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 Talys wrote:

Marlov wrote:

 Talys wrote:

Games Workshop is about making really cool models with which to build a model collection, and then giving some context to play them. For 30 years, they have not been about writing a wargaming system, and then building models for that system. It's all about making awesome 28mm miniatures, spending thousands of hours painting them, and playing with them -- or sometimes not, and just displaying them or building dioramas. The problem with 15mm is that it's impossible to make your infantry awesome, with the sort of detail you can get into 28mm. They're miniatures sized for gaming, not sized for painting.

The last thing in the world I want is miniatures that require just a quick drybrush to paint. I probably spend 5+ hours on every single model, even the most repetitive infantryman (and I'm pretty quick); an army represents, literally, thousands of hours of work that was all highly enjoyable.

I hate this attitude so much, because it represents everything that wrecks wargaming. Players who come in with awesomely painted armies who can't play for ****, and "just want to have fun" then whine when a better player stomps them and call them TFG or WAAC -- it's a WAR game, go do something other than WAR if "fun" is all you want, and leave wargames to people who are tactically minded and who want to do battle. Of COURSE I want to win. What other possible reason could I be playing a WAR game?

Who cares if your plastic toy soldier took 5 hours to paint or 5 minutes to paint? It's just a plastic soldier. The game is in figuring out what to do with it once you play it. If you want to take a thousand hours to fill a display case, good for you, but it dont expect me to make a weak army to play you.

If it's just all about miniatures, GW should rename themselves to Miniatures Workshop and get rid of all their stupid rules, and I'd be happy. But better that they go out of business, so they stop stealing customers from companies that properly test an balance games!

Are you for real? >.<

That sounds so... antisocial and narrow-minded. The hobby is different things to different people. Also, if you think that plastic soldiers are just plastic soldiers, save yourself money and just tape a piece of paper onto a base with an arrow on one side that indicates facing forward, and go play with a free gaming system with good competitive rules like KoW. Your whole army will take you 10 minutes to build and cost you $20 in bases off of eBay. Why buy models at all?

I definitely play for narrative. I want to have fun pretending a full story. I understand there are fluffers and crunchers, I'm definitely on the fluffy side myself. I don't see how people can completely rule out the other side though, its so, as you said, antisocial and narrow-minded.

AOS appeals to me for that reason. I can play a narrative and Endure 6 turns against a huge orc onslaught as an elite group of Sigmarines, or I can go hunting for a Daemonlord of Chaos. Feels a lot more story driven than "throw your army against mine over and over until one of us runs out of models."

AncientSkarbrand wrote:
But Bull0, are you saying the way theyve told us to play this game is actually balanced inherently? You really dont ache for more advanced rules and game setup than this?

I didn't say it's balanced, I'd have to play a lot of games to know that, I said it has balancing mechanics. You alternate while you're setting up units, and you can take *anything*, so if one of you is picking Nagash, the other can also pick Nagash. If one of you continues to put units down, the other can continue to put units down. Two balancing tricks here - the player that finishes setting up first chooses who goes first in round 1, and if one of you has a bigger army than the other, the underdog gets a sudden death objective. Balancing mechanics.

They introduced the mechanic where monsters' attacks diminish as they take wounds over the course of the game, levelling the playing field between these large, multi-wound models and regiments of single-wound models. Balancing mechanic.

Close combat is fought in nominated order instead of initiative order, meaning a player can prioritise which attacks they make and in some cases defeat powerful enemies before they've attacked, which previously wouldn't have been possible. Balancing mechanic.

All of these things have been done to make the game more balanced, because going back through the hundreds of units in the back catalogue assigning points costs to them would've been an utter nightmare. People who have played the game are generally reporting it works well enough, and the legacy warscrolls are clearly a stopgap measure while more new Age of Sigmar stuff comes out, Age of Sigmar isn't intended to be the game of using WFB units forever.

I think it works great, and I'm excited to see what else comes out and how the campaign books are going to work, etc.

 Talys wrote:

 Vermis wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:FWIW, I actually find 15mm models easier to paint than 28mm. 15mm is my sweet spot, there's a lot of tricks you can get away with to make painting easier that don't work on larger models because it'd look too messy, but the models are still large enough to make out the smaller features of a mansized model (unlike 10mm and 6mm where models start to not look human any more).

Yup. IMO painting gets easier the smaller you go, because the the smaller scales become much more forgiving of quick, basic wash, drybrush and other techniques.

The only thing I prefer about 28mm models is you can't really convert 15mm models very easily, but that's not a problem if you just want to fill out ranks of tons of troops.

The more I look around the hobby, the more I think this is the way it should be. Keep character conversions and heaps of special rules for small 28mm skirmishes, and let mass battles be mass battles, about whole 15mm- units and regiments wheeling about on the table.

This in diametric opposition to Games Workshop's philosophy.

Games Workshop is about making really cool models with which to build a model collection, and then giving some context to play them. For 30 years, they have not been about writing a wargaming system, and then building models for that system. It's all about making awesome 28mm miniatures, spending thousands of hours painting them, and playing with them -- or sometimes not, and just displaying them or building dioramas. The problem with 15mm is that it's impossible to make your infantry awesome, with the sort of detail you can get into 28mm. They're miniatures sized for gaming, not sized for painting.

The last thing in the world I want is miniatures that require just a quick drybrush to paint. I probably spend 5+ hours on every single model, even the most repetitive infantryman (and I'm pretty quick); an army represents, literally, thousands of hours of work that was all highly enjoyable.

If "the best" wargaming system is what you're interested in, look elsewhere. You'll *never* find it in GW, because they're more concerned with the models, and you can't heap on more cool models with more cool powers all the time, and keep a game balanced.

If you think GW models are awesome, and want an context in which enjoy them in games, GW games are perfect.

For me, I am definitely in the second category. I can and do have fun with almost any wargame rules. I have tried dozens, and frankly, it doesn't matter to me how good or bad they are. What's most important is a table that looks awesome, and an opponent who is someone I enjoy playing with. I have no desire to compete with strangers to show my tactical superiority, and the last thing I want to do is humiliate my friends. I see this hobby as a miniature hobby with a wargame that's as much social as strategic; I don't see the hobby as an export of a computer game.

I totally disagree with your fundamental argument that you can't make 15mm infantry look awesome. 15mm can look awesome and in fact IMO are EASIER to make look awesome. You can also spend hours on each individual model to make them look insanely good.

28mm models might *photograph* better because being bigger you effectively end up zooming in on them more (the same way 54mm photographs better than 28mm!) but in real life 15mm looks just as good if not better to me because even though you might not make it look as good under a magnifying glass, to the eye it still looks awesome.

In the end it's just personal preference as to which looks *more* awesome. Do you like the aesthetic of individual models painted with higher detail, or the aesthetic of a more realistic sized battle with dozens of tanks and hundreds of soldiers. I prefer the latter. I think a Flames of War (or indeed even Epic 40k) army deployed across a well constructed table is a more impressive sight than your typical 40k army.

Individually, sure, a 28mm looks (subjectively) nicer and photographs better, but then a 35mm model looks nicer and photographs better again, and a 54mm model looks nicer and photographs even better! As a whole force, 15mm looks (subjectively) nicer.

Mediocre painters will roughly drybrush and wash their way to a painted army regardless of whether it's a 28mm army or a 15mm army and good painters will spend time layering and blending and weathering regardless of 28mm or 15mm as well.

Personally, I know I'm not a great painter, but my 15mm models are some of my favourite in my entire collection. In fact they currently hold the most prominent place on my display shelf because I LOVE the aesthetic of a dozen tanks rolling across a battlefield (sure, you can do that with 40k, but the scale is all fethed up and it looks silly having a dozen tanks lined up not much more than 4 tank-lengths from the enemy).

Also you mention GW for the "30 years", in that time they've released Dreadfleet, Warmaster, Inquisitor and Epic 40k while Forge World have also had Aeronautica Imperialis. GW certainly aren't unfamiliar with other scales, they've just decided to place all their eggs in the 1 basket of 28mm 40k and WHFB.

 Talys wrote:


Yes, I agree. As I've said before, this is philosophically what GW believes in, it's built into their company's DNA, and everything I've ever seen of them is that they are a company that loves awesome miniatures first, friendly/casual/social games second, fluff third. Competitions are like, an afterthought.

Except for, you know, WHFG 6th and 7th editions and 40K 4th and 5th editions, which coincidently where the periods in which they experienced the biggest growth... funny that.

Bull0, I see what you're saying. Ive only played one game, and it seemed balanced but we attempted to put balanced forces out there on our own. I suppose i never particularily looked at ALL the things you stated as balancing mechanics. I suppose i'll have to play more games and watch more batreps to form a deeper opinion..

Still, sadly i believe my group won't be very interested in it outside of one-two people. Im more upset by the lack of unit value designation because of it's affects on the experiences and opinions of others than my own. I know i'm never going to cheese my friend's army off the table, but i cant say the same for the whole group, and if even one person does that or wants to do it, it will ruin it for the whole group and cause bad feelings between players, which would further alienate the game from the rest of us.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I totally disagree with your fundamental argument that you can't make 15mm infantry look awesome. 15mm can look awesome and in fact IMO are EASIER to make look awesome. You can also spend hours on each individual model to make them look insanely good.

28mm models might *photograph* better because being bigger you effectively end up zooming in on them more (the same way 54mm photographs better than 28mm!) but in real life 15mm looks just as good if not better to me.

In the end it's just personal preference as to which looks *more* awesome. Do you like the aesthetic of individual models painted with higher detail, or the aesthetic of a more realistic sized battle with dozens of tanks and hundreds of soldiers. I prefer the latter. I think a Flames of War army deployed across a well constructed table is a more impressive sight than your typical 40k army.

Individually, sure, a 28mm looks nicer and photographs better, but then a 35mm model looks nicer and photographs better again, and a 54mm model looks nicer and photographs even better!

Fair enough

In my opinion, on 15mm, you can't do details like writing on a model's name on their shoulder pads, or picking out visor lenses, or detailing heraldry. You can't effectively wet-blend non-metal metallics on 15mm infantry, you can't detail the runes on a sword, or paint OSL or other things.

I believe that 28mm is the smallest scale that allows you to do this type of thing, even for painters that are way more skilled than me. You can't really imagine a 15mm infantryman winning a Golden Demon, right? Also, 15mm is not a good size for expressing facial expressions or dioramas.

To your point, armies look awesome, and the more models the more awesome. So yeah, lots of 15mm models look really awesome. But lots of 28mm models on a slightly bigger table look even more awesome, IMO, but to each their own. The problem with going beyond 28mm is that tables can only be so big, and at some point, even though your 1 model might look cool, you can't field an army, because the table isn't big enough.

I'm not dissing smaller scales -- I think they're great in a game like FoW, and I've seen great looking armies. I just don't think you can put nearly as much detail into each individual model, even if you're prepared to put the time into it, but that's just my opinion and experience.

Edit: I would add that I agree with you that smaller scales are technically better for wargames that are a larger scale. The problem for me is that they're less satisfying individually to paint and personalize I do not get the same sense of completion when a model is done. Philosophically, every infantryman in my army is unique, and I want to express that; I don't want rows of nearly-identical soldiers, even though I fully understand this is how a real army works (incidentally, this is why I don't like Guard, and why I like "heroic" factions like Eldar/Marines, where every model is intended to be exceptional). I've never seen multipart, configurable small-scale models either But this is just my own preference!

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AncientSkarbrand wrote:
Bull0, I see what you're saying. Ive only played one game, and it seemed balanced but we attempted to put balanced forces out there on our own. I suppose i never particularily looked at ALL the things you stated as balancing mechanics. I suppose i'll have to play more games and watch more batreps to form a deeper opinion..

Still, sadly i believe my group won't be very interested in it outside of one-two people. Im more upset by the lack of unit value designation because of it's affects on the experiences and opinions of others than my own. I know i'm never going to cheese my friend's army off the table, but i cant say the same for the whole group, and if even one person does that or wants to do it, it will ruin it for the whole group and cause bad feelings between players, which would further alienate the game from the rest of us.

Yeah, the latter is really the problem with "casual gaming" in the pickup or open scene. It only takes one cheesemeister to ruin it for everyone.

 mikhaila wrote:

 agnosto wrote:
And so GW learns the downside of free rules.......

Definitely a gamble on their part. If you don't want the AoS minis from the box, why would you buy the box? blue whippy sticks, dice, and the fluffbook are the only other things in there.
That said, i think a lot of people will buy this box. Models are awesome.

I'm more talking about the 264 page fluff book. It will sell, just not as much as a book that's pretty-much required due to rules content.

 Rayvon wrote:
I wonder if GW expected so many heads would be exploding at the thought of no points values though, It should be expected somewhat, they have been doing it since the start, stands to reason its one of the key things that people expect with a GW game.

GW Suit: Jervis, you forgot the points values for models on scrolls.

Jervis: No, I forgot them from the rules. Most historical WARGAMES don't have points values, just forces available for scenarios.

GW Suit: Whatever nerd!

Points have never balanced a game, but certainly give the illusion of it. As a Rogue Trader player I can tell you their points value calculators didn't yield good points values. Like everything else, severely under or over costed and couldn't take into account edge cases where the model under or over performed.

The real problem is that GW has to fight against the inertia they created. Only in the GW bubble are these even things. Latter people followed their lead to re-inforce the belief it's the one try way.

Iain.

 Talys wrote:

 Vermis wrote:


The thing is, all this self-policing, reasonable player stuff was the excuse trundled out for 40K and WHFB's glaring imbalances - as if only unreasonable players cared about balance - and it didn't help matters. What's different this time?

Also, women who complain about the rules for their dwarfs should just be ignored. That's a special kind of lack of self-awareness, right there. About on par with the assertions that this is a perfectly sensible post.

It just boils down to the folks who just want to play a game and having a good time -- rather than folks who are actively looking for a way to break the game. GW games are generally fantastic for the former crowd and lousy for the latter.

You know there are more than just two options in that world, right? I'm casual but not grow a beard and make fart noises to get bonuses casual; I like tight rules but I don't try to break the game, I just don't like stopping the game to discuss unclear rules.

 agnosto wrote:

 mikhaila wrote:

 agnosto wrote:
And so GW learns the downside of free rules.......

Definitely a gamble on their part. If you don't want the AoS minis from the box, why would you buy the box? blue whippy sticks, dice, and the fluffbook are the only other things in there.
That said, i think a lot of people will buy this box. Models are awesome.

I'm more talking about the 264 page fluff book. It will sell, just not as much as a book that's pretty-much required due to rules content.

I don't see how anyone could disagree with that

It's not nearly as many scenarios as I would have liked, though. Since I never read End Times and only know the story in the vaguest of ways (I don't follow WHFB fluff, and don't play it), I really am not attached enough to buy it for the fluff. I'm not sure I'd even read it, because I only have so much time, and there's other stuff I'm behind on reading that takes a higher priority.

The warscrolls will be free anyhow, I imagine, right? So it's only 8 scenarios; they'd have to be something awesome for me to buy the book. I guess if the artwork were incredible, or it had some other gaming purpose.

That's a huge book, by the way. Bigger than the new Codex: Space Marines LOL.

 Talys wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I totally disagree with your fundamental argument that you can't make 15mm infantry look awesome. 15mm can look awesome and in fact IMO are EASIER to make look awesome. You can also spend hours on each individual model to make them look insanely good.

28mm models might *photograph* better because being bigger you effectively end up zooming in on them more (the same way 54mm photographs better than 28mm!) but in real life 15mm looks just as good if not better to me.

In the end it's just personal preference as to which looks *more* awesome. Do you like the aesthetic of individual models painted with higher detail, or the aesthetic of a more realistic sized battle with dozens of tanks and hundreds of soldiers. I prefer the latter. I think a Flames of War army deployed across a well constructed table is a more impressive sight than your typical 40k army.

Individually, sure, a 28mm looks nicer and photographs better, but then a 35mm model looks nicer and photographs better again, and a 54mm model looks nicer and photographs even better!

Fair enough

In my opinion, on 15mm, you can't do details like writing on a model's name on their shoulder pads, or picking out visor lenses, or detailing heraldry. You can't effectively wet-blend non-metal metallics on 15mm infantry, you can't detail the runes on a sword, or paint OSL or other things.

I believe that 28mm is the smallest scale that allows you to do this type of thing, even for painters that are way more skilled than me. You can't really imagine a 15mm infantryman winning a Golden Demon, right? Also, 15mm is not a good size for expressing facial expressions or dioramas.

To your point, armies look awesome, and the more models the more awesome. So yeah, lots of 15mm models look really awesome. But lots of 28mm models on a slightly bigger table look even more awesome, IMO, but to each their own. The problem with going beyond 28mm is that tables can only be so big, and at some point, even though your 1 model might look cool, you can't field an army, because the table isn't big enough.

I'm not dissing smaller scales -- I think they're great in a game like FoW, and I've seen great looking armies. I just don't think you can put nearly as much detail into each individual model, even if you're prepared to put the time into it, but that's just my opinion and experience.

In the end it just comes down to personal preference whether you prefer an individual model to look nice or the force as a whole I think.

When I started WW2 stuff, I had to choose between 28mm (Perry, Wargames Factory, Bolt Action, etc) and 15mm (Flames of War, Plastic Soldier Company and so on). In the end my decision was largely based on aesthetics, I'd rather have a 1 square foot region of my gaming table taken up by half a dozen tanks and 20 to 30 men than taken up by 1 to 2 tanks and a dozen or so men Individually, the 28mm models would have looked nicer, but as a force, the 15mm stuff looks pretty cool to me.

But if you like painting the names of individual soldiers on the shoulder pads, 28mm is obviously better (and 54mm probably even better again).... but I tend to reserve that stuff for small scale games like Space Hulk

 Talys wrote:

 agnosto wrote:

 mikhaila wrote:

 agnosto wrote:
And so GW learns the downside of free rules.......

Definitely a gamble on their part. If you don't want the AoS minis from the box, why would you buy the box? blue whippy sticks, dice, and the fluffbook are the only other things in there.
That said, i think a lot of people will buy this box. Models are awesome.

I'm more talking about the 264 page fluff book. It will sell, just not as much as a book that's pretty-much required due to rules content.

I don't see how anyone could disagree with that

It's not nearly as many scenarios as I would have liked, though. Since I never read End Times and only know the story in the vaguest of ways (I don't follow WHFB fluff, and don't play it), I really am not attached enough to buy it for the fluff. I'm not sure I'd even read it, because I only have so much time, and there's other stuff I'm behind on reading that takes a higher priority.

The warscrolls will be free anyhow, I imagine, right? So it's only 8 scenarios; they'd have to be something awesome for me to buy the book. I guess if the artwork were incredible, or it had some other gaming purpose.

That's a huge book, by the way. Bigger than the new Codex: Space Marines LOL.

TBF, the artwork shown so far looks nice and they do have to establish the new universe so that should take up a fair number of pages, then I'll assume there's some background for the campaign and some for each battle...it all adds up. I hope for their sake that they include more scenarios in later books since that seems to be the way that the game shows any semblance of balance.

 agnosto wrote:

You know there are more than just two options in that world, right? I'm casual but not grow a beard and make fart noises to get bonuses casual; I like tight rules but I don't try to break the game, I just don't like stopping the game to discuss unclear rules.

Yeah, but every player that I know will be fine with waiving the silly rules, recognizing that they're just silly rules made in homage to the old game and their characters.

I agree that tight rules are better in both technical and practical aspects. I just don't really have a problem with having fun with less-tight rules, and it doesn't affect my fun. Generally, if my opponent really wants something one way or another, I really don't care, as long as they're consistent. The effort I'll spend arguing over what a rule should be during a game can be measured in seconds. I also am not a huge fan of playing with strangers anyhow, so this affects me much less.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 agnosto wrote:

TBF, the artwork shown so far looks nice and they do have to establish the new universe so that should take up a fair number of pages, then I'll assume there's some background for the campaign and some for each battle...it all adds up. I hope for their sake that they include more scenarios in later books since that seems to be the way that the game shows any semblance of balance.

Yeah, totally agreed.

 Talys wrote:
Edit: I would add that I agree with you that smaller scales are technically better for wargames that are a larger scale. The problem for me is that they're less satisfying individually to paint and personalize I do not get the same sense of completion when a model is done. Philosophically, every infantryman in my army is unique, and I want to express that; I don't want rows of nearly-identical soldiers, even though I fully understand this is how a real army works (incidentally, this is why I don't like Guard, and why I like "heroic" factions like Eldar/Marines, where every model is intended to be exceptional). I've never seen multipart, configurable small-scale models either But this is just my own preference!

I can appreciate that, it's just when painting smaller scale stuff I tend to think of it less as "I am painting an individual model" and more "I am painting a squadron of tanks/platoon of men", so each model is a part of a whole rather than an individual. I tend to feel the same way when painting 28mm WHFB regiments as well, I don't want to dynamically pose each and every single model because I want the *regiment* to look cool, not Bob who's standing 3rd from the left in the 2nd rank to look cool

Of course I do also enjoy painting the odd single model to a high standard.... I just don't want to paint the 100 of them required to make an army

But that's why I said earlier in this thread, if GW dropped WHFB in favour of AoS AND simultaneously created a new game of WHFB in 15mm scale for mass battles, that would be the best outcome. I'd probably buy some AoS to paint up here and there while preparing a whole force of 15mm for mass battles.

It's just a shame GW don't have the balls they used to have to venture out in to the likes of Epic 40k or Warmaster or an entirely new 15mm game.

I name every person in my rank and file and give them all unique backstories..

I will note, a 15mm Warhammer Fantasy would be cool.

 Talys wrote:

 agnosto wrote:

You know there are more than just two options in that world, right? I'm casual but not grow a beard and make fart noises to get bonuses casual; I like tight rules but I don't try to break the game, I just don't like stopping the game to discuss unclear rules.

Yeah, but every player that I know will be fine with waiving the silly rules, recognizing that they're just silly rules made in homage to the old game and their characters.

I agree that tight rules are better in both technical and practical aspects. I just don't really have a problem with having fun with less-tight rules, and it doesn't affect my fun. Generally, if my opponent really wants something one way or another, I really don't care, as long as they're consistent. The effort I'll spend arguing over what a rule should be during a game can be measured in seconds. I also am not a huge fan of playing with strangers anyhow, so this affects me much less.

I hardly play with strangers myself but my friends and I agree on a general dislike of the necessity to stop play and talk about what a rule means or how it is actually interacting in the game due to poor wording; no arguments but usually a "huh, what do you suppose that means?" or "how the heck is that supposed to work in this situation?" moments, it kind of spoils the rhythm of play and concentration on the game.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Shadowclaimer wrote:
I name every person in my rank and file and give them all unique backstories..

I will note, a 15mm Warhammer Fantasy would be cool.

lol. You'd have a hard time doing the former if the later existed due to the massive number of models.

 agnosto wrote:

I hardly play with strangers myself but my friends and I agree on a general dislike of the necessity to stop play and talk about what a rule means or how it is actually interacting in the game due to poor wording; no arguments but usually a "huh, what do you suppose that means?" or "how the heck is that supposed to work in this situation?" moments, it kind of spoils the rhythm of play and concentration on the game.

This is a reasonable argument against 40k, but I don't think that AoS suffers this problem. When we played, we didn't discuss rules even once in 6 hours (other than "how does this work", because the game was new to us).

 agnosto wrote:

 Talys wrote:

 agnosto wrote:

You know there are more than just two options in that world, right? I'm casual but not grow a beard and make fart noises to get bonuses casual; I like tight rules but I don't try to break the game, I just don't like stopping the game to discuss unclear rules.

Yeah, but every player that I know will be fine with waiving the silly rules, recognizing that they're just silly rules made in homage to the old game and their characters.

I agree that tight rules are better in both technical and practical aspects. I just don't really have a problem with having fun with less-tight rules, and it doesn't affect my fun. Generally, if my opponent really wants something one way or another, I really don't care, as long as they're consistent. The effort I'll spend arguing over what a rule should be during a game can be measured in seconds. I also am not a huge fan of playing with strangers anyhow, so this affects me much less.

I hardly play with strangers myself but my friends and I agree on a general dislike of the necessity to stop play and talk about what a rule means or how it is actually interacting in the game due to poor wording; no arguments but usually a "huh, what do you suppose that means?" or "how the heck is that supposed to work in this situation?" moments, it kind of spoils the rhythm of play and concentration on the game.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Shadowclaimer wrote:
I name every person in my rank and file and give them all unique backstories..

I will note, a 15mm Warhammer Fantasy would be cool.

lol. You'd have a hard time doing the former if the later existed due to the massive number of models.

Give me time and a spreadsheet lol

15mm too small to 'look good'? nonsense! I have /6/mm Dropzone Commander Infantry that I think looks good and has plenty of room for personal touches.





Scale doesn't matter, model quality does. But the model size does have an effect on game quality: Some games suffer because of model mismatch: For example, Apocalypse, as a game, has no reason to exist in it's scale. It'd be a superior GAME as a smaller model game, as your individual infantry positions no longer matter.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I can appreciate that, it's just when painting smaller scale stuff I tend to think of it less as "I am painting an individual model" and more "I am painting a squadron of tanks/platoon of men", so each model is a part of a whole rather than an individual. I tend to feel the same way when painting 28mm WHFB regiments as well, I don't want to dynamically pose each and every single model because I want the *regiment* to look cool, not Bob who's standing 3rd from the left in the 2nd rank to look cool

Of course I do also enjoy painting the odd single model to a high standard.... I just don't want to paint the 100 of them required to make an army

But that's why I said earlier in this thread, if GW dropped WHFB in favour of AoS AND simultaneously created a new game of WHFB in 15mm scale for mass battles, that would be the best outcome. I'd probably buy some AoS to paint up here and there while preparing a whole force of 15mm for mass battles.

It's just a shame GW don't have the balls they used to have to venture out in to the likes of Epic 40k or Warmaster or an entirely new 15mm game.

I hear you, and largely agree Pretty much everything except the part about painting a hundred models to a decently high standard to make an army, because that's largely where my hobby time goes, but everyone's thing is different.

And yeah, 15mm would have been very cool to see WHFB. I remember watching so many games of Epic, and thinking the tables looked awesome! The Eldar titans just looked so good in Epic.

I do not know if this information has been posted yet.

Standing by my reputation in the rumor tracking thread, I reveal this

The Age of Sigmar $74 Book:

74 dollar book is NOT a big rule book. its the campaign setting. new warscrolls, new scenarios, full background, some new rules (but NO balancing rules). takes the place in official gw display rack of whfb 8 rulebook. It is different than the AoS box set 96 page book. different. its like a campaign setting for a rpg basically, with background and stats and adventures. but adventures for miniatures called scenarios.


dice cups for $40:
sculpted painted cast resin with fancy stuff on them geared to each faction. set of 8 special dice. symbols on ONES for whatever reason


new miniatures sets coming out:
different sprues of the same guys from AoS set, with weapon options like swords and 2-h hammers. arrows/bows.
clamshell is the main good guy from the AoS set, but on foot instead.


new terrain: balefull realmgates

New rulebook also contains Sylvaneth stuff, which is the Treekin/Dryad faction.

I will definitely buy the book. I am also looking forward to seeing the dice shakers and dice. But eight dice seems a bit stingy and I don't like the idea of symbols on ones. Why associate your faction symbol with poor rolling?

Some of that regarding the book has popped up here Judge, but further info and confirmation is always welcome, thank you.

 agnosto wrote:

 mikhaila wrote:

 agnosto wrote:
And so GW learns the downside of free rules.......

Definitely a gamble on their part. If you don't want the AoS minis from the box, why would you buy the box? blue whippy sticks, dice, and the fluffbook are the only other things in there.
That said, i think a lot of people will buy this box. Models are awesome.

I'm more talking about the 264 page fluff book. It will sell, just not as much as a book that's pretty-much required due to rules content.

Absolutely. 10%? 5%? 1%? Really hard to say. The Basic Rulebooks were always a 50-100 per store order for me, depending on whether we already had the rules in a starter set. For a not needed Fluff book like this I'll be getting Pre-orders +1. Can't take a chance with expensive items like that, that no one needs. Then you take a look at the product, order more the next week if it's needed or you have faith in it.

 Manchu wrote:
I will definitely buy the book. I am also looking forward to seeing the dice shakers and dice. But eight dice seems a bit stingy and I don't like the idea of symbols on ones. Why associate your faction symbol with poor rolling?

I have seen somewhere in recent days someone who has had custom dice made. Hell of a lot cheaper, and slap those symbols on the sixes. Everyone knows Rackham and Mantic splat dice roll way better because of that, haha

 judgedoug wrote:
I do not know if this information has been posted yet.

Standing by my reputation in the rumor tracking thread, I reveal this

The Age of Sigmar $74 Book:

74 dollar book is NOT a big rule book. its the campaign setting. new warscrolls, new scenarios, full background, some new rules (but NO balancing rules). takes the place in official gw display rack of whfb 8 rulebook. It is different than the AoS box set 96 page book. different. its like a campaign setting for a rpg basically, with background and stats and adventures. but adventures for miniatures called scenarios.


dice cups for $40:
sculpted painted cast resin with fancy stuff on them geared to each faction. set of 8 special dice. symbols on ONES for whatever reason


new miniatures sets coming out:
different sprues of the same guys from AoS set, with weapon options like swords and 2-h hammers. arrows/bows.
clamshell is the main good guy from the AoS set, but on foot instead.


new terrain: balefull realmgates

This matches the latest info I have from GW

 Killionaire wrote:
15mm too small to 'look good'? nonsense! I have /6/mm Dropzone Commander Infantry that I think looks good and has plenty of room for personal touches.

Scale doesn't matter, model quality does. But the model size does have an effect on game quality: Some games suffer because of model mismatch: For example, Apocalypse, as a game, has no reason to exist in it's scale. It'd be a superior GAME as a smaller model game, as your individual infantry positions no longer matter.

Like I said, certain things which 28mm painters like to put onto single models is not possible (or practical) in smaller scales, like lettering, heraldry, OSL, facial expressions, jewels, NMM, et cetera. I think smaller scales can look AWESOME as a whole, but if you compare an individual infantryman in 15mm to an individual infantryman in 28mm, it's just not comparable. Show me an individual infantryman painted in 15mm that looks anything like a Golden Demon winner for a 28mm infantryman, and I'll take it all back.

For example:


or:

 judgedoug wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
I will definitely buy the book. I am also looking forward to seeing the dice shakers and dice. But eight dice seems a bit stingy and I don't like the idea of symbols on ones. Why associate your faction symbol with poor rolling?

I have seen somewhere in recent days someone who has had custom dice made. Hell of a lot cheaper, and slap those symbols on the sixes. Everyone knows Rackham and Mantic splat dice roll way better because of that, haha

Chessex is a company that makes a lot of custom dice for different clubs and tournaments.

 Shadowclaimer wrote:
You may dislike it, but the level to which you feel you need to repeat yourself about it "not being a game" or being "childish drivel" just destroys your own argument. You can have a scholarly discussion without resorting to immature hyperbole.

I was referring to the new fluff when I called it 'childish drivel' - which it is. It reads like fan fiction, at best. 'Sigmarite'? 'Bloodsecrator'? I do not see how it can be taken remotely seriously - and if it's not meant to be, why does it try so very hard to convey itself as such?

 Shadowclaimer wrote:
Many of us have played games by "winging it" on points and what you table in the past across a dozen different systems, hell the number of times I've had to tell someone just to "play what you have". I've told players to slam their armies together and do 2v1's without counting points and had a blast doing it. Whether you want there to not be a community is irrelevant, there are rules, there is a game, and even without a current point/balance system it is playable and on that fact alone people will play it.

And on the other side of the anecdotal coin, in all the years I've played wargames I've never 'winged it' on points, or just put down whatever I felt like, because I would not find that particularly enjoyable. I play these games, at least in part, as a friendly competition between players on an even footing - that's what is fun about them, to me. What people find fun is variable, which is precisely the point I was making. There was a time where you could take your army for Fantasy or 40k to any wargaming club and be able to play the same game by the same rules against anyone, but AoS opens up a vast disparity in what people consider reasonable. A player might find that the army he was using in his local club, which no one objected to, is suddenly rejected as 'being a ****' in another club, because that group has a different idea about what fairness and 'powergaming' are. So individual groups will have their own interprtations, thus making that inter-group play that much harder.
What I personally want is not relevant to the discussion, and is not what I was talking about.

 Shadowclaimer wrote:
The rules for the old armies are imbalanced and the silliness is absurd (albeit, Warhammer Fantasy always had a dose of that, so I'm not too shocked, I think people just prefer to forget it was ever a humorous game, same with 40k) but as a core system starting with this starter set going forward I definitely see potential for a very solid and interesting game to come into being (thankfully without more joke rules going forward.).

Humour is fine, but it feels entirely forced in this context, and really does not have a place in the mechanical side of the game. You yourself acknowledge that you don't want there to be any more of these sort of rules, and plenty of others say to simply ignore them. So why even put them in? In the context of the release, they feel like an insult, an expression of the contempt GW has for veterans by making the old armies one big joke, a series of jibes at the 'manchildren' they believe those customers to be.

 Shadowclaimer wrote:
I give Games Workshop credit here, we've been bitching for years the story had stagnated (oh no, another Everchosen..) and that the gameplay was being run in the ground without proper fixes, and they finally decided to DO something with it, and even if it fails, I'll give them kudos for at least trying.

'We' are not a hive mind, and do not all share the same opinion on the matter. Speaking for myself, I was perfectly happy with the Warhammer setting being just that: a setting, not a story that needed to progress. But even with that aside, I very much doubt anyone who wanted the story to advance wanted what we got: an end to the story they loved, and the beginning of an entirely different one with tenuous links to what came before.

 Shadowclaimer wrote:
Aesthetic is entirely opinion, the aesthetic is no worse to me than the old one (given the Eternals are just Knights of the Blazing Sun-level detail on models that could be made with better technology now, and artwork of the Old World had shown intricacies far worse than this.) If Games Workshop had the ability to make models of this quality ten years ago they would've done it in the same methodology/style, the "squat" style models are just a relic of a bygone age when models couldn't have hanging limbs/scale properly.

Aesthetic is subjective, I agree. But I don't agree that the current GW style is a natural evolution of what came before. There is far more emphasis on an ever-increasing amount of detail and an abandonment of any subtlety in designs. Encrusting a model with 'stuff' does not automatically make it better.

Chairman Aeon wrote:
But seriously, let me tell you of a little game called AD&D. It existed in a pre-Internet era where the only "communities" were magazines (I use this term vaguely), stores and gaming clubs. And while there was some difference in house rules, there were almost universally accepted groupings of interpretation of rules. This was actually a feature not a bug because it allowed you to assess new groups by their house rules. (Rogue Trader also existed pre-Internet with lots of interpretations and it seems to have done fine.)

I don't see how an RPG is comparable. An RPG does not require you to invest as much time (or money, at least by GW's current pricing standards) in creating your 'playing pieces' for the game, so to shift 'house rules' around is not going to have such a profound effect on the pieces used. Not to mention that, were a player to join a new group's game, they would surely be creating a new character in any case - which does not require the assembly and painting of an army of miniatures. It's not a question of the internet as a factor. I'd also argue that wargames and RPGs are both considered more 'socially acceptable' than they were back then, and certainly more widespread and with a greater variety of choices. So given the choice between a wargame where you can guarantee a (reasonably) fair matchup whomever you play against - because of a balancing mechanism like points that aims to keep both sides equal - or a wargame where the 'fairness' of your army can vary enormously depending on the person you play and where there is nothing in place to ensure the game doesn't devolve into a one-sided affair (intentionally or not), which do you think any prospective new player would prefer?

Chairman Aeon wrote:
Right now Warhammer in all its incarnations is tournament focussed. I don't play tournaments and exacting total balance for me is not important. I generally don't like the people who play in tournaments. I wouldn't play with them socially now that I've seen their black hearts. But now I am free to find players who interpret the rules like I do and to play fun rather than competitive games. It happened with Rogue Trader, a game that was less balanced than AoS in spite of having points, and it will soon enough happen with AoS.

This is a good example of the behaviour I was talking about - the glee at the prospect of ousting 'competitive' players from the game because they don't play 'for fun', like you do. But fun is entirely subjective, and for some a fair competition where both sides are evenly matched is fun. Who are you to tell them that they're wrong? How can deliberately excluding people from the game, just because they don't play it the same way you do, ever be a good thing?

Chairman Aeon wrote:
The thing you liked is gone and I understand that upsets you. But give this new thing its own chance. It's not here to replace your old thing, only it's retail space. You can still play your old thing, there are no shortage of stand in WHFB proxy minis.

Actually, I loathe 8th edition, and dropped out of WHFB when it was released, but that is beside the point. Functionally, AoS *has* replaced WHFB, and therefore anyone who wants to play 8th (or any other version) is going to find it very difficult to find games of it. Not everyone has the luxury of a close-knit gaming group that they can agree to stick to old rules with. Some are entirely dependent on pick-up games, and AoS makes those practically impossible.
The 'thing' I'll be playing is Kings of War, as I have happily been for several years, so my feelings towards this affair are divorced from personal investment.
And I don't much appreciate your condescending tone.