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 Xyxox wrote:
GOOD GOD! $250 in the US!

GW has shot themselves in the foot on this one. They are toast.

looks like someone is using the Australian version of the GW website again

Link works

http://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/age-of-sigmar-compendiums

 Xyxox wrote:
GOOD GOD! $250 in the US!

GW has shot themselves in the foot on this one. They are toast.

You sure? It is $250 here in NZ... if it is also 250 USD then I will be happy, because for the first time we will not be getting more ripped off than anyone else haha.

Ejay wrote:

 Xyxox wrote:
GOOD GOD! $250 in the US!

GW has shot themselves in the foot on this one. They are toast.

looks like someone is using the Australian version of the GW website again

D'oh!

 TalonZahn wrote:


Like others said, before and after me though, historicals aren't a good comparison. They are mostly built around set forces of a battle or time period. So I will agree there.

You asked for miniatures games that didn't use points. I provided an example and a half. You didn't indicate interest in anything beyond a lack of points.

*shrug*



On another note, others have asked about the target demographic. At least one of them is fairly easy. You can't really play WFB 8th without investing ridiculous amounts of money. For instance, building a completely inadequate Dark Elf army consisting of sixty fully-dressed core troops, a melee character, and a sorceress character, will set you back roughly $240. That's in addition to the rules and army book. With AoS, that entry-cost issue is completely upended. One character model, one box of spears, and one box of crossbows, is a playable army for roughly $85. And the rules are free. That's a *much* lower bar to entry for the new player. And if the player decides that she's interested in dwarves, then instead of buying a brand new dwarf army, he can buy a single box of dwarves to add to her Dark Aelf army instead of buying an entire new army.

That right there is one of the target demographics.

 mikhaila wrote:
A...
How to balance armies? Well, I have no Fething Clue yet. But i'm getting to work on it and the first tournament at my shop is next Sunday.

Did you play a(n) official scenario with suggested number and type of models/side in addition to terrain layout?
Sorry If I missed your commenting if you noted that.

Haven't seen this linked before, but here's the new terrain kits. Possibly going to b released next weekdend, as they are not on GW website atm.

$250 bucks....Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand thank GW for COMPLETELY pricing me out of your new game.

There has been lots of talk on this thread about jumping the shark...GW has jumped, flambé and eaten the shark. Then regurgitate thus said shark and ate it again.

GW

privateer4hire wrote:

 mikhaila wrote:
A...
How to balance armies? Well, I have no Fething Clue yet. But i'm getting to work on it and the first tournament at my shop is next Sunday.

Did you play a(n) official scenario with suggested number and type of models/side in addition to terrain layout?
Sorry If I missed your commenting if you noted that.

Yep, we've played some of the scenarios, and two of the guys had fun with a small Lizardmen vs Skaven game. Loved seeing the doomwheel run over a weapon team on its way towards the enemy

 Third_Age_of_Baggz wrote:
$250 bucks....Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand thank GW for COMPLETELY pricing me out of your new game.

There has been lots of talk on this thread about jumping the shark...GW has jumped, flambé and eaten the shark. Then regurgitate thus said shark and ate it again.

GW

Half that (and take 20% or more off if you use a discounter) and you're closer.

New Zealand site strikes again.

Scheduled a tournament for next weekend...working on format.

First Rule: No summoning Dear lord, you can summon so much stuff so easily in some armies. Makes sense in some ways. If you have the models you could have just set them on the board, so this is just like reserves.

But in any scenario where you try for balance, bringing in some extra bloodletters and greater demons is a tad over the top

Guys....im sad. I feel sorry for WHFB players.
You bros have my sympathy. I mean really. Pts would have been great and could have made this a great GREAT game.
But now......it just cant be really. The rules are not that bad, it encourages building your own army. and an army of heroes could have been cool.
But NOPE.
Nope.................
Maybe I should buy a carnosaur before it disappears, I always liked that model

 mikhaila wrote:

number9dream wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
Wow. I'm actually a bit surprised so many people find the idea of a game system that requires you to behave like a five year old appealing.

Yeah... makes me wonder what their actual target demographic is. At 14, i would have hated this stuff even more than i do now, simply because of being more concerned with not being embarrassingly immature etc.

Depends on the players. We had 6 people laughing about all the silly rules and signing up for our first tournament tonite. The stuff was funny to us because we've played so long and know the fluff behind a lot of it. We aren't taking the game serious, so its funny. But we'll still pull out armies and play. Ages ranged 20 to 54 in the group, 3 of them have played in multiple GT's every year for a decade.

At the same time, we discussed how to do a points system for AoS, and are planning to run tournaments for KOW2. So I think it's more of a mindset, or history with the game, than an age for who will enjoy it.

Now as to who GW is aiming this at? No Fething clue. That would mean figuring out how they think. I'd have to guess 10 to 16 range to attract new players, but it's only a guess. Even 10 year olds like a fair game.

In that setting it does sound like it could be kind of fun. I think part of the negativity I feel is caused by how I expected a re-booted warhammer instead of a party game o_O Then again it is possible for a party game to be competitive too, so I guess I shouldn't dismiss it just on that alone (plus a game doesn't have to be competitive to have value, obviously!!).

 Thraxas Of Turai wrote:
Wow, just wow.

The Sigmarite "Chapters" managed to simultaneously jump the shark and take the biscuit.

From Page 181.

I find the "silly" rules not much of an issue. They are limited to a few warscrolls in each faction, with most aligned to special characters you barely see. It is also clear to see that they are very tongue in cheek, the idea of rules lawyers dancing to gain an advantage is fun in itself.

 Xyxox wrote:

Ejay wrote:

 Xyxox wrote:
GOOD GOD! $250 in the US!

GW has shot themselves in the foot on this one. They are toast.

looks like someone is using the Australian version of the GW website again

D'oh!

Hm, the australian site says 200$ for me?

 Yodhrin wrote:

I get that, it just doesn't make any sense to me. They can do the whole "unbound erry day", "enthusiasm" kick in their stores with games that have points and rules that don't make groups of people uncomfortable, I know that for a fact because I used to attend exactly those kinds of events when I was a wee kid. They could have included points, or even just some basic balancing mechanism like having a Warscroll specify the size of the unit, and they could push all the shouty-shouty nonsense as suggested ways to play in their usual gushing WD editorials or the 96-page fluff & extras booklet.

It's hard not to take it personally when it very much appears that their intent was to write the rules in such a way as to say "you're not welcome here" to anyone who doesn't fit their idea of the perfect walking wallet...sorry, "hobbyist", with total and utter disregard for people who're not neurotypical(or even just folk who're a bit shy).

Why not put in that minimal extra effort and sell your game to more people?

Ok, I deal with those who have ASD professionally every day. I'll tell you this with a straight face. Do not take it personally. I understand the self-focused nature of ASD (and the internet), and I can also recognise that you seem to be intellectually able to understand things that you may not be able to on an emotional level. They simply do not care. That's not a personal attack towards you on their part. It's indifference and it's a very different thing. I do not have ASD, but I do have an aversion to acting like a fethwit in public. They also don't care about me. But I understand that it's not personal. GW corporate essentially have no idea that you nor I even exist and would neither blink, celebrate or weep if you or I died tomorrow - it's pretty much a definition of impersonal. As individuals, we're not important. Neither you nor I will play the new game in a store. Assuming that you have friends who you're able to game with, then you're welcome to either act like a fethwit in private, or skip that aspect of the new rules entirely. Alone with the other obvious options of just playing something else. Not every game has to be for all of us, of course - and this is no exception.

Don't hold your ASD as making you anything more or less special here than someone who is left-handed or sight impaired. They don't care and won't make allowances for it. Much like the world at large does not care and will generally make only token allowances for it outside of specialist venues and organisations. That's far from the worst of their indifference of course - When was the last time you saw an official GW paintjob painted as a non-caucasian? How many women and non-whites are there in human armies (IG/AM) of the 40th millennium compared to, say the British Army, US Armed forces or the IDF?

Getting back to AoS, I'd suggest that Tournament and competitive players are a comparatively bigger slice of the money pie, and they're pretty blatantly showing that they don't care about them, either. "Tournament Gamers" are not important enough in the context of their comparatively low-selling fantasy genre for them to care about. "ASD Gamers" are are not important enough in the context of their comparatively low-selling fantasy genre for them to care about. This game is aimed at the walk-ins and the new players, and adheres very strongly to the "churn through young teenagers" demographic that has been their target for nigh on 20 years now - as well as "figure collectors" who don't care about the actual games.

Don't get me wrong. I wish they'd included points as well, and the lack of same means I'll be playing far less than I would otherwise (I'll probably have a go with it since the rules are free - which is very telling in and of itself!). I think it's stupid that they did not include points, but I recognise that they (think) they know their market, and are aiming their game very hard at that market.

I looked all over and i can't figure out how the armies are setup balance wise. My best guess so far would be: I take 6 units, you take 6 units, of anything. ???

 Xyxox wrote:

 Talys wrote:

 buddha wrote:
This isn't a game without points, formations, or some way to level opponents. That's like saying you can play monopoly but you can just take as many properties as you want. Also money. And pieces. So buy multiple monopoly boxes. o.0

A much better comparison is Chainmail by Garry Gygax, the predecessor to D&D, which used(and had rules for) miniatures.

The campaign nature of sigmar means GW wants its players to follow a story and pay for that content, OR to build their own stories to play.

As somebody who payed both Chainmail and its successor, Swords and Spells (a D&D supplement) I can tell you have no clue what you are talking about. Chainmail included a very complex points based system and was incredibly balanced.

To compare AoS to Chainmail is to mock a highly advanced and well developed war game system. Chainmail would run circles around AoS. I'm disgusted that the two would be uttered in the same breath.

Sure Chainmail had a rudimentary point system, upon which many future point systems were based. I have no idea how you can consider its points system complex. It was very reasonable and straight forward, to reflect medieval armies that were very straightforward.

My point wasn't that Chainmail didn't have points, it was that you created scenario-based play (or at least, we did), a miniature based game that eventually led to campaign-based RPGs.

I think of of AoS as a campaign based, story driven miniature game, revolving around key skirmishes between heroes, rather than a miniature war game. And before you jump all over me, I don't even like this kind of thing, certainly not enough to make it my main fame or to play through a campaign. If GW makes boxes with good value in models, and they're great models, I'll buy them for that, and *occasionally* play AoS, but I'll never make it through a campaign or buy a campaign set that has no models.

What I want is a large scale, high model count scifi war game, though scenarios (not campaigns) in that setting are interesting to me. I don't want fantasy or historical, so it would be impossible, no matter how great the game, for AoS to grab me.

 mikhaila wrote:

 warboss wrote:

I saw a reference to the halfling hot pot catapult but I didn't see anything for lumpin croop's band, regular halfling archers, or spearmen either. Did I miss those or are they gone as well?

Listening very carefully, i noticed that the words "current" and "sold by the website" were used quite a bit. Even then, this was a pretty big project. I've got all 439 pages printed out at the shop.

Maybe we can petition for a 10th realm where all the models with no rules live now?Unobtania?

Oh, wait, i used too many real vowels.......Unybtynya.....

Is the hot pot catapult still available for sale then up until yesterday? It's listed in the empire list (admittedly in the counts as appendix) but the rest of the halflings that I thought went away at the same time weren't. It just seems odd that they'd mention one and not the other since both were OOP to my knowledge.

number9dream wrote:

 Xyxox wrote:

Ejay wrote:

 Xyxox wrote:
GOOD GOD! $250 in the US!

GW has shot themselves in the foot on this one. They are toast.

looks like someone is using the Australian version of the GW website again

D'oh!

Hm, the australian site says 200$ for me?

Yes, it's $200 in Oz. $250 in New Zealand, apparently.

If you were determined to make it work, you'd need to make force orgs a thing and no special characters.

Then you'd need to take the really big game changers, things like Bloodthirsters, Tomb Kings on Necrosphinx, and probably anything with 12 wounds or more and put them in a Lords of War type category.

(Seriously, Royal Warsphinx are great. 12+ wounds and take half damage? All for the same "points cost" as a regular tomb prince on foot!)

Then you would need to take anything that hits and wounds on 4's or better and move them into an elite category.

Everything else is probably just fine as core troops tend to balance out.

So like, you might have a format of say..

2/50/25/1

2 Characters, 50 general wounds, 25 elite wounds, and 1 lord of war which can be added to any category.

At first I was afraid, I was petrified...
Thinking however could I play without points on my side...
I spent oh so many nights thinking how could they go so wrong, I grew strong, realized points doesn't mean anything at all!

And now Sigmars back, from outer space, I find him here smashing orks upin their face. I would have changed my stupid list, I would have made you rebalance yours if I had known for just one second you'd play 100 monstrous creatures or more!



First impression is that this game sucks, no balance what so ever and with stupid rules that either shouldn't be there at all or make no sense.... So if I talk to Konrad I get to re-roll 1s to hit, if he talks back I get to re-roll all to hit? So... people with paranoid schizophrenia have an advantage over people who don't?

This is a kids game, not to be taken serious at all and not to be played by anyone above the age of 12 as they should be smart enough to graduate to a more complicated product like 40K.

I can just take 30 large monsters, if you have 90 models or more I can set the Sudden Death to kill your weakest unit, run every model I have into that unit and win through sudden death. I might have 180+ wounds vs your 100+ or you could have 600+ wounds if you brought 100 MCs.

I guess it's too early to tell how this will play out but I think the game is pretty much dead from a competitive side of view as it is right now. If we want any semblance of balance we are going to have to create our own ruleset. Since Fantasy is pretty much dead already I don't think anyone will bother past the first year.

I honestly believe GW just killed off the entire Fantasy franchise with this move. It's a kids game to allow kids to play with whatever they own and nothing more as of yet.

@Thunderfrog Do you care to add that to the "proposed rules" forum for AOS? I like that concept a lot.

Will do.

 Talys wrote:

I think of of AoS as a campaign based, story driven miniature game, revolving around key skirmishes between heroes, rather than a miniature war game.

Mordheim and Necromunda did this. Empire of the Dead and Deadzone do this. Frostgrave and Open Combat will do this.

Unless I missed something in the rules about campaigns and evolving units/characters, this is just something you're making up and throwing up as a defense for a poorly thought out, bare-bones ruleset. There is nothing in AoS that makes it any more 'campaign based' or 'story driven' than any other game on the market, apart from the fact that GW didn't bother to put points in the game, so now players have to spend time before a game hashing out what each player can bring that won't make the game unfair/not fun.

This release has stopped me from buying anything from GW (and I have a completely massive collection). It shows me they have no judgment left and Im not risking buying more products.

 infinite_array wrote:

 Talys wrote:

I think of of AoS as a campaign based, story driven miniature game, revolving around key skirmishes between heroes, rather than a miniature war game.

Mordheim and Necromunda did this. Empire of the Dead and Deadzone do this. Frostgrave and Open Combat will do this.

Unless I missed something in the rules about campaigns and evolving units/characters, this is just something you're making up and throwing up as a defense for a poorly thought out, bare-bones ruleset.

I'm describing AoS, not defending it. I don't think it's inaccurate. Did you miss the part where I said that this isn't my kind of game?

 MadCowCrazy wrote:
At first I was afraid, I was petrified...
Thinking however could I play without points on my side...
I spent oh so many nights thinking how could they go so wrong, I grew strong, realized points doesn't mean anything at all!

And now Sigmars back, from outer space, I find him here smashing orks upin their face. I would have changed my stupid list, I would have made you rebalance yours if I had known for just one second you'd play 100 monstrous creatures or more!



First impression is that this game sucks, no balance what so ever and with stupid rules that either shouldn't be there at all or make no sense.... So if I talk to Konrad I get to re-roll 1s to hit, if he talks back I get to re-roll all to hit? So... people with paranoid schizophrenia have an advantage over people who don't?

This is a kids game, not to be taken serious at all and not to be played by anyone above the age of 12 as they should be smart enough to graduate to a more complicated product like 40K.

I can just take 30 large monsters, if you have 90 models or more I can set the Sudden Death to kill your weakest unit, run every model I have into that unit and win through sudden death. I might have 180+ wounds vs your 100+ or you could have 600+ wounds if you brought 100 MCs.

I guess it's too early to tell how this will play out but I think the game is pretty much dead from a competitive side of view as it is right now. If we want any semblance of balance we are going to have to create our own ruleset. Since Fantasy is pretty much dead already I don't think anyone will bother past the first year.

I honestly believe GW just killed off the entire Fantasy franchise with this move. It's a kids game to allow kids to play with whatever they own and nothing more as of yet.

I totally agree about the "kids" comments. Crazy that GW would limit their target audience this way!

I just preordered the Kings of War 2.0 rulebook. Looks like it will be given in pdf form the day before this releases, and they'll be adding in armies for all fantasy factions. I'll be switching over with my chaos dwarfs! Was already using the Mantic models for my K'daai anyway

 Kirasu wrote:
This release has stopped me from buying anything from GW (and I have a completely massive collection). It shows me they have no judgment left and Im not risking buying more products.

Be fair though -- you've been pretty down on GW already, and it's not like you were happy with their releases, AoS or otherwise.

 Talys wrote:

 infinite_array wrote:

 Talys wrote:

I think of of AoS as a campaign based, story driven miniature game, revolving around key skirmishes between heroes, rather than a miniature war game.

Mordheim and Necromunda did this. Empire of the Dead and Deadzone do this. Frostgrave and Open Combat will do this.

Unless I missed something in the rules about campaigns and evolving units/characters, this is just something you're making up and throwing up as a defense for a poorly thought out, bare-bones ruleset.

I'm describing AoS, not defending it. I don't think it's inaccurate. Did you miss the part where I said that this isn't my kind of game?

I did. I suppose I'm wrong in saying that you're defending the game, but then I guess I'm saying you're description is actually inaccurate. There's nothing here apart from the starter scenarios that indicate the game has any story driven components than what players make themselves, but I can do that for any games I play already - heck, I do that regularly on my blog! See the intro story to the All Quiet AAR. And a 'campaign based, story driven miniature game' sounds more akin to PP's RPG, or DnD 4th edition, both of which have more than four pages of rules and allows players to actually create an ongoing story with more detail.