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As per the title really. Just getting a grip on AoS and feeling out whats what, never see the Anvil rules being bought up and wondered what peoples experiences with it are. I gather that its only for narrative games and not matched play but surely someone has played with them?

Pretty cool. A few rough edges and it sacrifices strict balance in favor of options and depth, which is preferable for narrative play where people are generally not trying to game the system. Definitely something I hope they ("they" being Sam/Bottle) expand in the future because some serious fun there.

It can be adapted for matched play with suggested point values, but it can also be bent (in clearly unintended angles) to create some serious cheese that way.

I've been using it a bit, all of my games are narrative and it works well for that. I'm working to tell a particular story and so I'm using it to create underpowered characters that can grow and it's fun that way

My group is pretty competitive focused, so we've never used it.

My group doesn't have an issue with it, unless you're trying to use it in bad faith. Even still, it's not used often.

You can either make a 200+ pt mediocre cavalry lord, or make a 30pt wizard that can resurrect 3 models per turn

Small note: Strictly by the rules you can only make 200pts and 400pts heroes. That avoid a lot of the cheesenes within the system (you still got some broken things like the 3+ ethereal heroes)

Now to the big note: I got plans of using it as the core of a mordheim-like skirmish campaign, sadly covid has greatly delayed this proyect since last summer. I will try to quickly write the core ideas.

Bands start at 150-200pts (preference of playing group) using point per model (You divide the points of the unit between the number of models, or between the number of wounds if models got different wound characteristic, then multiply for the number of wounds the respective model have. The second part is mostly for the sake of playing underworlds/warcry models) and the Hinterlands "Heroes and behemoth cost half the point but have half the wounds rounded up and they combat profile is modified accordingly" rule.

Then is when the Anvil of Apotheosis comes into play. Ancestries, weapons and bestial companions cost half the points too but you still reduce the max wound characteristic to half rounded up (and modify the combat profile of behemoths accordingly). You cannot buy abilities or enhancements with regular points, instead you get them from experience points. After each battle every model get 1xp for participating, 1xp for surviving till the end of the game, and 1xp if your warband won the match (so 1 to 3 xp per game). Then you can spend this xp in the anvil to upgrade the figther.If you buy the same enhancement multiple times it cost 1 more experience point each time (like +1 to hit cost 2pts, then 3pts, then 4 pts in the last purchase). This suddenly fix the nonsense of shields and save enhancements being exactly the same, since now you get shields cost 10 regular points and save enhancements cost 2/3/4pts of experience instead.

And you also get 10 regular pts to replace fallen troops between matches (20 if you win). Every slain model roll 1d6 and 1 dies 2-3 cannot fight next combat 4-5-6 can fight next combat.

The rest is just playing skirmish by the rules of triumph and treachery in free for all scenarios. We plan to use some custom bravery rules too (the whole warband works as a single unit for battleshock test purposes and inmunity to battleshock is changed to +1 bravery to the warband instead)

Aaand we also gona apply some of the balancing rules of AoS Warbands (No ability or attack activation can affect more than 3 enemy models, mortal wounds are reduced to half rounded down, healing is reduced to half rounded down, instakill effects do a mortal wound instead)

You can probably really easily use only the experience part of all of this nonsense i just wrote and use it in an army wide campaign as a renown system for the troops.