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Herzlos wrote:

 Sarouan wrote:
Let's be clear; AoS wasn't designed for being balanced and fair; it was designed so that the players could have full freedom to play whatever they want however they want.

AoS was designed to give the players full freedom to buy whatever they want, and then put them on a table to roll some dice with later. Game play is pretty low down on the list of considerations.

Semantic arguments aside, that freedom is the best thing about Age of Sigmar. The ability to pick up almost any box in the entire range (at least one in the same Grand Alliance) is intoxicating and has led to a lot of purchases that otherwise would not have been made... which is great for GW and great for me, because I get to recreate whatever vision I have in my mind on the tabletop without arbitraryrestrictions, and I can still play in tournaments and against my club mates without breaking the status quo. My Chaos army, for example, has Warriors, Beastmen, and Chaos Dwarfs in a haphazard mix, and I will surely add some Skaven units just because I like the look of them, and maybe a demon unit or two if I feel like it. It's awesome.

 Mymearan wrote:

Semantic arguments aside, that freedom is the best thing about Age of Sigmar.

Flashback to all the fans I've seen say 'I play 40K because of the fluff!'

Again, I like games that have freedom and fully-baked rules.

and I can still play in tournaments

Pfft.

But that exact freedom existed within WHFB.

It also exists in loads of other games, though there tends to be some power check on it (in Malifaux, you can hire units from other factions as mercenaries, but you pay 1pt extra for the privilege).

Herzlos wrote:
But that exact freedom existed within WHFB.

It also exists in loads of other games, though there tends to be some power check on it (in Malifaux, you can hire units from other factions as mercenaries, but you pay 1pt extra for the privilege).

I said "without breaking the status quo" so no it didn't actually, just like it doesn't in 40k even though Unbound is in the rulebook. If you mean within the rules, I'm pretty sure you couldn't have an army consisting of one unit from each of 10 different armies in WHFB? Or would that be fine in a tournament or pick-up setting?

and I can still play in tournaments

Pfft.

I suspect the 'pfft' refers to the fact that if you play AOS as written, then it makes a mockery of the aim of any sort of competitive event, which is to establish who does the thing best. Without checks and balances in place to ensure an even contest, then any result is meaningless, and if those checks and balances are added, then you're not playing AOS, you're playing a different game based on its rules.

Plus, while you cite adding one unit from 10 different armies as some sort of positive, or at least appear to, I'd say it completely ruins the integrity of the game. Part of the point of having factions is that they all have different strengths and weaknesses, and the challenge of exploiting the former and minimising the latter is a key part to success. Just creating fluff to justify the inclusion, and therefore sale, of any old gak is clearly a cash grab, and a clumsily implemented one at that (as usual from GW,) and totally removes an important part of any multi faction tabletop game.

 Talys wrote:


Incidentally, I DO think that GW wants to build a fair and balanced ruleset. The problem is, they have so many factions and they change their definition of "fair and balanced" or even what belongs in the game, before they finish an edition, so it turns into chopped tuna.

I think you're probably right in the sense that the designers/studio want this, but you can't really remark on 'GW' being a single entity in this sense.

The problem is as I see :
- Games designer wants to produce a 'game' that introduces an element of competition between players, ergo something made possible by a rule structure/balance.
- Releases go via a sales department which says 'yes' to this bit and 'no' to that bit (such as point values, or something that stops you from collecting each monster/big vehicle kit as it's released in turn). They get the final say and what is and what isn't released.
- Game is turned into a cluster-feth

This is obvious every time you look at a game of 40k or AoS going on, let alone from the comments of several developers who have since left GW or else are talking about the changes within the company that have happened over recent years.

The only way this will change is if marketing (and perhaps this might change with Rowntree) realise that the playing of the game, tournaments and a balanced/fun game mechanic affects sales of their products.

Please, so many factions.... No, its not an excuse, GW simply is run from the accounting and not from the design studio.

And short gain over long growth is how GW works the past decades.

 Azreal13 wrote:
I suspect the 'pfft' refers to the fact that if you play AOS as written, then it makes a mockery of the aim of any sort of competitive event, which is to establish who does the thing best. Without checks and balances in place to ensure an even contest, then any result is meaningless, and if those checks and balances are added, then you're not playing AOS, you're playing a different game based on its rules.

Plus, while you cite adding one unit from 10 different armies as some sort of positive, or at least appear to, I'd say it completely ruins the integrity of the game. Part of the point of having factions is that they all have different strengths and weaknesses, and the challenge of exploiting the former and minimising the latter is a key part to success. Just creating fluff to justify the inclusion, and therefore sale, of any old gak is clearly a cash grab, and a clumsily implemented one at that (as usual from GW,) and totally removes an important part of any multi faction tabletop game.

So what he was doing was indeed being childish and nothing else. Right. I appreciate you elaborating your thoughts instead of acting similarly.

As for your points and my view of them: Both WHFB and 40k have always been extensively comped, so "playing a different game" is par for the course with GW and doesn't actually affect my experience in any way.

As for your second point, where you see a clumsy cash grab, I see the freedom to finally create the sort of army I want to play. So far this has resulted in zero negative experiences.

 Mymearan wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
I suspect the 'pfft' refers to the fact that if you play AOS as written, then it makes a mockery of the aim of any sort of competitive event, which is to establish who does the thing best. Without checks and balances in place to ensure an even contest, then any result is meaningless, and if those checks and balances are added, then you're not playing AOS, you're playing a different game based on its rules.

Plus, while you cite adding one unit from 10 different armies as some sort of positive, or at least appear to, I'd say it completely ruins the integrity of the game. Part of the point of having factions is that they all have different strengths and weaknesses, and the challenge of exploiting the former and minimising the latter is a key part to success. Just creating fluff to justify the inclusion, and therefore sale, of any old gak is clearly a cash grab, and a clumsily implemented one at that (as usual from GW,) and totally removes an important part of any multi faction tabletop game.

So what he was doing was indeed being childish and nothing else. Right. I appreciate you elaborating your thoughts instead of acting similarly.

As for your points and my view of them: Both WHFB and 40k have always been extensively comped, so "playing a different game" is par for the course with GW and doesn't actually affect my experience in any way.

As for your second point, where you see a clumsy cash grab, I see the freedom to finally create the sort of army I want to play. So far this has resulted in zero negative experiences.

Who was stopping you before?

 Mymearan wrote:


Semantic arguments aside, that freedom is the best thing about Age of Sigmar. The ability to pick up almost any box in the entire range (at least one in the same Grand Alliance) is intoxicating and has led to a lot of purchases that otherwise would not have been made... which is great for GW and great for me, because I get to recreate whatever vision I have in my mind on the tabletop without arbitraryrestrictions, and I can still play in tournaments and against my club mates without breaking the status quo. My Chaos army, for example, has Warriors, Beastmen, and Chaos Dwarfs in a haphazard mix, and I will surely add some Skaven units just because I like the look of them, and maybe a demon unit or two if I feel like it. It's awesome.

And you needed AoS to do this? You weren't smart enough to just do this anyway with WFB?
Hell... even at the 40k club I run in a school there's a kid who plays with a mix of orks and space marines. He doesn't need GW to destroy the 40k universe and bring out a 4 page 40k rules effort to allow him to do that.

All those people hailing AoS as the game that allows them to play with what they want must have been real short on imagination.

 Mymearan wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
I suspect the 'pfft' refers to the fact that if you play AOS as written, then it makes a mockery of the aim of any sort of competitive event, which is to establish who does the thing best. Without checks and balances in place to ensure an even contest, then any result is meaningless, and if those checks and balances are added, then you're not playing AOS, you're playing a different game based on its rules.

Plus, while you cite adding one unit from 10 different armies as some sort of positive, or at least appear to, I'd say it completely ruins the integrity of the game. Part of the point of having factions is that they all have different strengths and weaknesses, and the challenge of exploiting the former and minimising the latter is a key part to success. Just creating fluff to justify the inclusion, and therefore sale, of any old gak is clearly a cash grab, and a clumsily implemented one at that (as usual from GW,) and totally removes an important part of any multi faction tabletop game.

So what he was doing was indeed being childish and nothing else. Right. I appreciate you elaborating your thoughts instead of acting similarly.

I wouldn't say childish, assuming I'm right in my interpretation, I was able to extrapolate that from the comment. Brevity is the soul of wit, and if you are unable or unwilling to do similar, that doesn't necessarily reflect badly on the poster.

As for your points and my view of them: Both WHFB and 40k have always been extensively comped, so "playing a different game" is par for the course with GW and doesn't actually affect my experience in any way.

As for your second point, where you see a clumsy cash grab, I see the freedom to finally create the sort of army I want to play. So far this has resulted in zero negative experiences.

To suggest the community addressing matters of FAQ because GW refuse to is in any way the same magnitude as essentially having to write a substantial portion of the system itself is a little disingenuous. There's a whole world of difference between making a decision on a vague rules interaction or limiting a specific outlier and the work needed to get AOS to a pre-comped standard. Medically speaking it's the gulf between casting a broken bone and doing a multiple organ transplant. Sure, they're on the same curve, but ones a lot more straightforward than the other.

As Joyboozer, and so many before, has said, nothing was stopping you doing anything AOS allows before, but now anyone who didn't want to play with no army building limits and who is made slightly uncomfortable by such a blatant disregard for fluff which was the whole universe's best asset is now up gak creek.

But this isn't an AOS thread, it's a GW financial one, and that paints a picture that those players were certainly common enough to put a dent in GW profits by moving elsewhere as the games have gone down this particular rabbit hole.

 Gimgamgoo wrote:

 Mymearan wrote:


Semantic arguments aside, that freedom is the best thing about Age of Sigmar. The ability to pick up almost any box in the entire range (at least one in the same Grand Alliance) is intoxicating and has led to a lot of purchases that otherwise would not have been made... which is great for GW and great for me, because I get to recreate whatever vision I have in my mind on the tabletop without arbitraryrestrictions, and I can still play in tournaments and against my club mates without breaking the status quo. My Chaos army, for example, has Warriors, Beastmen, and Chaos Dwarfs in a haphazard mix, and I will surely add some Skaven units just because I like the look of them, and maybe a demon unit or two if I feel like it. It's awesome.

And you needed AoS to do this? You weren't smart enough to just do this anyway with WFB?
Hell... even at the 40k club I run in a school there's a kid who plays with a mix of orks and space marines. He doesn't need GW to destroy the 40k universe and bring out a 4 page 40k rules effort to allow him to do that.

All those people hailing AoS as the game that allows them to play with what they want must have been real short on imagination.

And we have a winner. You are only limited by your imagination. A soild rule set does change this unless your brainwashed to believe otherwise.

To be honest, I agree with the people saying you always could play however you wanted.

If you played 40K or WHFB and someone said they would like to run an army with Chaos SMs plus Tau plus Tyranids, you might have thought it sounded like fun and made an army of IG plus Eldar plus Necrons, or you might have said you don't want to because it's silly.

The modern 40K and AoS rules allow you to do exactly the same. What has been taken away or eroded is the alternative method of play where you decide on an army, make a list according to restrictions that gives factions different characteristics and styles of fighting, and have a game of 1,200 points that is reasonably balanced against all comers. (GW never really balanced their games but it got a lot worse as time went on.)

I guess everyone missed the "without breaking the status quo" part of my initial post? The problem is not mine alone, the problem is that expectations are set in a certain way, and breaking away from those expectations is not trivial. I'm not talking theory here, I'm talking about real people who are set in their ways, who follow the rules and who have established a certain way of doing things based on the rules in the rule book. You don't "just" do whatever you want outside those confines when you're dealing with different people. You can call it "brainwashed" if you want, I'll call it "most people".

If you don't believe me, how come people don't play Unbound in 40k, but they have no problem accepting similar armies in AoS? I'll tell you. Expectations and status quo.

As for tournaments, the real world consequence of GW doing away with points is that I get to play games that are better balanced than anything GW could ever come up with. I think I can live with that.

I'd argue people do have an issue with accepting similar armies in AOS, hence it has apparently landed on its arse.

 Azreal13 wrote:
I'd argue people do have an issue with accepting similar armies in AOS, hence it has apparently landed on its arse.

Where are the numbers on that then?

Oh, and the reason you can do all these things without breaking the status quo is because GW have already broken it, thrown it to the floor and jumped up and down on it until it was dust.

Problem is, sometimes the status quo is the status quo because it's needed. Literally every other game on the market has a balancing mechanism, and there was nothing to suggest it either needed replacing or removal. Except that takes time, effort and, more importantly, money, whereas making the wargame equivalent of a Saturday morning cartoon where the new shiny gets its episode of the week (available in stores now folks!) takes much less investment of resources, and if enough people adopt that line, then everything is awesome.

Yeah, so the benefit of AoS is that there's a smaller group of players, but within that group they're more likely to want to play the way you want to play assuming you're one of the ones that stuck around... not really a good thing in my mind

I don't like Unbound in 40k. Didn't stop me from buying different units from different armies before "Unbound" was even a thing and it didn't stop me from occasionally asking my opponent if they wouldn't mind playing a mash up game using units that normally wouldn't be seen on the table together and wouldn't be legal.

I've played games of Necrons allied with Orks, Bretonnians allied with Skaven, Lizardmen allied with Orcs, lots of combinations of different armies I own. I even played a game of WHFB Lizardmen vs 40k Orks once If you ask, you'd be surprised what people might agree to if you aren't a dick about it, especially if you're willing to compromise "if I take this illegal thing, you can take that illegal thing".

The reason I don't like Unbound and don't like pointless, balanceless systems like AoS is because I never needed rules to tell me I was allowed to disregard rules from time to time. Yeah, sure, you often come up against an opponent that doesn't agree and wants to play it by the letter of the rules, but you have the option of finding someone else or just playing a regular game. Now every game is "irregular" unless you are willing to negotiate the Treaty of Versailles each time you want to play something that isn't a silly "lets put down random models and go pew pew" game.

 Mymearan wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
I'd argue people do have an issue with accepting similar armies in AOS, hence it has apparently landed on its arse.

Where are the numbers on that then?

FFS.

Another flat report and a profits warning. This is not the report of a company which has relaunched one of its two key products to great success.

That's fine if you see it that way. Different perspectives, obviously.

 Azreal13 wrote:

 Mymearan wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
I'd argue people do have an issue with accepting similar armies in AOS, hence it has apparently landed on its arse.

Where are the numbers on that then?

FFS.

Another flat report and a profits warning. This is not the report of a company which has relaunched one of its two key products to great success.

I doubt it's a great success. I also doubt it's the huge flop that some people think it is, however.

Thing is, my opinion is supported by zero revenue growth and statements from the CEO, if you're going to counter it, you'll need to provide more than just your opinion and speculation.

 Azreal13 wrote:
Thing is, my opinion is supported by zero revenue growth and statements from the CEO, if you're going to counter it, you'll need to provide more than just your opinion and speculation.

Well, you said it has

"has apparently landed on its arse"

Which is not a very exact statement, so not very easy to prove nor disprove! I agree that what the half-year report (?) says is indeed correct.

Azreal13 wrote:I suspect the 'pfft' refers to the fact that if you play AOS as written, then it makes a mockery of the aim of any sort of competitive event, which is to establish who does the thing best. Without checks and balances in place to ensure an even contest, then any result is meaningless, and if those checks and balances are added, then you're not playing AOS, you're playing a different game based on its rules.

Yes, this, thank you. (and the rest of the post) For months the mantra has been that AoS is a glorious revolution, getting rid of all those awful points and other ordering and balancing mechanisms (as unordered and unbalanced as they may have been) and so cleansing the game by chasing off those meany players who actually want a game with a reasonably level starting point and a winner at the end and some measure of competition in between. (The C-word. Amazing how much of a slur it became)

And now AoS, with (or without) those things, is apparently great for competitions, too.

I know Warhammer World puts on AoS events. Maybe you'd call them tournaments, or not. Maybe you'd view them as a nice day out just to roll some dice. In which case you definitely couldn't call it a tournament. But looking at some of the docs for them, I see a list of end-goals. Things you have to accomplish to win. I also see restrictions on the models you can bring, and use. That immediately pulls back on the 'freedom' of AoS.

Mymearan, you're posting here to stick up for AoS, that's fine. But the contradictions you're starting to bring up are convincing me more than ever that playing AoS needs a slug of the ol' GW kool-aid.

Or in other words, 'pffft'.

But Azreal's right again: this is a GW financials thread. I'll stop here, and just hope I've added some tiny hint of why people aren't sending GW's financials into the stratosphere

The WHW events aren't tournaments, things like the South Coast GT however, are. Playing AoS competitively doesn't need kool-aid, it needs comp, and if you want to call that a different game, that's fine, it's just semantics in the end. The only thing that matters is, after all, if you enjoy it or not.

AOS FTW!!!

Please avoid making posts with just a few words or no real content - thanks.

Has there been any update here since page 12? I'd love to update the OP if so (please link to the post it was revealed in if there is anything new to report).

 Mymearan wrote:
As for your second point, where you see a clumsy cash grab, I see the freedom to finally create the sort of army I want to play. So far this has resulted in zero negative experiences.

What stopped you doing it before? If you and your opponent are of like minds (which you obviously are if you're playing AoS), just agree to no factional divide in a game. You don't need someone sitting in an office in Nottingham to tell you you're allowed to do it.

The impact on the community is far less if a group of casual players take a balanced ruleset and have fun with it rather than not having a balanced ruleset to begin with.

 -Loki- wrote:

 Mymearan wrote:
As for your second point, where you see a clumsy cash grab, I see the freedom to finally create the sort of army I want to play. So far this has resulted in zero negative experiences.

What stopped you doing it before? If you and your opponent are of like minds (which you obviously are if you're playing AoS), just agree to no factional divide in a game. You don't need someone sitting in an office in Nottingham to tell you you're allowed to do it.

The impact on the community is far less if a group of casual players take a balanced ruleset and have fun with it rather than not having a balanced ruleset to begin with.

Although this is true, the practicality of it is that a lot of people play the game in the way it is intended. So, if you happen to like the type of game that AoS envisions, you're more likely to find like-minded players of that sort, than you would have in the days of WHFB. As time progresses, the number of people who play the game significantly differently than envisioned shrinks; for example the number of 5e and 4e players of 40k must surely be small, now.

If you'd like to discuss AoS generally, please do so in the AoS section of Dakka here:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/forums/show/32.page

This thread is for discussing the half-year financial report, so let's stay on that topic, please!

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