actualy hit something on a flying stand without a spear. Everything else was , imo, added later and never realy tested. So when SD mechanics work like GW wanted it to, and I will ignore how good or bad they are actualy, I doubt they designed them while thinking that one faction has one unit that can be on the table but totaly untargetable.