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So... What is right/wrong with the AoS ruleset?
A lot of people say they are terrible but it's also obvious a lot of people like them.
Why? And by 'rules' I mean the 4 page freebie along with battle plans, warscrolls, and time of War.
I'd ask that discussion of comp is excluded from this discussion purely because my perception is this is the main issue people have with it.

So with comp left to one side, what's good/bad about the ruleset? Or is it just the lack of comp that's the problem?

RoperPG wrote:
So... What is right/wrong with the AoS ruleset?
A lot of people say they are terrible but it's also obvious a lot of people like them.
Why? And by 'rules' I mean the 4 page freebie along with battle plans, warscrolls, and time of War.
I'd ask that discussion of comp is excluded from this discussion purely because my perception is this is the main issue people have with it.

So with comp left to one side, what's good/bad about the ruleset? Or is it just the lack of comp that's the problem?

Other than comp...

A few people are still complaining about the rules for some older characters that give preference to the loudest player or the best beard or whatever. It's important to note that GW said that this was thrown in as a nod to older players and wouldn't be used for any new units or armies. NONE of the new stuff has had these sorts of rules.

The comp is the main thing... and it's a really big thing. Everything else is a distant second.

Thread's theme has been around the block multiple times here already. But here we go...

RoperPG wrote:
So... What is right/wrong with the AoS ruleset?
A lot of people say they are terrible but it's also obvious a lot of people like them.
Why? And by 'rules' I mean the 4 page freebie along with battle plans, warscrolls, and time of War.
I'd ask that discussion of comp is excluded from this discussion purely because my perception is this is the main issue people have with it.

So with comp left to one side, what's good/bad about the ruleset? Or is it just the lack of comp that's the problem?

Whenever I refer to Comp I mean the community lead point system.

I have played more games without Comp than with. The games did not appear further 'balanced' with them.

Age of Sigmar is fun. I've had a lot of good games. We've played with models/units we might not have had with a strict points system.

The focus of using scenarios is one of the main strengths. It adds flavour and variety.

The games are sort(er) in length (a positive).

The lack of 'armies' or 'allies' is a strength.

Warscrolls allow the units to have rules that match their fluff. It provides way more special rules but never feels bloated, as they're often around similar themes and a reduced in breadth stat block.

Summoning is open to abuse but in reality on the tabletop it never becomes as overpowered as you'd expect. Or at least from what I've experienced.

It still uses D6 which in itself can be rather limiting.

Shooting into and out of combat is dumb is a bad rule that seems to be counter intuitive but slipped in somehow.

 Kriswall wrote:
NONE of the new stuff has had these sorts of rules.

The Auric Runeson disagrees with you.

Anyway, this overall feels like a bit of a moot thread. Liking or disliking the rules is utterly subjective and many people have already made many posts regarding the ups and downs of it (Jono, Matt, I, Bottle, etc)
Feels like flogging a dead horse, with all respect.

 jonolikespie wrote:
Shooting into and out of combat is dumb is a bad rule that seems to be counter intuitive but slipped in somehow.

I don't mind it. On the tabletop it provides more options and choices to make. Though I admit to some that the imagery of it might appear off.

It seems that the rules writing started with the attitude of "well, why not allow it?". And anything that was too much was taken out. This seems to apply to deployment, summoning, shooting, etc.

Direct measurement from the actual model instead of a standardized base/silhouette. Anytime modelling can give advantage or disadvantages to players is what I consider to be bad for the game. I understand the reasoning behind measuring directly to models (the switch from square/rectangular bases to circular bases).

Except for that, everything else about the rules is fine to me.

Aos has very simplistic yet effective rules for what it is, but there is a specific rule that is above all other rules that specifically states that if there is any disagreement of rules, roll a dice or discuss it with the second party, most game system do not have that particular rule and so it becomes a problem where people need FAQS and third parties to decide what is best... AoS is designed in a way as to simplify and speed up the game and if needed make it complex, if someone disagreed with me during WFB days we would spend time arguing and looking up rules and faqs in AoS we roll a dice and go from there, those joke rules can be ignored and its actually in the rules to be ignored so you won't get those "I am doing it because the rules let me" players

For me the bad aspects are:

- no points, after playing with and without comp systems I think that I prefer to play with points. AoS could easily incorporate points, with the scenarios fixing uneven point ratios for each side if needed - they could add points into the app and adjust them on a monthly basis.

- shooting, both shooting into/out of combat and also being able to shoot anything with even the slightest line of sight. It's not fun to have your heroes cannon sniped when they are surrounded by troops.

- buffs, I like them, but when you have to keep track of nearby terrain, formation bonuses, magical and command bonuses, and any others, it can get difficult to keep track of.

The good aspects are:

- Freedom in list building. I love being able to mix and match factions or play anything from monster mash to hero hammer to troops spam.

- Army Size. I love armies being 50-60 models and feeling "complete"

- Free rules. A great idea. Please do it for 40k too

Wait a second, something about this thread seems awfully familiar...

What's good about the AOS rules that I enjoy:

* four pages. I've gotten to the point in my life where I am done learning large rulesets. Every game of 40k I play involves spending a lot of time with my nose in a rulebook to make sure I play it right. I'm frustrated with that. Other games are similar. Infinity, for example... great game, but that rulebook...

* warscrolls - i like how the warscrolls work and how the units interact with each other

* time of war and scenarios - I enjoy a scenario driven game. I really cannot do more battle line 24/7 anymore in my life. This is something I've embraced 100%.

What I do not like about the AOS rules and why I wrote Azyr Comp:

* no points. I'm not a tournament gamer. I need points for my resource campaigns. I need points to make sure that the game is measurably balanced. The eyeball it method has never worked and I've never seen it work. Every eyeball it game I've watched since July has been very one sided and when we run the sides through Azyr the side that wins usually always had significantly more points which played a big part.

I do not enjoy sitting in a game that was one sided on either end simply because the forces were stacked past the point of reasonable imbalance and 99% of the people I've met cannot eyeball balance.

Yes GW's points systems are also dismal failures IMO but thats not a failure of a point system in general thats GW being GW and pointing things to sell models.

* nonsensical immersion breaking rules. Shooting into combat is fine. Being able to have a unit that pauses to shoot OUT of combat is absurd in my opinion.

Being able to drop a mortar shell over a combat and only hurt the enemy is absurd in my opinion.

* summoning. Summoning busts the game wide open in a not good way. I can't stand how summoning works out of the box. I would never play AOS raw with someone abusing summoning. It is not a fun game for me.

With a solid comp pack that removes these show-stoppers (for me), the game is a lot of fun.

I view the Age of Sigmar rules as a decent first draft to a game I might very much like in its second or third incarnation, though I fear the game has not been successful enough to get such.

Anyway, things I like about it:

1) the shift of rules complexity from the centralized core rules to the distributed unit rules. Basically, instead of a bunch of 'one size fits all' generic keyword special rules, anything special that a unit can do mechanically is printed right there on its 'war scroll' unit entry. This simultaneously saves hassle having to look up rules in multiple places and allows special rules to be considerably more diverse and targeted to the specific nature of the units in question. As a result, while there are one or two underwhelming units here or there, for the most part, most units in the game have something interesting they do mechanically that is evocative of their fluff and helps bring them to narrative life at the tabletop.


2) Flattened attack progression. Basically, instead of comparing stats on a table, to-hit and to-wound are flat values. A lot of people don't actually like this change, and I didn't like it when I first started playing age of Sigmar, but I've come to appreciate it. It simplifies combat, and brings most units much closer together in power, which allows deities like Nagash and chaff like goblins to exist on the same table. Also, we still have defensive differentiation - in number of wounds, saving throw, and war scroll specific defensive special abilities - so it's not as flat as initially described.


3) Monsters with stats that change as they take damage. In this way, most multi-wound monsters operate like units of single wound models, losing strength as the lose wounds / numbers, and again helping big monsters and large units of little things play nicely together on the same table.


4) Streamlined core rule set. Granted, I think they stream-lined things a bit too much, a 6 page ruleset, with separate scenario and terrain entries instead of trying to fit generic battle set up into those streamlined rules, would I think have been about right. Still, as mentioned in #1, I appreciate having a simplified set of core rules, and pushing the complexity into how your individual units are handled.


5) Scaling. Age of sigmar just scales up and down better than the old fantasy did. under 8th, I didn't even feel like I was playing the game until around 1500 points, and even then it was iffy. I've played Age of Sigmar in games of 'one squad and a hero' up to armies that would have been several thousand points in 8th edition, and regardless of the size it's worked... er... you could say 'as well' or 'as poorly', both would fit.


Those are the main things I like, but I really want to stress how much I like the shift of complexity from the core rules to the individual units, and the amount of narrative life that allows the designers to breathe into the mechanics of those units.



As for stuff I don't like...

1) No sense beating around the bush, the big one is the lack of an official points system, making organizing games, especially pick up games, extremely difficult and often frustrating.

2) The rules are a bit too streamlined, leaving areas that are awkward or confusing or prone to frustration, particularly when combined with the first point. I've seen so many games ruined by players who limited deployed forces without limiting reserves available to summoning and similar abilities. I've also seen a lot of confusion on pile-in moves.

3) lack of look out sir / joining units. This is another big ones. Most infantry heroes have five wounds, and lack the defensive stats needed to survive even a single unit targeting them with ranged attacks. Combine this with true line of sight, which means most of GW's big/floaty/dynamic hero models cannot be physically hidden by their smaller, built-to-be-ranked troopers, and you have a game where, if your general isn't some sort of monster, they're unlikely to see combat. Very frustrating.

4) This is a bit more minor, but... why are there no unit type keywords!? Infantry/cavalry/monstrous infantry/etc? It's such an obvious thing to do, such an obviously useful mechanical hook on which to hang abilities or special rules (ie, ability to join units of the same type, or units specialized in fighting big things or little things, etc), and yet its not there.

5) ability to shoot while in combat. Yeah, a lot of ranged units lose some special rules while engaged, but it still feels off.

6) round bases / loose formations. Can get to be a hassle in larger games with bigger squads. I prefer moving a single block unit on a tray, and also like the look of it.

But now were're getting into how stuff 'feels' and aesthetic preferences, so I feel like I'm beyond meaningful complaints here. The big ones for me are #1 (especially) and #3.


Honestly, that's not too much on either side, like I said, AoS is, mechanically, pretty close to a game I could very much like. My bigger complaints are with how GW has gone about retiring the old game and rolling out the new one., their lack of communication, the unengaging nature of the new setting due to it's nebulousness and lack of relatable grounding points, the seemingly deliberate rejection of their existing player base combined with the unwillingess to meaningfully reach out to anyone else (6 months of new releases into the new game, and still not a single female model among them if we don't count round base repacks), the utterly insane and completely self defeating pricing shifts (the biggest problem with fantasy was the ludicrous buy in costs of starting a new army, and at first it seemed AoS was going to improve on that with better introductory play at smaller scale, but GW have been ramping the prices up so hard that soon a starter AoS force of a couple dozen models will cost as much as a starter WHFB force of a couple hundred, utterly defeating the point). In the social media age, the lack of communication or community support in particular is egregious, but...


but none of that is mechanical stuff, so it's mostly off topic here.

Measuring is counter-intuitive (from the model, not the base)
Shooting is counter-intuitive (shooting out of combat, no risk shooting into combat)
Cover is counter-intuitive (you get cover when standing on a wall, but not behind it).
Combat is over-complified and counter intuitive (same to-hit/to-wound whatever you are attacking)
Lack of points/balancing systems makes balanced/pick up gaming hard to arrange.

Whilst the rules are simple, they leave a lot of questions, and the bloat is added back in with hundreds of special rules, meaning there's something like 35 different types of shield, some with duplicate rules, some with different rules.

I like the idea of a super streamlined set of gaming rules, and see what they were trying to do, but as usual with GW the implementation is a total let down. It's like a really bad facsimile of what the competition are doing now (with simple rules and stat cards)

The weakening monsters is a brilliant idea (it's my favourite part of the HeroClix system), the freeform basing and skirmish formation is pretty neat too.

The freedom of shooting is one of my favourite changes with AoS. It might not be realistic, but if I took that standard to pretty much any of the games I play, movies I watch, books I read etc. they'd have a lot of problems. I think comping shooting is lame and a bit of a knee jerk reaction.

I find the rules intuitive, and that's their best aspect. The game plays naturally. One myth I'm glad has died is lack of tactics. As has always been said, the game shines with scenarios and objectives. Retreating is a great mechanic.

Overall I don't think they are bad rules, but they could have been better, and they are not the kind of rules I want to play.


What I like about AoS

It is a genuine attempt to cram all of a basically functional skirmish game into 4 pages, and essentially succeeds (though I have reservations, as you will see below.)

The Key Words system seems pretty good. I haven't looked into it in detail as I don't play the game.

Simple and effective magic rules.


What I dislike about AoS:

Combat resolution is still the tedious, time wasting To Hit, To Wound, To Save system of WHFB and 40K. This idea dates back to the early 70s.

The necessity of measuring model movement by millimetres for maximum men in melee. This is as "gamey" as having ranks and flanks, but far less realistic, resulting in formations like the inverse T.

No proper command, control, communication and morale rules.


What I would have liked to have seen:

Combat resolution reduced to two rolls, a To Hit and a To Save. Differentiate
powerful weapons by giving them more attacks and a better To Hit. Differentiate tougher targets by giving them a better To Save and more hit points.

Use the paper saved to add simple C3 and morale rules. These add an extra dimension to your tactical decision making possibilities.

Dump the MMMbMfMMiM rule for a simple rule that any figure in the unit in base to base contact with an enemy can attack. If the other figures have range 2 weapons, they can also attack if they are in base to base contact with a figure of their unit that is in base to base contact with the enemy. If range 3, then, blah blah blah.

I think these rules would simplify and speed up the game while retaining all the simplicity and convenience of the war scrolls and special rules, and also add a new element of tactics in the use of C3 and morale.


Common complaints I don't worry about

No points.
I think it would have been better to give each unit a power rating, to enable players to judge the fairness of scenarios more easily, but I also think most standard units are not wildly imbalanced as they stand,and given the game is a small scale skirmish, intended to be played quickly and non-seriously, I don't think it needs a tournament grade balance mechanism.

Line of Sight
It isn't important in a small scale skirmish game.

Shooting into/out of combat
I don't find this unrealistic in a small scale skirmish situation where troops are individually aiming at each other, rather than shooting at a general area. It gives missile troops a bit of a boost, and therefore more interesting to play, and it helps to reduce the Mosh Pit effect of melee being so decisive.

I'm not sure I'd call the game a 'small scale skirmish game'. It certainly can be played that way, but when the rules include formations like the 'deathrattle horde' - which requires five units and a character, with three of those units being nowhere near effective unless you're running them in units of 20, 30, or more - then I'd say the game is also looking to run larger games.

But yeah, I'd definitely agree moving from measured ranges to 'in base, or with reach in base of someone in base' that would work better, though then you're back to the base having a measurable impact on the battle (not that bases don't have one as it is, but since the rules ignore them they can pretend players don't need to re-base entire collections).


As for static to-hit and to-wound rolls breaking immersion... I disagree. If you just play with it, you get over it quickly. Because units are not equally hard to kill - wound count, armor save, and defensive special rules all weigh heavily. It is harder to wound Nagash than a zombie, and it is much harder to kill him. defensive ability is reasonably modeled, and I consider the fact that powerful models can be reasonably dragged down by weight of attacks to be a considerable improvement to the game, it lets those types of units operate more smoothly together on the table.

I do however agree with kilkrazy's notion that three rolls is more than each attack should need, especially when relatively common 'd3 damage' can turn that into four rolls. Two rolls,(attack and save), or preferably a single opposed roll (though I'm not sure how to make that work with rolling attacks for a unit at a time), would be considerably better.

 Malisteen wrote:


3) lack of look out sir / joining units. This is another big ones. Most infantry heroes have five wounds, and lack the defensive stats needed to survive even a single unit targeting them with ranged attacks. Combine this with true line of sight, which means most of GW's big/floaty/dynamic hero models cannot be physically hidden by their smaller, built-to-be-ranked troopers, and you have a game where, if your general isn't some sort of monster, they're unlikely to see combat. Very frustrating.

4) This is a bit more minor, but... why are there no unit type keywords!? Infantry/cavalry/monstrous infantry/etc? It's such an obvious thing to do, such an obviously useful mechanical hook on which to hang abilities or special rules (ie, ability to join units of the same type, or units specialized in fighting big things or little things, etc), and yet its not there.

Yes! I really agree. And including #4 would make #3 so easy to implement.

Yeah, the quality is...bad, actually just awful. the 4 pages aren't really even 4 pages of actual game play rules(there is terrain and such). Herzlos hit on a lot of what made me finally give it up to the trash heap, so here goes my opinion, first..................

the bad stuff:
Measuring is counter-intuitive (from the model, not the base) this is just dumb, open to abuse and all around a bad idea. it could be mitigated by saying use round bases(yes I would complain, but I would do it anyhow and the game would be better for it)

Shooting is counter-intuitive (shooting out of combat, no risk shooting into combat) this is also ridiculous, and with the irritating manner of combat anyhow its back to models are supposed to be fighting, they aren't just standing there static, they would be moving, a clear easy shot would not be realistic or even rational (folks wouldnt usually shoot their friends)

Cover is counter-intuitive (you get cover when standing on a wall, but not behind it). poorly written rule, like most of them.

summoning....yeah, this blows in too many ways to go into detail, game breaking.

Combat is over-complified and counter intuitive (same to-hit/to-wound whatever you are attacking) this is a nod to speed but not very helpful especially since you are still rolling buckets of dice, who gets to fight is a mess, you need to keep track of which units already hit, meaning "fast" races are about as swift as a zombie, mortal wounds are the newest cheese rule to arrive. really combat all around is terrible in AoS, they really really miss the mark on small skirmish with this.

Lack of points/balancing systems makes balanced/pick up gaming hard to arrange. Here they want us to talk to our opponents and come up with a common consensus, thats great but then so much for the quicker game time they crowed on, its back to forever to plan for a very short unsatisfying game. with everyone being new to this "new" system, noone can really have much of an idea what would even be a "fair" game.

the scenarios touted as a strength I find boring as hell. overall the game is a rambling mess that rapidly degenerates into a rugby scrum in the center (not everyone has this problem, but for us, despite trying to avoid it, still happens)

calling it a skirmish. its not. there are still units, its basically a small battle. I have rarely seen games (and admittedly with its unpopularity, there are few here to see and usually I am a part of them) under 100+ models 5 warscrolls of units of 10 and already you are at 50, but alot of units suck at that size or there are distinct advantages to having many more.

its not new or innovative in any way, shape, or form, its warhammer fantasy battle/40k all over again with 99.9% (dramatic overexaggeration to make a point) the same rules, just watered down to the point of nonsense. the movement is just 40k, with 1inch between models they might as well just rank up. the turn sequence is virtually the same with only a few things flipped. the shooting is 40k style. we all got suckered into buying into the same old game or walked into it knowingly, which brings up my biggest disgust with AoS.

GW punts again. they had an opportunity to make something truly new and unique, or even a better hybrid, they chose not to, as usual. really would 4 more pages or so be that hard to do, just a little bit more clarification, a little more crunch?

terrain....meh

the previous win table, just go ahead and give it to everybody, if i am at a pick up game and i dont know you, how should i know (or you be honest) about your last fight, and why does it matter with ours?

sudden death rules, they suck, they suck because it is very easy to simply make them impossible to acheive, the game does bog down in combat the same as warhammer could.

battleshock, this is just lousy all around, whatever fluffy way you want to say it, its just losing more models like undead and such used to.

pickup games...it sucks for these, badly. I hate trying to explain such a weak ruleset, other than gw, when I bust out the rules sheets it makes folks cringe. its only 4 pages, should be a strength but has proven to me to be a major turn off (usually it starts with "hey would you like to try a game of age of sigmar with me, I show the models, then explain that its not warhammer fantasy, so no blocks or big books, then i show them the rules, they do quick glance and then its "lets play something else, i see you have malifuax, warmachine, imperial assualt, fill in what models i brought ad nauseaum) at gw its a little better, but not much, it usually goes "no that game is crap, lets do 40k instead"

the game is no fun. its a mess. it requires way too much from the players that the rules writers should have done. I am not a GW employee, I dont want to finish their product for them.

line of sight needs alot of love, its supposed to be small scale skirmish, every soldier matters, would like to protect them, which is also where the cover rules are bad.

The good stuff:

sounds of crickets......but seriously though there are some good things to it

the warscrolls, while I personally think they look stupid and hate the name, and yeah they could be more informative, they are otherwise pretty damn good. easy to print, 3 hole punch and make your own army lists. they are fairly varied and in tandem with how the minis are sold, you get a box and can use it right away, this is a major strength in my opinion (it was also one of the reasons i give for warmahordes superiority over gw products in general, the use out of the box) they are also easy to follow.

freedom to build fluffy armies, while this is a combo with the bads of troops being relatively irrelevant, it does allow you to build the army you want to build without being "broken" rules wise, I have seen some really really neat armies that while you "could" have done them in WHFB, you didnt.

the rules are "free". granted most of us who wanted to like the game or do like it did go out and buy the big rulebook (in hindsight I regret that book mightily, I think its trash) and will likely buy the starter box, because thats just what we do. but we did NOT have to. we were good to go from day 1, our armies were not instantly invalidated nor removed from the game *squats* and we could play with our free warscrolls and rules from word go.

the game scales very very well in a certain range...while you can play it with 20 or less models, it blows goats badly at that range. really big games suck too, but that middle ground it is really good for scaling game size.

the hero phase, i do like this, not sure why, but it grew on me, and having it at the beginning, just seemed right TO ME, i know alot who will disagree with me on this one.

the ability to continually grow the game,. right now nothing I hate about it has to be set in stone, its all easily fixable and hey they might make expansions and add ones that turn this into a really good game. I personally played 117 games using all of my armys but 1 at least once ( I despise with all my heart the character of sigmar, whom i call suckmar, and thus his suckmarines are still on sprue and will remain there until someone takes them off my hands) I dont believe in quitting a game after only a few and despite my initial disgust with the whole AoS concept, gave it a good old go, traded some stuff for a big book and box set and went to play. this game got boring much much faster than i could have thought, it has the depth of checkers. I have never much cared for 40k, but AoS has (in combination with discontinuing lotr/ hobbit, a game AoS should have taken alot of cues from) made me divorce GW.

Cover is counter-intuitive (you get cover when standing on a wall, but not behind it). poorly written rule, like most of them.

Actually thats for the most part an urban legend. The part about the wall is wholly false. There is a terrain warscroll that has the rules for all of the terrain.

For walls:
Barricade: If all of the models from a unit
are within 3" of a wall or fence, and are on
the same side of it, then the unit receives
the benefits of cover against attacks made
by models that are on the other side of the
wall or fence.

Also the game was not designed as a pick up game, which is where I feel a lot of the angst originates from in various forms. (that could be a viable and valid CON for the game for sure)

Having to find the rules for something basic like terrain in a separate document seems like a poor design choice... how would a new player know to do this? If things like that are required, any appeal of a 4 page ruleset is totally removed, imo. Why not do like many games do, and include those rules but put them in an "advanced" section after the basics?

 RiTides wrote:
Having to find the rules for something basic like terrain in a separate document seems like a poor design choice... how would a new player know to do this? If things like that are required, any appeal of a 4 page ruleset is totally removed, imo. Why not do like many games do, and include those rules but put them in an "advanced" section after the basics?

Well, those are rules for a piece of terrain GW sells. Everything has war scrolls now. It's the same situation with all of the terrain. Regular rules for how terrain works in terms of moving through it and special effects are in the 4 pages. There is a lot more than the 4 pages anyway, considering all the war scrolls, battle plans, etc. The 4 pages are just the basic mechanics, and then nearly everything on the table has its own rules entry to add onto it.

Edit: To add, I think one of my gripes with AoS is just how many rules it has, much contrary to all the complaints about 4 pages. There is a ton to remember.

It's broken in the core rules though. You need to be aware of that and use the terrain scroll instead. Whilst it's good they fixed it, they should do something about the original rules toom

coldgaming wrote:

 RiTides wrote:
Having to find the rules for something basic like terrain in a separate document seems like a poor design choice... how would a new player know to do this? If things like that are required, any appeal of a 4 page ruleset is totally removed, imo. Why not do like many games do, and include those rules but put them in an "advanced" section after the basics?

Well, those are rules for a piece of terrain GW sells. Everything has war scrolls now. It's the same situation with all of the terrain. Regular rules for how terrain works in terms of moving through it and special effects are in the 4 pages. There is a lot more than the 4 pages anyway, considering all the war scrolls, battle plans, etc. The 4 pages are just the basic mechanics, and then nearly everything on the table has its own rules entry to add onto it.

Edit: To add, I think one of my gripes with AoS is just how many rules it has, much contrary to all the complaints about 4 pages. There is a ton to remember.

I think that the amount of rules on each warscroll is off putting. I much prefer the way KoW does it with generic special rules and only those generic ones so I can look across the table and see a block of spearmen my opponent tells me they have phalanx and vicious. I know exactly what that unit does now. I don't need to remember any other BS.

As for the terrain... what do you do with home made stuff, do you need a warscroll for it to work?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Looking at the terrain warscrolls all I can say is that is another reason I'd consider AoS rules poor quality. The random magical terrain was crap in 8th ed, we should have had less of it not make every bit of terrain over the top too.

Comparing to KoW again since both are simplified versions of WHFB but imo KoW simplified the right ways where AoS went the wrong way.
In KoW terrain is much simpler, you can look at a hill and know what it does without remembering any odd special rules. They also include a part about terrain that is for show only, like say a stature, that your regiments just walk over like they aren't there. That I love as in 8th ed (and now AoS) that stature would shoot fireballs or some crap at you. In KoW it is easier to add in fun little terrain features to the table without worrying about them getting in the way of the game. It means you can add more of them which makes the table more flavourful imo.

 Malisteen wrote:
I'm not sure I'd call the game a 'small scale skirmish game'. It certainly can be played that way, but when the rules include formations like the 'deathrattle horde' - which requires five units and a character, with three of those units being nowhere near effective unless you're running them in units of 20, 30, or more - then I'd say the game is also looking to run larger games.
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On reflection I agree, it's a mass skirmish game like 40K. However, I think the movement and combat rules are too clunky to work for larger numbers of figures. Certainly, playing 40K, there starts to be a real time problem with horde armies like Tyranids and Orks. If I was going to play AoS and use large units like lots of Skinks, I certainly would put them on to block bases to speed up movement.

To go off at a bit of a tangent, I've noticed that people playing AoS in shops tend to move their units as sort of electron shell probability clouds, rather than properly measuring out the path and distance for each individual figure. I think this is because it's a right pain in the arse to do it properly, but, given the crucial factor in AoS of figure placement in melee, this kind of merry wandering is verging on cheating.

While actually I don't like the crucial figure placement mechanism, I would rather see people play games by the rules. Especially as the precise placement is a major part of the tactics in AoS.


If I was going to play AoS I would buy fish tank ornaments instead of the official terrain pieces, as they are expensive and need a lot of assembling and painting, while the ornaments come ready made. Then I would simply apply the appropriate terrain war scroll to each fish tank piece. Since the game is set in amazing magical landscapes, it's appropriate to give certain terrain pieces these special powers.

Regarding the special rules on each war scroll, I think this is the nature of the game. GW want to make it a "collect them all" type of game in which every unit is unique in some minor way at least.

The idea of learning the special rules to 100s of units probably appeals to young boys -- it's like learning all the nations and their capitals, or the specs of WW2 aircraft or something. That doesn't appeal to me so much any more, but I think it's easy enough to have a look at the war scrolls that are used for a single game.

On the whole though, the idea of having a war scroll for each unit, with all its rules and stats, is a good one. That's why I suggested it several years ago, and I'm happy that GW have taken up my idea.

The danger of the special rules proliferation is that it introduces more and more chances for exploits to be created. There is probably a mathematical formula to describe it.

To me this only matters if people are going to play AoS as a serious tournament game. I suppose it is something that organisers will just have to get to grips with, but it shouldn't matter for home and club play.

 RiTides wrote:
Having to find the rules for something basic like terrain in a separate document seems like a poor design choice... how would a new player know to do this? If things like that are required, any appeal of a 4 page ruleset is totally removed, imo. Why not do like many games do, and include those rules but put them in an "advanced" section after the basics?

This is simply how AoS rules are structured. Core rules only cover the very basics like movement, turn order, etc. Rules for any specific thing are on that specific thing's rules page. It is a deliberate redistribution of rules complexity from the central core rules to the distributed unit & terrain rules.

I personally find it more convenient, as I can set aside just the pages of the rules I'm using in a game, and not have to flip through a hundred page book of rules I'm not using if I have to look anything up. It also allows individual units and terrain to have more customized rules, rather than sticking to generic special rules that may not fit them as well - such as how the generic 'if you're standing on it you get cover' terrain rule doesn't fit with walls.

Personally I like that mechanical specialization, but I've always preferred piles of wacky special rules to sterile games like KoW, where faction rules look like spread sheets, and the difference between a 4 in this stat and a 3 in that stat is supposed to convey the distinct character of particular units or even entire armies. I understand that's an entirely subjective take, but I tried hard to like KoW back when I was much more bitter about AoS than I am now, and try as I might, even with the power of spite behind it, I just could not get into that game. There was nothing to it I could sink my teeth into or hang my imagination on.

 jonolikespie wrote:

coldgaming wrote:

 RiTides wrote:
Having to find the rules for something basic like terrain in a separate document seems like a poor design choice... how would a new player know to do this? If things like that are required, any appeal of a 4 page ruleset is totally removed, imo. Why not do like many games do, and include those rules but put them in an "advanced" section after the basics?

Well, those are rules for a piece of terrain GW sells. Everything has war scrolls now. It's the same situation with all of the terrain. Regular rules for how terrain works in terms of moving through it and special effects are in the 4 pages. There is a lot more than the 4 pages anyway, considering all the war scrolls, battle plans, etc. The 4 pages are just the basic mechanics, and then nearly everything on the table has its own rules entry to add onto it.

Edit: To add, I think one of my gripes with AoS is just how many rules it has, much contrary to all the complaints about 4 pages. There is a ton to remember.

I think that the amount of rules on each warscroll is off putting. I much prefer the way KoW does it with generic special rules and only those generic ones so I can look across the table and see a block of spearmen my opponent tells me they have phalanx and vicious. I know exactly what that unit does now. I don't need to remember any other BS.

As for the terrain... what do you do with home made stuff, do you need a warscroll for it to work?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Looking at the terrain warscrolls all I can say is that is another reason I'd consider AoS rules poor quality. The random magical terrain was crap in 8th ed, we should have had less of it not make every bit of terrain over the top too.

Comparing to KoW again since both are simplified versions of WHFB but imo KoW simplified the right ways where AoS went the wrong way.
In KoW terrain is much simpler, you can look at a hill and know what it does without remembering any odd special rules. They also include a part about terrain that is for show only, like say a stature, that your regiments just walk over like they aren't there. That I love as in 8th ed (and now AoS) that stature would shoot fireballs or some crap at you. In KoW it is easier to add in fun little terrain features to the table without worrying about them getting in the way of the game. It means you can add more of them which makes the table more flavourful imo.

I suggest trying the game at some point if you can. I think you'll find AoS is more intuitive than you've made it out.

 Malisteen wrote:

 RiTides wrote:
Having to find the rules for something basic like terrain in a separate document seems like a poor design choice... how would a new player know to do this? If things like that are required, any appeal of a 4 page ruleset is totally removed, imo. Why not do like many games do, and include those rules but put them in an "advanced" section after the basics?

This is simply how AoS rules are structured. Core rules only cover the very basics like movement, turn order, etc. Rules for any specific thing are on that specific thing's rules page. It is a deliberate redistribution of rules complexity from the central core rules to the distributed unit & terrain rules.

I personally find it more convenient, as I can set aside just the pages of the rules I'm using in a game, and not have to flip through a hundred page book of rules I'm not using if I have to look anything up. It also allows individual units and terrain to have more customized rules, rather than sticking to generic special rules that may not fit them as well - such as how the generic 'if you're standing on it you get cover' terrain rule doesn't fit with walls.

Personally I like that mechanical specialization, but I've always preferred piles of wacky special rules to sterile games like KoW, where faction rules look like spread sheets, and the difference between a 4 in this stat and a 3 in that stat is supposed to convey the distinct character of particular units or even entire armies. I understand that's an entirely subjective take, but I tried hard to like KoW back when I was much more bitter about AoS than I am now, and try as I might, even with the power of spite behind it, I just could not get into that game. There was nothing to it I could sink my teeth into or hang my imagination on.

Agree with this for sure!

For home made terrain, you either use the generic terrain rules if it fits, or one of the published terrain scrolls if that's a better fit (there are scrolls for forests, walls, grave yards, assorted buildings, etc), or you make up your own home brew rules.

coldgaming wrote:

I suggest trying the game at some point if you can. I think you'll find AoS is more intuitive than you've made it out.

You know if anyone played at my FLGS it wouldn't be hard to grab some old WHFB models, and I probably would have. But if I wanted to try I'd have to go to the local GW, which is 2 hour max parking and I may well end up waiting there that long just to use the one table..
I did get the demo when it started, but it seemed clunky so when my parking meter came up I just abandoned it.

Even as someone who likes Age of Sigmar (the game in and of itself, not the way GW's handled the transition) more than I dislike it, I can certainly admit that the game is clunky. Very much first draft material, not a refined experience. Then again, so was first edition Malifeux, and the initial releases of a bunch of other games for that matter. Whether AoS lives long enough to get a more refined second edition, well... We'll see.

As for nobody playing near you, well, not much can be done about that. Most minis games are pretty bad when you don't have anyone else to play with.