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So I just picked up GHB2019. This stuff is amazing IMHO. I love that they added something more than "bring whatever you want" to Open Play. The army generators seem pretty fair, no more crazy balanced than points could be, and the terrain layout generator helps a lot when you can't agree on terrain or are too tempted to make them meaningless. The hidden agendas are a nice touch and in the core book there's the Open War chart.

If you ask me, this just opened up a lot of potential for Open Play when you don't want to always use matched play. Sure, it's not quite as balanced but you can abuse the gak out of Matched Play too. Set up a game with someone using say 10 Force Points or something like that (decided beforehand, not rolled before you play), use the open war generator, use the terrain generator, add in hidden agendas and you have a way to have games without the Matched Play mindset that don't require a ton of negotiation beforehand, the major drawback to non-Matched.

Has anyone had a chance to try these out? Just from reading, they seem like probably the best thing in the new book if you aren't 100% Matched Play/Pitched Battle.

Tried them, they made people unhappy. I came up with an alternate, but deviating from points is a tough sell to a lot of people.

 auticus wrote:
Tried them, they made people unhappy. I came up with an alternate, but deviating from points is a tough sell to a lot of people.

Why am I not surprised knowing your group What was the issue, that it doesn't point out individual units? Looking at what was available it seemed like the guidelines were pretty well done to avoid crazy outliers. Like "Horde" is specifically guys with barely any save, etc. nothing jumped out as being stupidly abusable unless you rolled really well (and I guess you could pick to a limit instead of rolling)

I played with the army gen and it was fun. I can see it being an issue with players that don't have extensive armies (here's my 2k netlist) and in a few cases you might want to tweek/redraw/reroll but overall experience was good.

Haven't been able to try the terrain generator or Regiments of Renown yet but it's something im going to bring up next time I play.

I've been pushing for more narritive/open play games in both AoS and 40k and have been pretty successfull, but then my community isn't hardcore into the competitve scene.

I especially like the terrain because it's too common to not know how to set it up. The map showing what type of pieces go where I really find helpful.

I think it's great when you just want to throw some models on the board and see what happens. I feel like it is targeted at players who have been doing warhammer a while, have extensive collections, and for whom matched play has gotten stale. IMO it is a good resource to have in the game and I am glad GW put it in.

Ironically the army generator is not great for mortal Nurgle since Blightkings now have 4 wounds so fall under "Guard" (up to 3) instead of Elite (up to 5) and Pusgoyle Blightlords have to fall under Linebreaker (1).

You can take Slave to Darkness with Nurgle mark if you have trouble to fit the categories.

But yes, it looks intended for people having a fair choice to pick their army. It works as well with a smaller collection, but since you'll likely to have less choice, you will end up having to pay more so that you can fit the categories drawed.

Works best when you have a room with plenty of armies ready to be picked at hand - maybe a club.

Wayniac wrote:

 auticus wrote:
Tried them, they made people unhappy. I came up with an alternate, but deviating from points is a tough sell to a lot of people.

Why am I not surprised knowing your group What was the issue, that it doesn't point out individual units? Looking at what was available it seemed like the guidelines were pretty well done to avoid crazy outliers. Like "Horde" is specifically guys with barely any save, etc. nothing jumped out as being stupidly abusable unless you rolled really well (and I guess you could pick to a limit instead of rolling)

The games that were played ended up very one-sided due to force compositions. And while points produce the same one-sided games, players have agency in their list choices, whereas the open generator put the agency into RNG, hence the unhappy feelings.

Also a lot of our players buy just what they need for 2000 pts so dont have deep collections. Guys like me with 20 year old collections they feel have a steepadvantage.