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I've mostly been playing super simple intro type games of AOS with my buddies and newer people getting into the system, as 40k descends further and further into absolute madness AOS is exploding in popularity where I play. As a consequence I've mostly played either crazy simple "put out a few objectives and score 1pt per turn per objective you hold" type missions or drew cards from the Open War deck to set up the mission.

I experienced the "Contest of Generals Grand Tournament Matched Play Super Serious Competitive E-Sport" mode for the first time yesterday, and....

....really? REALLY?????? THIS is the matched play thing? Grown-ups come together in large groups, nod solemnly to one another and go "Yes, this is the most balanced way to set up an Age of Sigmar competitive event, we will play using these rules for our missions."

Don't get me wrong - if this was branded as a narrative campaign mission system where you've got like, your core rules based around the zany monster-themed land and all the battletomes get themed objectives that they also do - I'd think it was good fun. Nice, varied stuff you want to do throughout the game, balance is super bad but, meh, it's a narrative game whatever.

but this game mode is your matched play? This mode where half the factions in the game don't even get the extra 3 secondary objectives, and if neither player brings a monster, you can have a matchup where one player can only choose ONE secondary that they can not try to achieve during the game, and the other player gets 5 that they have to achieve and 4 they can choose not to?

The spread of secondaries and how hard/easy they were to achieve was literally the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life. The game went down like this:

Top of turn 1 - my opponent declares run with 3 supporting characters in the backfield. Battle tactic: Achieved.
Bottom of turn 1 - the easiest secondary for me to achieve is killing a 450 point hero dragon with a relic. Battle tactic: Achieved. Those two actions were the same exact value in victory points.

Top of turn 2 - my opponent targets and destroys a half-strength unit of goblins. Battle tactic: Achieved.
Bottom of turn 2 - I charge onto an objective being held by 20 skeletons with 40 goblins to outnumber him and steal the objective. Battle tactic: achieved.

Top of turn 3 - my opponent has a battle tactic that lets him decide he wants to get the remaining 5 skeletons still hanging out nearly surrounded by the goblins killed. He has to kill...his own unit. Sigh... Battle tactic achieved.
Bottom of turn 3 - the most accessible one I have is to seize the 2 objectives on the board not in my DZ, but I fail to take the second one, so, no tactic for me.

Top of turn 4 - my opponent has to deal 1 damage with 1 of his 2 vampires. That's it. Battle tactic achieved, a vampire yeets a goblin and drinks its blood.
Bottom of turn 4 - I kill the enemy warlord. Battle tactic achieved

Top of turn 5 - my completely tabled opponent picks one that's basically just "roll a 5+". He does. Battle tactic: Achieved.
Bottom of turn 5 - I do the stupid 'declare 3 run rolls' one.

I think - call it a hunch here, folks, but I think MAYBE just MAYBE having basically all the secondary objectives in the game give you bonus points if you do them with monsters, might be contributing to age of sigmar's perennial problem with all monster lists being an issue in 3rd edition! Holy cow have we cracked the code??? Who could have possibly figured this out, it must take a super-duper-genius to have found the tiny pin-hole in the otherwise 100% airtight mega competitive tournament contest of galaxy brain mensa tier logiclords mission set!

Do tournament organizers seriously use this thing? Is there a less crazy one that is more stable that theyre actually using, or is this monster themed one the actual one that you'd end up playing if you went to a big con? Am I missing something?

Your first error was assuming there's competive gw games. There isn't one. Regardless of system somebody claims to play gw game competely is making clown of themselves.

I think - call it a hunch here, folks, but I think MAYBE just MAYBE having basically all the secondary objectives in the game give you bonus points if you do them with monsters, might be contributing to age of sigmar's perennial problem with all monster lists being an issue in 3rd edition! Holy cow have we cracked the code??? Who could have possibly figured this out, it must take a super-duper-genius to have found the tiny pin-hole in the otherwise 100% airtight mega competitive tournament contest of galaxy brain mensa tier logiclords mission set!

Is this a problem? I thought the problem were people were taking god-level characters (Morathi, Nagash, Be'lakor) and stacking save modifiers and heals to make them unkillable.

Also: There are 8 battle tactics in Pitched Battles, not 6. edit: oh, I see what you mean now, okay.

This is why I had to get out. Matched play / tournament play only in the community I was in, and it was bonkers.

 Rihgu wrote:

I think - call it a hunch here, folks, but I think MAYBE just MAYBE having basically all the secondary objectives in the game give you bonus points if you do them with monsters, might be contributing to age of sigmar's perennial problem with all monster lists being an issue in 3rd edition! Holy cow have we cracked the code??? Who could have possibly figured this out, it must take a super-duper-genius to have found the tiny pin-hole in the otherwise 100% airtight mega competitive tournament contest of galaxy brain mensa tier logiclords mission set!

Is this a problem? I thought the problem were people were taking god-level characters (Morathi, Nagash, Be'lakor) and stacking save modifiers and heals to make them unkillable.

Also: There are 8 battle tactics in Pitched Battles, not 6. edit: oh, I see what you mean now, okay.

I mean, in terms of save mods/heals and stuff, me personally I have never had an issue with bringing down any big stuff. That's one of the utilities of Mortal Wounds being fairly common to come by - it allows you to have basically two different 'forms' of durability in the game - lots of wounds (on cheap stuff) and a really good save (on elite stuff). My stupid little Boingrot Bounderz charge of the light brigade gobbo cav army has no problem dealing with an uber character with a 1+ armor save and 10 wounds, because I bring enough MWs to chop em down.

 the_scotsman wrote:
I've mostly been playing super simple intro type games of AOS with my buddies and newer people getting into the system, as 40k descends further and further into absolute madness AOS is exploding in popularity where I play. As a consequence I've mostly played either crazy simple "put out a few objectives and score 1pt per turn per objective you hold" type missions or drew cards from the Open War deck to set up the mission.

I experienced the "Contest of Generals Grand Tournament Matched Play Super Serious Competitive E-Sport" mode for the first time yesterday, and....

....really? REALLY?????? THIS is the matched play thing? Grown-ups come together in large groups, nod solemnly to one another and go "Yes, this is the most balanced way to set up an Age of Sigmar competitive event, we will play using these rules for our missions."

Don't get me wrong - if this was branded as a narrative campaign mission system where you've got like, your core rules based around the zany monster-themed land and all the battletomes get themed objectives that they also do - I'd think it was good fun. Nice, varied stuff you want to do throughout the game, balance is super bad but, meh, it's a narrative game whatever.

but this game mode is your matched play? This mode where half the factions in the game don't even get the extra 3 secondary objectives, and if neither player brings a monster, you can have a matchup where one player can only choose ONE secondary that they can not try to achieve during the game, and the other player gets 5 that they have to achieve and 4 they can choose not to?

The spread of secondaries and how hard/easy they were to achieve was literally the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life. The game went down like this:

Top of turn 1 - my opponent declares run with 3 supporting characters in the backfield. Battle tactic: Achieved.
Bottom of turn 1 - the easiest secondary for me to achieve is killing a 450 point hero dragon with a relic. Battle tactic: Achieved. Those two actions were the same exact value in victory points.

Top of turn 2 - my opponent targets and destroys a half-strength unit of goblins. Battle tactic: Achieved.
Bottom of turn 2 - I charge onto an objective being held by 20 skeletons with 40 goblins to outnumber him and steal the objective. Battle tactic: achieved.

Top of turn 3 - my opponent has a battle tactic that lets him decide he wants to get the remaining 5 skeletons still hanging out nearly surrounded by the goblins killed. He has to kill...his own unit. Sigh... Battle tactic achieved.
Bottom of turn 3 - the most accessible one I have is to seize the 2 objectives on the board not in my DZ, but I fail to take the second one, so, no tactic for me.

Top of turn 4 - my opponent has to deal 1 damage with 1 of his 2 vampires. That's it. Battle tactic achieved, a vampire yeets a goblin and drinks its blood.
Bottom of turn 4 - I kill the enemy warlord. Battle tactic achieved

Top of turn 5 - my completely tabled opponent picks one that's basically just "roll a 5+". He does. Battle tactic: Achieved.
Bottom of turn 5 - I do the stupid 'declare 3 run rolls' one.

I think - call it a hunch here, folks, but I think MAYBE just MAYBE having basically all the secondary objectives in the game give you bonus points if you do them with monsters, might be contributing to age of sigmar's perennial problem with all monster lists being an issue in 3rd edition! Holy cow have we cracked the code??? Who could have possibly figured this out, it must take a super-duper-genius to have found the tiny pin-hole in the otherwise 100% airtight mega competitive tournament contest of galaxy brain mensa tier logiclords mission set!

Do tournament organizers seriously use this thing? Is there a less crazy one that is more stable that theyre actually using, or is this monster themed one the actual one that you'd end up playing if you went to a big con? Am I missing something?

The AoS community has never been good at making decisions about competitive formats.

Look at the Realm of Battle rules.This is the same community that thought 'roll random dice on 6 tables to see if your models can run this game or not' was a legitimate inclusion in tournament play.

The problem, in this case, isn't JUST on GW's end.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Rihgu wrote:

I think - call it a hunch here, folks, but I think MAYBE just MAYBE having basically all the secondary objectives in the game give you bonus points if you do them with monsters, might be contributing to age of sigmar's perennial problem with all monster lists being an issue in 3rd edition! Holy cow have we cracked the code??? Who could have possibly figured this out, it must take a super-duper-genius to have found the tiny pin-hole in the otherwise 100% airtight mega competitive tournament contest of galaxy brain mensa tier logiclords mission set!

Is this a problem? I thought the problem were people were taking god-level characters (Morathi, Nagash, Be'lakor) and stacking save modifiers and heals to make them unkillable.

Also: There are 8 battle tactics in Pitched Battles, not 6. edit: oh, I see what you mean now, okay.

Morathi can't be healed.

Monsters aren't a problem, its hero monsters. They double-dip the buffs 3rd gave to characters and to heroes, resulting in compounding benefits.

Also, killing monsters gives bonus VP up to 1 per round, which counterbalances the bonus VP they can gain from battle tactics. The GHB also gives access to the Hunters of the Heartland battalion, one of the easiest ways to get a significant counter-play against monsters that anyone can take.

Also also, GW has been reasonably diligent in getting armies their own faction specific battle tactics via White Dwarf if they aren't getting a 3rd ed battletome this year. Granted this should be something they included for everyone in one of the balance updates but better than nothing.

It is also notable that while there are a few rough edges the scenarios themselves are really good overall. I can't think of another era of Warhammer or another wargame that has a strong a set of core gameplay scenarios as AoS does right now.

I will add that as part of the 2021 battle pack under Realmsphere Magic all Wizards know the Metamorphosis spell in addition to any other spells they know. This spell gives one of your Heroes the Monster keyword until your next hero phase. So if you do not have any Monsters but brought a Wizard you can have a Monster to achieve those Battle Tactics or the bonus VPs for Monsters performing certain Battle Tactics.

I've enjoyed my 3rd Edition AOS experience including tourneys- I am fairly new to it, but there are some things that 40K could consider stealing. I agree, though, that having a theme such as Monsters is a little strange. In its defence, though, players know the parameters going in and can choose to prepare for them (or not). Next year it will be something else and we'll have to adapt. In theory it keeps the game state fresh.

 Rihgu wrote:

I think - call it a hunch here, folks, but I think MAYBE just MAYBE having basically all the secondary objectives in the game give you bonus points if you do them with monsters, might be contributing to age of sigmar's perennial problem with all monster lists being an issue in 3rd edition! Holy cow have we cracked the code??? Who could have possibly figured this out, it must take a super-duper-genius to have found the tiny pin-hole in the otherwise 100% airtight mega competitive tournament contest of galaxy brain mensa tier logiclords mission set!

Is this a problem? I thought the problem were people were taking god-level characters (Morathi, Nagash, Be'lakor) and stacking save modifiers and heals to make them unkillable.

Also: There are 8 battle tactics in Pitched Battles, not 6. edit: oh, I see what you mean now, okay.

I have never heard it as a problem before lol. IMO Flat out killing is not fun, but for someone that seems to like minimal objectives like OP I can see how a full objective/secondary mission set is not as fun. Now is that a problem? IMO no its not a problem for the game.

The nature of AoS is still to kill for the most part, but they make objectives and other secondaries actually matter over just flat out killing.

I think there's a place for flat out killing. If scenarios are all about the same thing, then everyone builds for the same parameters.

If the missions all have different victory conditions, you have to prepare for a variety of types, not just skew build toward one.

That's why I don't play anymore, as these "tactics" are not in any way tactical, with some extremely rare exceptions.
*Ferocious advance. Just deploy your 3 units, do not move, declare you advance and stay put. Ding ding ding, 2 points!
*Monstrous takeover. "I will take over this objective I'm already holding since deployment".
*Bring it down/Slay the Warlord/Broken Ranks - these just come automatically, unless dice rolls gaks on you. Again, no tactics needed.
*Behind enemy lines. For some armies this can be hard. For other armies this is but a breeze, where you can just teleport your units around the board.
Not to mention faction specific ones, like op mentioned roll a 5+, or the SoB one to demolish a faction terrain, that happens on 3+. You rolled a 3+? Good for you! Rolled a 1 or 2? Sorry, but your tactics failed...

TangoTwoBravo wrote:
I will add that as part of the 2021 battle pack under Realmsphere Magic all Wizards know the Metamorphosis spell in addition to any other spells they know. This spell gives one of your Heroes the Monster keyword until your next hero phase. So if you do not have any Monsters but brought a Wizard you can have a Monster to achieve those Battle Tactics or the bonus VPs for Monsters performing certain Battle Tactics.

Only thing spell is good is getting it with bonus. Monstorous takeover? You need to be monster from starting army when you pick tactic. You haven't been able to cast spell by the time you pick BT so can't pick the wizard as he isn't yet monster.

But what OP is(surprise surprise with such low quality post) is that yes you score bonus VP. You also lose VP when you get killed so monster needs to score two battletactics with bonus if he doesn't want to end up even. Behind if he gets killed first...

And lol at bring it down etc being automatic. On that claim any objective is automatic unless dice rolls. Need to control point? Automatic unless dice gaks on you. No tactics needed. That claim applies to 100% of 40k vp goals as well on his stupid "logic".

Well, at least the open war deck for AOS is miles better than the open war deck for 40k. I can turn this into a good time.

Only thing spell is good is getting it with bonus. Monstorous takeover? You need to be monster from starting army when you pick tactic. You haven't been able to cast spell by the time you pick BT so can't pick the wizard as he isn't yet monster.

Since the spell lasts until your next hero phase, you can cast it the turn before you technically need it and pick your wizard as the monster.

 Rihgu wrote:

Only thing spell is good is getting it with bonus. Monstorous takeover? You need to be monster from starting army when you pick tactic. You haven't been able to cast spell by the time you pick BT so can't pick the wizard as he isn't yet monster.

Since the spell lasts until your next hero phase, you can cast it the turn before you technically need it and pick your wizard as the monster.

That's just rulesbending.

 CragHack wrote:

 Rihgu wrote:

Only thing spell is good is getting it with bonus. Monstorous takeover? You need to be monster from starting army when you pick tactic. You haven't been able to cast spell by the time you pick BT so can't pick the wizard as he isn't yet monster.

Since the spell lasts until your next hero phase, you can cast it the turn before you technically need it and pick your wizard as the monster.

That's just rulesbending.

I'm sorry that you feel that way.

 CragHack wrote:

 Rihgu wrote:

Only thing spell is good is getting it with bonus. Monstorous takeover? You need to be monster from starting army when you pick tactic. You haven't been able to cast spell by the time you pick BT so can't pick the wizard as he isn't yet monster.

Since the spell lasts until your next hero phase, you can cast it the turn before you technically need it and pick your wizard as the monster.

That's just rulesbending.

Given the notorious double turn, I definitely do NOT see taking all the advantage of effects that last until YOUR NEXT x phase to be "rulesbending" in any way.

I will give just one caveat to my thinking this mission set is bad, though:

The thing where the second player on turn 3 gets to remove an objective of their choice is a HUUUUUGE offset to the power of the nastiest double turn possibility.

That rule should just be like, a universal thing, and it should occur basically any time a person chooses to take a second turn in a row. fluff it as "as their frenzy reaches a fever pitch, they lose sight of the objectives of the battle in their eagerness to take the fight to the enemy"

 CragHack wrote:
That's why I don't play anymore, as these "tactics" are not in any way tactical, with some extremely rare exceptions.
*Ferocious advance. Just deploy your 3 units, do not move, declare you advance and stay put. Ding ding ding, 2 points!
*Monstrous takeover. "I will take over this objective I'm already holding since deployment".
*Bring it down/Slay the Warlord/Broken Ranks - these just come automatically, unless dice rolls gaks on you. Again, no tactics needed.
*Behind enemy lines. For some armies this can be hard. For other armies this is but a breeze, where you can just teleport your units around the board.
Not to mention faction specific ones, like op mentioned roll a 5+, or the SoB one to demolish a faction terrain, that happens on 3+. You rolled a 3+? Good for you! Rolled a 1 or 2? Sorry, but your tactics failed...

-Picking three units in your army to run and end within 3" of each other is a noteworthy tactical cost. Those units can't shoot, can't charge, and can't split up. There's a reason people usually do it first turn or not at all.

-I also think it should require the opponent control the objective, but it does mean that the chosen monster needs to stay on that objective for a turn. Given monsters generally want to be doing anything but objective camping it most often gets used in an offensive capacity anyways.

-No, you don't just point at an enemy and they die. You have to make it happen, and do so while the opponent is trying to stop you. Between finest hour, redeploy, unleash hell, and all out defense there are a lot of tools that can throw a wrench into things. I cannot say how many times I have seen someone pick broken ranks on a near-death unit thinking it was a shoe in, then get screwed because they didn't plan movement accordingly and the opponent used redeploy to move the target unit away or another unit in between.

-Totally agree that some of the faction specific ones are really dumb. It should never come down to an unavoidable coin flip to see if a tactic is achieved. Others certainly have luck elements (it is a dice game after all) but there is a great degree of player control in them.


But honestly? Those who approach AoS as a game without tactics always have a bad time. But I have and continue to criticize that some of these are not good tactics/strategies to have in the game, so I can understand if the type of tactical play available in AoS isn't for you.

At its core a tactic is defined as nothing more than a choice.

AOS has plenty of tactics.

It just may not be the tactics you are looking for.

My play group, basically as a whole has been enjoying the Battle Tactics. The extra depth it adds, and as Ninth said, weight the tactical costs of attempting to achieve those goals. And often in my games either my opponent or I willfully choose a battletactic that cannot be achieved for one turn, to ensure we can take a more achievable option on a later turn.

The system isn't without flaw, no system is. But I think it's a great system. My only gripe with it is more centered on the GHB's Battle maps. Much of the objectives are middle-of-the board big smashy fight incentivising ones. Take your Godmonster and dominate the middle, while the enemy may have no option to score points from their backfield. This is a flaw also in IGOUGO, where the player going first sets the game's tempo. This is sometimes counterbalanced by an effectively-used Double Turn, but, with the toughness of some godmonsters or some bricks, you just can't knock them off objectives.

With a whole two AOS 3rd Ed tourneys under my belt I have to say that I enjoy the Battle Tactics. You need to think ahead to avoid painting yourself into a corner while remaining ready to take advantage of opportunities. Along those lines I've certainly committed some tactical errors trying to achieve a Battle Tactic (like Broken Ranks), which opens up the possibility of gambits and feints to draw the opponent into an error (yes - I fell for the bait). At a minimum, they generally encourage your forces to come out and play for the mid-field - which is a good thing in my books.

I am far from an expert on the faction Battle Tactics, but some do seem a little wonky. Still, its been a refreshing change from Retrieve Nachmund Data.

Mid-field play isn't always a good thing. Many of the missions have objectives along the middle of the board. This can lead to the player going first, or the faster/tougher player coming out way ahead. And moshpit in the middle of the board incentivizes big dumb hero-monster types.

My issue with it is that some armies don't have the option of playing in that way. Skaven, Nighthaunt, Gloomspite, Kruleboyz. They struggle in that regard, and it's been showing in their recently results, being amongst the lowest placing armies in the whole game.

 Thadin wrote:
Mid-field play isn't always a good thing. Many of the missions have objectives along the middle of the board. This can lead to the player going first, or the faster/tougher player coming out way ahead. And moshpit in the middle of the board incentivizes big dumb hero-monster types.

My issue with it is that some armies don't have the option of playing in that way. Skaven, Nighthaunt, Gloomspite, Kruleboyz. They struggle in that regard, and it's been showing in their recently results, being amongst the lowest placing armies in the whole game.

I can appreciate that, but having objectives at least means that that armies have to manouevre and not just sit tight and shoot. I understand, though, that some may not like this! I guess I play AOS to get stuck in, so I recognize that I am fortunate that the mission pack accords with my preferences. Perhaps the General's Handbook roulette wheel will work against me with the next iteration?

 auticus wrote:
I think there's a place for flat out killing. If scenarios are all about the same thing, then everyone builds for the same parameters.

If the missions all have different victory conditions, you have to prepare for a variety of types, not just skew build toward one.

Sure but the missions are widely different, the Tactics are the same yes but the missions are not. Some you can remove the objectives others you can't, some you need Heroes other you need Battleline, and then some are built to be played early game others for late game.

Personally I've found the scenarios offer a good mix of objectives mid or edge field, often both. Some scenarios will be a bit of an uphill battle for some armies, but I don't see much in the way of situations where an army is totally left out to dry. Yes, certain skew lists might have it bad once in a while but that is always the risk with such.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 auticus wrote:
I think there's a place for flat out killing. If scenarios are all about the same thing, then everyone builds for the same parameters.

If the missions all have different victory conditions, you have to prepare for a variety of types, not just skew build toward one.

Sure but the missions are widely different, the Tactics are the same yes but the missions are not. Some you can remove the objectives others you can't, some you need Heroes other you need Battleline, and then some are built to be played early game others for late game.

Good. There's no build one list skewed to do one thing and hey presto like in 40k resulting in 40k games being 100% predictable. As it is AOS is pretty predictable but at least I have failed 3 out of about 600 games to predict. Lower rate than 40k.

tneva82 wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 auticus wrote:
I think there's a place for flat out killing. If scenarios are all about the same thing, then everyone builds for the same parameters.

If the missions all have different victory conditions, you have to prepare for a variety of types, not just skew build toward one.

Sure but the missions are widely different, the Tactics are the same yes but the missions are not. Some you can remove the objectives others you can't, some you need Heroes other you need Battleline, and then some are built to be played early game others for late game.

Good. There's no build one list skewed to do one thing and hey presto like in 40k resulting in 40k games being 100% predictable. As it is AOS is pretty predictable but at least I have failed 3 out of about 600 games to predict. Lower rate than 40k.

You've yet to provide any evidence of your predictive abilities, despite numerous requests.

I've not played any 3rd edition AOS so can't comment but the scenarios in 2nd edition and 1st edition (lol the game is in a 3rd edition and its on its 7th year) were a lot of the same thing just with minor permutations.

You still built the lists for the same basic task of capping objectives, they just happened to exist in different parts of the table in those editions.

I assume its the same now but thats just an assumption because GW hasn't had a list of differing actual objectives in many years now.

People who barely play something often have a lot to say about it. Meanwhile, we're out here having fun playing Matched Play.