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 Talys wrote:

......the more unit variety you have, the harder it becomes to balance.

Yes but harder doesn't mean impossible and it certainly doesn't mean that it shouldn't even be attempted. Removing points values doesn't in any way make the game more balanced and I fail to see how it can be more enjoyable.

Competent games design allows for a wide variety of unit types and play styles while creating a balanced metagame.

The only games which work with no points values are either preset scenario driven games or true narrative games.

The former requires a lot of research by the players and rules/scenario designers and can only really be used in one off games or ideally campaigns. The latter only works with rulesets with enough depth and flexibility to allow the degree of player agency that this sort of game demands.

AoS could be used for the former (although I would argue that WHFB, or any wargame for that matter, would be at least as suitable) but it is unsuited for the latter.

With AoS how do you even decide what size of game that you want to play?

I always play to win, it is after all wargaming but it would be hard to get further from a WAAC gamer than me. I generally only use themed lists (and those themes tend to be what would the standard army of X look like rather than how many broken units can I cram into 2000 points) I pick a concept that appeals to me and then I will run with it, irrespective of its ingame effectiveness. I haven't been to a tournament in well over a decade and I am more than happy to be flexible with the rules with regards to things like allowing people to do things out of sequence if they forgot to move etc.

This talk about 12 Bloodthirsters displeases the Blood God. Can't we use something more appropriate, like 16?

Your primary balancing factor will be table size. You are limited in your army size by the size of your deployment zone. A 3'x3' table will give you a maximum 3'x6" area to fill with soldiers. You don't want them too bunched up because of breath weapons, movement limitations, and the ability to pile into units that weren't originally locked in combat. Then there is the fact that whoever finishes deployment first gets to choose first turn. If you outnumber me by too much, I will choose assassinate and pound whatever hero or monster you choose with my artillery in two turns maximum. So don't load up too much unless you want to lose in the 2nd round of the game.

Come join our

Age of Sigmar

group on Facebook

The boys are really enjoying it, so much so I just ordered a second box to boost their armies... although as the Khorne side has an obvious disadvantage.. I got a box of Blooodletters, Skar Bloowrath and a box of the Wrathmongers to bolster them.

I'm also liking how the game flows, especially in combat.. so will be very likely joining them down the road, but will be waiting to see what GW does to the other races first.

In the mean time I'm happy to use one force or the other to challenge the boys.

Overall I am liking it so far.

I find it strange that they would set tabling as the primary win condition in a game with no inherent balancing mechanic.

I've been using some 40k missions to alleviate the scrum in the middle to death issues. It has worked quite well.

Tabling is the default win condition, which makes sense, as GW is a minis game - no minis, you lose.

And there are also Sudden Death conditions as a sort of balance against number of models.

But the PRIMARY win condition should be defined on a per-scenario basis.

I expect the scenarios will introduce more interesting objectives.

Most wargames benefit from campaigns to give meaning to individual battles.

 Silent Puffin? wrote:
The only games which work with no points values are either preset scenario driven games or true narrative games.

The former requires a lot of research by the players and rules/scenario designers and can only really be used in one off games or ideally campaigns. The latter only works with rulesets with enough depth and flexibility to allow the degree of player agency that this sort of game demands.

AoS could be used for the former (although I would argue that WHFB, or any wargame for that matter, would be at least as suitable) but it is unsuited for the latter.

AoS strives to be a scenario based game, and will feature campaigns in the coming months and years. I think enough people who enjoy this sort of thing exist for AoS to carve out a niche specifically for this market, and some people will use either official or unofficial competitive rules for tournament/competitive play.

With AoS how do you even decide what size of game that you want to play?

If you gave the game a shot, you'd figure that out pretty quickly. Basically, WMH sized armies. It gets cumbersome and slow at large army sizes; anything from 20-40 models will work pretty well. There could be exceptions, of course.

I always play to win, it is after all wargaming but it would be hard to get further from a WAAC gamer than me.

Actually, Age of Sigmar is self-described as Tabletop Gaming. Nowhere has Games Workshop ever described AoS as a wargame -- I think purposely so. If you take a look at the leaked Competitive Play rules and the armybuilding system there, you might be happy with it. It uses a combination of wounds, warscrolls, and keywords to place restrictions on the armies based on ratios -- so for example, out of 25 counted wounds, only 5 may be from models with the keyword Warmachine; only so many Heroes, etc..

I don't know if you'd be happy with the 'tactical depth' but most people won't be able to answer this without actually trying it. Many people get stuck on the rules being 4 pages, but actually, it's not 4 pages. It's 4 pages to describe basic mechanics, plus 300+ pages of special rules on warscrolls, plus a couple of formations/batallions (the number will surely grow) with more special rules.

The biggest problem with these rules is that you're back to square 1 in terms of "balance" -- there will be warscrolls you might as well put through the paper shredder, because per wound, they're not as good as some other warscroll in the faction. The whole idea of making it point-less was that it would be possible for the players to look at some models and go, "yes, these are weak models, and therefore should be balanced in our game as such".

 Da Boss wrote:
I'm tired of this WAAC vs. Casual debate. I really am.

+1. I'm incredibly sick of it, and it gets discussed in such black and whites when in reality most people lie somewhere in between. Things that particularly get on my nerves.

"it's about having fun not being competitive" as if they are mutually exclusive. I have fun BECAUSE I am playing a competitive game, not in spite of it!!!!!

"It's not about whether you win or lose it's about having fun" as if this has anything to do with the price of fish in China. Just because I'm playing competitively doesn't mean I break down and cry when I lose, am TFG when I win or that any of that has an impact on how much I'm enjoying the game.

"As long as you play with reasonable people it's fine" Yeah, because it's sooo unreasonable to want well written and balanced rules

"it's fine if you just play casually instead of competitive" as if these mutually exclusive Personally I'd say I'm an incredibly "casual" player, I don't enter tournaments, I don't keep any tally of my wins or losses, I don't care whether I win or lose, I play for the sake of meeting up with friends more than anything.... but I still want to be somewhat competitive and have some structure to what I'm doing otherwise I might as well just be sitting in a bar chewing on nachos with mates or shooting spitballs at a wall.

"It's about narrative so these things don't matter" as if forging a narrative was independent of a solid rules base or indeed as if GW wrote narrative rules in the first place!. Fact is, I like narrative gaming, but I still like to use a solid rules base to start from and a proper points system to try and arrange the scenarios, otherwise it's just meaningless "pew-pew-pew"-ing to me.

"It's fine if you're willing to adapt the rules" as if it wouldn't be better if you didn't have to bend rules to make a workable game. I'd say I'm a very adaptable player, but I still like to have a set of clear and concise rules as my base so that when I'm adapting rules it's not just to fix blatant oversights of the writers but it's actually to forge new and interesting narratives! If you first have to fix the damned rules then it just takes me one step further away from forging a good narrative game.

I do tire of reading these sorts of comments.

This.

This, this, this.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Tabling is the default win condition, which makes sense, as GW is a minis game - no minis, you lose.

And there are also Sudden Death conditions as a sort of balance against number of models.

But the PRIMARY win condition should be defined on a per-scenario basis.

Yes, I agree I like objective-based games better than tabling or the sudden-death, too. If the leaked file is to be believed (and the source, Lady Atia, has been very good), the objectives-based scenarios look pretty interesting. We may even give them a whirl next time we get together and chip away at some more 40k time


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 tydrace wrote:
This talk about 12 Bloodthirsters displeases the Blood God. Can't we use something more appropriate, like 16?

The Blood God would be very pleased if you would field 66.

 Talys wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Tabling is the default win condition, which makes sense, as GW is a minis game - no minis, you lose.

And there are also Sudden Death conditions as a sort of balance against number of models.

But the PRIMARY win condition should be defined on a per-scenario basis.

Yes, I agree I like objective-based games better than tabling or the sudden-death, too. If the leaked file is to be believed (and the source, Lady Atia, has been very good), the objectives-based scenarios look pretty interesting. We may even give them a whirl next time we get together and chip away at some more 40k time


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 tydrace wrote:
This talk about 12 Bloodthirsters displeases the Blood God. Can't we use something more appropriate, like 16?

The Blood God would be very pleased if you would field 66.

I can't wait to see the scenarios.


66? Not really. 66 = 6 (Slaanesh) x 11 (Malal) -- *I* would be happy with that, though, having 66 Bloodthirsters slaved to Slaanesh and/or Malal.

For Khorne, 64 would be better 8 x 8...

 Talys wrote:

AoS strives to be a scenario based game, and will feature campaigns in the coming months and years. I think enough people who enjoy this sort of thing exist for AoS to carve out a niche specifically for this market, and some people will use either official or unofficial competitive rules for tournament/competitive play.

A scenario based game that describes the exact forces used by each side?

 Talys wrote:

Basically, WMH sized armies

I take it WMH is Warmachine? How many Goblins is that for an evenings game? How many Ogres?

 Talys wrote:

Nowhere has Games Workshop ever described AoS as a wargame

Tabletop game and wargame are synonymous.

 Talys wrote:

I don't know if you'd be happy with the 'tactical depth' but most people won't be able to answer this without actually trying it.

I'm not going to be trying it as it would be hard for me to find opponents given its reception at my club and there are much better games that I would rather play anyway.

We've got a slow grow league starting in August a culminating in December with 25 wounds per month increase. We've got about 15 people in our group signed up for it. We'll see how it goes. I like it because I can paint a small force of Dwarves one month, elves the next, eternals the next, and round the previous three out in the last month.

We're all looking forward to it.

 Silent Puffin? wrote:
A scenario based game that describes the exact forces used by each side?

That is how scenarios often work ...

 Silent Puffin? wrote:
Tabletop game and wargame are synonymous.

Nope. Is MtG a wargame? Settlers of Catan? D&D?

 Hulksmash wrote:
I like it because I can paint a small force of Dwarves one month, elves the next, eternals the next, and round the previous three out in the last month.

Yeah, should be good to paint pretty much whatever you like from across the armies.

 Manchu wrote:
Nope. Is MtG a wargame? Settlers of Catan? D&D?

Card game, boardgame, RPG.

Although as MTG and D&D involve combat they could be classed as wargames as easily as they could be classed as tabletop games. I have also played both of them over the internet so......

 Silent Puffin? wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
Nope. Is MtG a wargame? Settlers of Catan? D&D?

Card game, boardgame, RPG.

I know. And they are all tabletop games.

 Manchu wrote:
That is how scenarios often work ....

So highly restrictive then and a lot of work to incorporate all the various races and factions.

 Silent Puffin? wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
That is how scenarios often work ....

So highly restrictive then and a lot of work to incorporate all the various races and factions.

Sure, they can be. A scenario is often a way to represent a pre-existing event or story. A friend of mine recently used the LotR rules to run a scenario right out of the Felix and Gotrek novels, for example.

Amazingly the D Day scenario for WW2 games failed to cater for Imperial Japanese units, a shocking omission.

@Silent Puffin - Manchu replied to most of your points better than I could

WMH = Warmachines / Hordes, the very popular Privateer Press skirmish games.

I can't answer in the form of goblins and ogres. Like Sigmar, you have little troops, bigger troops, special units, and heroes. Unlike AoS, the warcaster (who represents the player) plays a pivotal role, and you've pretty much lost if the warcaster dies. The warcaster can do more interesting things than AoS heroes.

There are models as small as a goblin, and models as large as an Imperial Knight. Mostly, the models are metal and/or resin, with a few plastic kits. Very few are configurable or posable in any way, none in the GW sense (which is ok from a gaming perspective, because models have no equip options in the game anyhow). The aesthetic is fantasy steampunk, and subjectively (ie in my opinion), the models are decent, with a small number being exceptional.

If you haven't heard of WMH and you like fantasy skirmishers, you should check it out. A lot of people like it quite a bit.

Wow, trying to describe AoS as not being a wargame? We truly have crossed over into bizarro-land territory.

 Grimtuff wrote:
Wow, trying to describe AoS as not being a wargame? We truly have crossed over into bizarro-land territory.

I've been slammed before for saying not all tabletop games require assembly and painting (basically saying not all tabletop games are war games).

Wonder when those people are going to show up to defend their case against Manchu's school of thought.

I mean I don't expect them to because now it's in the favor of GW, but ehhhh.

It's weird to me that anyone would assume miniatures war games are the only kinds of table top games. I mean, haven't they ever heard of D&D ... or at least Monopoly?

Miniatures war gaming is fairly new to the USA. Wargaming over here, during the 60s up through the 80s (maybe even 90s really), was dominated by hex maps and chits. Even now, when miniatures gaming has become fairly popular (as niches go) in the States, a lot of stuff still comes to us from the UK.

In any case, Talys seemed to be making a point about how GW is marketing AoS rather than saying AoS is not a war game.

It wasn't common where I am from to call RPGs or board games "table top games". It's not a commonly used phrase at all. So that could be the source of confusion?

TBH the first time I heard the phrase "table top games" was in the context of marketing the resurgence in board game popularity over the last decade. I think card games, RPGs, and miniatures games got roped in by association.

 Manchu wrote:
It's weird to me that anyone would assume miniatures war games are the only kinds of table top games. I mean, haven't they ever heard of D&D ... or at least Monopoly?

Miniatures war gaming is fairly new to the USA. Wargaming over here, during the 60s up through the 80s (maybe even 90s really), was dominated by hex maps and chits. Even now, when miniatures gaming has become fairly popular (as niches go) in the States, a lot of stuff still comes to us from the UK.

In any case, Talys seemed to be making a point about how GW is marketing AoS rather than saying AoS is not a war game.

Oh no I agree, not all tabletop games are wargames.

I don't necessarily agree that AoS is not a wargame, though.

I'm just pointing out that their are certain people in the community that would argue with you if your opinion was more negative towards GW.

Also thing about marketing is if GW isn't convincing people that the game isn't a wargame... well they're going to keep thinking it is a wargame.

Remember how terrible of a failure "Forge the Narrative" was?

If you can't convince your customers, it doesn't matter. Before you even up bring up the "but logic, but they're saying", it's irrelevant, the customer's perception of your product matters more than reality. Marketing 101 stuff.

Well, to get back to (my understanding of) Talys's point, I think GW is going for the widest possible market -- hence using the term "tabletop game," which I believe simply indicates a sort of marketing reminder that not all games are played on electronic devices.

 Manchu wrote:
It's weird to me that anyone would assume miniatures war games are the only kinds of table top games. I mean, haven't they ever heard of D&D ... or at least Monopoly?

Miniatures war gaming is fairly new to the USA. Wargaming over here, during the 60s up through the 80s (maybe even 90s really), was dominated by hex maps and chits. Even now, when miniatures gaming has become fairly popular (as niches go) in the States, a lot of stuff still comes to us from the UK.

In any case, Talys seemed to be making a point about how GW is marketing AoS rather than saying AoS is not a war game.

You will be surprised that miniature wargames have a longer, stronger history in the US than you knew. E.g.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Scruby

 Talys wrote:
A lot of people like it quite a bit.

Played it, didn't like it.

Warmachine has, or at least had, around 20-25 models a side in a standard game. Are you seriously telling me that is all that you would need to play AoS in a typical game? If you are that puts AoS very much in skirmish game territory yet for a skirmish game AoS rules are extremely shallow.

Just because GW calls its games tabletop games (which they have done for a very long time by the way) means absolutely nothing.

Providing specific scenarios for AoS has absolutely no bearing on how I am going to find, for example, a fair pick up game nor will it provide any real guidance to gauge how an army containing X, Y and Z will fare against an army that contains X, B and C. Specific scenarios are great and have been at the foundation of wargaming but there needs to be some kind of structure to create armies.