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Prestor Jon wrote:

If GW wants anyone to be able to pick a box of the shelf and have a playable unit then each box is going to have a warscroll with the unit size being the box contents..

In which case nearly everything will need reboxing (unless the power levels are very homogenised), as 16 High Elf Spearmen don't equal 20 Goblins don't equal 10 State Troops ect. Then there's the issue of newer kits without duplicate sprues, they can't really be reboxed with a different mini count so you're left with fixed unit sizes.

I think I've seen statements from people who were right about the AoS contents saying that the stats/powers/abilities of the old units in AoS many well not be what we expect based on their WFB stat/pwers/abilities

if so it's not impossible that 'boxes' can be balances to at least the level of old points based units (which were, we know, not very balanced)

Yeah, that certainly possible, it just means that a lot of flavour might be lost; there's a reason 1 Elf costs 3 Skaven or whatever, bringing them that so much closer just to balance boxes seems a mistake to me.

Then again, if army sizes are more consistent then that could explain the pretty extreme rules for being outnumbered.

Those two models look awful.

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
I think I've seen statements from people who were right about the AoS contents saying that the stats/powers/abilities of the old units in AoS many well not be what we expect based on their WFB stat/pwers/abilities

if so it's not impossible that 'boxes' can be balances to at least the level of old points based units (which were, we know, not very balanced)

Impossible? No.

But why would they suddenly start to care about balance, when they didn't back when they had (or still have in 40K) points. Look at the recent 40K stuff. Free equipment for AdMech, Skyhammer, D-Weapon-bonanza for Eldar, etc.., etc.., etc..

And now, after taking the points away, which even in 40K today are mostly a meaningless "legacy-feature", they're to start working on balance again? With the added handicap of no points, which they just removed?

Seems unlikely.

Colour me disappointed. I suppose I fall into the camp of, "people who played WFB already and were hoping for more of the same, albeit with some its major failings addressed."

I can understand why GW would go in the direction they seem to be going. Their tiny window of pre-release information already makes it look like they're aiming at knee-jerk purchases. This game seems to empower that sort of buying. Any models can seemingly be fielded together, less emphasis on points values and more on random assortments of models, rules cards come with models (I may be wrong on this?).

There were rumours a while ago that GW was wanting to move towards a release model where they brought out new products for a window of time, then stopped selling them. What I'm reading sounds in that vein.

Outside of potentially alienating some of your existing customers, it's a pretty smart move:
-There's no longer the burden of stocking and supporting older armies/models, as "armies" as we formerly understood them, no longer exist. This in turn empowers them to continue with their current pricing model whereby old releases don't see their prices raised, but new releases of similar products are constantly sliding up in price. Eventually those older models are no longer restocked and there's no giant price increase to offend the client.
-The random assembly of models for play places less of a burden on players to stick with one army, thus making new releases always potentially desirable.
-They can mess around with the game "meta," by which I mean rolling out progressively overpowered models which are then countered by other newer overpowered models. This makes for easy sales.

All of this wouldn't be so disappointing if the game didn't sound so absolutely different than what we're already playing and if they hadn't absolutely destroyed the background setting. Oh well.

With WH-AOS sounding like a dramatically simplified game, where you can take any units you want, it's sounding a lot like a Warhammer: All Stars sort of game, perhaps emulating League of Legends or Blizzard's Heroes of the Storm.

In fact, I wonder if they'll take the same route as Heroes and make it so you can use ANY Games-Workshop model (excluding LOTR), and make one super game of "play anything you want!" Maybe there really was credence to those old rumors of Space Marines versus High Elves

 darkcloak wrote:
Those two models look awful.

Yes, that was my first thought too. These look really crappy and sub-par to other GW releases.

Accolade wrote:With WH-AOS sounding like a dramatically simplified game, where you can take any units you want, it's sounding a lot like a Warhammer: All Stars sort of game, perhaps emulating League of Legends or Blizzard's Heroes of the Storm.

jojo_monkey_boy wrote:-They can mess around with the game "meta," by which I mean rolling out progressively overpowered models which are then countered by other newer overpowered models. This makes for easy sales.

I've been thinking about potential balance acts in WHAoS, and how the meta could be 'patched' as it goes to adjust for imbalances - or on the darkside, tweak things to promote poor sellers, though likely not while demoting power sellers.

Anyway, I was reminded of this comic:



Not 100% inapplicable, but we'll see how things shake out.

- Salvage

Damn, this is still a quite nerve wrecking ride!

Ok so no points but we have not seen the Scrolls yet, also Sales reps are probably clueless with the gaming side of things?

I think there will be 2 outcomes for me on this.

- I enjoy the game and keep on expanding my collections on my own bubble of preferences

- I do not enjoy it and will keep on collecting stuff for other games, prev editions included

GW seems more interested in giving us minis, so as long as there are good minis to buy I will collect them.

Is it sad that all is discarded? Not ideal I can guarantee you that but at the end of the day Im lucky that this is just a hobby for me and I take control to where I want to take it.

They should make 40k rules free too.

 Talliostro wrote:

 darkcloak wrote:
Those two models look awful.

Yes, that was my first thought too. These look really crappy and sub-par to other GW releases.

Even if I'm not fond of them they don't seem badly sculpted. They just look well as previously mentioned copy n pastes of some blood angel captains.

The chaos pictures are blurred so I can't really pass to much judgment on those. Save I have a sword hand and a whip guy who's kinda cool.

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
I think I've seen statements from people who were right about the AoS contents saying that the stats/powers/abilities of the old units in AoS many well not be what we expect based on their WFB stat/pwers/abilities

if so it's not impossible that 'boxes' can be balances to at least the level of old points based units (which were, we know, not very balanced)

While I agree that "balancing by stats" is what is most likely to occur, I also don't see a way some armies survive this with their "feel" at all intact. I mean, horde armies were just that "we have lots of little guys so that we can equal one big guy eventually!". But if a warscroll is a box's contents, 20 skaven suddenly equaling a monster feels... wrong. Consider just clan rats vs skaven slaves. They come from the same box, but slaves are 1/2 a clan rat.

I mean, we'll see on Friday I guess, but so far things are seriously sketchy.

 Paradigm wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:

If GW wants anyone to be able to pick a box of the shelf and have a playable unit then each box is going to have a warscroll with the unit size being the box contents..

In which case nearly everything will need reboxing (unless the power levels are very homogenised), as 16 High Elf Spearmen don't equal 20 Goblins don't equal 10 State Troops ect. Then there's the issue of newer kits without duplicate sprues, they can't really be reboxed with a different mini count so you're left with fixed unit sizes.

High Elf Spearmen are webstore exclusives, so I wouldn't be surprised to see them get "reboxed"--but more likely we'll see a new kit, given that the High Elf Spearmen, Archers, and Silver Helms are crap sculpts.

number9dream wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
Smug posters like you are just as bad as any hyperbolic "hater", JohnnyHell. We're making judgements based on the information we have. If you are happy to wait til later to see the full rules, go do that.

What is amusing to me is seeing the acceptance of KOW style rules by many who had decried KOW as "too simple" and lacking in depth. I guess it's different if it comes from GW rather than Mantic, right?

I thought people were saying the rules were similar to Wrath of Kings, not Kings of War (those two names do really blend together)?

Or does KoW and WoK both have similar rules?

Yes, it sounds MUCH more similar to Wrath of Kings than Kings of War.

Kings of War is very similar to existing WHFB (at least the earlier versions, I haven't played in a long time) with some tweaked rules. Block troops, point costs for balance, move/shoot/attack, players take turns activating everything.

Wrath of Kings has no point costs - models are divided into roughly equivalent categories of type and level, e.g. level 1 infantry or level 2 character and there's a flat exchange of 2 level 1 for 1 level 2 of the same type if you want to upgrade. All of the models have special rules on a card for their own unique abilities based on fluff, which are generally variations of a dozen or so basic modifications, and for their defensive chart. Players alternate actions rather than entire turns (it sounds like this is only true for combat is AoS?) everything does its own movement, no blocks, but leaders can activate a group as a single action giving them a special minor boost if they are of a compatible type. The one thing WoK has that AoS apparently doesn't is their attack/defense mechanism where each model has a unique chart for defending which can be modified by the attacker, which is very clever and nicely done. I'm also not sure how well you can keep any sort of balance if you were talking about using the system for many hundreds of model types, I'd guess there are 60-80 types in WoK currently.

Looks like I am sticking with 8th edition

So when we say "any units you want" does that mean potentially we could see a list of an Ork hero with a goblin unit, a scaven unit and a bunch of Chaos Dwarf war machines?

 Dark Lord Seanron wrote:
So when we say "any units you want" does that mean potentially we could see a list of an Ork hero with a goblin unit, a scaven unit and a bunch of Chaos Dwarf war machines?

Yeah, I think that's definitely part of the goal of the new game.

No, because Chaos Dwarfs are very unlikely to get stat cards. Substitute them for some HE chariots and you're golden.

 Dark Lord Seanron wrote:
So when we say "any units you want" does that mean potentially we could see a list of an Ork hero with a goblin unit, a scaven unit and a bunch of Chaos Dwarf war machines?

or a bunch of trolls and troll slayers led by an elf wizard?

I will get into this on the condition that there is some sort of system to balance armies. It's honestly really disappointing, as I was down with pretty much everything else. I love the idea of stripped down, streamlined rules that are easy for newcomers to pickup and play with a small number of models. Sounded like the perfect way to introduce my friends to the game. Then they just have to throw a massive spanner in the works with this 'no points, no FOG, no masters' system, which is so typically GW; they have plenty of nice ideas, and then they ruin it all with one awful one. In my honest opinion, at least...

 His Master's Voice wrote:
No, because Chaos Dwarfs are very unlikely to get stat cards. Substitute them for some HE chariots and you're golden.

I only used Chaos Dwarves as an example cause I'm still bitter

Maybe gw are using the cost of the models as a points value? Turn up at the Store and put down your £150 army verses an opponents £150 army worst would come if a unit was found too powerful and had to have its points/price increased

 pretre wrote:

 RiTides wrote:
timetowaste, it seems like your source was a little off about this... emphasis mine:

 timetowaste85 wrote:
I'm chiming in that Age of Sigmar's is actually a board game. Told it's something like space hulk. The source that told me 7/11 was release day also told me this. So I'll run with it.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
My source said 9th at the same time. But AoS is a board game. So I've been told.

 timetowaste85 wrote:

TimW wrote:
Has anyone considered that Warhammer: Age of Sigmar is a different game from Warhammer Fantasy Battle and that we may still see a new edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battle come out, alongside the new skirmish sized game?
Plus Age of Signar could actually be something akin to Space Hulk. A stand alone game, all inclusive. I'm just guessing here...

That's actually what my source told me: a game similar to Space Hulk or the assassin one that just came out. Bunch of models for a stand alone game that CAN port directly into the mass battle thing when it hits.

I guess it's a bit open to interpretation, though - maybe this sort of is like Space Hulk in a sense? Rules are in the box, all you need to play... but there is definitely no board like Space Hulk or the Assassins game. So yeah, hard to judge.

And I tracked both of them already. timetowaste85 is at two false.

Rest of it is on page 20, near the bottom:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/570/643158.page#7850850

 edlowe wrote:
Maybe gw are using the cost of the models as a points value? Turn up at the Store and put down your £150 army verses an opponents £150 army worst would come if a unit was found too powerful and had to have its points/price increased

Though, considering the average cost of a WHFB army the new adjusted points cost wouldn't be too far off from what they were before.

 edlowe wrote:
or a bunch of trolls and troll slayers led by an elf wizard?

*throws up in his mouth a little bit*

- Salvage

Nothing GW do these days convinces me they will ever release a decent set of rules again.

Ironically, Dreadfleet may have been the last time they attempted anything fresh, but it just wasn't what people were expecting/wanted, so it sunk (ho ho).

Time to invest in other games methinks. I'm already enjoying X-Wing and Dropzone Commander while Tabletop Gaming Magazine was full of stuff I'd like to have a crack at. Guildball is looking interesting...

I hope at the very least certain units will have some sort of animosity towards each other a la Come the Apocalypse in 40K. I'd like the idea of certain units have either synergy or animosity with other units e.g. a unit of Empire Knights would get a bonus for being within 6" of other units with the (Empire) faction, but would receive penalties/would attack units with the (Chaos) faction if they are within 6". Something like that could be interesting as you could expand it to certain specific units (e.g. a unit of HElf archers could gain bonuses for standing behind a unit of spearmen). This could add a lot of tactical depth to the game whilst still allowing the player a large degree of choice when it comes to units
WARNING, THIS IS JUST ME THEORIZING, NOT RUMOURS

 Flashman wrote:
Nothing GW do these days convinces me they will ever release a decent set of rules again.

Ironically, Dreadfleet may have been the last time they attempted anything fresh, but it just wasn't what people were expecting/wanted, so it sunk (ho ho).

Time to invest in other games methinks. I'm already enjoying X-Wing and Dropzone Commander while Tabletop Gaming Magazine was full of stuff I'd like to have a crack at. Guildball is looking interesting...

Yeah, the Dreadfleet thing kills me.

The models for it were quite nice, but the game seems to have some issues. But worse than any of that, apparently GW didn't do any market research to determine if a one-off fantasy fleet all-stars (since you got one ship per faction) game would be something that would be well-received. The same problem went for WHFB- you had models that look great (i.e. new Wood Elves were quite popular), but there were substantial issues with the game itself, possibly including things such as the game costing too much to get into. It seems that instead of trying to tackle what concerns there might be regarding the game itself, the plan is just to shoehorn all models into purchasability and expect people to jump into it. I don't feel that is the best plan of action by any means.

 Dark Lord Seanron wrote:

 His Master's Voice wrote:
No, because Chaos Dwarfs are very unlikely to get stat cards. Substitute them for some HE chariots and you're golden.

I only used Chaos Dwarves as an example cause I'm still bitter

Hey, I'm holding out hope that FW's chaos dwarf line will get warscrolls. How else would FW continue to be able to sell them? I guess we'll see on Saturday and soon thereafter...

I'm looking forward to trying the AoS. It has been obvious for years that WHFB is/was a dying game. Compared to 40K, it is a very small part of GW's bottom line. The End Times releases invigorated the fantasy line, and maybe this will help it further. If it is a game that can bring new people into the table-top miniatures hobby, then I'm all for it.