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I applaud everyone's efforts to point out AoS for competitive play. However, I'm just looking for a method that will produce a reasonably fun game most of the time. The method in the rules is okay for making fun games, but requires both players to have the same kind of game in mind, makes us bring our entire armies to the game store, and makes deployment take FOREVER as we slowly dig out each unit from our bags in alternating fashion. I'm not looking for a "balanced" method, because nothing really is. Just needs to produce games where each side feels like they have a shot of winning if they make good decisions. It would also be nice if we could communicate the method over our facebook group so both players can only bring what they need and we can deploy quickly.

First, let me start with what has failed. My friend saw a tournament run with a limit on warscrolls, plus a limit on wounds within warscrolls. We gave this a try but it was a complete failure. I play Orcs & Goblins and the wound limit kept me from from getting large squad bonuses, while the scroll limit punished me for bringing low-wound scrolls like bosses, shamans, and bullies/artillery. I was completely crushed by my friend playing Ogres, and after the game it turned out that he had brought twice as many points to the game using the old 8th edition point values. For our next game we're knocking out the wound limit on scrolls but this still makes me outclassed if I bring too many of the low wound warscrolls mentioned above. I've also read some other posts of people using the warscrolls method with mixed results.

Second, let me mention one interesting option I've seen on the forums so far that I think merits further discussion. There was an idea to use GW monetary prices to benchmark models (http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/655574.page). This sounds interesting because the boxes are generally sold along the lines of their intended squad sizes. Cheap troops come 20 to a box, average troops come 10 to a box, elite troops come 5 to a box, that kind of thing. The method might break down with special characters or demons, but frankly my group doesn't play a lot of those. I may also try it this week and report back on the results. If you guys have any other ideas for CASUAL balancing I'd love to hear them. Thanks.

I know this is going to sound crazy, but if you want to have games that are fun and reasonably balanced, only play with people who also want fun games that are reasonably balanced. You will very quickly get to know your own units and the units your friends use. During deployment, you'll quickly and naturally get to a point where you both balance on the fly. Takes me about 2-3 games versus any given friend before I'm seeing an automatic balancing taking place.

You don't need any special systems. If both sides strive for balance during deployment, you'll get balance. If one side deploys 10 Night Goblins and the other side reacts with 40 Ogre Ironguts, there will be no balance.

Completely agree, but again we're looking for a way to schedule games ahead of time, only bring what we need to the game store, and deploy efficiently. I've played games with friends using only the method in the rules and it works completely fine. It just doesn't lend itself to efficiency. I play games with my roommate, and talking face to face it's still difficult to answer the question "what kind of game do you want to play?" with both players on the same page. I should also mention that I'm new to WHFB / AoS and I'm not familiar with many of the other armies to be able to visually gauge if we've setup a reasonably fair game.

Ninski wrote:
Completely agree, but again we're looking for a way to schedule games ahead of time, only bring what we need to the game store, and deploy efficiently. I've played games with friends using only the method in the rules and it works completely fine. It just doesn't lend itself to efficiency. I play games with my roommate, and talking face to face it's still difficult to answer the question "what kind of game do you want to play?" with both players on the same page. I should also mention that I'm new to WHFB / AoS and I'm not familiar with many of the other armies to be able to visually gauge if we've setup a reasonably fair game.

Have you considered using table size as the signifier? Age of Sigmar is designed to be played on a surface "any shape or size provided it's bigger than 3 feet square". Perhaps something like this...

Small Games = 3' x 3' table surface
Medium Games = 4' x 4' table surface
Large Games = 4' x 6' table surface

If you agree to a small game, you'll bring what you think you can reasonably deploy in a 1.5' x 3' section (your deployments zone) that has a couple of pieces of terrain in it.

If you agree to a medium game, you'll do the same, but for a 2' x 4' section. Large games would be 3' x 4'.

This will obviously require that you play a couple of games to calibrate what small, medium and large mean, but once you've calibrated you can say things like "Hey, want to meet at the Ogre's Basement and play a medium game of Age of Sigmar?".

Remember, the core limiters of the game are table size and time available to play. Table size limits what you can deploy and time available to play limits how many turns you get before calculating a minor victory.

Ninski

Here is a simple system I've come up with for army building. I wanted to try a way that didn't get bogged down with a lot of maths and just used the info we had available in the warscrolls. Let me know what you think.