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If I go ahead and get the Orc Start Collecting set, would I have some fun scenarios with some of my other small armies (dwarfs, tomb kings)? Would it be more fun to use the skirmish rules from 8th - or use the AoS rules? ...or Kings of War? What rule set is good/best for an escalation campaign?
Thanks for your thoughts?
-Bill

AoS plays very well with small armies. The start collecting sets can certainly make for good games, and then I'd suggest you might want to escalate one unit box at a time (or use a www.scrollbuilder.com system to determine escalation).

This is a timely post as there have been a bunch of good YouTube videos on the subject of army size in AoS recently:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OAf9c9p2cc&index=5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20NPJDqRMz4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8MGfiwWRF4

For escalation campaigns Age of Sigmar is the best from the systems you mentioned. Kings of War is meant for massive battles as blocks of infantry do not look well if you only have 2 units only due to the low point cost of the initial phases of the campaign. Plus you'll need more models (and more money)...

Depends on your definition of smaller armies.

Armies in my path to glory chaos campaign have 10-50 models. That seems to work great for us.

For pickup games, we tend to use that size range as well.

 cpt_safety wrote:
If I go ahead and get the Orc Start Collecting set, would I have some fun scenarios with some of my other small armies (dwarfs, tomb kings)? Would it be more fun to use the skirmish rules from 8th - or use the AoS rules? ...or Kings of War? What rule set is good/best for an escalation campaign?
Thanks for your thoughts?
-Bill

AoS is ONLY for small games.

I played skaven orcs and vampires so horde armies for me are 200-400 models.

AoS is for mostly 10+ all basic troops are 1 wound and all form of fairness could never say a rat can 1v1 a warrior of chaos evenly.

It's available for games of any size. All depends on the scenario that you and your opponent want to play. Add monsters or a war machine to the respective forces if desired.

 Lou_Cypher wrote:
It's available for games of any size. All depends on the scenario that you and your opponent want to play. Add monsters or a war machine to the respective forces if desired.

Agreed. My fav games were actually the mass battle ones. It went the opposite of long and tedious and mass death helps with the amounts of models. Like playing 40K Apoc
Also, serious now, if you play on a smooth surface like a FAT MAT instead of felt or a table which hinders moving models, it's a lot smoother. (pun)

If you go for small games I suggest you to put some effort on the table and terrain, otherwise each game will look the same pretty quickly. But build walls and say it's in a cave or a dungeon and it becomes very interesting.

Thanks, all. I've been concentrating on small armies and lots of terrain. That way, I can have a variety of armies - as opposed to building and building one army (i.e. 40k). Now I just have to figure out the fluff... I love The Old World fluff and I don't really get the AoS fluff yet - maybe I'll just keep my scenarios in The Old World for a while. Any guidance on what AoS fluff books are good - and sort of an overview of the new fluff...? Thanks - Bill

The normal AOS book has a massive amount of fluff in, albeit just introducing how the new world works. It then goes into detail about a few of the realms and what happens there, and you then play through battleplans based on the fluff. It's quite a good starting book, with rules for units, and rules for playing in the different realms.

The next two books, Quest for Ghal Maraz and Balance of Power follow this theme a bit more loosely, more focussing on particular story arcs than being a "general" book on lots of different goings on. This makes QFGM and BoP better suited for more story driven campaigns, whereas the original AOS book is good for general games and battleplans.

Also, there are at least 6 or 7 fiction books that parallel the three fluff/scenario books (Gates of Azyr, etc.).

The Orc box looks like it would be very fun for small games, you get a nice variety of units to get yourself going right out the box.

As for AoS in small games, it is still very fun, I have done small games using almost any kind of unit you can think of and had a fun time.