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The sad thing is that it should be so clunky, being GW's first major release in 15 years, based on their 70 years' experience in development of mass skirmish games (WHFB, 40K, LoTR.)

However I will turn the thread into a Two Minute Hate if I am not careful.

pretty sure WHFB and 40k are also and have pretty much always been pretty clunky as well. LotR was a bright spot, but it didn't scale up all that well, which is a problem when the most memorable scenes in the films & books the game was emulating were huge battles.

Yes, definitely true. That's why AoS was so disappointing for me. It essentially is 40K in fantasy clothing, with some minor changes to the stat line and a new set of special rules.

 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.

So... as is often cited; people weren't getting into WHFB because of the size of start up.
So GW wipe out an amazing piece of IP which they've spent countless years building up and protecting. To replace with a game with a low buy in. Sounds good so far. Except the figures cost more and it's now back to formations with the same amount of figures. Good business idea if people fall for it.
I have nothing against the rules, but I got He-man and the Masters of the Universe out my system as a pre-teen. I assume this is now the age category the game is aimed at?

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.

That's actually what is off-putting to me, too (your last line). I just don't know where I'd have to find everything... the idea that in the core rules there's a different (or insufficient) rule for walls than in a specific terrain warscroll... I can't think of a scenario that would be less appealing to me! It's great to have alternate advanced rules at times... but that's just basic.

One of the things that has stopped me from playing 40K is the scattering of rules into a ton of different books, PDF-only supplements, etc... and it continues in AoS, that a certain unit might have different rules if fielded in a particular detachment than if fielded standard, and there's no way to know that other than to remember the detachment (referring to 40K here). It is actually too complicated... and AoS makes that even worse with separating out basic rules into more documents.

The appeal it had for me as a simple ruleset was real (although comp / balancing was an issue, which we're not really considering here). But that seems to be a bit of a mirage, and the actual game is still large, and getting more complex with additional rules in frequent campaign supplements and an ever increasing number of warscrolls... honestly it's a bit overwhelming as an outsider looking in. I'm sure folks playing have it down, like most systems, but it is kind of defeating the purpose of what I thought was the goal with AoS rules - simplicity and ease of play!

I find that AoS is simpler to learn but actually plays slower than WHFB.

 Gimgamgoo wrote:
To replace with a game with a low buy in. Sounds good so far. Except the figures cost more and it's now back to formations with the same amount of figures.

If AoS do not exist, and GW introduce 9th edition instead. I pretty sure that, the price of the new 9th ed kits would cost more too.

 Gimgamgoo wrote:
So... as is often cited; people weren't getting into WHFB because of the size of start up.
So GW wipe out an amazing piece of IP which they've spent countless years building up and protecting. To replace with a game with a low buy in. Sounds good so far. Except the figures cost more and it's now back to formations with the same amount of figures. Good business idea if people fall for it.
I have nothing against the rules, but I got He-man and the Masters of the Universe out my system as a pre-teen. I assume this is now the age category the game is aimed at?

The buy in is lower, because Age of Sigmar scales down to small games far better than WHFB ever did. WHFB needed side games like 'skirmish' to try and do the low scale game thing. AoS plays just as well (and by extension just as poorly) with a unit box plus a hero as it does with a couple hundred models.


As for who the game is aimed at - Age of Sigmar is auture's work, in the sense of creators in dialog with themselves, rather than with an audience in mind. Ie, it is coming from older designers designing a game for themselves. Designers who pre-date the 'competitive scene' in minis games - both tournaments and casual pick up games, designers who saw that kind of play, with its over-adherence to 'rules as written', its boring generic scenarios, its finicky points-crunching and math hammering and list building, as a blight that ruined good old-fashioned narrative basement campaigns played for fun with regular friends and tons of house rules and armies based on stories rather than points limits.

It is a game not aimed gamers younger than you, but rather at older gamers, gamers who are parents now and want a game they can play with their kids. Gamers old enough to no longer be embarrassed about 'playing with he-man dolls'. Who no longer need a rigid rules structure and the veneer of competition as a psychological excuse to get them over the hurdle of playing with toy soldiers (to be clear, I'm expressing my impression of the opinions of the designers, not my own). It is decidedly and deliberately NOT aimed at competitively minded 20-somethings who complain endlessly on the internets and send death threats to games designers (which actually happened oh my god I'm ashamed of the people in this hobby some times) and play super serious games against strangers at insular and unwelcoming game stores.

If you want to know the mind set behind Age of Sigmar, it's all here in this old Citadel Journal article by Jervis Johnson from, what? More than a decade ago?
http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2015/08/40k-editorial-rules-rant-jervis-are-you-serious.html

Yeah. Age of Sigmar isn't some brand new corporately mandated response to Chapterhouse or to 8th edition failing financially. Those have been the catalysts that led to the corporate suits letting the designers off their chain, but make no mistake, this is the game that the heads of GW's design team have been wanting to make for ages.


Now, I happen to think all of this demonstrates a pretty poor understanding of their audience. It's all a very condescending attitude to adopt, and it takes a pretty big head to decide the problems with your game aren't how you wrote it, but how the players choose to play it, so you're going to write a version of the game that deliberately makes it impossible to play that way, like a kid sharing their toys, but when the other kids don't 'play with them right' taking them all back and going home. And as a business move, it's daft. There aren't as many basement players. And basement players play their basement games regardless. They don't need your rules to cater to them, because they don't need your rules in the first place. They're also unlikely to show brand loyalty to your product line.

But fantasy as it was was failing, and the suits decided they might as well let the designers try something crazy and do what they've been wanting to do to the game for, apparently, years, designing a game purely for themselves and just hope other people would buy into it.


And some of us have. I think the mind set behind the game is pretty dumb, and GW's business practices and community interaction remain utterly toxic, but I am one of those older, narrative gamers who finds 'serious' gaming tedious and 'serious' gamers irritating. As much as I hate the way this transition has been handled, and I hate the lack of communication and air of condescension coming from GW, I kind of like the game. So... *shrug*

Meowstalker wrote:

 Gimgamgoo wrote:
To replace with a game with a low buy in. Sounds good so far. Except the figures cost more and it's now back to formations with the same amount of figures.

If AoS do not exist, and GW introduce 9th edition instead. I pretty sure that, the price of the new 9th ed kits would cost more too.

likely as not, but a 9th edition wouldn't try to make the claim that you "need" fewer models. AoS was very deceptive on that point, my AoS battles have been much larger than their 8th edition counterparts, taken longer and were much less interesting and far more obnoxious until we starting ignoring some of the rules.

thekingofkings wrote:

Meowstalker wrote:

 Gimgamgoo wrote:
To replace with a game with a low buy in. Sounds good so far. Except the figures cost more and it's now back to formations with the same amount of figures.

If AoS do not exist, and GW introduce 9th edition instead. I pretty sure that, the price of the new 9th ed kits would cost more too.

likely as not, but a 9th edition wouldn't try to make the claim that you "need" fewer models. AoS was very deceptive on that point, my AoS battles have been much larger than their 8th edition counterparts, taken longer and were much less interesting and far more obnoxious until we starting ignoring some of the rules.

I mean that, GW price hike exist before AoS.

 Malisteen wrote:

But fantasy as it was was failing, and the suits decided they might as well let the designers try something crazy and do what they've been wanting to do to the game for, apparently, years, designing a game purely for themselves and just hope other people would buy into it.

Is there any number or metric or even outright quote from someone in GW that says "fantasy was failing"? Back when all this was just starting, there was a lot of 'it's not making as much as 40k and GW wants it to make more', which seems believable enough. Even 'space marines make more than fantasy' seemed...not TOO much of a stretch...although I'd take that with a grain of salt. But somewhere along the line, this turned into 'fantasy was losing money/failing', and I'd like to know if that was actually the case or it's just a game of whispers.

That's not the kind of thing that would exist as a public quote or figure even if it were true.

The only evidence we have of it was indirectly, from people who claimed (relatively believably) to have inside sources. Rumor sources like Hastings, who were talking about Age of Sigmar (if not that specific name) fairly accurately well before the End Times even started. These sources said WHFB was providing no more than 15% of GW's revenue, while eating considerably more than 15% of the costs, and claimed that there had been serious discussion of just discontinuing the fantasy game and product line altogether, with nothing at all in its place.

Unfortunately, I can't link to the posts in question, because warseer is still dead.

Anyway, if you believe my third hand accounts from these sources, there was an unexpected spike of sales and interest during the End Times, but by that point the wheels were already in motion.


However, regardless of whether that part is accurate, the part where Jervis Johnson was describing something like Age of Sigmar as the ideal form of warhammer, and decrying "competitive gaming" (ie, games played with points values, victory conditions, and unseemly adherence to something so pedestrian as 'rules') as the death of the hobby is direct from the horses mouth, as linked above.

Age of sigmar didn't come from the corporate suits worried about chapterhouse profiting from their IP. It came from the game designers worried about competitive gamers ruining their beer & pretzels game. And it isn't aimed at 12 year olds, it's aimed at 40+ year olds who miss ye olde days, including 40+ year old gamers who want to play games with their 12 year old kids.

Oh, no, I had no problem with that second part, it's pretty obvious that this is the sort of thing Jervis wanted. I do remember seeing something from Hastings on it - that 15% figure sounds familiar - but I don't remember anything about costing them more than that. It's entirely possible that I missed that, but...

I don't know if the earnings stuff is true or not. It's certainly plausible, you often see the most creative freedom given to designers when they're working on flagging product lines, while the corporate suits maintain tight controls on successful lines to keep creatives from killing the cash cows with needless innovation.

But whether it's that or something else that led to Jervis, or designers with the same mentality, being given the reigns is kind of besides the point. I'm mainly just arguing against the notion that Age of Sigmar was a cynical top-down editorially mandated money-grab pushed by non-gamer marketing suits and an out-of-touch corporate board feeling jealous and protective over their IP.

This game is very much a game design auture's vanity project. If anything, AoS may be the fault of too little corporate interference, not too much.

Wow. You sure did make a lot of assumptions about me and my play style. Firstly, thanks for assuming I'm a 20 something rules lawyering max min list maker.

Late 40's would be a better estimate.
I bought the 2nd edition box set with some of my christmas money in 1984 (iirc). Even my last Bolt Action game had some of the old cardboard 'Terror of the Lichemaster' scenery in it. (See blog)

I managed to play WHFB right up to the End times without ever max/min or comp lists. I play (and still play) with only the figures I like to paint, so even if a unit is trash, it still regularly gets a place. Units I don't like the look of never make it to my lists.
We played games that had all kinds of scenarios, zulu dawn type out numbered games, skirmish, objective lead. I didn't need GW to tell me in a new rule set that I could play like that.

A lot of pro-AoS arguments are always the people arguing for the fun story telling games. In my opinion, if you've not been doing that pre-AoS and needed AoS to tell you how, then I wonder why you played. Any ruleset fits this category.

The only 'quality' AoS brought was to the pockets of the owners/shareholders in Lenton.

 Malisteen wrote:

Age of sigmar didn't come from the corporate suits worried about chapterhouse profiting from their IP. It came from the game designers worried about competitive gamers ruining their beer & pretzels game. And it isn't aimed at 12 year olds, it's aimed at 40+ year olds who miss ye olde days, including 40+ year old gamers who want to play games with their 12 year old kids.

That's making a huge assumption that goes against a lot of the evidence we have, like the renaming of even the most basic fantasy races in such a way that GW think it can protect them, and the design of the game, which plays on the ability of children and teens to memorize all the little fiddly rules on each warscroll.

You also keep talking about "older designers" - but apart from Jervis, all the rules writers at GW are a bunch of no-names. All the talent has left to go and do their own things, or help out other companies.

It's much easier to say that that AoS is a continuation of GW's "We're a model toy company, not a game company." No rules means no need to playtest new units or factions. Warscrolls offer a very simple way for designers to take a picture of a model, do up a page in a PDF maker, and then put it out with minimum fuss. A minimal amount of effort is needed for GW to put out new, "impressive" looking kits that they can charge a lot of money for.

I wasn't trying to express my own opinion, but rather attempting to characterize the attitude expressed by the jervis johnson article, the attitude that seems to underlie AoS's design in general, an attitude I find condescending and reductionist. I apologize for my failure of communication in this regard.

AoS isn't about letting people play pointless (literally) narrative basement campaigns. As you say, players could always do that, you don't need rules to play without rules, that's the entire point of playing without rules. Rather it was designed to make it impossible, or at least very difficult, to play any other way, by designers who felt other ways of playing were somehow 'ruining the hobby'.

 infinite_array wrote:

You also keep talking about "older designers" - but apart from Jervis, all the rules writers at GW are a bunch of no-names. All the talent has left to go and do their own things, or help out other companies.

Phil Kelly is part of the old guard and still in the design team - although perhaps now in the specialist games team as it seems he worked on BaC.

 infinite_array wrote:

You also keep talking about "older designers" - but apart from Jervis, all the rules writers at GW are a bunch of no-names. All the talent has left to go and do their own things, or help out other companies.

This is a very mean thing to say... When you are working for a larger company (like GW) you often have to do what your superiours and project managers ask you to do. If you want creative freedom you're free to leave and establish your own firm (and lose the financial backup to produce your product).

 infinite_array wrote:
That's making a huge assumption that goes against a lot of the evidence we have, like the renaming of even the most basic fantasy races in such a way that GW think it can protect them, and the design of the game, which plays on the ability of children and teens to memorize all the little fiddly rules on each warscroll.

What evidence? Most of the wacky names aren't protectable, if that was the point then lawyers would have mandated original names that passed the google-check at least. It would also be pointless from the start, since calling your dwarve 'duardin' doesn't stop people from using another companies dwarf models as 'duardin' in your games. I'm always one for assuming malice before incompetence, but this is a pretty dramatic load of incompetence and malice you're trying to sell, here.

Changing the names also doesn't require blowing up the old world or starting a new game, and it runs 100% counter to including free rules in the new game for all your old dwarf and elf and lizardmen units. So again, the idea that the name changes are about copyright again seems to be a pretty huge stretch.

And it's not like Age of Sigmar is the first fantasy setting to come up with wacky names for old genre staples. It's practically ubiquitous. There are several tv trope entries on it from 'fantasy naming convention' to 'our X are different' to 'Phantasy Spelling' to 'ye olde buchurede englishe'. It goes back to the very roots of the genre, because if you'll recall Tolkien didn't just have 'Elves' and 'Dwarves' and 'Orcs', he had 'Eldar' and 'Khazád' and 'Uruks'.

And even warhammer fantasy had its 'Druchii' and 'Asur' and 'Dawi'.

So:

1) Silly names are common in the genre
2) The old setting already had them
3) They wouldn't have had to blow up the game and start a new one to change the names (see: Adeptus Astartes, Astra Militarum)
4) The new silly names don't even actually protect the IP, some even failing a basic goodle check.

So yeah, I feel pretty comfortable in saying that worries over protecting IP are not at the heart of this transition, nor are they to blame for AoS's mechanical... peculiarities.


As for memorizing things... you had to memorize a bunch of old rules before. now you're just looking them up on the pages of the units themselves, instead of starting with the units and then cross referencing with a BRB. I don't see evidence of anything there.


Where as the evidence that AoS's direction, especially mechanically, was very much driven by the attitudes and preferences of Jervis Johnson or designers like him is all over the previously linked article, a 15 year old editorial describing basically exactly Age of Sigmar as the ideal version of Warhammer fantasy, even at a time when the game as it was was still going relatively strong.

I can imagine Jervis wanting to throw away points and create a game that ran only on scenarios instead. I cannot imagine him wanting to blow up the Old World and shoehorn in Fantasy Space Marines.

I think they are looking for trademarkable names on some levels, but as we've seen with the factions released so far, it's not "duardin" that they would seek to trademark, but "fyreslayer" instead.

Sure sure, but they could have been called 'fyreslayer' regardless of whether they were 'fyreslayer dwaves' or 'fyreslayer duardin'. And they could have been 'fyreslayer dwarves' or 'fyreslayer duardin' in the old world and the old game, too.

I just can't see any reasonable way to hook the silly names to IP worries to blowing up the setting or making a new game with rules that seem designed to deliberately alienate the bulk of their customer base.

Oh, I don't think the destruction of the old world was so that the names could be changed (although it was no doubt a convienent opportunity), I think that was solely to introduce the Stormcast Eternals and to move away from ranked unit gameplay.

I think blowing up the world specifically was more to shake things up. A big event do over, issue zero thing designed to draw attention and provide a jumping-on point for new players when the existing customer base is providing a failing revenue stream. See: comic universe re-boots.

Perhaps that too. Again, I don't see that as Jervis' decision but more a marketing team decision there.

I wonder if Jervis brings over Stormcast models when he games in the Perry twin's basement :-p

 Malisteen wrote:
Sure sure, but they could have been called 'fyreslayer' regardless of whether they were 'fyreslayer dwaves' or 'fyreslayer duardin'. And they could have been 'fyreslayer dwarves' or 'fyreslayer duardin' in the old world and the old game, too.

I just can't see any reasonable way to hook the silly names to IP worries to blowing up the setting or making a new game with rules that seem designed to deliberately alienate the bulk of their customer base.

In any other case, you'd be right. But this is GW, whose head of IP was forced to testify under oath that he didn't know the difference between trademark and copyright. I think they absolutely renamed everything under the misguided notion that these new names are somehow more "protectable" than the old ones. It's the same reason that the Imperial Guard became the "Astra Militarium."

 Malisteen wrote:

I just can't see any reasonable way to hook the silly names to IP worries to blowing up the setting or making a new game with rules that seem designed to deliberately alienate the bulk of their customer base.

Although they did manage to change all the shades of paint by a fraction and rename them all with IP protectable names. Why do you not think they could try the same with AoS?

 Spinner wrote:

 Malisteen wrote:

But fantasy as it was was failing, and the suits decided they might as well let the designers try something crazy and do what they've been wanting to do to the game for, apparently, years, designing a game purely for themselves and just hope other people would buy into it.

Is there any number or metric or even outright quote from someone in GW that says "fantasy was failing"? Back when all this was just starting, there was a lot of 'it's not making as much as 40k and GW wants it to make more', which seems believable enough. Even 'space marines make more than fantasy' seemed...not TOO much of a stretch...although I'd take that with a grain of salt. But somewhere along the line, this turned into 'fantasy was losing money/failing', and I'd like to know if that was actually the case or it's just a game of whispers.

It's perfectly obvious that WHFB was in trouble, and 40K got into the same trouble when GW went down the same road with the title.

This can very easily be read in the rules changes that caused large amounts of complaints, the price doublings that caused large amounts of complaints, and the very rapid fall in sales that occurred following the previous events.

Whether this justified canning the whole game and fluff to replace with AoS is another thing.

Given the recent positive changes in GW that seem to be the work of new CEO Rountree, it would be very interesting to find out if the destruction of WHFB and creation of AoS was Rountree's first bold step forwards, or Kirby's last disastrous jerk on the reins of power. I suspect we'll never know.

However this is all getting off the proper topic.

Trying to head a little more back to the topic of the rules themselves, I'd just like to throw in my personal anecdote of having never seen any gamers (or collectors for that matter) asking for anything GW has done with AoS.

Yes Jervis promoted the idea of no points but no actual customers I ever met asked for that, any that wanted it seemed to be doing it themselves anyway.

A slimmed down, simpler ruleset was certainly asked for, but I don't feel like AoS delivered on that. It made the core rules smaller sure, but it still looks bloated to me with the need to remember a different special rule for every warscroll.

People hated magic terrain in 8th ed WHFB and 7th ed 40k, why does AoS have even more of it?

No one, and I mean no one, wanted space marines in their Fantasy.

End Times seemed well revived when it started and Nagash (and Sigmar in a sense) returned for the final big showdown with Chaos in a new campaign that was advancing the story... but as soon as the last one came out people locally just.. stopped. Fantasy was dead, no one knew what was coming, so people just set it aside.

But again, back to the rules, I feel like someone told the studio they have to condense the rules to 4 pages and the studio just had to run with that. Rules like shooting into and out of combat feel like they were simply cut for formatting's sake. KoW rules are clear and simple enough that I can sit down and read them easily in one sitting. They take up the first 40 pages of the rulebook yes, ten times as many pages as AoS, but they contain ALL the special rules you'll ever encounter. They contain ALL the rules for terrain. They contain rules for timed games in competitive events, they don't have the variety of AoS scenarios, but they have 6 solid ones that provide enough of a difference that people aren't playing battleline by default.

Looking at both of them I would say AoS has been simplified on the surface, but scratch the surface and it is needlessly complex. KoW on the other hand doesn't look as simplified, but is exactly as simple as it seems.

I'm also going to have to compare the two in terms of narrative gameplay since people claim that is the strength of AoS. From everything I've heard the battlplans are good scenario games, since I've got no interest in paying anything to read them I'll assume that's ture but point out KoW have put out an amazing campaign book that covers map based competitive campaigns, narrative campaigns and how to link one game to the next, it gives an example narrative campaign that includes a round of one of their skirmish games, with KoW rules for one of the named bad guys from the skirmish game fluff to include him in the next KoW battle. It even includes basics such as how to get a group together and organize a campaign. Given that I find it hard to believe AoS is better in the narrative gaming department, mostly that just comes down to the players being imaginative and both games seem to offer good inspiration there, albeit in different forms.

That kinda leaves me asking what the AoS rules are actually good for?

If I want a mass battle game I have KoW, if I want skirmish there are a dozen other skirmish games on the market. If I want narrative gaming in mass battle KoW and the campaign book serve me better than AoS as it's a real mass battle game. If I want narrative based skirmish.. honestly Mordheim seems better than AoS as I can watch my men gain experience and level up. Like 40k, AoS seems forced into this niche of skirmish rules but trying to sell the game with 100+ models because GW wants to sell models.

I've actually asked this on this forum and got the response that most people seemed to play with less than 50 models, but GW themselves only ever said that 100 models a side is a good evenings gaming so from that I assume they play with 100 models a side at Nottingham, and since I've not seen any battle reports from GW themselves nor any armies being shown off that are that small I am under the impression GW do expect the game to be played larger than that. (Although thinking about it the battleplans may give a better idea of how many models GW are expecting people to use, if people want to contradict my theory by throwing out battleplans using 20 models a side, or prove it by showing ones with 100+ models aside, please do.)
Actually they also state in the rules: "  Thee more units you decide to use, the longer the game will last and the more exciting it will be! " Sounds like an endorsement of mass battle armies to me.



That may have turned into an incoherent ramble, but the tl;dr is that AoS seems like a game built for a very specific, almost non existent* niche for no other reason than the GW studio seem to like it that way.

(*Before anyone jumps on me saying that they like the game so clearly there is a niche for it, just ask yourself if you discuss what a balanced fight would be, or if you just place a unit, let your opponent place a unit, etc, as per the exact rules as written and then play with sudden death even if the smaller army has the advantage or it looks like a perfectly balanced game that would be unbalanced by giving one side sudden death.)

I do agree that, AoS rules are pretty bad in term of quality. However, rule like shoot in/out of combat is mean to streamline the game flow, it is a choice.