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Plumbumbarum wrote:
Products have universaly agreed inherent quality requirements.

Universally agreed? When did we all agree as to what constitutes a quality war game? Did your country legislate some regulations about this or something? I don't think they were adopted in the UK or US.

Plumbumbarum wrote:
Not to mention that ignoring a feedback from large portion of your active consumers (competitive gamers) is one of the worst quality management crimes you can commit.

I'm not sure you can demonstrate GW ignores competitive gamers just because it has not chosen to make a rule set that faciliates tournament-style play. A company can learn not to do things, after all.

TheKbob wrote:What's their equivalent to MEHTAL BAWKSES?

I always imagine Ben Affleck or Bill Burr saying that in all their Boston-ised glory.

edit - it's and early and my words aren't working yet.

 Manchu wrote:

Plumbumbarum wrote:
Products have universaly agreed inherent quality requirements.

Universally agreed? When did we all agree as to what constitutes a quality war game? Did your country legislate some regulations about this or something? I don't think they were adopted in the UK or US.

Plumbumbarum wrote:
Not to mention that ignoring a feedback from large portion of your active consumers (competitive gamers) is one of the worst quality management crimes you can commit.

I'm not sure you can demonstrate GW ignores competitive gamers just because it has not chosen to make a rule set that faciliates tournament-style play. A company can learn not to do things, after all.

The thing is, there's no reason not to write a balanced ruleset that does also facilitate tournament style play. Everyone wins with a tight ruleset. Narrative, casual and tournament players all would benifit from a well written, well balanced set of rules.

 ImAGeek wrote:
The thing is, there's no reason not to write a balanced ruleset that does also facilitate tournament style play.

Sure there is. For example, if you want to discourage or at least not encourage certain play styles.

 Manchu wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:
The thing is, there's no reason not to write a balanced ruleset that does also facilitate tournament style play.

Sure there is. For example, if you want to discourage or at least not encourage certain play styles.

But...why? It just cuts off a chunk of your potential customers.

Plumbumbarum wrote:


Irony being the fact that Mantic gained a lot of recognition and goodwill thanks to new GW rules and if able to capitalise on it, might grow into a much more significant competition than ever before.

Yeah, it is pretty funny that Mantic is essentially built on the things that GW dropped. First it was Dreadball that got them rolling, and now it might be KoW that makes them big. Even better is that they are almost neighbours - GW management must have fun watching the little company that's Mantic churn out profit with all the stuff that they failed

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

It's sad that the overall effect of the CHS case was a company more paranoid, insular, secretive and petty than ever before.

I have a feeling that if GW used the money and effort in developing their rules team and market research, instead of all legal battles and copyright stuff, they'd be much better off. I cannot see much return for all those legal costs, copyright revamps etc. they've invested in, and while at it the rules team seems to have suffered the most, which has lowered the overall quality of their product.

 ImAGeek wrote:
But...why? It just cuts off a chunk of your potential customers.

Everything has a cost, including selling to certain demographics. Perhaps the costs outweigh the potential profit.

 prowla wrote:
Yeah, it is pretty funny that Mantic is essentially built on the things that GW dropped.

Mantic is great because it can afford to do things that GW cannot or does not want to precisely because it is so much smaller and niche-oriented. If you think about it ecologically, Mantic is a commensalist symbiont of GW. It thrives in (admittedly small) markets GW makes available. But it isn't much of a competitor (yet).

What extra cost is there selling a ruleset to competitive players than there is selling a ruleset to non competitive players?

 Mort wrote:
Losing most certainly does not ruin my fun - at least I hope not, since I probably lose about 55-60% of the games I play. But losing sure does ruin WAAC guy's fun, as you can tell by the quiet awkwardness as he makes up his excuses while he's packing his cheddar back into his minis case.

Losing certain does NOT ruin my fun either. In fact, our group makes a very active effort to rebalance to give everyone a reasonable chance of winning against everyone else. I don't want to win 9 games in a row OR lose 9 games in a row, especially against the same person. In a perfect world, around 50/50 is cool, and just a little above that against skilled players makes me feel good.

In computer games with matchmaking (like starcraft and hearthstone), after you reach equilibrium (stomp all the people much less skilled than you), your win ratio approaches 50%. If you can keep it at 51%, you will eventually be the #1 rated player in the season. But these are the kinds of W/L ratios I like, and I'm happy to handicap (remove my own units, or let the other person have more) to get there in a wargame.

 Mort wrote:

The definition of WAAC guy -is- arbitrary - I said pretty much that very thing in my description. It varies from person to person. For some, a WAAC guy is just someone who cheats. If you're willing to break the rules just to win, well, you're a WAAC punk. For others, it means something a bit different.

For me, WAAC guy puts winning above having fun. Cheating doesn't make the game fun for your opponent. Whining, pouting, and crying during the game (especially when things aren't going your way) doesn't make it fun for your opponent. Doing your best to table your opponent on turn two -probably- doesn't make the game fun for your opponent. WAAC guy sees the game as an event solely for -his- enjoyment and entertainment, and if his opponent has fun or not is pretty much irrelevant to him.

I'm with you on the WAAC guy as putting winning above having fun. I don't actually consider cheating "Any Cost" -- any more than I consider bashing your opponent's head in with a beanie, or having someone call him to tell him that his house is on fire and forcing him to concede. Like, WAAC still assumes that the "Any Cost" is within the constraints of the game rules, because once you're willing to go past that, it's just a question of who's meaner and wants to win more, and has nothing to do with a game at all.

I'm ok with someone who tries to table me on T2 as long as that's not ALL they EVER try to do. If they want to test out a killer list on me, I'm happy to be a guinea pig. I'd welcome it as long as they're ok with me figuring a way to counter it, and crying uncle if I can't with the tools that are at hand.

 ImAGeek wrote:
What extra cost is there selling a ruleset to competitive players than there is selling a ruleset to non competitive players?

Seriously? So much of this thread is about how important it is to create balance. And people don't just want rough balance; they want something finely tuned. That costs money. It costs a lot of money to do it on the scale necessary for the back catalog of units in GW's line. And it costs lots of money going forward, as GW adds to the line. It's not just a matter of recruiting and retaining good designers, either. Power creep spiral is a real thing in competitive game product lines, which is a damned if you do and damned if you don't situation that can derail an entire brand (see, e.g., WHFB).

So by that same token, if GW are not interested in the competitive side of the market as you postulate Manchu, does that point to us seeing something similar for 40K should sales suffer a fall?

 filbert wrote:
does that point to us seeing something similar for 40K should sales suffer a fall?

I believe that AoS is a more extreme version of what GW has been doing with 40k over the last few years. I think GW would like to go this far with 40k eventually but the 40k brand is practically synonymous with the bottom line and so GW decided to experiment with a far less valuable brand first (which had nowhere to go but up). So if AoS dramatically improves Fantasy sales, I think GW will continue to steer 40k in the direction it has been going, namely toward what we see in AoS -- but with greater speed. I think AoS will be a big success in terms of the Fantasy brand. The trick is, how much of a success does it need to be to speed up 40k along its current course?

 Manchu wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:
What extra cost is there selling a ruleset to competitive players than there is selling a ruleset to non competitive players?

Seriously? So much of this thread is about how important it is to create balance. And people don't just want rough balance; they want something finely tuned. That costs money. It costs a lot of money to do it on the scale necessary for the back catalog of units in GW's line. And it costs lots of money going forward, as GW adds to the line. It's not just a matter of recruiting and retaining good designers, either. Power creep spiral is a real thing in competitive game product lines, which is a damned if you do and damned if you don't situation that can derail an entire brand (see, e.g., WHFB).

Balanced rules can actually be made quite cheaply. An 'open' ruleset currated and created by professionals but actively tested by large segments of the player base wouldn't cost more than GW currently spends on games development ( or at least more than they should be spending) could easily lead to a tight but well balanced game. Given that the AOS rules are free I don't understand why GW doesn't go down this route, aside from GW being GW.

 Manchu wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:
What extra cost is there selling a ruleset to competitive players than there is selling a ruleset to non competitive players?

Seriously? So much of this thread is about how important it is to create balance. And people don't just want rough balance; they want something finely tuned. That costs money. It costs a lot of money to do it on the scale necessary for the back catalog of units in GW's line. And it costs lots of money going forward, as GW adds to the line. It's not just a matter of recruiting and retaining good designers, either. Power creep spiral is a real thing in competitive game product lines, which is a damned if you do and damned if you don't situation that can derail an entire brand (see, e.g., WHFB).

wait, wait, wait. Didn't privateer press bassicly do that when they made Mark 2?

Not to mention the new 2nd ed of kings of war?

I don't think "It's hard to balence a game" is a excuse to just throw out the baby with the bath water and get rid of even the illusion that some thought went into the rules. I will call it for what it is, and that it was GW was to lazy to even care.

The target demographic for PP and Mantic games are competitive gamers; that is, their business models are built around the idea of marketing their products as tournament-geared. Just because GW is a larger company that manages a much more popular brand does not mean it can do everything smaller companies with less popular brands can do plus more.

 Manchu wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:
What extra cost is there selling a ruleset to competitive players than there is selling a ruleset to non competitive players?

Seriously? So much of this thread is about how important it is to create balance. And people don't just want rough balance; they want something finely tuned. That costs money. It costs a lot of money to do it on the scale necessary for the back catalog of units in GW's line. And it costs lots of money going forward, as GW adds to the line. It's not just a matter of recruiting and retaining good designers, either. Power creep spiral is a real thing in competitive game product lines, which is a damned if you do and damned if you don't situation that can derail an entire brand (see, e.g., WHFB).

It goes deeper than that.

We're not balancing archers, chariots, and spearmen here. There are hundreds units, many with special (magical) abilities that might individually be balanced, but when applied as force multipliers to each other are extremely difficult to balance. For example, Librarians? Cool. Centurions? Cool. Take both? They are worth WAY more than the two units separately, because one can make the other nigh invincible.

The one thing worse than not putting out points for everything is to have points that aren't balanced -- as Manchu puts it, finely tuned balance such that people can pick anything from a vast menu, and as long as it adds up to X points, the battle forces have some kind of chance to win. You know the competitive crowd is going to go nuts looking for those wombo combos to win tournaments. Every competitive player's heart aches for the next rule that can be badly abused.

Games Workshop has taken a gamble: instead of trying to balance units individually, they're planning to sell battle scenarios where they've prebalanced the two sides. Pick a scenario, and unless GW wrote the scenario badly, you won't be able to get into a situation where there's great imbalance. Alternatively, sit down with your opponent, and work out what you feel are two opposing forces that are competitive with each other.

Is this a winning formula in terms of selling a product? I don't know. As I said, as much as competitive players whine and bitch about imbalance, they *love* rules they can abuse. I know, because on the PC, you'll find no more competitive a player, and no worse an abuser of game mechanics. I will do ANYTHING within the terms of service (ie I won't cheat) of a PC game to claw my way to the top of that ladder, and I care not for what fun the other player is having, because I don't know them from a fly on the wall.

However, in miniature wargames, it's TOTALLY different, for me. I mean, the guy is standing 5 feet from me. Even if I don't know him or her, I'm gonna have a conversation, hopefully make friends, and hopefully play again in the future. We're probably going to share food and beverage, and be genuinely interested in each other's miniatures and gaming likes and dislikes. It's a real person that's there. So no, I want it to be a fair fight, and I'm happy to do what it takes to make it thus.

On the other hand, I really do enjoy listbuilding and unit configuration, something that's AoS doesn't offer, partly in the effort to simplify. Perhaps in the long run I'll find some entertainment in scenario building, where the challnge is to build TWO interesting lists that face off against each other in some interesting context. I dunno.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Lockark wrote:

I don't think "It's hard to balence a game" is a excuse to just throw out the baby with the bath water and get rid of even the illusion that some thought went into the rules. I will call it for what it is, and that it was GW was to lazy to even care.

It goes a little deeper than that, though. Games Workshop has ALWAYS been about the awesomeness of miniatures more than about game balance and tournament play. It's in their DNA. If you talk to their folks, you can feel it seep into their conversations. It's in WHW, in White Dwarf, Visions and everything else they do.

In their own words, theirs are games about like minded hobbyists sharing a common gaming experience. That just doesn't sound like, "You. Me. FIGHT!" When you talk to many WMH or X-Wing players, the models are more gamepieces and tokens than potential art or collectibles.

As I've said before, doing what you want to do is not being lazy or not caring; it's just caring about and focusing on something different. Now, whether or not GW can make a business out of it, I don't know. Maybe.

I can say that there's nothing particularly "lazy" about Age of Sigmar. We played it for 6 hours on Sunday, with random Warhammer Fantasy miniatures, and we had a blast. I mean, it was more fun than most other games that we randomly pick up and try, and even though some of us had totally disjointed battleforces and a couple had almost-cohesive armies, the games were pretty close.

We were supposed to play 2 games of 40k and give AoS a quick go; as it turned out, we ended up spending half our time on AoS, and talked about it most of the time we were playing 40k. I'm sure we'll play with the Sigmarites/Chaos when the box comes out, and try out the scenarios there. It's not going to replace 40k for us, but it certainly isn't a terrible game.

 Manchu wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:
What extra cost is there selling a ruleset to competitive players than there is selling a ruleset to non competitive players?

Seriously? So much of this thread is about how important it is to create balance. And people don't just want rough balance; they want something finely tuned. That costs money. It costs a lot of money to do it on the scale necessary for the back catalog of units in GW's line. And it costs lots of money going forward, as GW adds to the line. It's not just a matter of recruiting and retaining good designers, either. Power creep spiral is a real thing in competitive game product lines, which is a damned if you do and damned if you don't situation that can derail an entire brand (see, e.g., WHFB).

Another point I'll add to that is that a points system means there are always unit people won't use, thus won't buy.

If a company spends X amount designing and producing a unit for it to then not sell because the points aren't as good as another unit it's a waste. And I imagine the cost it takes for GW to research/design/produce a unit is more than its competitors in the market.

I think this is what GW is experimenting with. Does removing points encourage more balanced sales across units.

Like on Sunday - I played Masque of Slaanesh for the first time. Wouldn't have happened if points were still a thing.

ShaneTB wrote:

 Manchu wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:
What extra cost is there selling a ruleset to competitive players than there is selling a ruleset to non competitive players?

Seriously? So much of this thread is about how important it is to create balance. And people don't just want rough balance; they want something finely tuned. That costs money. It costs a lot of money to do it on the scale necessary for the back catalog of units in GW's line. And it costs lots of money going forward, as GW adds to the line. It's not just a matter of recruiting and retaining good designers, either. Power creep spiral is a real thing in competitive game product lines, which is a damned if you do and damned if you don't situation that can derail an entire brand (see, e.g., WHFB).

Another point I'll add to that is that a points system means there are always unit people won't use, thus won't buy.

If a company spends X amount designing and producing a unit for it to then not sell because the points aren't as good as another unit it's a waste. And I imagine the cost it takes for GW to research/design/produce a unit is more than its competitors in the market.

I think this is what GW is experimenting with. Does removing points encourage more balanced sales across units.

Like on Sunday - I played Masque of Slaanesh for the first time. Wouldn't have happened if points were still a thing.

Why does it take GW more money to research, design and produce a unit than other games companies..?

Well I do care for opponent enjoyment and am generaly too nice in rl, traits I was sadly never able to overcome but I never put much weight into others caring for my enjoyment tbh. It's a game not a brothel (that's not a suggestion that casual gamers are whores or sth lol) and unless you cheat or accuse me of cheating, we're not here to pleasure each other and the game itself is pleasure enough.

Never had a problem with sore loosers either, it's just a trait for me nothing more. Btw from my experience the worsst sore loosers are the scenario beardy this beardy that relaxed types especialy when they loose a scenario where they had a clear advantage. Jesus the crying, the army is op, so point and click that a monkey could win , he sells the game etc, again not really a problem but it was excessive for sure in few cases. Sure purely anecdotal but very funny in the context of the discussion imo.

Also I have a story about balance and casual play. Back in 5th I played nids, my friend played space marines and I had a winning streak against him like 20 games or sth. Now I am not much into fluff more into artwork and minis but he was very immersed in his army and the narrative of it. My list was mediocore at best, 5th edition cc carnifex and a second one with venom canon, walking hive tyrant a zoanthrope venomthrope some warriors lot of stealers and gaunts. It was neither horde not nidzila and far from min maxed in any part. Anyway we switched to 6th where my army got considerably worse and I was still winning, I remember adding a Trygon at some point but it wasnt some op thing by any stretch. I had been succesively limiting our terrain to finaly loose and in the end proposed to play on an empty table. I won, it was his last game of 40k ever and while obviously I am a natural strategic, tactical and overall genius, the actual reason he was loosing that badly was his love for tactical marines, terminators and dreadnoughts. Competitive player would just use better options but he as an ultimate narrative player was fethed by GW abysmal balancing.

Having played four AoS games now (two from the starter set and two with armies my opponent and I created), I have to say that I think a lot of the rage/quit comments are misguided.

Before, so much of WHFB seemed to boil down to who was better at placing their movement trays. With the AoS rules, tactics come back into the game in interesting ways. Formations no longer matter, so how you move and place models takes on a whole new significance. For game balance, my opponents and I agreed on wounds as our number. We created a 100 wounds apiece battle, and the games lasted about 3 hours each. The random aspect of who goes first each turn keeps things interesting and exciting. And the pile in mechanic allows for more models to get into combat rather than being stuck at the end of rank.

One thing I really liked about the scrolls was that most monsters now have variable stats, depending on their wounds. It makes you think how best to use them rather than just barrelling forward into combat.

My big takeaway - if you like 8th edition, your game is still there, and now your models will be there as they are being supported by AoS. If you are new to fantasy, want to pick it up again, or play 40K, you might want to give AoS a try. So far, the games have been fun (something that was lacking in my last experience with WHFB). Of course, your milage may vary.

 Manchu wrote:

Plumbumbarum wrote:
Products have universaly agreed inherent quality requirements.

Universally agreed? When did we all agree as to what constitutes a quality war game? Did your country legislate some regulations about this or something? I don't think they were adopted in the UK or US.

Plumbumbarum wrote:
Not to mention that ignoring a feedback from large portion of your active consumers (competitive gamers) is one of the worst quality management crimes you can commit.

I'm not sure you can demonstrate GW ignores competitive gamers just because it has not chosen to make a rule set that faciliates tournament-style play. A company can learn not to do things, after all.

Logic dictates those requirements. Balance is better than no balance, clear rules better than vague, faq better than no faq, reliable car better than unreliable etc. Then they get universaly agreed because logic dictates them, ie you agreeing with me from now on heh.

It sure looks like GW is ignoring competitive gamers atm. Maybe they dont though, how can you say when they hardly communicate with their customers.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Manchu wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:
What extra cost is there selling a ruleset to competitive players than there is selling a ruleset to non competitive players?

Seriously? So much of this thread is about how important it is to create balance. And people don't just want rough balance; they want something finely tuned. That costs money. It costs a lot of money to do it on the scale necessary for the back catalog of units in GW's line. And it costs lots of money going forward, as GW adds to the line. It's not just a matter of recruiting and retaining good designers, either. Power creep spiral is a real thing in competitive game product lines, which is a damned if you do and damned if you don't situation that can derail an entire brand (see, e.g., WHFB).

Yes quality has a price that you have to pay if you want to have a quality product.

 Talys wrote:

It goes deeper than that.

We're not balancing archers, chariots, and spearmen here. There are hundreds units, many with special (magical) abilities that might individually be balanced, but when applied as force multipliers to each other are extremely difficult to balance. For example, Librarians? Cool. Centurions? Cool. Take both? They are worth WAY more than the two units separately, because one can make the other nigh invincible.

It's true, and what would be required for balancing is to reduce the complexity and make different armies closer to each other statwise - especially if GW insists on making a ton of different units and armies. IMO one of the few positive things with the AoS is that the warscrolls have dropped a whole layer of extra complexity in form of equipment, making units more simple and easier to balance.

If I was designing a miniatures game, I would first make all the armies have roughly similar units, wizards etc., then add flavour with only very small changes. Ogres gain little toughness, elves have small movement bonus, skaven units have a couple of extra models etc., but nothing to make anything OP, that sort of thing. Smaller the army specific bonuses/disadvantages are, easier they are to balance and less effect a bad balancing job has. Having powerful special rules for different units is just asking for trouble, especially if you want to suddenly add new units to the range.

IMO this is what GW should do as well. If they don't want to spend much time doing game development, then make a simple game where every army has similar units of light/heavy cavalry/infantry/bowmen etc. and let people choose a faction simply based on what minis they like.

 Manchu wrote:
The target demographic for PP and Mantic games are competitive gamers; that is, their business models are built around the idea of marketing their products as tournament-geared. Just because GW is a larger company that manages a much more popular brand does not mean it can do everything smaller companies with less popular brands can do plus more.

Are you sure? Mantic gamers don't seem to be any more competitive than anyone else, and whilst PP has super-competitive tournaments it's also a good casual game (though with a steep learning curve).

There's no reason GW should avoid a balanced game, except to sell more models. But that's their thing now; models uber alles.

 Xyxox wrote:
For any 40K players who are afraid that 40K is next on the list to be Sigmar'd, Mantic has something in the works:

http://www.manticgames.com/games/warpath.html

I wonder if they'll work up some rules for all current 40K armies, too? Maybe I should hang on to my Dark Angels for now, especially since my Ork Boyz will work with the current system.

Too bad AoS is actually a batter game than Warpath. Mantic should seriously just take the AoS core rules and write army lists (with points values, obviously) for their sci-fi stuff and call it a day.

Jeff Tracy wrote:Having played four AoS games now (two from the starter set and two with armies my opponent and I created), I have to say that I think a lot of the rage/quit comments are misguided.

Before, so much of WHFB seemed to boil down to who was better at placing their movement trays. With the AoS rules, tactics come back into the game in interesting ways. Formations no longer matter, so how you move and place models takes on a whole new significance. For game balance, my opponents and I agreed on wounds as our number. We created a 100 wounds apiece battle, and the games lasted about 3 hours each. The random aspect of who goes first each turn keeps things interesting and exciting. And the pile in mechanic allows for more models to get into combat rather than being stuck at the end of rank.

One thing I really liked about the scrolls was that most monsters now have variable stats, depending on their wounds. It makes you think how best to use them rather than just barrelling forward into combat.

My big takeaway - if you like 8th edition, your game is still there, and now your models will be there as they are being supported by AoS. If you are new to fantasy, want to pick it up again, or play 40K, you might want to give AoS a try. So far, the games have been fun (something that was lacking in my last experience with WHFB). Of course, your milage may vary.

Not having ever played WHFB, this is an interesting perspective. Thanks for sharing, Jeff

Wounds does seem like a pretty reasonable balancing factor. I don't know how abusable the warscrolls are when it's balanced this way, nor if this makes certain units always poor choices and other units always excellent choices -- I just don't know Fantasy units well enough, and I'm not quite sure I'll ever read all 400-ish or so warscrolls... though it is entertaining, lol

prowla wrote:

Spoiler:

 Talys wrote:

It goes deeper than that.

We're not balancing archers, chariots, and spearmen here. There are hundreds units, many with special (magical) abilities that might individually be balanced, but when applied as force multipliers to each other are extremely difficult to balance. For example, Librarians? Cool. Centurions? Cool. Take both? They are worth WAY more than the two units separately, because one can make the other nigh invincible.

It's true, and what would be required for balancing is to reduce the complexity and make different armies closer to each other statwise - especially if GW insists on making a ton of different units and armies. IMO one of the few positive things with the AoS is that the warscrolls have dropped a whole layer of extra complexity in form of equipment, making units more simple and easier to balance.

If I was designing a miniatures game, I would first make all the armies have roughly similar units, wizards etc., then add flavour with only very small changes. Ogres gain little toughness, elves have small movement bonus, skaven units have a couple of extra models etc., but nothing to make anything OP, that sort of thing. Smaller the army specific bonuses/disadvantages are, easier they are to balance and less effect a bad balancing job has. Having powerful special rules for different units is just asking for trouble, especially if you want to suddenly add new units to the range.

Right. In a lot of ways, Rogue Trader was like this -- most factions had access to the same items or equivalents, at least where it mattered, and the greatest difference was in statlines. I mean, sergeants could take vortex grenades, and tactical squads could take D-Cannons.

The flip side of this balance is that you have armies that are very same-y, and people complain that there's no "flavor". I'm not sure the market would tolerate such a game except for historicals.

I think "modern 40k" -- post 2015 -- is pretty balanced in a GOOD way, with formations and superformations that make each faction radically different, but gives access to really good stuff that offers flexibility, fluff, and power. Largely, this is accomplished by saying, "if you take this list of stuff, you will get something really neat". It encourages people to take from a quasi-fixed list of stuff, and it's much easier for GW to balance formations, than every possible unit potentially combined by the player. Ironically, it's a little like the Scenarios in AoS, but with points

Also, that "different but same" balancing is really hard to achieve when you have incarnations of Gods walking around the battlefield, like Bloodthirsters and Nagash. You really want them to be feared -- and different. And remember GW's philosophy -- cool models first, how to make it work in the game second.

 Jeff Tracy wrote:
Having played four AoS games now (two from the starter set and two with armies my opponent and I created), I have to say that I think a lot of the rage/quit comments are misguided.

Before, so much of WHFB seemed to boil down to who was better at placing their movement trays. With the AoS rules, tactics come back into the game in interesting ways. Formations no longer matter, so how you move and place models takes on a whole new significance. For game balance, my opponents and I agreed on wounds as our number. We created a 100 wounds apiece battle, and the games lasted about 3 hours each. The random aspect of who goes first each turn keeps things interesting and exciting. And the pile in mechanic allows for more models to get into combat rather than being stuck at the end of rank.

One thing I really liked about the scrolls was that most monsters now have variable stats, depending on their wounds. It makes you think how best to use them rather than just barrelling forward into combat.

My big takeaway - if you like 8th edition, your game is still there, and now your models will be there as they are being supported by AoS. If you are new to fantasy, want to pick it up again, or play 40K, you might want to give AoS a try. So far, the games have been fun (something that was lacking in my last experience with WHFB). Of course, your milage may vary.

So you think a game where units have facing, turning on the spot is not free and flank/ rear charges provide advantage is less tactical than a game with none of the above where you move entire units like they were skirmish models. Interesting tbh.

 Manchu wrote:

 filbert wrote:
does that point to us seeing something similar for 40K should sales suffer a fall?

I believe that AoS is a more extreme version of what GW has been doing with 40k over the last few years. I think GW would like to go this far with 40k eventually but the 40k brand is practically synonymous with the bottom line and so GW decided to experiment with a far less valuable brand first (which had nowhere to go but up). So if AoS dramatically improves Fantasy sales, I think GW will continue to steer 40k in the direction it has been going, namely toward what we see in AoS -- but with greater speed. I think AoS will be a big success in terms of the Fantasy brand. The trick is, how much of a success does it need to be to speed up 40k along its current course?

I agree with all of this.

I also will state that I would welcome an AOB style version of 40K, with free rules, because I have tons of figures that haven't had an outing since the end of 5th because the books became too expensive. I do not think I am the only one.

The key question for GW is whether increased sales of kits will more than make up for lost sales of books. AOB obviouly gives them some idea about that.

Found this on Mexican Ork's Facebook page:

A $40 dice shaker? Good grief...

Out of interest has anyone tried playing AoS with units the same size as they are sold with?

Most elite units have only 10 dudes where as base infantry units have 16-20 just thinking if they made the scrolls with the intention that people could just play the unit from the box it could add an element of balance.