Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So as of late I've given warmachine a little love and watched some battle reports and I suddenly realized that it roughly is the same as AOS in some ways. The basics are cast spells in a hero phase, move your guys, get into combat with the enemy. (Yes I realize this is the basis of most war games) but when I went through and watched some reviews of AOS all anyone every talked about was how simple AOS had become. Yet this is basically the same concept between the two games but AOS gets so much hate? Why is that? Fill me in if I'm missing anything about warmachine that could change my opinion because I'm a little jaded against it.

I've been in lurking mode for the past month, but I'll come out of retirement for a chance to bad mouth Warmachine...

Nah, I'm not going to do that. It's basically just a case of confirmation bias. When you like something, you find reasons to like it more. When you dislike something, you find reasons to dislike it more. Warmachine is a fairly stable place right now where the fanbase is relatively content with the game, whereas Age of Sigmar represented a rather significant upheaval for Warhammer Fantasy fans, so it's easy to see where the bias comes from and why it plays out how it does.

I also think Warmachine has, somehow, become the standard Anti-AoS, with its highly competitive play and balanced point system (I resisted the urge to put that in sarcasti-quotes), it represents what one segment of the population wants out of miniature games, and I think AoS's loss of those elements maybe made them hug Warmachine just a little bit tighter as a result. In my case, Warmachine, being the Anti-AoS, came to represent everything I hated about competition and balance, and I turned against it pretty strongly.

I was reading an article that said that if you ever wanted to know what group another group hates the most, don't look towards the groups that are most different - look towards the groups that are the most similar. Perhaps it is that miniature gamers of one type just hate miniature gamers of another type, despite both being quite similar in most, but not all, aspects.

Warmachine and AoS have many similalrities, but they have also got some pretty important differences.

Points balance is obvious, but Warmachine also has some pretty "gamey" rules designed to make playing the game easy, which ignore the models and abstract them. AoS went the other way, making the models important and doing away with abstraction (measuring ranges from the models themselves rather than bases for example).

AoS is a bit like a mix of Kings of War and Warmachine without points and with some odd choices in rules design, to me.

Abstracting the models position to a 'volume of space' is a pretty fair way of defining issues like line of sight, and warmachine is far from the only game that does it this way. andTo be fair, aos has some pretty 'gamey' features too... It's homeopathic warmachine in a lot of ways since it tries to be combo and synergy based as well. Gamey rules abound though,

Orbiting enemy models.
The inverse-t formation.
Shooting in melee.
Gamey zone of controls for models.
Always,wounding on a set value, regardless of whether it's a zombie or a dragon...

Folks aren't really having a go at Aos for being 'simple'. It's more nuking the old world, and things like utterly changing the game in terms of direction and alIenating and deliberately discarding the old fanbase. Lack of points isn't necessarily that big of a deal, and it gets far more hate than it deserves, for there are legitimate grounds for complaints in how Aos is quite unfriendly towards things like pick up games and tournaments, both of which have good value to the community,

For the record, I think Warmachine is a very good ruleset - I've got three armies for the system. The main reason I don't play any more is because my trollbloods fell apart in transit despite extensive pinning and greenstuffing, and their paintjobs got chipped the crap despite varnish.

I just don't have the heart to reassemble them and repaint them, so I've barely opened the case for like 4 years.

But the rules for the game are great, and I full agree that abstracting those elements makes sense. I wish AoS did that!

Warmachine is designed to be a full-on competitive fight.
No Quarter, as it were.
Both players are aware their opponent is going to try and kerbstomp them so hard even their grandkids will need dentures, so that's the atmosphere it's going for. If any miniature game could be made into a televised sport, it'd probably be Warmachine.
It does have its' faults - due to the combative nature and drive for efficiency/synergy netlisting is A Thing, and the annual Steamroller pack (Official PP tournament) scenarios - whilst challenging - are pretty much just multiple variations on Unreal Tournament game modes.
But if you're more into the 'war' aspect of wargaming, it's probably a very good shout.

AoS is completely the opposite. It's a game where - on the published info at least - you can infer that GW aren't interested in competition, and instead want people to focus on enjoying the game as an experience or a story.
GW performed a total compositionectomy, so if 'official competitive' is your thing, it won't even know where to start looking for the itch. The rules aren't highly detailed or complex - you could probably memorise them inside 10 minutes - so again, if you like complexity it might not be for you.
AoS really & truly shines if you are playing a scenario/objective-based game without comp against a like-minded opponent. If your main gaming opportunity is PUGs against strangers.. unlikely to work without a few games first.

The main cause of the AoS hate is two-fold. Maybe 3. It was just two to begin with though.

1) GW replaced Warhammer Fantasy Battle with a game that was about as different as you could get and still be called a wargame, that got rid of a number of sacred cows (rank & file, no shooting in combat, army lists, etc.) when all people wanted was a 9th edition WFB that was... better? (Opinion appears quite divided on what that would have meant).
2) Alongside blowing up the game, GW also blew up the setting. Literally. The newer setting is - on current evidence - not so gritty or focussed on the little guy and is quite high magic. For people who grew up with it, that's a big change.
3) The minis for AoS definitely have a different aesthetic to WFB, and the prices are generally higher per model for the brand new AoS stuff than the legacy repacks.

Warmachine and AoS might appear superficially similar, but when you look a little deeper they are VERY different games.

For one thing with a well balanced point system and tourney support Warmachine can be played as a VERY competitive game while the entire design philosophy behind AoS is to roll dice and laugh about it.

I think you're a little off suggesting that Warmachine is about 'casting spells in a hero phase, moving your guys, get into combat with the enemy'. For one it doesn't actually use 'phases' like GW games, you pick a model, do everything with that model, then move onto the next. That makes unit activation critically important at times so you can do things like debuff an enemy, clear a charge lane, and then attack your enemy's caster in the right order.

There is much less emphasis on simply killing your opponent's troops and a lot more on controlling the board.

Why AoS gets so much hate is easy, as people have said they killed WHFB in order to create it. I know I'm still jaded about that. Moving beyond that though, I still have little or no interest in it (wouldn't say hate) because it is not easily adaptable to pick up games with strangers. With Warmachine I can ask my opponent '35 or 50 points?' and we can start setting up, AoS requires you to discuss a fair match up when two people can have totally different ideas about how strong their units are. In the club environment that's prevalent in the UK this probably isn't a big deal. In the US and here in Australia most games seem to be pick up games at FLGSs.

While I greatly dislike both of them, I certainly hate AoS more, but the similarity between the 2 I just dont see, there is no "hero" phase in warmachine, the warcaster acts when he acts, not a set phase for just him, the synergies in the game are IMO much better thought out and the interactions between rules, units, models, etc appear to be much better conceived, warmachine also seems to have a much better ruleset in terms of answering questions about how the game even plays. While I firmly believe that warmachine is the far superior game, I wouldnt touch it with a ten foot pole wearing rubber gloves. I will play AoS with my son and his friends. AoS is not more "story" or "scenario" driven than warmachine. When you take base set and compare base set, the value is also weighted in warmachines favor. While I have a very low opinion of the fluff of warmachine, it is coherent, semi believable, and just as prone to story oriented games as AoS and in many ways is superior even in that. The old Mark 1 set even had campaign play firmly in the books. PP is also much better at supporting communities of gamers and events *not just tournements* than GW.

Well not everything I typed was meant to be literal, but reguardless I appreciate the enlightenment. I'm still learning a lot about both games so any bits of information along the way I can pick up is appreciated.

I'd say the biggest difference in the two are the communities and the fans of either game and what they want out of a game.

I played warmachine back in the day, still own my cryx, but one thing that pushed me out was that the warmachine community ... at least where I am ... was never interested in campaigns or anything that was not related to a tournament or tournament-league.

My warhammer community was also a lot like that until 8th came out.

If the community supported more non tournament events for Warmachine and focused more on narrative or kingdom building, I may give it another look but until then for me thats kind of pointless where I am because the player base is not interested in those type of games at all.

 auticus wrote:
I'd say the biggest difference in the two are the communities and the fans of either game and what they want out of a game.

I played warmachine back in the day, still own my cryx, but one thing that pushed me out was that the warmachine community ... at least where I am ... was never interested in campaigns or anything that was not related to a tournament or tournament-league.

My warhammer community was also a lot like that until 8th came out.

If the community supported more non tournament events for Warmachine and focused more on narrative or kingdom building, I may give it another look but until then for me thats kind of pointless where I am because the player base is not interested in those type of games at all.

This was where I was at with Warmachine when I quit. I wanted to play at smaller point sizes for a variety of reasons. I was a returning player after a decade and wasn't familiar with the game, I had fewer models to choose from, liked games that could be played in an hour (especially since victory in Warmachine is often decided before you move your first unit), and so on - but I ended up playing the same two guys over and over again because the majority of the group wouldn't play anything but 50 pt Steamroller tournament games. Variety is the spice of life, and Warmachine is decidedly not spicy.

Ouch, do you really want to make a topic with "Warmachine vs Age of Sigmar" as a title?

To me, comparing these two games is like comparing apples to pears. Sure, they're both fruits and grow on trees, but they're not really the same things.

Most of the "hate" with AoS mainly comes from the players feeling betrayed by the sudden killing of WFB and replacement of rules/background/miniatures that felt too different to what they have known. If Privateer Press did a new game called Era of Toruk that totally replaced Warmachine with rules completely different and seeing the destruction of Cygnar and Khador as factions but seeing new ones like Toruk's Minions and Privateer Rebel Alliance gathering the survivors trying to fight the new Undead Dominion, with total disappearance of well known characters because they're finally dead*....I believe there would be quite a fair number of people not being happy about this at all. And some who will be very glad to have something different and to their taste.

*Please note that's a total make up. Privateer Press didn't do that, to my knowledge. For now.

 Sarouan wrote:
Ouch, do you really want to make a topic with "Warmachine vs Age of Sigmar" as a title?

To me, comparing these two games is like comparing apples to pears. Sure, they're both fruits and grow on trees, but they're not really the same things.

Most of the "hate" with AoS mainly comes from the players feeling betrayed by the sudden killing of WFB and replacement of rules/background/miniatures that felt too different to what they have known.

Personally, that is just part of the reasons, and it's incomplete.

The new background is absolutely not at the level of the old one. People could argue that this is because AoS is new, but nobody ordered them to destroy the old world. I find the new setting bland, uninspiring, and victim of the same wow-ish clumsiness the new models suffer.

The models, I just find them horrible (with few exceptions), and I hate the scale creep. And these new masterpieces will lead to GW discontinue the minis of old. With other bland background changes. Mind it, I found horrible EoT too, especially the whole Malekith thing. The most heavy handed ret-con from GW, so far.

Finally, the 4 page rules of GW are just insulting, and there is where the comparison with Privateer just becomes embarrassing.

I cannot speak for other players but I have a laundry list for the reasons I think AoS is terrible, and this led me to just look into ebay for old minis if I need them, because I can't see myself give money to GW (for other games) anymore. Well, since the good stuff is often discontinued or is going to, this is just natural i suppose.

If Privateer Press did a new game called Era of Toruk that totally replaced Warmachine with rules completely different and seeing the destruction of Cygnar and Khador as factions but seeing new ones like Toruk's Minions and Privateer Rebel Alliance gathering the survivors trying to fight the new Undead Dominion, with total disappearance of well known characters because they're finally dead*....I believe there would be quite a fair number of people not being happy about this at all. And some who will be very glad to have something different and to their taste.

*Please note that's a total make up. Privateer Press didn't do that, to my knowledge. For now.

I find that Privateer is too eager into go on with the story, but I suppose this is what fans want. And this is something I never understood. I want a setting, when I want a story I go to read a book or watch a movie.

Kaiyanwang wrote:
Malekith thing. The most heavy handed ret-con from GW, so far.

Finally, the 4 page rules of GW are just insulting, and there is where the comparison with Privateer just becomes embarrassing.

Just changing Malekith's name without a big change would have been weird.
As for the rules being 'insulting' - mind if I ask why?

There are a lot of pepole that use wargaming to tell stories or as a vehicle for stories.

All I know is I would love to play AoS on some of the amazing Warmachine tables I have seen. Warmachine tables are great inspiration for AoS and I love browsing them on Google/Pinterest etc.

Warmachine sadly doesn't appeal to me miniatures wise as it all has this Final Fantasy aesthetic I am not a fan of.

In the end, we always come down to the same thing; it's mainly because AoS is coming AFTER Warhammer Fantasy Battle that it got so much "hate".

If WFB didn't exist and AoS was actually the first to come with exactly the same miniatures, I'm pretty sure the reactions wouldn't be the same. Of course, this game is not to the taste of everyone (and that's perfectly normal), but most of the hate come BECAUSE AoS technically replaced WFB in such a way that the "old guard" didn't accept it.

Which is the reason asking why AoS brings so much hate in comparison to Warmachine is a bit biased; of course it would, since Warmachine/Horde didn't get replaced by something that feel too different and totally not what a significant part of your oldest and most loyal fans would ever want.

Players who sticked with WFB all these years wanted to have a game that would still be WFB. Not AoS. Of course they would get angry like hell. That's a natural reaction when you feel betrayed (term may sound a bit too much, but that's exactly how some felt at that time - to the last day, most WFB players were sure GW would never do a thing like blowing up their favorite universe and litterally destroy the core rules they all loved - they thought they would have WFB 9th Edition, and AoS was not it - and never was intended to be).

That's where all the "hate" is coming from, mainly. IMHO, like always.

RoperPG wrote:

Kaiyanwang wrote:
Malekith thing. The most heavy handed ret-con from GW, so far.

Finally, the 4 page rules of GW are just insulting, and there is where the comparison with Privateer just becomes embarrassing.

Just changing Malekith's name without a big change would have been weird.
As for the rules being 'insulting' - mind if I ask why?

But with the whole "he was king all along" they just s**t on all the High Elf /Dark Elf backstory of all these years. They perhaps thought this is was a brilliant coup de théâtre, but it was just lame and out of character. And one must thank the attention given I suppose, other characters just disappeared.

And for the AoS "rules" being insulting, well. GW creates system, GW does not balance system (and makes it high entry cost), system dies. GW scraps systems and instead of, you know, pay people to develop a functioning one, tells players that THEY have to do GW's job, so they can be busy selling players their overpriced miniatures.
GW sold us this "freedom" as something new, when it was something we were able to do since day one. I remember dueling with characters with my firends when we had not time for a full game. But when we wanted a fast 1k points, there was a (not fully functional) framework.
Really, this did not come through? Is marketing so strong?
Other companies spend time and pay people and listen to feedback to create a framework, and now I should be "grateful" to GW because they removed the point system. People keep telling me that such point system was faulty (see other games? 40k is unbalanced AH CHECKMATE)... when other companies demonstrate that it can be functional if effort is put in it.

And I should not feel insulted? Oh my.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sarouan wrote:
In the end, we always come down to the same thing; it's mainly because AoS is coming AFTER Warhammer Fantasy Battle that it got so much "hate".

If WFB didn't exist and AoS was actually the first to come with exactly the same miniatures, I'm pretty sure the reactions wouldn't be the same. Of course, this game is not to the taste of everyone (and that's perfectly normal), but most of the hate come BECAUSE AoS technically replaced WFB in such a way that the "old guard" didn't accept it.

Which is the reason asking why AoS brings so much hate in comparison to Warmachine is a bit biased; of course it would, since Warmachine/Horde didn't get replaced by something that feel too different and totally not what a significant part of your oldest and most loyal fans would ever want.

Players who sticked with WFB all these years wanted to have a game that would still be WFB. Not AoS. Of course they would get angry like hell. That's a natural reaction when you feel betrayed (term may sound a bit too much, but that's exactly how some felt at that time - to the last day, most WFB players were sure GW would never do a thing like blowing up their favorite universe and litterally destroy the core rules they all loved - they thought they would have WFB 9th Edition, and AoS was not it - and never was intended to be).

That's where all the "hate" is coming from, mainly. IMHO, like always.

In part, I would argue the opposite. AoS came after Warhammer - the game that made GW famous and popular. If such sorry mess was made by an obscure company, it would have been laughed and would have disappeared soon. But since many people spent good money for years on GW minis, one of these two things happen:
A) Violent reaction: THIS GAME SUCKS F*** YOU GW
B) Denial. "No actually the game is good I can keep playing with my models GW did not treat me once again with utter contept SHUT UP THE GAME IS WHAT I ALWAYS DREAMED

Is quite hilarious to observe, actually. But something so dull is destined to die off soon, unless something radical happens.

Kaiyanwang wrote:

A) Violent reaction: THIS GAME SUCKS F*** YOU GW
B) Denial. "No actually the game is good I can keep playing with my models GW did not treat me once again with utter contept SHUT UP THE GAME IS WHAT I ALWAYS DREAMED

There's more options than that, but the fact you think these are the only two options says more about you than it does about the game.

C) I spent a lot of money on these models, painted these models and want to still use these models, but Kings of War and all of the alternatives suck to me, and I kind of feel Age of Sigmar is a bit fun so I will play it.

D) I am burnt out on the same old same old rank and flank chess matches over the past thirty years and feel Age of Sigmar is a bit of fun, so I will play it.

E) I'm a big fan of over the top WWF Clash of the Titans fantasy and I find that Age of Sigmar fits that, so I will play it.

F) I'm kind of burnt out on competitive styled tournament chess matches and the guys that play Age of Sigmar seem more relaxed here, so I will play it.

G) I'm a big fan of how the Age of Sigmar models look, and am interested in the game system behind it, so I will play it.

H) No one here will play Kings of War or any of the alternate games, and I really want to spend time with my friends playing something, so I will play Age of Sigmar, which is what they are playing.

I) I'm really not looking at having to memorize another complicated ruleset and Age of Sigmar's light rules appeal to me. Therefore I will play Age of Sigmar.

Those are all examples of what I've heard from others who primarily play Age of Sigmar today.

There certainly is a place in the spectrum of wargames for a simple, lightweight fantasy ruleset that is easy to pick up and play. AoS fits the bill as long as you don't worry about the special rules. That's the area where the game runs the risk of becoming a Sargasso Sea of overlapping special modifiers and bonuses.

GW will continue to release new kits and books with more and more new special rules in them. This will make the situation ever more complicated, and we've already seen the SDK people abandon their comp system because of this factor.

However I think that's also the part of the game that appeals to people who like that sort of thing (a truism, I know...). I call it the Pokemon "Gotta Catch 'Em All" concept. It doesn't appeal particularly to me, but I understand how it does appeal to others. You buy a new kit, and you get an awesome new Battalion Formation.

If you're having fun with the game, fair play to you!

RoperPG wrote:

Kaiyanwang wrote:

A) Violent reaction: THIS GAME SUCKS F*** YOU GW
B) Denial. "No actually the game is good I can keep playing with my models GW did not treat me once again with utter contept SHUT UP THE GAME IS WHAT I ALWAYS DREAMED

There's more options than that, but the fact you think these are the only two options says more about you than it does about the game.

Please specify. What does it say about me?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 auticus wrote:
C) I spent a lot of money on these models, painted these models and want to still use these models, but Kings of War and all of the alternatives suck to me, and I kind of feel Age of Sigmar is a bit fun so I will play it.

"GW abused my trust once again, time to reward them again"

D) I am burnt out on the same old same old rank and flank chess matches over the past thirty years and feel Age of Sigmar is a bit of fun, so I will play it.

I find amusing that the need of such skirmish system appeared after AoS came. Before, we just needed WH fixed.

E) I'm a big fan of over the top WWF Clash of the Titans fantasy and I find that Age of Sigmar fits that, so I will play it.

Fair enough I guess

F) I'm kind of burnt out on competitive styled tournament chess matches and the guys that play Age of Sigmar seem more relaxed here, so I will play it.

I am sorry this is not relevant. You can have relaxed games with WH too. We even used local anti-spam tournament rules to have a more balanced games without going into detail of what is good or bad for balance. But if we wanted to play by the ruleset 100%, we had a ruleset.

G) I'm a big fan of how the Age of Sigmar models look, and am interested in the game system behind it, so I will play it.

People are fan of tiptoeing Fyreslayers?

H) No one here will play Kings of War or any of the alternate games, and I really want to spend time with my friends playing something, so I will play Age of Sigmar, which is what they are playing.

This is sad but true

I) I'm really not looking at having to memorize another complicated ruleset and Age of Sigmar's light rules appeal to me. Therefore I will play Age of Sigmar.

Not sure about this. AoS suffers from non-rules in the general ruleset, and many exceptions for each warscroll. See shields as often discussed.

Yeah some people are a fan of the Fyreslayers. It's almost like people are capable of independent different opinions to yours! Madness I know. Plus, the same people that just wanted WH fixed aren't the same people who would be saying they wanted a skirmish system, again the whole different opinions thing. You clearly aren't a fan, but some people genuinely are, hence why your two options thing is nonsense.

Judging from the AoS projects thread Fyreslayers seem to be popular indeed. I really liked building and painting my box of Vulkites too.

I'm not sure what more can be said on Warmachine vs AoS though - it'd be interesting to hear from a user who likes and plays both actively.

I think a big part (NOT the only) is that AoS caters to an entirely different player type than WFB (i.e. psychographic profile: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iemNBE97tl4), this means that the fanbase got something that was entirely unlike what the wanted from a wargame.

Aye, that and the fact they killed WHFB would account for 90% of the hate imo.

Kaiyanwang wrote:

RoperPG wrote:

Kaiyanwang wrote:

A) Violent reaction: THIS GAME SUCKS F*** YOU GW
B) Denial. "No actually the game is good I can keep playing with my models GW did not treat me once again with utter contept SHUT UP THE GAME IS WHAT I ALWAYS DREAMED

There's more options than that, but the fact you think these are the only two options says more about you than it does about the game.

Please specify. What does it say about me?

As you're a fan of broad strokes, here goes;

You think nuance is a wood elf special character.

You're so sure of your mental superiority that anyone who disagrees obviously is experiencing some sort of hobby- related Stockholm Syndrome.

That without complicated rules (to feel clever about) and an official points system (so you can convince yourself that your list wasn't broken, you're just a better player) you can't actually garner any enjoyment from the hobby any more because you're back to being an insecure beta with no outlet to demonstrate your prowess at being an alpha nerd. Because if winning isn't the point, then why bother, right?

Hey, isn't painting people with broad strokes fun?

You do not like AoS. I'd go as far as to say you don't like GW either.
There are others who feel the same way as you.
But there are many more either at the opposite end of the spectrum or somewhere in between. Seeing the world as only black or white isn't a good idea.

Because when someone dumb walks in the room your like ok he is stupid. But then when whfb walks in the room and then someone smacks it in the head with a brick from the average IQ of an adult to the IQ of a 3 year old then you see how dumb it got.

Pretty sure the people that don't like AoS and GW far outnumber the fans these days.

Go to any other games forum and mention either you'll see how little people think of the company and its products.

AoS wouldn't even have been a blip if it were made by another company it's only because GW is on the box anyone paid it any attention.

GW is an example of how not to run a games company they are a laughing stock.

hobojebus wrote:
Pretty sure the people that don't like AoS and GW far outnumber the fans these days.

Go to any other games forum and mention either you'll see how little people think of the company and its products.

AoS wouldn't even have been a blip if it were made by another company it's only because GW is on the box anyone paid it any attention.

GW is an example of how not to run a games company they are a laughing stock.

Ya but if I learnt anything in my 28 years of life it is that the internet is full of tough guys weirdos and complainers about nothing. It is like the worse of the worse who never leave the house internet instead. So basing anything on the net is like finding the ones who got only things to complain about.