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In my view I see that Age of Sigmar has pretty much been a success. Part of the reason for this is the departure from formations and a move to a more skirmish like game. The advantage of this approach is the need to have fewer models and an acceleration of gameplay. I was once very active in the WAB tournament scene in HMGS East. But with the demise of the rule set by GW, I have not been active for a number of years. Do you think revising WAB along the lines of AoS is possible and would it be worthwhile?

No. The point of WAB is that it recreates ancient battles, and ancient battle mean blocks of troops, formations and manoeuvring. Skirmishers played a part, but re-configuring WAB into a skirmish game is a horrible idea!

But then, if you ask me, re-configuring WFB into a skirmish battle was a horrible idea.

The success of Saga and the recent Osprey titles would suggest otherwise. I believe that miniature wargaming as we knew it has been changed due to a lot of factors including competition from alternative platforms such as board war games, electronic games and a desire to get into game systems quickly and with a minimal investment.

I think you could make an Ancients skirmish game, but it wouldn't be WAB. It would be Age of Ancient Battles.

For some ideas on how this could work take a look at Lion Rampant, Broken Legions, and Of Gods and Mortals.

I guess AoS could be called a success, as long as what you wanted was a fantasy rule-lite skirmish game and not a fantasy mass battle game. You could try to apply it to historical games, but there's plenty of decent rulesets out there that do ancient/medieval skirmishing well enough already. Trying to do an AoS version would just be a drop in the bucket with the added GW/AoS stink that would probably put off plenty of gamers.

It's also probably a reflection that 28mm isn't a great choice when it comes to mass combat games, although plastic has helped patch that over. Better to use 15mm to 6mm troops instead, and leave the larger scales to skirmishing.

Carthagenj wrote:
The success of Saga and the recent Osprey titles would suggest otherwise. I believe that miniature wargaming as we knew it has been changed due to a lot of factors including competition from alternative platforms such as board war games, electronic games and a desire to get into game systems quickly and with a minimal investment.

From what I've seen of Saga they focus on viking era combat - roughly half a millennia after the fall of the Roman empire, so quite a narrow period of history compared to the scope of WAB.

I guess the scale of WAB is closer to skirmishing than actually fighting with large ancient armies, but it still better represents blocks of troops better than AoS style skirmishing would.

Carthagenj wrote:
The success of Saga and the recent Osprey titles would suggest otherwise. I believe that miniature wargaming as we knew it has been changed due to a lot of factors including competition from alternative platforms such as board war games, electronic games and a desire to get into game systems quickly and with a minimal investment.

There is a difference between historical based skirmish games like SAGA and historical based full battle line games with ranks and flanks. If you want historical skirmishes, then use a ruleset for it! WAB can remain for what it was designed to do.

I suspect Hail Caesar might transfer into a skirmish game nicely, using the command system they have.

Please not another age of shitmar.

WAB is its own thing and style, it doesn't need to radically change as it is currently.

I agree as others have said, it might work for a smaller scale skirmish - perhaps 'unit' level up to something like SAGA (50-60 miniatures), but I don't think for the scale that WAB covers.

I haven't played Age of Sigmar, but from what I have seen a lot of the games seem to culminate into a big pile-on/rumble in the centre of the board. This might be accurate for certain settings in history, after a certain point in the battle when battle lines have devolved into a swirling mess (although usually soldiers would still fight alongside the men next to them, perhaps?), but you then miss out on the movement of units, flank charges, collapse of moral etc. that WAB and other games of its ilk are able to represent.

There are actually quite a few games out there that don't use rank and file for smaller scale battles, focusing instead on skirmishing units, but I'm not sure how they compare to the rule mechanics of Sigmar.

 Pacific wrote:
I agree as others have said, it might work for a smaller scale skirmish - perhaps 'unit' level up to something like SAGA (50-60 miniatures), but I don't think for the scale that WAB covers.

I haven't played Age of Sigmar, but from what I have seen a lot of the games seem to culminate into a big pile-on/rumble in the centre of the board. This might be accurate for certain settings in history, after a certain point in the battle when battle lines have devolved into a swirling mess (although usually soldiers would still fight alongside the men next to them, perhaps?), but you then miss out on the movement of units, flank charges, collapse of moral etc. that WAB and other games of its ilk are able to represent.

There are actually quite a few games out there that don't use rank and file for smaller scale battles, focusing instead on skirmishing units, but I'm not sure how they compare to the rule mechanics of Sigmar.

It wouldn't really mesh with the scene of WAB. Like, at all. Still gotta say that in my experience I've never had things devolve into a big pile-on. I was close once but I still had elements of my army dunking it across the board and backfiield. But there's one mission that "kind of" forces you to do that, since there's three point to control in the middle of the map.

 Easy E wrote:
I think you could make an Ancients skirmish game, but it wouldn't be WAB. It would be Age of Ancient Battles.

For some ideas on how this could work take a look at Lion Rampant, Broken Legions, and Of Gods and Mortals.

Agree.

A historical version of AoS would be unrelated to Warhammer Ancient Battles though. I imagine it would be fun and would probably run similar to Saga.