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 streamdragon wrote:

 Kriswall wrote:

Makumba wrote:

Nerm86 wrote:
don't play that opponent.

Then you find out that your faction is the only one who plays mass range troops and cannons, and they are the only good thing about it, so everyone wants you to not use them, because you know your good can make them lose games, so after a few weeks you can start playing yourself or buy another army of a faction that plays like everyone elses, which no one will dare to veto, because everyone uses magic, monsters and multiple heros.

Taking Nagash doesn't make you a jerk... unless you know for a fact that your opponent isn't prepared for it and can't counter it.

How would you know that? you see his list only just before or even after the game, as there is no pre games list check, because of no points to be checked.

You would know this from literally 30 seconds of conversation. Seriously. 30 seconds. OR... deploy Nagash last. If you feel you need him, deploy him. If you don't feel you need him, don't. This isn't rocket science. If you can't look at what an opponent brought to play with and know whether or not Nagash is needed, you need to build up more play experience.

Yeah, clearly you need to play more games to .. get the experience ... to play more games...

You don't realize how dumb that sounds? It's basically the Warhammer equivalent of the old employment catch-22, where you need work experience to get a job, but you need a job to get work experience.

It's called a learning curve. It's a pretty common concept and applies to almost every walk of life where you need to learn something.

I'm not expecting someone's very first game to be flawless and full of perfect decisions. I am expecting their second game to be a little better than the first. And I'm expecting their umpteenth game to be pretty solid. In other words, if you want to get better at the game, play more games. So yes, you need to play more games to game the experience to be better at playing more games. This is a fairly simple idea.

Nagash isn't scary, nagash with someone carrying around 500+ other undead models is. If they don't have that many models, they are wasting time bringing nagash because he can't cast the same spell twice, making him less utilitarian than 4 basic necromancers as far as spells thrown is concerned.

You can never bring too much, it allows better depth of play. What you need to do is police yourself, if at some point during deployment you think to yourself "there's no way they can beat this army" then you are breaking the rules. You are supposed to be actively trying to achieve a balanced game, the moment you stop doing that you aren't playing age of sigmar anymore.

Formations are a safe start. Have yet to play a guy formation vs formation were I felt either side need a major adjustment to make it fun.

The golden rules for me is this.

1. Keep model counts based on kits and minimum, if you want more in a unit just combine what would of been two units in your army. I.E combine the two liberator squads in the starter set.

2. Create a army that you would think players would enjoy fighting against, and that interest you.

3. Create the mission that is narrative for both armies. It's a lot easier to have fun losing when the mission involves you taking a risky charge to slay Nagash before his minions overrun you.

I'm not expecting someone's very first game to be flawless and full of perfect decisions.

Why is that? With other systems you have pre build armies and people starting to play AoS offten have played other systems. I will give my own example, almost years ago we lost a tourmanet team member to flu and I had to play 6 tournament games with an army I never played, before and I did very well considering I never played WFB before.

You would know this from literally 30 seconds of conversation. Seriously. 30 seconds. OR... deploy Nagash last. If you feel you need him, deploy him. If you don't feel you need him, don't. This isn't rocket science. If you can't look at what an opponent brought to play with and know whether or not Nagash is needed, you need to build up more play experience.

Why deploy him last, you deploy him the flying corrions and nothing else. I don't see how a conversation should help someone pick or not pick a unit, if the game already started. Even before it how does it suppose to look like. He can just lie or say he doesn't care or say that he doesn't want to talk at all, it is not like everyone talks durning gaming, in fact a lot of people don't talk at all.

Makumba wrote:

I'm not expecting someone's very first game to be flawless and full of perfect decisions.

Why is that? With other systems you have pre build armies and people starting to play AoS offten have played other systems. I will give my own example, almost years ago we lost a tourmanet team member to flu and I had to play 6 tournament games with an army I never played, before and I did very well considering I never played WFB before.

You would know this from literally 30 seconds of conversation. Seriously. 30 seconds. OR... deploy Nagash last. If you feel you need him, deploy him. If you don't feel you need him, don't. This isn't rocket science. If you can't look at what an opponent brought to play with and know whether or not Nagash is needed, you need to build up more play experience.

Why deploy him last, you deploy him the flying corrions and nothing else. I don't see how a conversation should help someone pick or not pick a unit, if the game already started. Even before it how does it suppose to look like. He can just lie or say he doesn't care or say that he doesn't want to talk at all, it is not like everyone talks durning gaming, in fact a lot of people don't talk at all.

I'm afraid I can't offer any advice if you play in a gaming group where people either lie to each other or remain silent. That just sounds like a horrible experience. I'm assuming a certain amount of integrity and communication. Without those basic building blocks, everything else is up in the air. I have never, ever in my 30+ years of gaming run into an opponent who refused to talk.

Yes, the rules allow you to deploy Nagash, a Carrion and nothing else. You will automatically win against any opponent who deploys at least three models. Thanks to Nagash, you will almost certainly win against any opponent who deploys one or two models... unless he deploys exactly the same at which point it comes down to player skill. For me, that victory would feel shallow and worthless as there is no challenge whatsoever. I suppose it comes down to priorities. I want to enjoy myself, preferably while winning a challenging victory. I don't want to find a baby, push him over and take his candy. Bringing Nagash and a Carrion to a game against a new or inexperienced player is very much like taking candy from a baby. The outcome is basically a foregone conclusion. Why play the game at all? Isn't it better to have a 30 second conversation, be the bigger person, realize your opponent either doesn't own the necessary models to put up a fight or isn't that great at the game and modify your army to try and match? Again, this is where sportsmanship comes into play. If you have none, Age of Sigmar probably isn't the game for you. It almost requires its players be good sports to maintain balance.

I'm kicking around an idea for solving this issue as I read through all of the warscrolls: a disclosure system that gives each unit a "strength" and a "toughness" value, where strength represents the approximate number of wounds it can inflict against models with a 5+ save and toughness represents approximately how resilient the unit is to damage, normalized to a 5+ save, and discounted based on bravery and risk of battleshock. A quick version would stop there, a more detailed version would also include "ballistic skill" and "weapon skill" (to quantify the damage potential of shooting vs. combat) and provide separate values for best case scenario (getting the charge, using a once per game ability, etc.) vs. normal combat.

The idea is to do lots of math in the background, but stop short of making the judgement calls and static decisions of a points system wherever possible. If you plop 10 swordmasters down, instead of a general sense of "those guys look powerful" you could glance at their entry and know they'll inflict ~8.6(!) damage on the charge compared to the ~1.6 damage a unit of high elf spearmen would expect. Meanwhile the "12 wounds" of a Necrosphynx would disclose a toughness value closer to 30, which again gives you real information about how many units (or how many turns of combat/shooting) you would need to fight that thing.

That information is immediately practical in a way that points values aren't: the "8.6" after the swordmasters unit tells you with ~math~ that you really, really don't want to let a 5 wound character get in their line of sight. A dwarf list with a "ballistic skill" of 25 puts you on notice that your dragon will probably die on turn 1 if you deploy it in range.

It could also allow dynamic updates during the deployment process. The second you plop down the wood elf banner/totem that grants a 4+ 'ward save' to units around him, you can quickly increase the disclosed toughness of units in range.

Much like a point system, it acknowledges the fact that weaker units bring less to the table, giving a reason to bring spearmen instead of a giant blob of swordmasters. Unlike a point system, it doesn't try to predict the value of a dwarf engineer in a vacuum, and then allow a list builder to 'optimize' by cramming 6 cannons in a ring around one engineer that was bought for the same price as if it were standing next to a single bolt thrower.

It could even make summoning kinda-sorta-work under RAW. Every potentially summoned unit has to be fully 'disclosed' at the beginning of the game. No surprises - the pool of models/units as well as information about the casters means the craziest summoning spam list is giving the opponent a realistic and informed chance to appropriately counter it in deployment. If the VC/TK/Lizardmen player has 500 models ready to be summoned, it puts a big fat number on the army's potential and puts both players on notice that they either need to hold back or reconsider the game.

In theory, the added disclosure perfects the RAW's iterated prisoners dilemma style deployment, because even against an army and opponent you've never faced, you're getting useful and nearly complete information with each unit deployed. From there it's up to you how 'balanced' you want the fight to actually be - it's not a rule that the armies need the same strength, the same toughness, or the same ratio of strength to toughness - it's simply concrete information both players have while choosing how much to bring and when to stop deploying.

The new rule system makes this surprisingly possible. Most models and abilities simply do damage and absorb damage, and most synergies are relatively simple and direct - meaning there's little in the lists that couldn't be roughly accounted for in such a system. There will be judgement calls, of course (one example: how much toughness do you grant for undead banners that heal the unit?). But I think for most lists and most potential armies, it could actually give a nice sense for how balanced a game is or isn't before the first die gets cast.

matthewp wrote:
Formations are a safe start. Have yet to play a guy formation vs formation were I felt either side need a major adjustment to make it fun.

Often true, but a few are downright abusive if you're just looking for a casual pickup game. The dwarf artillery train with grudge throwers isn't likely to win you any friends, nor is the "formation" in the high elf list that reads "take 3 dragons and give them a super combo breath weapon of doom."

 Kriswall wrote:
Yes, the rules allow you to deploy Nagash, a Carrion and nothing else. You will automatically win against any opponent who deploys at least three models. Thanks to Nagash, you will almost certainly win against any opponent who deploys one or two models...

I have yet to play a game where either side chose to make use of Sudden Death if it was available to them. So there's that option too.

#ObviouslyStupidThingsAreObvious

- Salvage

These discussions hurt my head.
I hate to say the game is still in the realm of the designers not taking ownership of the full package of the game and making it fall on the players to make it work.
It is like designing a bad computer interface and expecting the user to learn and work around it.

*****Old guy rant commence*****
Games have rules so that we are not reduced to things like when we were kids: "Pew!, pew! gotcha!, No you didn't!, Did too!".
Then points or some kind or balancing mechanic (limited choices) so we got an idea of scale, force size or general power of the models: "I get all bajillion army men! Oh yeah: I have my Superman action figure who will destroy them all!".
Also bear in mind how much we want to involve "lady luck" into the mix: http://blog.prismata.net/2014/07/15/luck-in-games/

Risk, Chess, Carcassonne, X-wing, Battletech and Combat Commander: Europe have all been fun and give some measure of balance.

AOS has the mechanics of going about the battles pretty good for a reboot, I applaud that effort.
The method of balancing opposing forces is having some trouble, I was hoping it was just that is was so new we did not understand it well enough: it is now exposing serious flaws.
It IS early, I hope they can find a means of achieving some measure of balance.

@coelomate: Yeah, my first instinct is to throw some algorithm to try to come up with a sane points system, as pointed out by others: when a unit or model buffs others it's "value" should increase in proportion to how wide a number of models it can affect.

I dunno, just trying to give the game a fair shake which is hard to do since it represented the death of WFB at least as a live product from GW.

If they deploy nagash and a single carrion, then pile models on the table to match what nagash could summon, and have some serious ranged support/ reserves to help coral his ability to summon. Then proceed to shoot him to death.

Why does everyone assu.e nagash equals instant win?

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
If they deploy nagash and a single carrion, then pile models on the table to match what nagash could summon, and have some serious ranged support/ reserves to help coral his ability to summon. Then proceed to shoot him to death.

Why does everyone assu.e nagash equals instant win?

Nagash is irrelevant. The Carrion grants the instant win. Goes like this...

1. Deploy at least one Tomb Kings Carrion, but otherwise almost nothing. Lots of people recommend Nagash as a second model, but you'll see that he's irrelevant. Make sure you're outnumbered.
2. Choose the Sudden Death objective Endure - "Have at least one model which started the battle on the battlefield still in play at the end of the sixth battle round."
3. Never charge with the Carrion and just stall until the end of the sixth battle round, at which point you win a Major Victory.

This works because of two Carrion special rules...

Circling High Above - "When first set up, units of Carrion are assumed to be flying high above the battlefield. As long as they remain high in the sky, they cannot be charged, attacked, targeted by spells or effected by abilities used by either side, and they also cannot make any attacks themselves as they soar far above their foes. Enemy units ignore Carrion as they move (they move underneath them)."

Scavenger's Dive - "The first time a unit of Carrion charges, you can roll 3 dice rather than 2 to see how far it charges (when doing so, you can declare a charge if it is within 18" of the enemy, rather than 12"). As they charge, the Carrion are assumed to drop down to the low level, and the Circling High Above ability no longer applies to the unit for the rest of the battle."

So... the Carrion effectively can't be killed until it charges. Don't charge, wait 6 turns and then auto-win as you have a model that started on the battlefield (and the Carrion is most certainly on the battlefield... just flying above and so untargetable) still in play at the end of the sixth battle round.

Nagash just makes the intervening 6 turns interesting and gives you something to do other than saying "I'm not taking any actions. Your turn."

 Kriswall wrote:

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
If they deploy nagash and a single carrion, then pile models on the table to match what nagash could summon, and have some serious ranged support/ reserves to help coral his ability to summon. Then proceed to shoot him to death.

Why does everyone assu.e nagash equals instant win?

Nagash is irrelevant. The Carrion grants the instant win. Goes like this...

1. Deploy at least one Tomb Kings Carrion, but otherwise almost nothing. Lots of people recommend Nagash as a second model, but you'll see that he's irrelevant. Make sure you're outnumbered.
2. Choose the Sudden Death objective Endure - "Have at least one model which started the battle on the battlefield still in play at the end of the sixth battle round."
3. Never charge with the Carrion and just stall until the end of the sixth battle round, at which point you win a Major Victory.

This works because of two Carrion special rules...

Circling High Above - "When first set up, units of Carrion are assumed to be flying high above the battlefield. As long as they remain high in the sky, they cannot be charged, attacked, targeted by spells or effected by abilities used by either side, and they also cannot make any attacks themselves as they soar far above their foes. Enemy units ignore Carrion as they move (they move underneath them)."

Scavenger's Dive - "The first time a unit of Carrion charges, you can roll 3 dice rather than 2 to see how far it charges (when doing so, you can declare a charge if it is within 18" of the enemy, rather than 12"). As they charge, the Carrion are assumed to drop down to the low level, and the Circling High Above ability no longer applies to the unit for the rest of the battle."

So... the Carrion effectively can't be killed until it charges. Don't charge, wait 6 turns and then auto-win as you have a model that started on the battlefield (and the Carrion is most certainly on the battlefield... just flying above and so untargetable) still in play at the end of the sixth battle round.

Nagash just makes the intervening 6 turns interesting and gives you something to do other than saying "I'm not taking any actions. Your turn."

And that is how you get a chance to play any person once.

One story I have to share:

... most people coming to play AOS at my FLGS in pick up games have a conversation about the number of models before the game starts. They adjust the size of their forces together to have an enjoyable game.

The people who have a problem with that don't seem to enjoy the game much.

I actually think this is a better way to play than sticking to a strict points system. It means both people have to be friendly to begin with.

 techsoldaten wrote:
One story I have to share:

... most people coming to play AOS at my FLGS in pick up games have a conversation about the number of models before the game starts. They adjust the size of their forces together to have an enjoyable game.

The people who have a problem with that don't seem to enjoy the game much.

I actually think this is a better way to play than sticking to a strict points system. It means both people have to be friendly to begin with.

I actually think that assuming that competitiveness =/= friendliness is a bad assumption to begin with...

 Anpu42 wrote:

 Kriswall wrote:

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
If they deploy nagash and a single carrion, then pile models on the table to match what nagash could summon, and have some serious ranged support/ reserves to help coral his ability to summon. Then proceed to shoot him to death.

Why does everyone assu.e nagash equals instant win?

Nagash is irrelevant. The Carrion grants the instant win. Goes like this...

1. Deploy at least one Tomb Kings Carrion, but otherwise almost nothing. Lots of people recommend Nagash as a second model, but you'll see that he's irrelevant. Make sure you're outnumbered.
2. Choose the Sudden Death objective Endure - "Have at least one model which started the battle on the battlefield still in play at the end of the sixth battle round."
3. Never charge with the Carrion and just stall until the end of the sixth battle round, at which point you win a Major Victory.

This works because of two Carrion special rules...

Circling High Above - "When first set up, units of Carrion are assumed to be flying high above the battlefield. As long as they remain high in the sky, they cannot be charged, attacked, targeted by spells or effected by abilities used by either side, and they also cannot make any attacks themselves as they soar far above their foes. Enemy units ignore Carrion as they move (they move underneath them)."

Scavenger's Dive - "The first time a unit of Carrion charges, you can roll 3 dice rather than 2 to see how far it charges (when doing so, you can declare a charge if it is within 18" of the enemy, rather than 12"). As they charge, the Carrion are assumed to drop down to the low level, and the Circling High Above ability no longer applies to the unit for the rest of the battle."

So... the Carrion effectively can't be killed until it charges. Don't charge, wait 6 turns and then auto-win as you have a model that started on the battlefield (and the Carrion is most certainly on the battlefield... just flying above and so untargetable) still in play at the end of the sixth battle round.

Nagash just makes the intervening 6 turns interesting and gives you something to do other than saying "I'm not taking any actions. Your turn."

And that is how you get a chance to play any person once.

Absolutely. I'd never actually do that. I was just explaining how the instant win mechanic works. I would imagine most tournaments would just house rule to say that Carrion models don't count as 'on the battlefield' when 'circling high above'. Solves the issue nicely. That's my group's house rule, incidentally to prevent this shenanigan.

@steamdragon - if you've never deployed Nagash before, or your opponent has never played against Nagash before, you can say, "well, I had no idea". If either of you have, like Kriswall said, it takes you seconds to go, "whoa, this big boy is just too much for this board".

So if you're both in doubt, try it out, if it doesn't work, laugh it off, and play again without Nagash. It won't happen again with this opponent or another, because you'll know better. Not so hard, right?

But anyways, to make it simple... generally speaking, if you have a really powerful premium hero model (surely you will know this just from looking at your own warscrolls), and your opponent doesn't, they'll probably have trouble winning.

 techsoldaten wrote:
One story I have to share:

... most people coming to play AOS at my FLGS in pick up games have a conversation about the number of models before the game starts. They adjust the size of their forces together to have an enjoyable game.

The people who have a problem with that don't seem to enjoy the game much.

I actually think this is a better way to play than sticking to a strict points system. It means both people have to be friendly to begin with.

This system seems really appealing to me, although it relies on people being a good judge of models' effectiveness and synergies (hence my monologue above about disclosing more useful statistics).

I haven't tried playing a game yet though, just obsessed over the rules and watched a number of video battle reports. Have pickup games in that style worked in your experience? You say people who have a problem with that don't seem to enjoy the game much - but how common do you think is it for people to have a problem with that?

The problem I see with something like this, is what it's most compared to are historicals / scenarios, where there is a clear reason for one side to have more models or the like, and no need for points as it's not supposed to be a "fair" competition.

But in most game settings, you have as close to "equal" sides are you can under the rules. Same number of foozball mans (or real soccer players!). Same salary cap for a sports team (and yes, uncapped leagues are a bear!). Same points in a wargame. There is almost always some external balancing mechanism other than your "conscience" to guide you.

The idea that I need to mentally balance during deployment strikes me as an asymptote - both players will want to deploy as much / as good of units as they can without being perceived as overpowered. This is already an issue I had with army building in GW games (how many OP units do you include in a list?) and it has been a major turnoff to me for their games for some time. I played them anyway, but that was probably the single biggest negative of their games for me.

And now, they've actually made it much worse, so I'll feel like even more of a jerk if I run a "good" army, and even more of a patsy if I run a "bad" one and get my face beat in (because I could have just deployed MOAR!). This has zero appeal to me and I've mostly just moved on from this forum, and our whole local group has embraced Kings of War as an alternative mass fantasy battles ruleset.

But I thought it was worth noting it since the comments about people being jerks really bothers me - next time, you might be the one someone is offhandedly referring to as a jerk for bringing one-too-many ironguts. And for a ruleset to be inherently set up that way... well, it just plain sucks.

 RiTides wrote:

The idea that I need to mentally balance during deployment strikes me as an asymptote - both players will want to deploy as much / as good of units as they can without being perceived as overpowered. This is already an issue I had with army building in GW games (how many OP units do you include in a list?) and it has been a major turnoff to me for their games for some time. I played them anyway, but that was probably the single biggest negative of their games for me.

What happens if the people you're playing with just don't play with this philosophy? Personally, bringing the most good stuff is just no longer any sort of draw for me, and I don't really want to play against someone who just wants to field the most good stuff they can, either. Mostly, I like to field interesting combinations that I haven't before, and visually cohesive armies, and generally, neither is a great way to push the boundaries of what rules permit.

Even though winning is not close to paramount for me, neither do I want to not ever win, and therefore, I don't want to just play against proven, optimal or loaded armies. Frankly, I prefer to play people who often field different things and try stuff I haven't seen before.

At the end of the day, I think it's all about having the right people to play with/against. Something that has really taken me years (nearly decades) to succeed in, and that is a LOT harder than mastering game mechanics and combat tactics.

Talys wrote:Personally, bringing the most good stuff is just no longer any sort of draw for me, and I don't really want to play against someone who just wants to field the most good stuff they can, either. Mostly, I like to field interesting combinations that I haven't before, and visually cohesive armies, and generally, neither is a great way to push the boundaries of what rules permit.

This was the main reason I walked away from 40k in 5E, and part of the reason I left WM/H a couple years back (or at least a significant impediment to returning to it). Honestly it tended to be an unsettling bit of the 8E competitive meta as well, pretty much no matter what restrictions were in place. Hence the beauty of Swedish Comp there at the end finally opening lists up to include Less Obvious Things ... but then Swedish is a points system comp of its own, soooooo

RiTides wrote:And now, they've actually made it much worse, so I'll feel like even more of a jerk if I run a "good" army, and even more of a patsy if I run a "bad" one and get my face beat in (because I could have just deployed MOAR!).

- next time, you might be the one someone is offhandedly referring to as a jerk for bringing one-too-many ironguts.

So part of my mission in any game I play is to suss out the power meta and aim lower on the curve. This is why I feel kind of dirty running my ogres in AOS - haven't lost a game, and I don't mean that as a brag! - which is frankly ridiculous, as my own ogres were quite weak in 8E, with zero ironblasters, etc. (Aside: it's the Damage 3 on Ironguts that breaks things, they've got plenty going for them without the extra pip of Damage. But anyway.) So instead I've amassed an orc army to round-base for quick and dirty AOS gaming. Not particularly hard, not a total pushover, likes to fight, good selection of units, and I get to yell and roll a lot of dice, which frankly is why I'm here.

But that said, even my goal of making soft armies is hard to do without some kind of overarching guidelines. I know more than ever that game time is precious, so while my aim is to run less seen units/models because it's Cool + Interesting, I don't want to waste both our time setting up only to have my face shoved in simply because I didn't understand the limits I was building to.

- Salvage

In answer to the carrion example above, you counter their cheese with slow play until time runs out. If they have to win so badly that this is the rout they go about it with, then it will end in a draw, period. If it never gets to turn 6, your sudden death option is moot.

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
In answer to the carrion example above, you counter their cheese with slow play until time runs out. If they have to win so badly that this is the rout they go about it with, then it will end in a draw, period. If it never gets to turn 6, your sudden death option is moot.

Actually, this is a perfect counter to the Carrion example. I hadn't even considered it. Fight bad sportsmanship with even worse sportsmanship! Great success.

 Kriswall wrote:

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
In answer to the carrion example above, you counter their cheese with slow play until time runs out. If they have to win so badly that this is the rout they go about it with, then it will end in a draw, period. If it never gets to turn 6, your sudden death option is moot.

Actually, this is a perfect counter to the Carrion example. I hadn't even considered it. Fight bad sportsmanship with even worse sportsmanship! Great success.

Love. It.

I would never condone either tactic. But if that is how they want to play I can read a book for an hour and call it a good game.

Whenever someon is being a bad sport, no matter what game, there is always a way to show them to be error of their ways. Whether it is picking up you models to not waste your time (and some of the people who would use this tactic may consider that a success) or just force them to have a worse time by ensuring they cannot claim the victory.

It makes me want to throw up in my mouth a little thinking of playing the game like that though...

Salvage, nice post, was thinking of you a bit when I wrote that

Talys - I think it's a bit much to say you need years/decades to find the right folks to game with. For myself, rules help establish a level playing field, and as Salvage notes players will naturally find the power curve and where they want to play on it. I never am playing at the very top of the curve either - but with AoS, the curve can be so radically different with just a different group, more than anything I've seen.

As someone who likes to be able to play against new opponents and even complete strangers at events, it's just a terrible ruleset for that. I love my gaming group, but I'm not going to invest in a game I only feel comfortable playing against my best mates.

@RiTides - Sure, it's easy to find people to play with. But it's much harder (at least for me) to find people that I really enjoy spending a whole night with, to the exclusion of other things that I really enjoy too.

Basically, wargaming for me is a 5:30 pm - 1 am affair, and if I'm gonna blow that much time, dammit, it's gonna be with someone I really enjoy the company of. They don't have be a best friend, but they should have the same types of goals as me, AND have a compatible time schedule as the rest of my gaming group, especially if we're playing campaigns or storylines. Since we all (really) like well-painted miniatures, there's that too, that isn't the easiest thing to find. Plus, you want to ideally game with people with similar constraints (or lack thereof), in terms of collection/time/budget/etc.

I think it actually took me 10+ years before I settled into a group and routine that I was really happy with, for wargaming -- essentially, there is never a night that we *don't* all have a blast. Part of that is also self-discovery, because what I want out of the hobby (including gaming) is much different now than when I started.

I will happily agree that AoS seems to be better suited to playing with regulars than complete strangers; and to someone for whom meeting strangers with preset constraints to army building is a high priority, AoS is probably not a great choice.

Thanks for acknowledging that, Talys! One of my main goals with any army project is building towards an event (usually AdeptiCon). While I may be doing a bit more casual gaming in the future, like I said, I just don't want a game that can only be that.

And I certainly don't want to only be able to play against people with "similar constraints in terms of collection/budget"! I've seen a few people mention price is the balancing factor for AoS, and they must not know the wargamers I do (myself included ). There's many things wrong with that, but I think it's self explanatory - our gaming group happily includes college students and professionals, who can easily play balanced games in a large variety of wargames despite not being homogeneous, without trying to figure out if they "brought too much".

I don't want a system that makes us navigate these things unnecessarily (doing the game designer's work for them) when I can play so many others that already worked those things out and we can just roll dice. I could see it working for you personally if you have a decades old, homogeneous group that can navigate these things - but I like being a part of a diverse gaming group that has a steady influx of new players, so it was DOA here.