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Having recently got back into GW gaming (entirely focused on 40k atm), I was interested to look at AoS but mortified at quite how much things had changed.

Now, don't get me wrong, there's some pretty cool stuff in AoS. The Wood Elves (sorry, Sylvaneth) are rocking it! Alliance 'Death' is also pretty awesome (especially the Nighthaunt stuff), although I miss the Tomb Kings (who were one of my favourite armies - those Ushabti were something special).

The Idoneth Deepkin look spectacular, but my heart aches at the disappearance of Ulthuan and the High Elves that were. I see some units/models have survived, but the glory of the Phoenix King and his awesome realm is gone.

Also, I greatly miss Bretonnia.

What do you miss? And how have you adjusted to AoS?

- Rank and file combat

- Flanking

- actual movement rules

- Unit and item names that don't make me wince

- Actual geography in the setting instead of this wishy-washy dimensional nonsense. Just give me a single, physical place where all of these fancy realms converge that all the factions fight over, like a world sized Sigil or something.

- The Empire, Bretonnia, Lustria...you know what, just add all of the old factions in there

- Dawi in all of their grumpy glory. I don't know why GW went with Duardin instead of Dawi. I'm not even sure if the Dammaz Kron still exists.

- Actual army structure instead of this "take what you want" mentality

Yeah...AoS was a hard pass. It had nothing I wanted, and was basically just a garish, high fantasy 40k where the writers and artists took acid before working on it. Just stick to Total War: Warhammer. Its not perfect, but its still more Warhammer than AoS.

+ maneuver that mattered. Granted 8th edition WHFB kind of started removing that with steadfast and how it turned the game into mega blobs that tried to out steadfast the other.

+ terrain that mattered. Again though 8th edition started down the path of a kinder gentler battlefield and had forests you could shoot through.

+ armies clashing. Thats what brought me to the game in the first place. Now we have the 8 steam tank "army". I'd prefer to keep the low model count to skirmish games like warcry.

+ army structure. Having to make due with "core" troops instead of just getting to go all out and get all elites all the time whatever you want foreva!!!

+ the era. back in the early 2000s GW produced great books like the General's Compendium, and the how to make terrain book. Both of those books would fall on their face today. Scratch built terrain in general is often looked at with disdain or modeling for advantage and the general attitude where I am is if its not a GW kit, it doesn't belong on the table.

Campaigns were also a lot deeper and easier to get people involved with because the tournament meta was not as hot as it is today. (And I was a big tournament player back then, traveling to 2 GTs a year)

+ no rules no model not being a thing. Seeing custom models for units that had no official model was pretty awesome.

+ Ravening Hordes. The best balanced the game ever was. For a scant few years from 2000 - 2003 the notorious GW imbalances were not present. You could get great games in with a lot of different army builds. Sadly those game designers left for other things and Mat Ward came in and... we know how that played out.

* note that this was also true at the GT level. It wasn't until the end of 2003 that the imbalance started showing up at the GT level and the "meta" started becoming a thing. There were still armies that were stronger than others but good players with weaker armies were still making strong showings. The vampire bus of doom started the tanking down the road of "meta" and would eventually lead to the 7th edition demon, dark elf, and vampire count trifecta of "meta".

AoS is a totally different game meant for a totally different type of person that likes a totally different set of parameters in their games.

I had relatively little trouble adjusting, I left the steaming pile that 7th ed was in mid-00s, so I had a decade to get over it.
I did like the lore, but the game itself was always mired in 80's game design philosophy.
I still remember the game that made me drop out of WFB, where two blocks of 30+ infantry spent the whole game bumping into each other, generating maybe 1 dead model per turn. People always go on about how movement mattered...except it only mattered for the units fast enough to have movement.
If you played infantry blocks, it was a game of line up and move forward thanks to pathetic Mv rates and rules designed to make turning as slow and difficult as possible.

So yeah, I do have nostalgia for the period of 5th-6th editions, and I miss the thrill of seeing brand new plastics released for my Lizardmen.
At the same time, I don't really miss anything in the game itself, it was bog-standard Medieval-period historical game with weaksauce (6th ed) magic thrown on top of it, and monsters that always felt too weak for what they were supposed to represent.

I miss 6th Edition mostly. Yeah it had it's problems but those problems were no where near as bad as the one 7th had.

That rulebook was amazing, Campaign, Siege and Skirmish rules all in one.

- 1/2 point Skaven Slaves and my blocks of 200 of them.
- Formations and formation bonuses.
- The Iconic Armies- Dwarfs, Elves, Orcs, Goblins, Empire... all the "traditional" armies that GW has abandoned in favor of their more high fantasy, copyrightable names/units.

With all that being said though, I really, really like AoS.

The army blocks and feeling of strategy.
Pretty much all the armies. Idoneth are pretty much the only army I can look at without thinking either they're outright bad (like Cities) or adding a but (like Sylvaneth would be so much better with asrai back).
The world felt important rather than a bunch of random locations that I'm told is important without any sense of scale.
It might just be me here but armies had more variety. Mine certainly did as I used to play Strollaz Dwarfs but now I have F all to play.

AoS isn't that bad (anymore) but to me it feels like it's eternally hamstrung by being a sequel to a much better universe. I'm glad some people like it though, it's nice that some good came of the tremendous feth up that was End Times.

Going to have to disagree with Sylvaneth being improved by the return of Asrai.
Frankly? It was the best thing to happen to Wood Elves in a long time. There was a bit of hope that we would see design space focused on the Elves rather than the Forest Spirits that were supposed to be 'the other' part of the faction.

An arrow got put into the knee of that pretty quick though.

What do I miss most from Warhammer Fantasy? The mounts for characters. Cities of Sigmar has a Nomad Prince on Great Stag, and damn does it make me salty.

Wait, Sylvaneth are not wood elves? Well that sucks. I guess they are hanging out with Bretonnians then. Which is kind of funny, if you think about it.

 Darian Aarush wrote:
The Idoneth Deepkin look spectacular, but my heart aches at the disappearance of Ulthuan and the High Elves that were. I see some units/models have survived, but the glory of the Phoenix King and his awesome realm is gone.

We are still in for another 3 kinds of elves, perhaps one of them will inherit the same vibe as the High Elves. I hope so, I've spend almost all the playing time in Total War on them.

 Kanluwen wrote:
Going to have to disagree with Sylvaneth being improved by the return of Asrai.
Frankly? It was the best thing to happen to Wood Elves in a long time. There was a bit of hope that we would see design space focused on the Elves rather than the Forest Spirits that were supposed to be 'the other' part of the faction.

An arrow got put into the knee of that pretty quick though.

What do I miss most from Warhammer Fantasy? The mounts for characters. Cities of Sigmar has a Nomad Prince on Great Stag, and damn does it make me salty.

Yes the lack of humans on horses (I know there are some) is irksome...


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 Knight wrote:

 Darian Aarush wrote:
The Idoneth Deepkin look spectacular, but my heart aches at the disappearance of Ulthuan and the High Elves that were. I see some units/models have survived, but the glory of the Phoenix King and his awesome realm is gone.

We are still in for another 3 kinds of elves, perhaps one of them will inherit the same vibe as the High Elves. I hope so, I've spend almost all the playing time in Total War on them.

Well this is a glimmer of hope!

The setting and novels. The feeling of gravity to what was happening...less "comic" I guess.

I miss the ogre kingdoms lore, the mountains of mourn. Ancient sky castles with giants, there was so much lore just to one faction. Now in AoS ogres are just.....ogres. No depth, religion, backstory, culture. AoS feels very comic like, it's a bit too far on the fantastical side for me. I pretty much liked all the lore from WHF, it felt like a believable fantasy world where you could imagine what life might be like in certain regions.

Nowadays with AoS games, warcry for example. you're lucky to get more than a few pages or barely paragraphs of lore. It's all half baked...I don't think they know what they are doing, or what direction to take things in. They're just winging it. Alot of the new stuff GW is doing feels like they're growing turds at the wall to see what sticks.

Big magic tomb king turns. Or just tomb kings.

The Lore / background.
The origin story of the Skaven is still one of the great pieces ever written by GW.

Tomb Kings
A geography
Not having a specific "saviour" faction who are the one to hold back the darkness (Stormcast). Just a bunch of factions doing their thing and having a life outside of combat.
The characters, Settra, Vlad, Kurt Hellborg
The history. I loved reading about the vamprie wars, skaven wars, how some races were declining and others ascending.
The names, Dwarfs > Duarding, Ogres > Ogors, Orcs > Orruks.
Black orks being the apex of their race instead of fantasy stormboyz.

I miss Dogs of War. Yes I know they disappeared in 2004, but I still have my army.

Nothing from the ruleset itself, but I do miss a lot of the old discontinued models.

I miss how you could squint and sort of see a low fantasy world. Hell, they once ran a White Dwarf article about low fantasy gaming, with limited magic/monsters. You could build a really neat Empire army out of blocks of human soldiers with some artillery and knights, maybe a wizard or priest, and it would really sell the world. Now, an empire army would be <checks notes> five steam tanks and some stormcast "not angels."

The old world was like a Mexican street taco: based on meat and the corn tortilla, fresh herbs, and maybe a little head. AOS is like a Taco Bell Quesarito - it's turned up to 11 with extra cheese! And I like both... but I miss my simple taco.

I miss the heroes of the Empire. Karl, Kurt, Marius (I was salty when they killed him in 7th)...and that’s about it. My Chaos heroes have 95% returned, the elven heroes and undead heroes have returned...heck, even the Dwarves got Gotrek back. Empire...jack squat.

That’s basically everything I miss. Because missing fantasy means missing Storm of Chaos 6th edition for me. And I played two editions after that still. Ravening Hordes was great except for one damn thing...they did NOT permit Elector Counts of the Empire to carry their iconic Runefang. Which was a kick in the face.

well to be fair, Ravening Hordes stripped the power out of the game for everyone and put everyone on an even footing (the only time in the history of the game that you didn't have a meta and didn't auto lose for showing up with the wrong models that you liked). The empire book came out right after and they had their runefangs returned (well ... A runefang that any elector could carry).

Customization of equipment and item options. But tbf we now have customization of allegiance options.

A retreat & pursuit mechanic for morale.

Charges where you still moved somewhat on a failed charge.

Rose colored nostalgia.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Customization of equipment and item options. But tbf we now have customization of allegiance options

That and realm relics. Though I would like to see more restrictions like Cities of Sigmar.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Rose colored nostalgia.

Indeed. We were overdue for one of these style of threads though.

As in everything though there will be a time when the aos chapter will be viewed through what people called rose colored nostalgia when the next version of fantasy emerges from games workshop, whatever and whenever that may be.

And the people that loved the design decisions of aos will vent frustration. And the people that love the new direction will call that nostalgia.

The cycle of life?

 auticus wrote:
As in everything though there will be a time when the aos chapter will be viewed through what people called rose colored nostalgia when the next version of fantasy emerges from games workshop, whatever and whenever that may be.

And the people that loved the design decisions of aos will vent frustration. And the people that love the new direction will call that nostalgia.

The cycle of life?

More like oversimplifying attitudes and positions which have a good deal of nuance.

 nels1031 wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Rose colored nostalgia.

Indeed. We were overdue for one of these style of threads though.

I just mean to keep things in context and poke fun at those of us who have nostalgia for WHFB. I certainly do.

For example, I almost put something along the lines of 'more significant terrain rules' but then remembered how a rank & file unit that moved into a forest was basically gone from the battle; at half speed and no marching it would be unable to actually move through the forest in time to do anything. So then it becomes me wanting more significant terrain rules, but not like it was in WHFB, so not really something I miss but just something I want.

The trick is making it something that has some impact on the game, not massive impact, and not no impact at all (which are the two settings we seem to receive).

I thought AoS's system of rolling to determine the specific effects of every terrain feature accomplished that quite well (conspicuously deadly signposts notwithstanding), but people seemed to disregard that aspect of the game by silent consensus.

The 'rank and file' "look and feel" of the game and battlefield.

It was a glorious sight to behold!

 Alpharius wrote:
The 'rank and file' "look and feel" of the game and battlefield.

It was a glorious sight to behold!

Yeah, close order formations are nice to look at.
Well, if there's more than 1 anyway. The 8th ed way of doing it, where you had just one huge block of soldiers, didn't look nice.

 Captain Joystick wrote:
I thought AoS's system of rolling to determine the specific effects of every terrain feature accomplished that quite well (conspicuously deadly signposts notwithstanding), but people seemed to disregard that aspect of the game by silent consensus.

Nothing really slows anything down in AOS. The effects of the random chart are almost negligible to not even really mean much. People disregard those rules because of how low impact they are coupled with it being annoying trying to remember status effects on terrain that changes game to game.

Today the hill can kill a model.

Tomorrow the hill gives you a +1 to cast.