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MongooseMatt wrote:
When I play 8e or 40k (and I still play both), the rules are always in mind. I am playing a game and the rules are followed/manipulated in an effort to win. In AoS, I have found that does not happen - the rules effectively become invisible

Happens to the human eye when something's so thin you can barely tell it's there

Wow lots of harsh words back and forth, could we just you know be a bit less stressed up about this?

Arguments like GW does not care about you or Kirby is the devil on earth and is ruining GW... It reminds me off the consoles wars back in the day and my argument always was I do not care about consoles I care about having fun with games and both have them!... So I do not think about GW or Kirby since Im neither a shareholder or his acquaintance I do care about their miniatures and games.

Arguments that the game is a load of cr@p... true for some and not so true for others can we just talk about the game itself without labeling people? Its unnecessary. Personally I like its simplicity it fits with what Im looking t to play with my young kid, its relaxed and fun and without a load of rules so we can concentrate on building small lists and play fast games. Time is short for this sort of things so all good there too.

Yes I know simplicity is different from broken or incomplete but I do not believe this game is broken or incomplete it fills a very specific role which is casual gaming with friends, unfortunately its hard to do that if you are a tournament player ( fan made rule packs are required there unfortunately).

 Korinov wrote:

MongooseMatt wrote:
When I play 8e or 40k (and I still play both), the rules are always in mind. I am playing a game and the rules are followed/manipulated in an effort to win. In AoS, I have found that does not happen - the rules effectively become invisible

Happens to the human eye when something's so thin you can barely tell it's there

When you play a videogame do you like to get stuck on memorizing all the crazy key combos or actually do them without thinking? Which is the most enjoyable part of the process of playing?
I know you are just joking but MongooseMatt does have a point there.

GW does actually remind me of Microsoft a lot. Xbox one trying to shovel garbage into your mouth and charging for you for these "added features"? Sounds like the miniatures and AoS rules. But unlike microsoft, GW doesn't have a direct competitor to call them out on their gak and stealing away all their customers. KoW is trying, but are a smaller company with an unfinished army catalog. Hopefully someone comes up to smack GW down to a reasonable mindset, because this level of not-games is making me want to just stick to bloodbowl and nothing else

autumnlotus wrote:
GW does actually remind me of Microsoft a lot. Xbox one trying to shovel garbage into your mouth and charging for you for these "added features"? Sounds like the miniatures and AoS rules. But unlike microsoft, GW doesn't have a direct competitor to call them out on their gak and stealing away all their customers. KoW is trying, but are a smaller company with an unfinished army catalog. Hopefully someone comes up to smack GW down to a reasonable mindset, because this level of not-games is making me want to just stick to bloodbowl and nothing else

They don't have just one large competitor, they have several smaller ones, each taking a chunk out of GW. Individually they're not a threat, but together they very much are.

 MWHistorian wrote:

They don't have just one large competitor, they have several smaller ones, each taking a chunk out of GW. Individually they're not a threat, but together they very much are.

Definitely , but in this case it's a question of if GW recognizes that as an actual problem. For microsoft it was immediate: day one if its premiere people were harassing them about it and pointed to the PS4 which had near identical specs, was 100$ cheaper, and didn't have its forced DRM junk. This forced them to backtrack at a sprinters pace. In wargaming...there is no cousin company that forces the monopoly to rethink its goals. Sure KoW is better at regiment fantasy, dozens of other better at skirmish, and hundreds of games with better Lore, but what keeps AoS relevant is that there is brand loyalty that is not being stressed by equal options elsewhere.

Here's a question to AoSers: would you play this game if another company came in with comparably brilliant miniatures in quality and theme, with a better grip on rulemaking that ended up being about 20 pages instead of 4, and allowed you to fully customize your units and characters? Would the Lore of AoS be worth it to stick onto?

autumnlotus wrote:

 MWHistorian wrote:

They don't have just one large competitor, they have several smaller ones, each taking a chunk out of GW. Individually they're not a threat, but together they very much are.

Definitely , but in this case it's a question of if GW recognizes that as an actual problem. For microsoft it was immediate: day one if its premiere people were harassing them about it and pointed to the PS4 which had near identical specs, was 100$ cheaper, and didn't have its forced DRM junk. This forced them to backtrack at a sprinters pace. In wargaming...there is no cousin company that forces the monopoly to rethink its goals. Sure KoW is better at regiment fantasy, dozens of other better at skirmish, and hundreds of games with better Lore, but what keeps AoS relevant is that there is brand loyalty that is not being stressed by equal options elsewhere.

Here's a question to AoSers: would you play this game if another company came in with comparably brilliant miniatures in quality and theme, with a better grip on rulemaking that ended up being about 20 pages instead of 4, and allowed you to fully customize your units and characters? Would the Lore of AoS be worth it to stick onto?

absolutely not. though the fluff is probably the part I hate the most about AoS. The game is half baked, but fun enough for a unfinished weak product (like carnage or dark heaven) but the lore and fluff I find personally as the worst in the gaming market. If I didnt already have tubs of WHFB models I wouldn't even give it a second glance, as it is I have finished 60 games of AoS so far. Its good enough to fiddle with, but I wouldnt be sad to see it go extinct. I am actually hoping that GW goes to its next edition much faster than their usual change.

autumnlotus wrote:

Here's a question to AoSers: would you play this game if another company came in with comparably brilliant miniatures in quality and theme, with a better grip on rulemaking that ended up being about 20 pages instead of 4, and allowed you to fully customize your units and characters? Would the Lore of AoS be worth it to stick onto?

The model range would need to be as wide as GWs as well as being its equal in aesthetic and quality (actually it would need to be better in every aspect to warrant me switching over) and they would also need to have stores to play and paint in.

 Bottle wrote:

The model range would need to be as wide as GWs as well as being its equal in aesthetic and quality (actually it would need to be better in every aspect to warrant me switching over) and they would also need to have stores to play and paint in.

That is certainly fair. Given popularity any game has a store to play it at, FLGS are a thing. GW definitely have their own stores of varying success, though given their rapid dissolvent across the US I would never trust it as a permanent place to play. Then again I have my own table for games at my house, so I have no horse in that race xD

As for model range: it certainly depends on preference. If your army of preference was supported, but another was lumped together into a faction (elves, undead, etc) would it matter to you? What if humans were a dozen box range, and encouraged using historical models to supplement them as they build their own range further?

These are various ideas brought up by other companies, however ununified they may be. Heck many are how GW used to be

My local GW is a two man soon to be a three man and is a great place to get a game of AoS. I understand that situation is basically unheard of outside the UK which may be a reason as to why AoS only seems to be doing well in the UK.

As to your other questions, I'll let other AoSers answer. For me I don't like mixing model ranges together which is why I've never bought a non-GW model (save airfix kits when I was a kid). Age of Sigmar/Warhammer has such an extensive range of miniatures that I found inspiration pretty quickly of a force I would want to collect. I have seen beautiful miniatures by other companies but never in a collection wide enough to make me want to collect them.

MongooseMatt wrote:
When I play 8e or 40k (and I still play both), the rules are always in mind. I am playing a game and the rules are followed/manipulated in an effort to win. In AoS, I have found that does not happen - the rules effectively become invisible, as we concentrate on whether Threx Skullbrand is going to recover the fallen Lord Khul, or if the Stormcasts will beat him back and force him to hide from his Lord's wrath (as it turned out, that is just what happened, and it did not end well for him, but I digress...).

In effect, we are concentrating on what is going on rather than how it happens - and I have seen this before, in RPGs. RPGs are all about the immersion (well, that is one take on it - character development, both in character and rules-wise, is obviously a thing), and a rules system is working well if it begins to 'disappear' during play.

See, I don't think that this is anything to do with the rules themselves, but simply a matter of how familiar the players are with those rules.

Any rules system fades into the background once you know it well enough to not have to concentrate too hard on it while you're playing.


Obviously, that's going to happen faster with a simpler ruleset. That doesn't make a simpler ruleset inherently better, though... just easier to learn.

The value or quality of a ruleset is how well it represents the things you want to have in your games. What I dislike about AoS, is that there is too much fiddly, clunky detail in the combat resolution mechanis, and nothing/almost nothing about formations, command and control, and morale.

I think they should have made combat resolution a lot simpler and used some of the space.complexity to include rules for these other faactors of warfare, then we would have a game that was more tactical and just as easy to learn. That is the big disappointment of AoS. Given the chance to streamline WHFB considerably, GW flubbed the job of simplifying the core combat.

However I know there are people who like to roll lots of dice several times to work out the result of a fight.

autumnlotus wrote:

Here's a question to AoSers: would you play this game if another company came in with comparably brilliant miniatures in quality and theme, with a better grip on rulemaking that ended up being about 20 pages instead of 4, and allowed you to fully customize your units and characters? Would the Lore of AoS be worth it to stick onto?

Here is the thing - yes, it would. The background behind Warhammer is the whole point.

 insaniak wrote:

See, I don't think that this is anything to do with the rules themselves, but simply a matter of how familiar the players are with those rules.

Any rules system fades into the background once you know it well enough to not have to concentrate too hard on it while you're playing.

This is true, and it is something I saw happening with, of all things, D&D 3.0.

 insaniak wrote:
That doesn't make a simpler ruleset inherently better, though... just easier to learn.

Didn't say it was better However, the streamlining made this happen almost instantly so you could just get right down to things and hit a Khorgorath in the face with a hammer.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I think they should have made combat resolution a lot simpler and used some of the space.complexity to include rules for these other faactors of warfare, then we would have a game that was more tactical and just as easy to learn. That is the big disappointment of AoS. Given the chance to streamline WHFB considerably, GW flubbed the job of simplifying the core combat.

I have this same damn problem with all of GWs rules these days. They seem to think rolling dice for the sake of rolling dice is fun, personally I find that lacking from a game design perspective and prefer something like Infinity or Warmachine with as few rolls as possible but with modifiers in place and each roll being rather important. The plethora of rerolls in GW games adds to this too, they hand those things out like candy.

MongooseMatt wrote:
Okay, I have a feeling this one might start an argument or two…



All my favourite characters are gone!
Just about all Chaos characters are still present. The Chaos Gods took their favourite servants and moved them to the Mortal Realms. Your Glottkin is still working hard for Nurgle (and doing a damn good job, as it happens, seriously kicking Alarielle’s rear end).

Problem with this is that while all of our favorite characters may be alive again, There is absolutely no lore on them whatsoever Instead, we just get more stories about even more bland space marines instead of say, stories about how the humans of the old world rebuilding and such
Because you know, SPACE MARINES

BobtheConquistador wrote:

Problem with this is that while all of our favorite characters may be alive again, There is absolutely no lore on them whatsoever

At the moment - GW have never revealed everything all at once for any of their worlds, they were not about to start now.

 jonolikespie wrote:

I have this same damn problem with all of GWs rules these days. They seem to think rolling dice for the sake of rolling dice is fun, personally I find that lacking from a game design perspective and prefer something like Infinity or Warmachine with as few rolls as possible but with modifiers in place and each roll being rather important. The plethora of rerolls in GW games adds to this too, they hand those things out like candy.

First, rolling a bunch of dice IS fun. It's like a pachinko manchine.

Second, in AoS, you can only reroll a dice roll once, regardless of how many rerolls you are allowed (had someone tell me that if you tied on an initiative reroll that the game got stuck and you couldn't finish playing it).

Third, Warmachine is the absolute WORST example of modifiers. There are about a thousand of them, and they get pretty darn absurd. It's like, can I see your unit through more than 3" of forest? Um, just barely. Let's see, he has a toe in the forest, so he has concealment. That's +2 against ranged rolls. Wait, he also gets camouflage which is another +2. However, my ranged unit has true sight, so he doesn't get those bonuses after all. My unit didn't move, so that's +2 to hit. I'm doing a combined attack with 3 units, so I'm doing one roll with a +3 to both hit and damage. Roll 2d6, add RAT and modifiers, check if it is higher than DEF and modifiers. It is? Okay, I hit. Now to do damage. My unit has brutal damage, so it rolls three dice. Your unit is your warcaster with 6 focus on it, which translates to +6 ARM, except my unit has Arcane Assassin, so it ignores focus-based bonuses. They also have an upkeep spell on them which adds +4, but are within 2" of a unit with Dark Shroud, that's -2 to ARM. Okay, so the damage done is POW + modifiers - (ARM + modifiers) and (punches stuff into calculator), I do 0 points of damage to your warcaster. Ah well. Now I'm going to try with the other two models in my unit, but they'll do it individually, so I need to do this math twice more. But at least I only had two roll a total of 4 dice...

MongooseMatt wrote:

BobtheConquistador wrote:

Problem with this is that while all of our favorite characters may be alive again, There is absolutely no lore on them whatsoever

At the moment - GW have never revealed everything all at once for any of their worlds, they were not about to start now.

So you want people to wait and see for potentially another 3 decades?

Kay.

 Grimtuff wrote:

MongooseMatt wrote:

BobtheConquistador wrote:

Problem with this is that while all of our favorite characters may be alive again, There is absolutely no lore on them whatsoever

At the moment - GW have never revealed everything all at once for any of their worlds, they were not about to start now.

So you want people to wait and see for potentially another 3 decades?

Kay.

Well, duh. The whole thread was started as a defense of AoS so... that is the main idea

So... talk to you when I got grandkids to take care of!

 Sqorgar wrote:

 jonolikespie wrote:

I have this same damn problem with all of GWs rules these days. They seem to think rolling dice for the sake of rolling dice is fun, personally I find that lacking from a game design perspective and prefer something like Infinity or Warmachine with as few rolls as possible but with modifiers in place and each roll being rather important. The plethora of rerolls in GW games adds to this too, they hand those things out like candy.

First, rolling a bunch of dice IS fun. It's like a pachinko manchine.

Second, in AoS, you can only reroll a dice roll once, regardless of how many rerolls you are allowed (had someone tell me that if you tied on an initiative reroll that the game got stuck and you couldn't finish playing it).

Third, Warmachine is the absolute WORST example of modifiers. There are about a thousand of them, and they get pretty darn absurd. It's like, can I see your unit through more than 3" of forest? Um, just barely. Let's see, he has a toe in the forest, so he has concealment. That's +2 against ranged rolls. Wait, he also gets camouflage which is another +2. However, my ranged unit has true sight, so he doesn't get those bonuses after all. My unit didn't move, so that's +2 to hit. I'm doing a combined attack with 3 units, so I'm doing one roll with a +3 to both hit and damage. Roll 2d6, add RAT and modifiers, check if it is higher than DEF and modifiers. It is? Okay, I hit. Now to do damage. My unit has brutal damage, so it rolls three dice. Your unit is your warcaster with 6 focus on it, which translates to +6 ARM, except my unit has Arcane Assassin, so it ignores focus-based bonuses. They also have an upkeep spell on them which adds +4, but are within 2" of a unit with Dark Shroud, that's -2 to ARM. Okay, so the damage done is POW + modifiers - (ARM + modifiers) and (punches stuff into calculator), I do 0 points of damage to your warcaster. Ah well. Now I'm going to try with the other two models in my unit, but they'll do it individually, so I need to do this math twice more. But at least I only had two roll a total of 4 dice...

And yet all of that translates to 1 roll of two dice to hit, and another roll of 2 dice to bypass armour.

I think that is brilliant. I much prefer it to rolling 4 dice to try and hit, but wait this unit has a reroll to hit with all it's 1s. Then roll the 3 hitting dice to see if they wound. Don't forget the reroll to wound gained by charging. Now I need to roll the 2 dice to save, oh but my shield allows me to reroll that. I don't actually know if ward saves are still a thing in AoS, but Feel No Pain is in 40k, which is another roll.

And then of course it doesn't matter if you are trying to hit a target as large and slow as a stegadon or as small and fast as a skink I hit on the same number. Hell, if I am playing 40k and shooting at a guardsman in heavy cover wearing a camo cloak I have the same odds of hitting that as a 50 ft tall robot standing still. Hell, I can be an elf with a longbow in combat at extreme range shooting at an enemy also in combat who is facing me and I have equal odds of hitting an enemy standing in the open with his back to me unaware while I am not in combat at the perfect range for a longbow.

 Grimtuff wrote:


So you want people to wait and see for potentially another 3 decades?

It has nothing to do with what I want. I am saying this is how GW have always done things.

MongooseMatt wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:


So you want people to wait and see for potentially another 3 decades?

It has nothing to do with what I want. I am saying this is how GW have always done things.

It has everything to do with it. GW created the WHFB background over 30 years. This is how they have always done this. You said so yourself why would they do it differently.

 jonolikespie wrote:

And yet all of that translates to 1 roll of two dice to hit, and another roll of 2 dice to bypass armour.

So your objection is the number of dice you roll, not the advanced math degree you need to interpret the results?

I think that is brilliant. I much prefer it to rolling 4 dice to try and hit, but wait this unit has a reroll to hit with all it's 1s. Then roll the 3 hitting dice to see if they wound. Don't forget the reroll to wound gained by charging. Now I need to roll the 2 dice to save, oh but my shield allows me to reroll that. I don't actually know if ward saves are still a thing in AoS, but Feel No Pain is in 40k, which is another roll.

No idea what ward saves are. Personally, I like that the modifiers in AoS modify what you can do to the dice rather than what you do to the math.

And then of course it doesn't matter if you are trying to hit a target as large and slow as a stegadon or as small and fast as a skink I hit on the same number.

I've heard this complaints before, but I don't understand it. It's an abstraction of battle, using a simplified formula that represents the skill of one unit versus to skill of another. It's not any different than saying a level 14 unit versus a level 8 unit.

Most units have a pretty similar ability to hit/wound. I'd say 95% of the units in AoS hit/wound on a 3+ or 4+. The Ghal Maraz hits on 3+, wounds on 2+. So, there isn't really this huge power gap between unit rolls. The defense of a unit is modeled with bravery/wounds/save, rather than a DEF stat, while the offensive capability of a unit is represented with number of attacks, rend, and damage, instead of an ATK stat. More defensive units have better saves and more wounds, and more offensive units have more attacks and do more damage per attack. You are still ultimately comparing ATK against DEF, which is a different way of doing MAT vs DEF, P+S vs ARM, but it is still essentially doing the same thing.

 Sqorgar wrote:

 jonolikespie wrote:

And yet all of that translates to 1 roll of two dice to hit, and another roll of 2 dice to bypass armour.

So your objection is the number of dice you roll, not the advanced math degree you need to interpret the results?

I suppose I don't find 2d6 +2 +2 -2 vs 12 a terribly hard thing to math out

 Sqorgar wrote:
I've heard this complaints before, but I don't understand it. It's an abstraction of battle, using a simplified formula that represents the skill of one unit versus to skill of another...

Most units have a pretty similar ability to hit/wound. I'd say 95% of the units in AoS hit/wound on a 3+ or 4+.

Yes, it is an abstraction, and I find the fact that there is such a little difference between skill in an immortal vampire lord with supernatural speed and centuries of skill vs a peasant far too much of an abstraction.

 Grimtuff wrote:

MongooseMatt wrote:



It has nothing to do with what I want. I am saying this is how GW have always done things.

It has everything to do with it.

Umm... What I personally want has an effect on GW and their games? Err, no. Just... no.

 jonolikespie wrote:

 Sqorgar wrote:
I've heard this complaints before, but I don't understand it. It's an abstraction of battle, using a simplified formula that represents the skill of one unit versus to skill of another...

Most units have a pretty similar ability to hit/wound. I'd say 95% of the units in AoS hit/wound on a 3+ or 4+.

Yes, it is an abstraction, and I find the fact that there is such a little difference between skill in an immortal vampire lord with supernatural speed and centuries of skill vs a peasant far too much of an abstraction.

This is actually one of my favourite things about AoS. Even a goblin can wound Nagash if he rolls lucky enough. It allows AoS to be a skirmish game that includes godlike creatures, dragons, war machines alongside empire militia and lowly goblins without having to field massive numbers of them.

 Bottle wrote:

 jonolikespie wrote:

 Sqorgar wrote:
I've heard this complaints before, but I don't understand it. It's an abstraction of battle, using a simplified formula that represents the skill of one unit versus to skill of another...

Most units have a pretty similar ability to hit/wound. I'd say 95% of the units in AoS hit/wound on a 3+ or 4+.

Yes, it is an abstraction, and I find the fact that there is such a little difference between skill in an immortal vampire lord with supernatural speed and centuries of skill vs a peasant far too much of an abstraction.

This is actually one of my favourite things about AoS. Even a goblin can wound Nagash if he rolls lucky enough. It allows AoS to be a skirmish game that includes godlike creatures, dragons, war machines alongside empire militia and lowly goblins without having to field massive numbers of them.

Then Nagash really isn't worthy of his titles if even a little snotling can wound him so easily. I don't know why Mannfred was so afraid of him to begin with...

To be honest there are things that are simply not meant to happen - no matter how lucky one is.

His point was that the Warmachine modifiers aren't actually any more complex, but they involve less needless work, and they are actually fairly intuitive. If you make the same attack twice the Warmachine version is easier because you already know the values.

More cover - harder to hit. More armour - harder to wound.

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:

Then Nagash really isn't worthy of his titles if even a little snotling can wound him so easily. I don't know why Mannfred was so afraid of him to begin with...

Nagash has 16 wounds and saves on a 3+, meaning 67% of the wounds ain't gonna mean anything (without rend) and the few that do won't take him down anytime soon.

For perspective, Celestant Prime has 8 wounds, 3+ save, so Nagash is two times more survivable than the CP. I would say that MOST units don't have more than 5 wounds each, with heroes having 7-8 wounds, and the really big mother fethers having 12-15 wounds. There's wiggle room, like a hero can have more wounds but will probably have a worse save. Nagash has, as far as I can tell, the highest number of wounds and the best save in the game. But yeah, with enough hits and luck on your side, you can take him down (you know, after you get through his army of skeletons).

The problem with a game involving objects that cannot be hurt by other objects is that often the game will be decided in the list building phase where people who understand math realize that if you can make as many static items that are difficult or impossible to hurt that they will have the better chance of winning.

Which turns the game into 100 variable builds, but only seeing 4 or 5 of those builds typically.

For some thats not a problem. For me - that kills my interest after a couple of months.

Herzlos wrote:
His point was that the Warmachine modifiers aren't actually any more complex, but they involve less needless work, and they are actually fairly intuitive. If you make the same attack twice the Warmachine version is easier because you already know the values.

More cover - harder to hit. More armour - harder to wound.

It's the quantity of modifiers that is the problem, as well as how situational the special cases are. Yeah, being in a forest gives you +2 to ranged attacks, but +4 if you have camouflage, except against a unit that has true sight, which allows them to ignore concealment and camouflage. And that's if you aren't next to a unit that changes those stats, or in a formation that changes them, or have a spell which changes them, or going against a unit that changes it.

Every single rule in Warmachine has another rule which ignores it. Want to walk through rough terrain? Half speed unless you have pathfinder. Can't shoot through units? Well, some units have ranked formation, which means they don't block line of site to friendly units. Focus adds to the ARM of your warcaster? Unless you have an arcane assassin which ignores it. Damage a jack? Roll for column, unless you have snipe and the attacker can do one damage to any column he chooses. Can see this enemy? Well, you can't shoot him because his is incoporeal (and also didn't attack this turn), which requires a magic weapon. This unit is immune to blast damage. This unit can't be targeted by spell. This unit can run a jack despite not being a warcaster. Roll two dice, except if it is a charge, then roll three. Or if the unit is a weapon master, roll three (or four if it is a charge).

EVERY. SINGLE. RULE. There is no rule in Warmachine that is absolute, and it means that every single combat action is situational and requires a thousand different factors to be considered and accounted for. There is nothing intuitive about Warmachine. It's why you have to play 200 games before you finally feel like you know how to play.