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That feels either very repetitive or requiring a vast wealth of miniatures to meet the specifications of the different scenarios. And still very limiting compared to just putting in a fething points system.

Books that had collected rules from WD were common about 20 years ago so anything is possible with GW today I guess.

Doot doot doot. A week away, examining myself in the mirror after that ludricous display a hundred(!) pages ago, and AoS dropped in the meantime. I had a couple of thoughts that might be pertinent to comments here, starting with the topic of balance and points values...

One blackshirt explained it yesterday: 'if someone wants to be a douche, you can be a douche back. If someone wants to play nice, then it's great'. True enough, but I'm not so convinced 'cos that was like the excuse GW fans give for points-based cheesery and powergaming. And that was possible because points-based matchups are not inherently balanced; not when you seem to shuttle between picking points values out of a hat, and favouring the newest, biggest toys, like GW does. From others here I get that any kind of playtesting done in Nottingham consists of a couple of guys knocking about, not caring what happens, just waiting to see things blow up. Just as they imagine every other 40K/WFB player doing, which is far from accurate.
You'll get 'those guys' in any game but GW's two seem to really foster them, thanks to what looks like an almost complete breakdown between the studio's apparent intent* (anything-goes, 'narrative-forging' games) and what a great many gamers assume the intent to be. I.e. a heavily points-based system = some kind of competitive, 'tournament' gaming. That so many people can easily hunt out the most overpowered, undercosted units and items, and figure how to slot them into nigh-invincible combos, is more an indication of the attitude of the GW studio (and the overly strategic, 'mathammery' nature of the games) than a failure of points-based wargaming.
I'd say that the abandonment of points in AoS is at least more honest and aware on GW's part. Still don't think it'll make the game much more playable, though.

* 'Course, there's the train of thought that the studio doesn't have much say in the matter, viz. Rick Priestley's reasons for leaving.

Meanwhile, back at the GW store, there was the guy (let's call him a stereotypical GW store inhabitant) who came up to me and the guy I happened to be standing adjacent to (Why us? Who knows?) to tell us about the hilarious new rule he just found: when your hero challenges your opponent's, or something, you can specify which body part he's going to hit. If successful, your opponent has to act as if they recieved the injury themselves. I.e. if their hero's right hand is injured, your opponent has to roll dice and move minis with their left hand for the rest of the game. And that's just the start of the potential japery of that one rule. I'm actually surprised at the effort it took to politely chuckle at his discovery, rather than stare in disbelief.

I was going to download all these free rules 'cos they're free, and one more option for gaming; now I don't think I even want to read them. It sounds like those stupid novelty boardgames that get you to stand up and act like a tool for one game, then gets shoved in the back of a cupboard and forgotten. People say you can just ignore the daft rules or not take them so seriously; but that's not going to be so easy as you think, since people like to play the rules as written. That section that likes to do things by the book, by the letter of the rules, grabbing whatever tiny, arbitrary loophole and advantage they can, are going to leave in droves, or make the game even more intolerable and unplayable for many people. (You can also ignore the daft rules by... playing something else. And a tightly-written, reasonably balanced game hurts no-one on the sliding scale between 'serious' and 'non-serious' gamers.) I've been a bit sceptical but otherwise undecided; but guys, now I honestly think this is the death of WFB. This is the game soiling itself in the last stages of senility.

Oh, and while I didn't get this issue of WD, I wandered into the newsagent and saw the newest issue of W:SS was out! Score!

The attitude that fantasy is just a bit of nonsense and frippery, and to pot with any notions of consistency, dignity or game balance, is something that's irritated me for a long time.
Aye, fantasy's more a type of escapism, and not so serious, consequential and set-in-stone as history (or so some historical players would have you believe), and I'm far from opposed to mixing up themes and stories and having fun with them. At the same time, it's only my opinion and one way of doing things, but I prefer fantasy that has a solid framework, drawing from history or real life, having an internal consistency, having a well thought-out and balanced ruleset or whatever. Something to get your teeth into. Then you can go as serious or wacky as you like with it. 'Anything goes', in official setting or rules, just looks too sloppy and bores me silly before too long.

I mentioned the latest issue of W:SS. Richard 'Too Fat Lardies' Clarke's column in it was on a similar topic. He was having a pop at historical gamers dismissing the whole hobby as 'just a game' (in fact I think he went a bit much like the 'historicals = srs bsns' thing in some places) but some points jumped out at me.

Unlike darts, where the participants simply chuck arrows at a board, or football, where they kick a ball about and fall to the ground crying occasionally, wargaming is a multifarious hobby, where the vast majority of us are also interested in the soldiers, the strategy, and indeed, the general history of warfare...
Frankly, if some people feel I'm wrong and that it is indeed "just a game", then that's fine by me... What does concern me is the on-line reaction those who stood up for wargaming as a learning tool were met with - at best ridicule, at worst vitriol. Their crime? To stand up for the hobby they enjoy.

I like the soldiers, strategy and history aspects of wargaming myself, as much as it applies to fantasy. I like recreating certain armies or characters. I like taxing myself in a wargame, same as taxing myself with sculpting, a game of sudoku or The Lords of Midnight or whatever, even chucking arrows or kicking a football if the situation arises. It's one way to go about wargaming. Chucking dice while mucking about with your mates is another way. I can't understand the attitude that the latter is the only natural habitat of fantasy, laxity and 'fun', while the former is just for historicals and dry simulations, too serious and 'boring'. Especially when there's been so much overlap - WFB to WAB, Warmaster to Warmaster Ancients and Hail Caesar et al, DBX to HoTT, and many other fantasy adaptations of historical sets, historical army lists for fantasy sets, etc. Whether you're playing Napoleonics or nose-picking orcs shouldn't make much difference to the elegance of the rules or, indeed, the fun.

That issue of W:SS also had an article about adapting Osprey's Lion Rampant medieval rules for fantasy, ahead of the release of the Dragon Rampant fantasy sequel out later in the year. Guess what book of medieval rules I got this week, too? Intended for retinues or warbands of 40-60 models... doesn't matter how models are based... why does that sound familiar? And oops, it was actually playtested, and has a forum where the author listens to and gives feedback! The daftest rule in it is that retinues entirely consisting of 70's-80's minis get +2 glory. (Those... ageists!) I'm already hanging out on ebay like a vulture, waiting for the folks chased away by AoS in their droves.

Mr. Sack o'Skulls is just a few dongs away from being a Kingdom Death model. If this edition is targeted at younger gamers, then this is a really weird way to take it. I know, phrasing.

 edlowe wrote:
Sounds like a wishlist rumour, tho if they do produce such a book it could only be an improvement

Don't so sure.

These days it seems a dedicated group of fans could easily write better, more fun, more balanced rules than the GW design staff.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:


These days it seems a dedicated group of fans could easily write better, more fun, more balanced rules than the GW design staff.

The fake edition of 40k already proved that.

 Melissia wrote:

Demandread wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
If the creators of WFB say it i supposed to be silly

... then it is irrelevant. Their wishes don't matter. When writing fiction, the end results matters vastly more than the intent of the author.

"Death of the Author is one of the laziest and intellecually dishonest tropes taught in the humanities today."

Alternatively:

“I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author."

Even if someone intended well, if they delivered poorly, their intents don't 'really matter.

Did nobody watch the news these past few weeks?

No less than the Supreme Court affirmed that intent mattered more than the result.

RoninXiC wrote:
I already call BS on the "no need for points because we have scenarios"
It will not work. Not with a dozend armies and 985439854 units.

Points didn't work for play either though. If they did, there wouldn't have been Tier levels where it was recognized that this army/that unit was more 'points efficient' (aka overpowered) and that army/this unit was a poor points investment (aka underpowered).

If points are working, like they largely were in the early version of KoW (most units in most early list armies were largely interchangeable) and in Void 1.1 (everybody could take largely the same core forces differentiated by a few specialty units), you wind up with vanilla/boring complaints.

EDIT: Additionally, game designers from GW have stated that they tended to ballpark estimate what a unit/model 'felt' like points-wise rather than resorting to rigorous math-hammer.

 Spinner wrote:
You know, I honestly kinda like Mister Skully? He actually makes a really good Chaos Spawn. They're supposed to be screwed up and not make any physical sense, and I could see Khorne 'rewarding' a champion by turning all his useless boring bones into nifty, throne-suitable skulls...

"Ah, human. 234 bones inside your pathetic fleshbag, yet only one skull. Here, let me fix that." -Khorne, probably

privateer4hire wrote:

RoninXiC wrote:
I already call BS on the "no need for points because we have scenarios"
It will not work. Not with a dozend armies and 985439854 units.

Points didn't work for play either though. If they did, there wouldn't have been Tier levels where it was recognized that this army/that unit was more 'points efficient' (aka overpowered) and that army/this unit was a poor points investment (aka underpowered).

If points are working, like they largely were in the early version of KoW (most units in most early list armies were largely interchangeable) and in Void 1.1 (everybody could take largely the same core forces differentiated by a few specialty units), you wind up with vanilla/boring complaints.

That wasn't an issue with the points system though. That was an issue with GW not giving anything the correct points value.

So both the points system method and this method are imperfect. Agreed.

 Vermis wrote:
... It sounds like those stupid novelty boardgames that get you to stand up and act like a tool for one game, then gets shoved in the back of a cupboard and forgotten. People say you can just ignore the daft rules or not take them so seriously; but that's not going to be so easy as you think, since people like to play the rules as written. That section that likes to do things by the book, by the letter of the rules, grabbing whatever tiny, arbitrary loophole and advantage they can, are going to leave in droves, or make the game even more intolerable and unplayable for many people. (You can also ignore the daft rules by... playing something else. And a tightly-written, reasonably balanced game hurts no-one on the sliding scale between 'serious' and 'non-serious' gamers.) I've been a bit sceptical but otherwise undecided; but guys, now I honestly think this is the death of WFB. This is the game soiling itself in the last stages of senility.

Very well put. Other than the hack job they did to the rules, it's the change in the general feel of the game that has struck me the most. These silly special rules that GW expects one to act out is a prime example. Granted the people I play with would never expect another gamer to act anything out or even want them to, it is still annoying since I am one of those people that like to adhere to rules. I will still buy it most likely and give it a fair try...if nothing else the miniatures are amazing and will be re-purposed while I stay with 8th edition. I truly hope this isn't the death of WHFB, as I've loved setting for decades, despite the tweaks and every shifting fluff. It was still consistent enough to be recognizable as the world that I first explored in the original release of the roleplaying game. Not that a drastic change in the setting was necessarily a bad thing...the way it was handled is.

 pretre wrote:
Can we take the beard talk to the beard thread?
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/654969.page

Indeed. I have cleaned out a whole swag of off-topic posts. If anyone feels a burning need to discuss representation of women in wargaming, there are other places than this thread to do it in.

privateer4hire wrote:
So both the points system method and this method are imperfect. Agreed.

No. The points system works fine, when significant effort is put into pointing things correctly. There is no method at all used in AoS. There just isn't anything at all in the rules to balance your army against your opponents. The points system might not be perfect, but it's far and away better than just having no system whatsoever.

 ImAGeek wrote:

privateer4hire wrote:

RoninXiC wrote:
I already call BS on the "no need for points because we have scenarios"
It will not work. Not with a dozend armies and 985439854 units.

Points didn't work for play either though. If they did, there wouldn't have been Tier levels where it was recognized that this army/that unit was more 'points efficient' (aka overpowered) and that army/this unit was a poor points investment (aka underpowered).

If points are working, like they largely were in the early version of KoW (most units in most early list armies were largely interchangeable) and in Void 1.1 (everybody could take largely the same core forces differentiated by a few specialty units), you wind up with vanilla/boring complaints.

That wasn't an issue with the points system though. That was an issue with GW not giving anything the correct points value.

A good solution might be to make army lists a living document, with points or rules updated periodically based on games played.

GW did a bit of that in the early 2000s.

But anyway point remains, why play this game when you either have to write your own #$%^ rules or cling to hope that someday GW might release the rest of the rules and the might, might, might, maybe, be good.

It's the little things that burn me.

For example, your unit can be made up entirely of banners and musicians?

No limits on copies of a special character?

It's almost like GW put out a mini rules set, are trolling for feedback secretly, then will put out a ruleset with all the stuff we are complaining about.

Having played my first game with Tomb Kings vs Demons, about 80 wounds each, I must say that summoning is VERY strong... summoned units can charge and shoot when summoned if in range!

TK's won the match, killing lots of Khorne Hounds and blood letters with about 40 free models on the board.

I DO like how your wizards can only summon units you have on the board, since they know the spell because said unit grants it to them.

 ImAGeek wrote:

privateer4hire wrote:
So both the points system method and this method are imperfect. Agreed.

No. The points system works fine, when significant effort is put into pointing things correctly. There is no method at all used in AoS. There just isn't anything at all in the rules to balance your army against your opponents. The points system might not be perfect, but it's far and away better than just having no system whatsoever.

Worse than that, it has a system based solely on model count!

So my 5 dragons are vastly out numbered by your hoard of 20 goblins and a troll.

So I get to pick a victory condition that lets me autowin with my poor out numbered army?

 Platuan4th wrote:
You may as well play KoW with pieces of cardboard cut to appropriate size.

That's what WHFB has always been. Rectangles and squares fighting each other on a table. Models are just wound counters.

Very expensive wound counters.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Very expensive wound counters.

But often very pretty!

It amazes me that people can praise a rules system as AoS for being loose and giving them "freedom" to make armies they couldn't under previous Warhammer editions, and then claim that people who complain about silyness like requiring facial hair to claim bonuses can just ignore those rules, so it's not a problem.

As if people couldn't ignore any rule from the previous editions!

The thing about having a balanced rules system as a baseline is just that. It is then balanced as the BASELINE. If you and your opponent (co-player) can mutually agree on playing the game in a different way then you have always been able to do so. The importance of having a balanced baseline is that when you don't have time, skill or desire to make modifications then the baseline will provide the version you play.

If you want to play an unbalanced game then both players should want this to be the case. So then it's no problem to modify the normal rules of equal points or give one force a beneficial bonus rule. If only one player wants to have a unbalanced game (normally wanting to be the stronger force). Then it's reasonable that this player should have to be satisfyed with an even game until he/she can find an opponent that wants to play with the same modifications.


Also about those facial hair rules. Yes of course it's no big deal and any Empire or Dwarf-playing girl can presumably get those bonuses if she wants. But that's not really the point. Having such rules does (intentionally or not) give off an air of exclusion, discouraging people who don't conform to the presumed group (males) who "should" be playing the game.

It's hard enough getting females interested in wargaming.

ShaneTB wrote:
Picked up from my Twitter feed:

I had no fears left to allay, and this just confirms that I want to stay out of AoS.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:

privateer4hire wrote:

RoninXiC wrote:
I already call BS on the "no need for points because we have scenarios"
It will not work. Not with a dozend armies and 985439854 units.

Points didn't work for play either though. If they did, there wouldn't have been Tier levels where it was recognized that this army/that unit was more 'points efficient' (aka overpowered) and that army/this unit was a poor points investment (aka underpowered).

If points are working, like they largely were in the early version of KoW (most units in most early list armies were largely interchangeable) and in Void 1.1 (everybody could take largely the same core forces differentiated by a few specialty units), you wind up with vanilla/boring complaints.

That wasn't an issue with the points system though. That was an issue with GW not giving anything the correct points value.

A good solution might be to make army lists a living document, with points or rules updated periodically based on games played.

GW did a bit of that in the early 2000s.

But anyway point remains, why play this game when you either have to write your own #$%^ rules or cling to hope that someday GW might release the rest of the rules and the might, might, might, maybe, be good.

Spartan Games is currently doing the living rules/army lists approach (all free downloads) with their Planetfall game. Every army has significant options that don't exist yet but are covered in the rules that will be released as models are developed. Points values have been clicked up and down, abilities altered, etc. especially when fans come back and note that, say, 75% of games are won by faction X. It's a lot of work on their part to keep up with and at the end of the day, you can still min-max just about any points system to get advantage over somebody who doesn't have that skill or doesn't want to devote their life to researching every possible combo for an easy win button.

My read is that you need scenarios with specified lists/model counts (as provided in the AoS set specifically to cover the models being played) to get the best from this game.
Scenarios that include force lists are good IMO because they have a balancing mechanism already built in.

shade1313 wrote:

ShaneTB wrote:
Picked up from my Twitter feed:

I had no fears left to allay, and this just confirms that I want to stay out of AoS.

so, instead of the freedom to choose what army you want, they just tell you what to use? Lame.

Anyone else looking forward to making custom Warscroll binders for their army?

I've been scrounging up some arts and crafts stuff today, just to see what I can put together. Hopefully have something together for my Beastmen later this week.

shade1313 wrote:

ShaneTB wrote:
Picked up from my Twitter feed:

I had no fears left to allay, and this just confirms that I want to stay out of AoS.

As somebody who hates the living daylights out of power gaming opponents and facing min-maxxed lists this confirms that I want to check AoS out.
Scenario (hopefully with suggested force lists) helps level the playing field for folks who have neither time/inclination to research a dozen loopholes and game-breaking combos.

You really like the idea of having a prescribed force for each battle?

From a guy on Something Awful:

GW had a guy camped out at the Forge World open day whos entire job was to answer questions and talk to people about Age of Sigmar. His entire job is to go to shows and talk to people about the new game. For the first time I think ever they're taking Age of Sigmar to Gencon, Comic Con, all the major wargames conventions in Europe etc. They're throwing a considerable amount of money at putting this in front of new audiences who have never played fantasy before. He was also brutally honest and didn't dodge any questions and answered everything he could. I'll start with the negative stuff first.

This is it. There categorically will not be a '9th' edition of fantasy. Age of Sigmar is the only thing fantasy related GW will do for the considerable future.

He acknowledges that the 'funny' rules are rather silly and don't make for a great intro to the system for new people. His response was that the armies in the box set don't have the silly rules. They're there as kind of a celebration and final send off of the old warhammer armies, and he said you might notice the new armies don't have the stupid noises or imaginary friends. This is deliberate, its designed that you'll only generally play the old stuff with your mates since it's a bit embarassing to play in a public place.

The new races will look different to the old ones. Ooruks will not look the same as the orcs we currently have. As such, when they get round to releasing Ooruks, the old models will cease production. He did say that you can still use your old models as ooruks, but you won't be able to buy normal orc boys again.

There will never be points values.

On to the slightly positive stuff then.

They are going to fully support all modes of play, and will be releasing rules to balance armies against each other. There will be narrative campaigns where your forces are picked for you for specific missions, and there will be a system for tournament players to balance lists that isn't based on model count. He did not know the specifics of this, but said it is definitely coming.

The rules will always be free. He said that they are very very aware that fantasy had a massive buy in for someone to get started, as such the game was designed with the ability to play it with one box of models. There will be army books, but every rule in them will be available, for free, online. The books will just have extra background info and scenarios.

GW really are trying harder than they ever have before to make this work. If you're at one of the shows go and talk to them. They want to talk to you about this, but especially they want your feedback on it. As he said, this is totally uncharted territory for them and they are totally open to rules revisions as they go.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3411068&pagenumber=511#post447395865

 nels1031 wrote:
Anyone else looking forward to making custom Warscroll binders for their army?

I've been scrounging up some arts and crafts stuff today, just to see what I can put together. Hopefully have something together for my Beastmen later this week.

These could be printed in a6 with a banner picture of your miniature on top of the name description and then laminated.

That would be quite a geeky thing to do.

The new races will look different to the old ones. Ooruks will not look the same as the orcs we currently have. As such, when they get round to releasing Ooruks, the old models will cease production. He did say that you can still use your old models as ooruks, but you won't be able to buy normal orc boys again.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo... terrible news.

That sounds like GW is doing exactly what they should be doing: free rules, better community interaction and outreach, simpler ruleset yet better support for competitive play...

Yeah, the more I'm hearing about AoS, the more I'm liking it. In a few years we might look back at the initial outrage with a smile and a shrug.