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Ok boys and girls, me and some of my friends tried the news AoS rules with the new warscrolls you can get for free on the GW main website. Two of my friend played a game Ogre vs Chaos (Daemons).. Here are some things we concluded :

1-This is a game to play with good friends. Real good friends. Not the kind of friends to which you tell you have a small army and they reply ''oh, don't worry, I go soft'' and then they bring things like a Bloodthirster or some big mean unit.

2-Balance : if you want balance, it's up to you working things out with you friend. Instead of following the rule : deploy till someone says stop, you and your friend determining a way to balance your forces. My friends decided to instead on focusing on the numbers of models, they'd focus on the total number of wounds (but that's them, you can base your criteria on anything else). Otherwise, simply se the given rules and try a sudden death victory. Might be surprising.

3-Not ready for tournment : without any real way to evaluate the power of the models (no points here), the game, as it is, is not ready for tournments. Maybe GW will issue a expansion or document for that later on.

4-Everything is simplier, easier, and suprisingly, funnier : Gone are the days when some models simply had no chances to hit or wound certain models. Pretty much anything can do that now. Everything can be a threat (to a certain level) to anything else, so everything has a usefulness in some way.

5-Models that were supposed to be god-like are now really god-like and can survive swarms : Bloodthirster of Insensate Rage. Nothing more to say here. Go see the rules. Now.

6-List-building : with the points gone, no more headaches over all these point calculations, limits to the number of a same unit-type you can field, etc. But then, how to know where to start an army ? Simple : warhosts. Every army has 2 or more warhost list that works like formations with bonuses. Fluffy, simply, and if you really are the kind of guys wanting limitations because you like having limits in exchange of benefits, warhosts are for you.

7-Small armies actually give a lot of fun and quickly.

So, all in all, what is my current verdict for AoS ? It's not for the hardcore WHFB tournment player who like to play long strategic games with thousand of models on the table. It's quick, it's fluffy, it's models killing each other everywhere on the table. It's like a Michael Bay movie meets Peter Jackson's fantasy. If you're a conservative players that hoped for 9th edition, almost identical to the 8th edition with some glitches fixed, then no, you're not in the right town. That would be KoW. Regardless, AoS, without comparing it to previous incarnations of WHFB, is a nice game. I'd even say a friendly game where I won't feel the flaws I feel when I play W40k or WHFB (some enemy units just being invincible because I didn't brought the right stuff, the sensation of being easily stomped on by my adversary, 4 hours long games during which I am feeling like a punching bag, etc.).
It's a game of it's own, and seriously, it's a game I'll find easier to get new people into rather than WHFB and even W40k. So, yeah, sorry for all those out there not liking it and it's rules.. But you can still use your models for KoW, play WHFB 8th with your friends (I still play Necromunda at my local Hobby store), and things aren't so bad. And sorry for those that felt betrayed, but hey, GW is a PRIVATE industry in a free market. They can do whatever the hell they want. That's what they've always did anyway.
Oh, and about that thing about Stormcast = Space Marines because they are tall, armored and look like the sanguinary guard : the sanguinary guard inspiration came from the death mask romans used during their funerals, and their armour was inspired by the one of the greek hoplites, and the wing were inspired by christianity concept of angels. All of these things are items of the antiquity and are associated with war and religion. And let's be honest, the Space Marines are mostly roman demi-gods legionnaires in space (except space wolves, they're vikings). W40k is a science-fiction setting borrowing elements from fantasy and classical history (Orks, Ogryn, Daemons, Witch Hunters, etc.). If it's okay for Science-Fiction to borrow things from fantasy, I hardly see why Fantasy should refrain itself from borrowing a small element back from it. Because let's face it: there are only 3 similarity between SM and Stormcast
1-Tall demigods warriors serving a god-like figure (Sigmar and The Emperor, both of which have always been in parallel)
2-Stormcast armours look like the one of the Sanguinary Guard, both of which borrow from the Greek-Roman style.
3-Both are poster boys for their respective brand.

So stop the whining. Find something else.

Couldn't agree more with your assessment.

My friends and I have found that picking based on wounds has also made for fun an balanced games. People knocking it haven't tried it.

I AM one of those hardcore WHFB 8th players that plays tournaments, and I am having a great time playing this game. I was scared I was going to hate it, but it's so easy to play, the new models look great, and it's still fun. I can see why GW made this game, it is the perfect gateway for newbies since the rules are so easy, and you still can collect the cool plastic crack.

Are you guys playing rank and file or "warband" style?
I have played 2 games, and found that rank and file is really fun, and still deeply tactical.
The warband skirmish style is weird for me

Thanks
austin

We played skirmish and the first couple of games we played we 75 wounds each. The standard infantry units were typically between 10-20 models strong. This allowed usually for some heroes and a wizard, war machines, and a big creature, with the meat and potatoes still coming from the infantry/cavalry.

Are armies calculated by wounds now?? I watched a demo at my local GW today, but they didn't say how army building was done... However the game itself looks a step in the right direction and I'm looking forward to trying it out.

It seems people are organising their forces based on wounds.
so far it works.
it's a hell of a lot of fun too

Thanks
austin

The armies right now aren't calculated in any manner officially. It can be a major setback for anyone at first, but as I said, this really seems to be a ''friendly-oriented`'' game rather than a tournment-oriented game. As such, you and your friend can decided between yourselves what you think his best. Hell, me and my friends were even doing this with 40k about the vehicules (cause I play Khorne Daemonkin, an army that doesn't have much anti-tank options). Seriously, you have no idea how it can piss you off when you play a 1500 pts newly-started-low-budget Khorne DK army and that your opponnent brings a Gorkanaut to the table.

Thanks guys, sounds like a plan to me. Im going to drag my Daemons over and cant wait to see what happens lol!

aronthomas17 wrote:
Thanks guys, sounds like a plan to me. Im going to drag my Daemons over and cant wait to see what happens lol!

Have fun with it!
Don't let these harbingers of doom on here dissuade you!
Remember it's completely possible to have a serious rank and file battle, or you can have a balls to the wall skirmish, or a silly engagement... regardless, you can have a lot of fun, your way, with this system.

Thanks
austin

Nice post, I had a play here and found that a sizable horde of goblins (ie 100 of the little guys) could take down tough characters like Nagash where as in the previous edition they would get slaughtered. Totally agree it was fun and in no way a 4 hour reaming because the enemy had better characters! It's definitely a game to get new people into as the rules are fairly simple, for me this is THE BEST feature of AoS, especially as newbies can play experienced hands without getting hammered because they forgot page 38 of the rules, section D, paragraph 2.

Obviously the world will need an extra war scroll for tournament play giving us fair and even points, but GW are always coming up with ways to make money so I wouldn't be surprised if we see a tournament "extension" pack in the near future.

Now to dust off Grom's chariot; the Waaaagh is on....

Whoa whoa whoa...... you have GROM?!

 Redbad wrote:
Whoa whoa whoa...... you have GROM?!

Many of us still have that crazed green fatty from back in the day

Not to derail the topic any further:
I can never find the bastard anywhere!

Back on topic:
Grom looks awesome in aos!

 Redbad wrote:

aronthomas17 wrote:
Thanks guys, sounds like a plan to me. Im going to drag my Daemons over and cant wait to see what happens lol!

Have fun with it!
Don't let these harbingers of doom on here dissuade you!
Remember it's completely possible to have a serious rank and file battle, or you can have a balls to the wall skirmish, or a silly engagement... regardless, you can have a lot of fun, your way, with this system.

Thanks
austin

Exalt, thank you!

Also Tomb Kings VS Vampire Counts is funny as both armies can summon the other armies units as per the summon rules.

First one to summon a Zombie dragon wins!

 Redbad wrote:
Whoa whoa whoa...... you have GROM?!

We're going off topic but he's hiding somewhere round here. He's also on eBay right now.
But it's going on twenty years since he first rolled out so I think he's going to have to get that paunch into shape before his first come back fight...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4Xo7cVu3Ik

See it works with friends but it's the death of pug games, which makes it alot harder to find a game which in turn means people will bring something else.

And if AoS fails then warhammer gets abandoned completely.

aronthomas17 wrote:
Are armies calculated by wounds now?? I watched a demo at my local GW today, but they didn't say how army building was done... However the game itself looks a step in the right direction and I'm looking forward to trying it out.

No, its not calcuated by wounds, officaially its not counted by anything, the rules says you can bring anything you want regardless of your opponent. However this can lead to very unbalanced armies, so to reduce this imbalance you can tell your opponent to set a limit by calcualting the total wounds on your army.