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 Talys wrote:
The result is that GW (purposefully or not) is attracting a bunch of people who were unhappy with the point-based constraint systems.

You say that like it is a bad thing

Yes, it is probably a big turn off for a lot of people. For my local group though it is what is drawing them into or getting them to return to Table Top Gaming.
I know I have a small group and to many this invalidates anything I say, but not a single one of us looked at AoS and thought that it was a 'Bad Game'. Now we all agree that it is not a 'Great Game' either.
It is what it says it is, a Game to have fun and kill a few hours with. That is how we look at it, nothing more nothing less. We will be squeezing it in between our normal games we play for when not everyone makes it or we are not in to mood to play more Complicated Games like WH40k, BattleTech. It is going into the rotation with our Munchkin, MLP: Card Game and soon to be Alpha Strike games.

@Anpu42 - I didn't mean it as a bad thing at all Or a good thing -- just an observation.

I think that AoS is a good game that has more mileage for some people than for me. But there will never, ever be a fantasy game that I like as much as Sci-Fi, because my preference is high-tech weaponry to magic and magical weaponry. 40k is has nearly all of my favorite game models because the guns in it are really cool

 infinite_array wrote:

auticus wrote:
Indeed Age of Sigmar is ambitious because at its core it challenges the modern concept of what a wargame is, the same as in the early 90s when the concept of wargames moved from narrative storytelling devices or reenactments to full blown tournament style competitions.

I've been trying to stay out of AoS discussions because I'd thought I'd finally reached the point where I had said what I wanted to and didn't want to become a broken record, but this is so wrong it's not even funny.

That's a very constructive post, thanks for contributing to the conversation.

whats the big deal? why cant people still just play 8th ediion fantasy? thats what my club does. heck they even have 10-12 people writing new stuff for fantasy. they made an entire sigmarine army book and its awesome!

many gamers fixate on a game being "dead" and avoid "dead games".

I agree however that there is nothing wrong with playing 8th if that's your thing.

 Talys wrote:

Again, I agree with you. There is the potential to build greatly synergistic and highly efficient armies within Age of Sigmar. However, by stripping the game of a points based constraint system, it's no longer possible to capitalize on such efficiencies, except if players create their own balancing system.

Well, efficiency changes when the constraints change. An efficient list based on points may differ than an efficient list based on wounds, or keyword constraints, or even the number of models. I've seen all of these suggested. Warhammer World has an Age of Sigmar campaign where you can bring 100 models, but creates constraints by having you join either the Sigmar or Khorne team and awards the entire team for winning - meaning you need to design your list to fight in multiple realms against multiple opponents, and to contribute something to the team's efforts. There are most certainly better and worse ways to create army lists, depending on which constraints you adopt.

Again, points are not a balancing system. They are a scenario generator. The scenarios that are generated can be balanced, but most likely, one side is going to be more efficient at eking out power from the point limitation (sometimes, comically so).

There is a burning desire within many gamers to be rewarded for good planning by having a leg up.

And you can still have that. Every single one of these systems, from scenarios to points to warscrolls and keywords, imposes limitations on the game that can be minmaxed for greater reward. Just pick a system up front and you and your opponents can sate that burning desire through your good planning. If you require things remain official, GW is producing numerous open ended scenarios. Or you can adopt the various official, but not official systems (like Warhammer World's campaign). Or use something simple and obvious, such as number of models or wounds. Or you can find a popular, respected system like Azyr comp rules. Or heck, you could just go with no system at all and simply build your army at the table as a reaction to what your opponent is putting down, stopping when you feel like you've got a decent game ahead of you. The point is, you have options.

By taking out the system, you shun such players -- because after all, if you play with your own balancing system, you may not have many / any play partners. The result is that GW (purposefully or not) is attracting a bunch of people who were unhappy with the point-based constraint systems.

I do not particularly hate or love points. They are what they are, and sometimes, that's a lot of fun. But I'm more excited by the possibilities that exist beyond points, and how they can change games, possibly even improving them. By not placing points on a pedestal, those possibilities are becoming very real. I'm not familiar with 40k, but has anyone ever suggested playing based on the number of wounds?

 hanshotfirst wrote:
whats the big deal? why cant people still just play 8th ediion fantasy? thats what my club does. heck they even have 10-12 people writing new stuff for fantasy. they made an entire sigmarine army book and its awesome!

I have no issue with that at all. In fact I see that as a good thing.

Some of us don't like 8th [or any] Edition WHFB.

auticus wrote:

 infinite_array wrote:

auticus wrote:
Indeed Age of Sigmar is ambitious because at its core it challenges the modern concept of what a wargame is, the same as in the early 90s when the concept of wargames moved from narrative storytelling devices or reenactments to full blown tournament style competitions.

I've been trying to stay out of AoS discussions because I'd thought I'd finally reached the point where I had said what I wanted to and didn't want to become a broken record, but this is so wrong it's not even funny.

That's a very constructive post, thanks for contributing to the conversation.

You're quite welcome.

The fact is that AoS is only revolutionary if you've had your head stuck between the firm, unyielding butt cheeks of the past few editions of Fantasy and 40k.

AoS offers nothing new to the wargaming community. It is not forward thinking. It challenges nothing, apart from the patience of fans of previous editions that liked the rank and file game and were hoping that GW could finally turn their dying system around. It is like GHQ's Microarmor Tank rules - a relatively simple to learn, free game designed to let you play with the models you've bought.

Which is fine. People can play AoS and have fun with it. Go right ahead and do so. But don't put the game up on a pedestal and imagine that it'll be leading the charge to a bright new future of wargaming. Because if that's what you think, Kirby should change his name to Cardigan.

 infinite_array wrote:
It is like GHQ's Microarmor Tank rules - a relatively simple to learn, free game designed to let you play with the models you've bought.

Isn't that the entire point? A simple game designed to let us play the the toy soldiers we've bought. And being free, doesn't that make everything better?

For the first time, I legally "own" all of the GW content for an entire GW battles game system.

Yeah, but that doesn't "challenge the modern concept of what a wargame is" - and it'd take a very long and probably pretty heated thread to figure out what the definition of "modern wargame" actually is.

And for owning all the GW content - you've bought both of the campaign books for AoS, and plan on continuing to buy them? Because, as far as I can tell, they do happen to have content in them that isn't available for free online, like the various Realm flavor rules, and scenarios.

 infinite_array wrote:

auticus wrote:

 infinite_array wrote:

auticus wrote:
Indeed Age of Sigmar is ambitious because at its core it challenges the modern concept of what a wargame is, the same as in the early 90s when the concept of wargames moved from narrative storytelling devices or reenactments to full blown tournament style competitions.

I've been trying to stay out of AoS discussions because I'd thought I'd finally reached the point where I had said what I wanted to and didn't want to become a broken record, but this is so wrong it's not even funny.

That's a very constructive post, thanks for contributing to the conversation.

You're quite welcome.

The fact is that AoS is only revolutionary if you've had your head stuck between the firm, unyielding butt cheeks of the past few editions of Fantasy and 40k.

AoS offers nothing new to the wargaming community. It is not forward thinking. It challenges nothing, apart from the patience of fans of previous editions that liked the rank and file game and were hoping that GW could finally turn their dying system around. It is like GHQ's Microarmor Tank rules - a relatively simple to learn, free game designed to let you play with the models you've bought.

Which is fine. People can play AoS and have fun with it. Go right ahead and do so. But don't put the game up on a pedestal and imagine that it'll be leading the charge to a bright new future of wargaming. Because if that's what you think, Kirby should change his name to Cardigan.

I never said it was revolutionary, that I liked it, hated it, or anything in between, that was what you pulled from me using the word "ambitious". "Ambitious" is simply that - its an ambitious project that is our first litmus test into a mainstream game being designed and developed contrary to what tournament players would enjoy to see if it will carry itself or fall.

"Modern wargaming" is simply (to me) what [most every game designed in the past ten years or so does. Point values. Adhere to tournament standards. Cater to a tournament meta. In some cases, go out of your way to cater to a tournament meta.

That is my definition of a "modern wargame". GW has created something that goes against what pretty much every company out there today would have done. That's fairly "ambitious" to me. The dictionary defines one of the terms of ambitious to mean: (of a plan or piece of work) intended to satisfy high aspirations and therefore difficult to achieve. I'd say that pretty much is AoS in a nutshell. Nowhere does it say revolutionary, awesome, or anything else denoting positive or negative.

Gaslighting and saying that its bad, wrong, jammed up our own *** etc is all well and good.

Age of Sigmar is in fact an ambitious and revolutionary game... if you hop into your time machine and travel back to the '70s. Then and only then.

When you say that AoS is doing the same as when miniature wargaming went from being narrative devices or reenactments to tournament focused, then that can be called revolutionary (which, by the way, means involving or causing a complete or dramatic change, if you want to play that game). And in the way you used "ambitious", it certainly had positive connotations.

I'll agree with you that most "mainstream" - nice job moving the goal posts, by the way - modern wargames uses points, and for good reasons. But I can really only think of one company that really goes out of its way to cater to a tournament atmosphere. What you call tournament standards, I call global standards. It means I can walk into a game store anywhere on the planet and potentially play a game without needing to sit down and hash out the community's house rules.

And there's a reason why mainsteam rulesets use points values and global standards - because, by and large, they work and foster the largest crowds of supporters for newer companies.

And speaking of gas lighting, exactly were did I say that you thought the game was awesome, or that the I thought the game was bad? I mean, I don't think it's great, but I've come around to the fact that people can and will have fun playing it, so trying to make them feel bad for doing so is a waste of tme.

However, I'm challenging your assertion that it's ambitious - instead, I see it as a by-product of GW following the mentality that it wants to sell miniatures first, and then worry about people actually using them.

 Sqorgar wrote:
I'm not familiar with 40k, but has anyone ever suggested playing based on the number of wounds?

In 40k, wounds as a constraint would not work at all, for a couple of reasons. First of all, the gear on a model can be (much) more expensive than the actual model. Second, most basic models are 1 wound, but they vary dramatically in performance. An infantryman with a 12" range weapon has 1 wound, and so does a guy on a jetbike whose weapon is way stronger and has twice as much range. Mobility is a huge factor in 40K and not reflected in wounds.

Finally, the damage resolution is much more complex than AoS. You have armor saves, cover saves, spell effects (like invisibility), invulnerable saves, and then a host of ways to ignore damage, plus ways to regenerate lost hit points. The point being, a Nagash size model with 6 wounds could take on 30 wounds worth of (some) infantry and literally stomp them all out of existence without taking any damage itself.

Basically, if the game were constrained to wounds, nobody would ever take infantry except heroes that are ultra-powerful or that provide some force multiplier benefit (like a mage-equivalent, for some great spell).


Automatically Appended Next Post:
By the way, since everyone keeps talking about goalposts, what ARE these goalposts that are being moved?

The goalposts I would set are that:

1. AoS is appealing to some people as their favorite game, and to other people as an occasional game, and to a third group for models only.

2. That AoS can generate some profits from #1, at least to the extent of the failed WHFB franchise (in GW's estimation, based on profits) and to a point which justifies GE's continued investment in it, by way of models, campaigns and story.

I would stay away from characterizations of whether AoS' system is good or bad, because that's too subjective. But I would embrace evaluating the reasons why people like or dislike it.

 infinite_array wrote:
And there's a reason why mainsteam rulesets use points values and global standards - because, by and large, they work and foster the largest crowds of supporters for newer companies.

The simple fact of the matter is, the reason why points are so common is because these games all descend from the sources. The designers of 40k go off and make other games (Kings of War), or players of GW games become inspired by GW games (Imperial Assault is a direct descendant of Space Hulk), or they are based off similar ancestors (Warmachine is based of DnD, which itself was based off wargames like Chainmail).

Basically, there's a handful of mainstream wargaming companies that are so inbred when it comes to their talent and inspirations, that the family tree is pretty much a straight line. They aren't picking points because points are a superior option. They are picking points because that's what the last guy did, and that's how they are used to it. And the last guy used points because the guy before him did. Not having points is ambitious, not because past games didn't have points, but because someone is purposefully going in a different direction, deliberately trying to create a new branch of evolution for the entire genre.

There's actually this really good book called Playing at the World, which traces DnD's lineage back through Chainmail and the wargames that inspired them. It pretty much stops at Chainmail, but there's a bunch of really well researched and exhaustively documented material on the early wargaming communities and games. That's completely off topic, but it's a great book and I recommend it.

However, I'm challenging your assertion that it's ambitious - instead, I see it as a by-product of GW following the mentality that it wants to sell miniatures first, and then worry about people actually using them.

How is AoS anything but ambitious? To completely change the direction of your company, creating a non-standard work with unproven potential, and producing scores of content before even the first starter set is sold? That is ambitious. Next you are going to argue semantics on what the definition of 'is' is.

No... the setting has a lot to do with the use of points or not.

In a setting where the difference between a French musket and a British musket is minimal when dealing with thousands of troops, and that time period happens to have book after book, documentary after documentary and so on written about various battles and army organisation there is little need of points. Players can simply use their knowledge of the actual history and make scenarios.

The same goes for most historical games. Naval games too, air combat games, hunting games, zombie survival games and the list goes on. Not often in the real world is something OP or stupidly powerful, and if it is it is quickly countered. We also know/can make educated guesses about how warfare was on the past and all of that helps create a very nice system in which no points are needed. They also give plenty of tools for creating scenarios and tips on how.

How is AOS similar to other points free games out there? Well it isn't. There are demons, gods, monsters and magic etc... we kind of need a measurement of their rough ability to create a structured game. We don't have thesis, history books or experts to find answers on combat in the world of Age of Sigmar. We have nothing of real substance to create any real scenario unless you happen to have learned the game and put up with it.

See AOS is a game that is clearly written to use points, but just with no points present. Hence why the game has very bland/few scenarios. It contains nothing to help players forge the narrative. It does not have examples of scenarios played by the GW staff. It does not contains any fluff to help detail how war is conducted so you can try balance it out that way.

AOS is nothing new at all. I play ALOT of games with no points whenever I visit the clubs in the city. Plenty of games have no points value, AOS has no points and does it terribly. It is not revolutionary for doing something that has been done and is being done, again this game is only getting any kind of attention because of the big GW label on it.

Just because points based games are some of the big names out there doesn't mean that making a points less game that is worse than all the other games of the same style is revolutionary. It is simply stupid.

That Jervis guy plays Black Powder for example. Now that game is a good example of what a game without points can be. He could have simply used Black Powder as a basis to create AOS and we would have scenarios, a method of roughly calculating costs, a method of creating armies, tools to create your own troops, examples of what the studio guys do and more. The tools are in the rules. AOS gives you a points based game without points and tells you the bare minimum to play.

The only way it is revolutionary is because such a big company released such terrible rules (in my opinion the worst rule set I have encountered) and maybe what's more revolutionary is that it is so bad and people still try to like it. But I suspect those people have not played other games that do not use points and as a result find the process mind blowing.

 infinite_array wrote:
Yeah, but that doesn't "challenge the modern concept of what a wargame is" - and it'd take a very long and probably pretty heated thread to figure out what the definition of "modern wargame" actually is.

And for owning all the GW content - you've bought both of the campaign books for AoS, and plan on continuing to buy them? Because, as far as I can tell, they do happen to have content in them that isn't available for free online, like the various Realm flavor rules, and scenarios.

From the various threads, it's pretty obvious that a modern wargame is the very sort of mindless "X points battle" that Jervis decried in Citadel Journal over a decade ago. Yes, there are tweaks, but the core of the genre, as homogenized by market leading 40k and the variety of third party successors, doesn't deviate the pattern nearly as much as AoS does. At least in concept.

On the tabletop, AoS plays very similarly (and not coincidentally) to 40k, but without as much complexity. To that point, AoS can be seen as fulfilling GW's objectives of moving away from generic "X points battle" while still playing as GW thinks a battles game should.

Deadnight wrote:

 Talys wrote:

The only way Age of Sigmar works is if the person who brings 50 greatswords goes, "Oh, these guys are way better than your 50 peasants. I'll just take 40 of them away, and give it a whirl. Sound good?"

Let's not move the goalposts again.

Is his intent a 'fun' or 'friendly enjoyable' game though with his greatswords - yes, or no?

Because right now, he is being judged as 'selfish" on the simple fact that he is bringing fifty greatswords. Is the fact that he has to change his entire playbook to accomodate and enable another person, when the other guy just sits there doing nothing and expectis to be placated ok? Surely he is s as 'selfish" as greatsword guy because he expects his way to be accommodated above that of the other guys.

And you are partly wrong in stating the 'only' way is for greatswords guy to acquiesce. Why is the obligation that greatswords guy 'plays down'? Because otherwise he is 'selfish'? Really? Surely, peasant guy is just as equally obligated to change his list to accommodate greatswords guy, and maybe bring fifty peasants and thirty men at arms to the game?

Edit: and what matt said. Scenario can be designed to accomodate a mismatch. Good suggestions there, you could also give the peasants an 'unending wave' rule if you fancied a last stand against overwhelming odds.

(Although to be fair matt, none of these are aos things)

What somewhat baffles me here is that way of thinking. If he wants to play with Greatswords it doesn't matter how many he fields. And if one insists that he came there with exact amount of 50 greatswords in mind, that's not really an argument. If I bring 50 greatswords and my opponent brings 30 dwarf warriors I am obviously going to tone my greatswords down to 30 or 25, it doesn't matter to me how many I field, it's the unit of choice that matters, and it's still there. You could also come with 300 greatswords, five generals on griffons and eight tanks along with lines of cannons and handgunners. It would be selfish for your friend who has only brought 50 miniatures to expect you to tone down, right? See the flaw in that logic?

Let's have this scenario - we both bring ~60 miniatures. His are weaker. We try to talk it out and agree on how do I tone my miniatures down. This takes less than five minutes. We play for fun, if I lose badly and we admit that it wasn't due to my bad decisions, next time we play I will field more of those guys. If it's still too much, we'll try with either more models on his side or fewer on mine. Simple.

And it's literally in the style of AoS 4 page rules when you bring a part of your collection and then decide what to field during the preparation for battle instead of bringing a fixed force with you.

As it was mentioned - scenarios and simple model count reduction are enough to make it even and enjoyable for both players, there really is no problem at all. None. If someone overblows this "issue", he's just trying too hard to find a hole. But then again I guess I'm just too much of a decent person and it's unusual that I personally care about how much fun my opponent is going to have while playing with me. I know, I'm weird.

As with the 12 Bloodthirster example, first, someone needs to buy and assemble (and maybe even paint) 50 Greatswords.

Now, it's not implausible to think that some Empire player has 50 such Greatswords, for whatever reason, and he might want to field them all at some point. Maybe against his Bret opponent. Why shouldn't that happen?

And why shouldn't that Bret player then decide to field a couple blocks of archers or whatnot to balance the game out?

If you want a way to reference how an age of sigmar battle would go, look at EVERY FANTASY COMBAT STORY EVER!

What does it take for someone to take down a dragon riding wizard? You can find it out there somewhere. How do you kill a necromancy swinging demigod, also out there. This game is nothing but fantasy tropes, and has the 25+ years of its own back story to also derive your answers from in regards to how to kill/counter something. You just have to research it like you would for any other points less system referenced so far.

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
If you want a way to reference how an age of sigmar battle would go, look at EVERY FANTASY COMBAT STORY EVER!

What does it take for someone to take down a dragon riding wizard? You can find it out there somewhere. How do you kill a necromancy swinging demigod, also out there. This game is nothing but fantasy tropes, and has the 25+ years of its own back story to also derive your answers from in regards to how to kill/counter something. You just have to research it like you would for any other points less system referenced so far.

Can you? Explain to me how you take down a wizard on dragon please? Then explain how this translates to Age of Sigmar.

Please explain how one kills a "necromancy swinging demigod" and how this translates to AOS?

Because I know exactly how to beat Elephants in Ancient warfare (easy by the way) and can find endless sources on how to do so, and most games based on the time period attempt to accurately portray this so generally (sometimes with a little abstraction depending on the game) gives me a good idea on how to prevent my troops falling victim to elephant charges.

So when I am making a scenario where Carthage or India is fighting an enemy I know that the Elephant has clear disadvantages and advantages that can help me make fair game (fair as in a chance for both sides to complete their objective, an objective can be anything). I also know how the Elephants worked alongside other troops and more. In that same vein I can do this for most troops types in history with the exception (off the top of my head) being chariots. But we can make educated guesses there.

"Research Fantasy"

 Klerych wrote:

What somewhat baffles me here is that way of thinking. If he wants to play with Greatswords it doesn't matter how many he fields. And if one insists that he came there with exact amount of 50 greatswords in mind, that's not really an argument. If I bring 50 greatswords and my opponent brings 30 dwarf warriors I am obviously going to tone my greatswords down to 30 or 25, it doesn't matter to me how many I field, it's the unit of choice that matters, and it's still there.

lets be clear. I have no issues with altering my army. I am quite happy to swap things out. My issues lie with the fact that I am essentially obliged to cut the heart out of my army to enable my opponents arbitrary notion of what's fair, when they have no corresponding obligation to change or swap out anything of what they bring. As far as I'm concerned, with 'fair being fair' both greatsword guy and peasant guy are equally obliged to come to an understanding.vbut that is not the narrative being pushed. The narrative being pushed is its all on gretsword guy, and he is the bad guy if he doesn't bend. He's 'selfish' apparently, despite every chance of wanting a 'fun friendly game'.

And Because apparently competitive players are 'selfish'. That they have no interest in 'fun friendly games' and only in 'cheesy wins'.

The wizard on a dragon, out magic them either with other powerful spell casters or multiple weaker ones to overwhelm their ability to counter spell. Out punch them with a couple big named heroes, or a bunch of heavy cavalry to chase them down. There is also the piles of archers and artillery to simply shoot it down.

The necromancy swinging demigod can normally only be stopped by another godlike being. That means either named characters, supersized monsters of your own, or again a pile of weaker wizards to try and out magic them. Or rush them with cavalry and chariots to keep him from summoning support to keep him alive.

Why is researching fantasy an issue? It is a genra as deep and varied as any other, including history.

Deadnight, the greatsword guy doesn't have to bend at all.

To take a 40k example. Joe has a 200 point kill team army. Sam has a 2500 point Knight Household. It's actually not possible for them to play any meaningful game together.

Nobody should be vilified for wanting to play their army, and that goes both ways. OTOH what happens in a lot of point based games is that the expectation is that at a point level the army IS optimized; or at least that people are bringing their best for that size of game. And, if you complain that someone's army is too strong, that you're just being a whiner, and should improve your own.

If you strip out the points, the latter becomes a non-issue (because there is no longer a reward for optimization). But there is still the possibility that the two people want to play a fundamentally different game. If one guy wants to play bows and swords, and the other guy wants to play demigods and demons, even though the game mechanics allow for coexistence of models, they would probably both be happier playing different opponents than saying, "my 200 peasants against your 2 gods".

Meanwhile Infinity and Warmachine have their complete rules for free on line. But there was a lot more effort put into them. They're complete games.

 MWHistorian wrote:
Meanwhile Infinity and Warmachine have their complete rules for free on line. But there was a lot more effort put into them. They're complete games.

Can't speak for Infinity, but only the basic rules for Warmachine are available - none of the unit stats are. The free rules are just the beginning of the MKII rulebook, cutting out the basic unit information, hobby info, unit pictures, timing chart, and even an index. Since the rules are already given out for free (with an index) in digest-sized books with the all-in-one boxes (I have two of them), the only people who really benefit from this are Battlegroup players who only get quick play rules. People who don't have models won't see how the pieces fit together and can't proxy models (unless they pirate the forces books - which going by the comments, isn't entirely uncommon), and existing players already have the rules. So it is specifically only useful to people who have enough models (and stat cards) to play a game, but don't know how to play?

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that Warmachine has the 95 pages of rules available for free, but without the stat cards, the rules are worthless. They should go the extra mile, like AoS, and make the stats free too. Places like the WM wiki can't list units stats because of this (Damage? Highish), and it would be nice to have an opponent's information without having to constantly ask them. You ever have 5 people crowded around a single card trying to figure out what it does? Getting access to all the cards digitally through War Room is, I think, $60. So the rules aren't FREE free. Just freer. Perhaps PP knows that most WM players are happy to just play with bases as proxies (I've seen more colossal bases than colossals) and wouldn't bother to buy the models (especially, their gakky, gakky resin models - good lord, the Convergence all-in-one was a nightmare).

Sorry. This is completely off subject, but I've spent the better part of a day cleaning mould lines off Retribution riflemen, rebuilding detail, and dunking them in hot water to bend them back into shape, and I'm very frustrated with PP right now.

 MWHistorian wrote:
Meanwhile Infinity and Warmachine have their complete rules for free on line. But there was a lot more effort put into them. They're complete games.

Really? You call them "complete" with NO unit stats?

Also, it's a lot harder to make something clean and simple than complex and messy. AoS shows that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sqorgar wrote:
Sorry. This is completely off subject, but I've spent the better part of a day cleaning mould lines off Retribution riflemen, rebuilding detail, and dunking them in hot water to bend them back into shape, and I'm very frustrated with PP right now.

At last PP is cheaper than GW, right?

Despite each of those PVC models costing more than its GW counterpart...

Nope, the entire MkII book is for download. Fluff and unit characteristics and all.
http://privateerpress.com/the-rules-are-free

 infinite_array wrote:

auticus wrote:

 infinite_array wrote:

auticus wrote:
Indeed Age of Sigmar is ambitious because at its core it challenges the modern concept of what a wargame is, the same as in the early 90s when the concept of wargames moved from narrative storytelling devices or reenactments to full blown tournament style competitions.

I've been trying to stay out of AoS discussions because I'd thought I'd finally reached the point where I had said what I wanted to and didn't want to become a broken record, but this is so wrong it's not even funny.

That's a very constructive post, thanks for contributing to the conversation.

You're quite welcome.

The fact is that AoS is only revolutionary if you've had your head stuck between the firm, unyielding butt cheeks of the past few editions of Fantasy and 40k.

AoS offers nothing new to the wargaming community. It is not forward thinking. It challenges nothing, apart from the patience of fans of previous editions that liked the rank and file game and were hoping that GW could finally turn their dying system around. It is like GHQ's Microarmor Tank rules - a relatively simple to learn, free game designed to let you play with the models you've bought.

Which is fine. People can play AoS and have fun with it. Go right ahead and do so. But don't put the game up on a pedestal and imagine that it'll be leading the charge to a bright new future of wargaming. Because if that's what you think, Kirby should change his name to Cardigan.

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 MWHistorian wrote:
Meanwhile Infinity and Warmachine have their complete rules for free on line. But there was a lot more effort put into them. They're complete games.

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 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 infinite_array wrote:
Yeah, but that doesn't "challenge the modern concept of what a wargame is" - and it'd take a very long and probably pretty heated thread to figure out what the definition of "modern wargame" actually is.

And for owning all the GW content - you've bought both of the campaign books for AoS, and plan on continuing to buy them? Because, as far as I can tell, they do happen to have content in them that isn't available for free online, like the various Realm flavor rules, and scenarios.

From the various threads, it's pretty obvious that a modern wargame is the very sort of mindless "X points battle" that Jervis decried in Citadel Journal over a decade ago. Yes, there are tweaks, but the core of the genre, as homogenized by market leading 40k and the variety of third party successors, doesn't deviate the pattern nearly as much as AoS does. At least in concept.

On the tabletop, AoS plays very similarly (and not coincidentally) to 40k, but without as much complexity. To that point, AoS can be seen as fulfilling GW's objectives of moving away from generic "X points battle" while still playing as GW thinks a battles game should.

Jervis is an idiot and a corporate cheerleader for GW. To illistrate this more he had to put his "Most Important Rule" on a 4 page rule set and in my opinion that rule is not even needed... if you cant figure out how to agree on a disagreement why do you even play games or socialize? GW just wants people to buy models. Yeah i get they are in that business. GW used to write rules, fact is all their good game designers are gone and doing their own things these days... the rulebooks dont even say who they are written by and instead now say "GW design team." When your core designers who had "vision" of a project leave and the newer generations take over they can loose their vision... to me GW is loosing their vision and concentrating on not the hobby they helped create but their vision is on their profit. You see this after lets say 3rd edition Warhammer Fantasy where they started seeking money over developing the game and designers start filtering out over time. You can see this in the new books for most part on artwork being replaced by pictures of models... yeah there is some artwork but not the same caliber of old... no feel of what made the GW games special... no suspense as i wonder what that is... Sure the new AOS has new fluff they are doing and lots of pictures of ground marines... it has a couple cool art pictures... but most are meh compared to the older art... even the old black and white stuff helped the imagination flow.

Point values are not needed in any game true. They should be included so that players have the option to have a structured list to play or play senerios w/o narrative like if you choose. For a game to have no structure and have to have the community make their own in order to play it to me shows a truely poor written piece of dross that can have all the synergy a turd has while being flushed. If you are going to make something do it to the best of your ability... the arguement that people buy GW models for models is crap. I buy their models and have bought them do to the fluff of the game and for the game itself. I dont buy models to build and paint just for grins... if i did that i would buy/build regular model kits from any company (like a model airplane). I build models first for the game i like to play and second then is the part of enjoying the building and painting of the models i bought for the game. If the rules were like AOS when i first started out i would have ROFLMAO at GW and warhammer and would never have wanted to try any warhammer games and would not thus collected any models aside from a F16 model i would have had when i was 6 years old that i built with my father and found boring.

I just downloaded the Hordes and WM PDFs again, and it's still just the intro and rule section.

Where are the unit and stats for Legion and Skorne? Or Cryx and Khador?

From what I see, PP wants me to pay to get the info.